Offender Management Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, has foreshadowed what I am going to say, but that does not diminish the efficacy of saying it. I hope that, when I have finished, the Committee will be reassured that we are very much on the same track. We are in many ways in violent agreement as opposed to disagreement. I shall explain why, taking the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, that we have already made some very significant changes in the openness with which we are participating, sharing and working together in these matters. We believe that that has had a very significant impact. There is no disagreement between us that working together in partnership is absolutely critical if we are to be successful. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, for highlighting the parts of the note which emphasise our aspirations and the work that we have already done. I say to her that because we wanted to make sure that these issues were mainstreamed I set up the Inter-Ministerial Group on Reducing Reoffending, on which 11 departments now sit. We are working very hard together to make sure that this is not simply the preserve of the criminal justice system but of all government. The issues in the note that the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, highlighted are those with which we are all concerned and to which we are entirely committed. The Scottish system is attractive but there are some very significant differences between its arrangements and those in England and Wales. The Scottish Act places a duty on Scottish Ministers, the community justice authorities and local authorities to co-operate in carrying out their respective functions in relation to relevant persons designated by order. As the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, made clear, it is important that the members of the body are all elected. This model is not transferable to England and Wales without making radical changes to our central and local criminal justice structures and does not allow for the introduction of commissioning. This amendment seeks to place a duty to co-operate on all bodies which deliver offender services, and on other related bodies to be defined by order. I thank the noble Baroness for tabling the amendment because it gives me an early opportunity to talk in detail about our commitment to working in partnership. This is the main purpose of the Bill. A wide variety of duties to co-operate in the delivery of probation services already exists in England and Wales. Some of these are statutory, such as crime and disorder reduction partnerships, through which we have delivered the successful Prolific and other Priority Offenders Programme; others are non-statutory, such as local criminal justice boards, which bring together the heads of all the local criminal justice agencies—police, Probation Service, Prison Service, Court Service, Crown Prosecution Service and youth offending services—in the 42 areas of England and Wales. We have also established reducing reoffending partnership boards in every region. These boards, convened by the regional offender managers, are proving very effective in bringing together a range of partners responsible for delivering services from outside the criminal justice system who have a part to play in addressing the wider causes of reoffending. Typical members will include representatives from Jobcentre Plus, the Learning and Skills Council, local authorities, health services and the sentencers. Indeed, on Friday I had the privilege of visiting Doncaster Prison, where I spoke to people in the resettlement wing. I saw some very impressive work there. The prison had just received £60,000 from the Home Office for a lithograph printer, which has enabled skills training to be delivered. I am given to understand that there is a skills gap in that part of Yorkshire. Some excellent training is now going on in the prison. Indeed, one prisoner has now left with sufficient skills to enable him to become a teacher trainer of printers and receives a wage equivalent to that of the senior prison officer who trained him. So there is a great deal of sharing of expertise. We are trying to replicate the outside working environment in prisons. I also saw the Together Women Programme in Doncaster and then moved on to Sheffield to look at the work by the partnership to reduce reoffending. Some splendid work is being done right across the piece. These partnerships are already co-operating and working together. We want to build on the successful work of these partnerships, which have been so painstakingly established over recent years. That is why we welcome the move to place local area agreements on a statutory footing in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill. I have tabled an amendment, which we will discuss later, to ensure that this applies to the new arrangements proposed in the Bill. I hope that I have made clear that we recognise that probation services cannot reduce reoffending on their own. Co-operation is crucial to the delivery of partnership working. Clause 3(3)(a) explicitly enables the Secretary of State to authorise or require providers to co-operate with one another and with other agencies involved in crime prevention, crime reduction or work with victims. These expectations will be clearly set out in contracts. From a wider perspective, the overriding point is that a duty to co-operate with external bodies would not of itself create a change of culture for those delivering probation services. We need to supplement the public sector Probation Service by working increasingly in partnership with the voluntary, charitable and private sectors, and with local communities. I do not see how this would be achieved by this amendment. I remind the Committee that around 50 per cent of the resources that support offenders come from outside the criminal justice system. The National Offender Management Service is already committed to working closely with all partners at a local level.At the moment the ability of local providers to co-ordinate these resources is hampered and variable. The legislation will give us the freedom to be far more flexible in the way that we do this. To safeguard against fragmentation we will make it a priority for regional offender managers to contract with probation trusts in such a way as to preserve the benefits of coterminosity. We can also make sure that those who commission do so in a way that encourages and enhances the opportunity for partnership rather than the opposite. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, referred to commissioning a service in a way that would not enhance co-operation and partnership. I believe that she is wrong about that. The whole purpose of our commissioning is to encourage and enhance co-operation and partnership working. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that our work with children is a very good example of how we can deliver that. We have been able to deliver that by working in partnership across the piece. We shall continue to work with our colleagues in DfES to do just that. The test bed areas that we have identified with DfES to look at the skills base and how we can work together will very much help us to embed co-operation and partnership working. We do not disagree in any way with the ethos; we simply say that this method of working could best be delivered by the structure that we propose. We invite the Committee’s attention to the way Clause 3 is structured, enabling co-operation in a way that we think is proper. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.