Offender Management Bill

I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that there should be principles applicable to the Bill at the beginning, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has just given. I also support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, to delete the words, "““the proper punishment of offenders””." Since the government plan to abolish the Probation Service first appeared, and the proposal to create instead a set of probation functions that could be put on the market, I have received messages about it from different parts of the world. I have had three, in particular, from people in reasonably highly placed policy positions in justice ministries in their countries. ““What on Earth is going on?”” they wanted to know. ““Why would the Government want to do this? You in England and Wales have something that we are struggling to build, without which there is an enormous gap in our criminal justice system””. They have asked, ““Is this service, a model for the world, to be fragmented and reduced to a set of functions?””. I therefore crave the indulgence of the House to talk about what a probation service is. It is a lot more than a set of functions. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, made it clear that we should talk about what probation is for before we talk about the rest of the Bill. What we say about this will structure what we want to say about the rest. Probation is a lot more than a set of functions. A probation service is a part of a necessary balance in a penal system. It is usually seen that there must be a balance between punishing the criminal act and dealing with the problem that led to the act—a balance between actions that protect society by taking people out of it and actions that protect society by keeping people in it, supervising and encouraging them to live law-abiding lives. Almost every country has this balance in its penal system to some extent. Any major penal reform activity taking place in a country often looks for the creation of some body that rehabilitates, reintegrates and works in communities as a visible reassurance to the public that people who commit crime are dealt and worked with so that they change. In England and Wales, that body is the Probation Service. We are not talking about a set of functions that can be reallocated and loosely held together in a ““probation trust””. We are talking about an organisation with a name that is recognised and understood, and which is there to protect and rehabilitate. It must have officers with a trusted professionalism and a standing in their area, so that their authority is accepted. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for the way in which she expressed that. Those officers need to be respected, and their organisation must be respected a great deal by the courts, other local agencies and the public. There needs to be a chief officer representing the service and known in the locality. There should be a strong organisation of chief officers, able to speak up in the public debate about probation and its work, the value of community sentences and the negative impact of short prison sentences. I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, on the importance of public education and reassurance about the Probation Service. Chief officers should be able to speak about the huge contribution that rehabilitation and supervision can make to public safety and peaceful neighbourhoods. An organisation of chief officers should be able to brief Members of Parliament, and there should be a strong probation presence in the Ministry of Justice to advise the Minister. It is sad that probation does not appear anywhere on the Ministry of Justice website. The principles of what probation is should be at the beginning of the Bill but they should not include punishment, whether proper or any other sort. I raised objections to that at the Second Reading of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill in 2000, when I said: "““I am very surprised to see such an aim set out in a statute … I thought that it was the court which punished. The order of the court … is the punishment. To suggest that those supervising the court order, whether in prison or in the community, should themselves be doing the punishing seems to me to run contrary to all the international requirements on the treatment of offenders as well as causing strong offence to probation officers who carry out their work on a strong ethical basis””.—[Official Report, 3/7/00; col. 1299.]" I can see why those drafting the 2000 Bill felt that it might give the impression that probation had been toughened up in some way, although I doubt whether anyone who would get that impression reads the small print of legislation. Now that probation is the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice, we can hope that a more appropriate term, more in line with the human rights framework, might be substituted; for example, ““enforcement”” would certainly meet the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. We are talking about enforcement. Words are important; we should try to use the right ones, and finding the right words in this Bill is particularly problematic. The inclusion of a purpose such as punishment would, in so far as the working probation officer or the person being supervised has the faintest idea that there is a Bill, that there are principles and that they include punishment, confuse and make it difficult to establish the trusting relationships that are the basis of successful rehabilitation. I end with a brief anecdote. Someone I know was talking to the Probation Service about the idea of bringing the services in a very deprived, crime-ridden area together with the Probation Service under one roof, on the lines of the excellent community court in Liverpool. The Probation Service listened to the proposal and responded, ““That is a very bad idea. You have to understand that probation officers are not welcome in deprived areas because their only contact with those areas is when they go looking for someone in breach to send back to prison””. I submit that this provision would not protect the public or make anyone safer.