Offender Management Bill

moved Amendment No. 18: 18: Clause 2, page 2, line 34, after ““State”” insert ““under any enactment (whenever passed or made)”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to the other amendments standing in my name in this group. Last week, I acknowledged the perception that our proposals were an unduly centralising measure. I explained that, in fact, the opposite was true. I want explore why we have come to that view. Under the new arrangements, commissioning will be an activity taking place at national, regional, and local levels. We do not envisage regional commissioners directly holding a myriad of small contracts. In most cases, they will agree contracts directly with lead providers who, in turn, will subcontract much of the delivery of interventions to other providers. Commissioning is primarily a local activity for lead providers to organise for themselves within a framework agreed with the regional offender manager, delivering some services in-house, letting out contracts for others and engaging in partnership with others to secure the necessary services to reintegrate offenders back into their communities. Working locally means working in partnership. The National Offender Management Service is already committed to working closely with all partners at a local level. As I have said, around 50 per cent of the resources that support offenders come from outside the criminal justice system. We have discussed the multitude of partnership arrangements in which probation services already play a key part. One of the most important developments in this area in recent years has been the establishment of local strategic partnerships—the LSPs to which I have referred. They bring together the public, voluntary, community and private sectors to co-ordinate the contribution that each can make to improving localities by agreeing on the priorities and co-ordinating their delivery. These priorities are developed into a local area agreement. LAAs are three-year agreements that set out the priorities for a local area and are agreed between central government and the local area represented by the local authority, and through the LSP, its key partner. Probation has been an increasingly active partner in the LSPs. From April this year, all LAAs must include performance indicators to assist the LSP in assessing their progress on reducing re-offending. The Local Government White Paper, Strong and Prosperous Communities, published in October last year, set out fundamentally different arrangements for LAAs. The ambition now is for LAAs to provide local authorities and partners with the flexibility and capacity to deliver the best solutions for their areas by changing the way that central government do business with them and their partners. The LAA will become an outcome-focused agreement based on streamlined priorities and targets agreed between local partners and central government, ensuring effective and efficient services for local people. Some targets will be agreed in negotiation with government and will reflect national priorities; others will be purely driven by the LSP and will concentrate on more local priorities affecting local citizens and communities. Local area agreements will then form the central delivery contract between central government, local government and their partners. In recognition of the critical importance of local area agreements, legislation currently being considered in the other place proposes to place them on a statutory basis. The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill will place a new duty on the local authority and named local partners, including chief constables, police authorities, local probation boards, youth offending teams and fire and rescue authorities, to co-operate with each other in agreeing the relevant targets in the LAA. Therefore, as regards the earlier amendment, the duty to co-operate will be provided for by that Bill. It also places a new duty on the local authority and named partners to have regard to specific targets agreed in the LAA. Despite what some people have said, the proposals in this Bill today are entirely consistent with the devolutionary thrust of the local government White Paper and with the proposals in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill. I hope that noble Lords will recognise that these amendments are proof of that. Noble Lords might find it useful if I take them through the effect of each of our amendments to clarify how they interrelate. Amendments Nos. 18 and 19 to Clause 2 are minor and consequential. Amendment No. 18 reflects the fact that the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill has yet to be enacted. Amendment No. 19 tidies up Clause 2(1)(c) to make clearer the effect of the cross-references to Clause 2(1)(c) in Amendments Nos. 42 and 133. Amendment No. 42 to Clause 3 states that the Secretary of State may delegate specific functions to other persons in specific circumstances, as provided for in the substantive amendment, Amendment No. 133. That amends the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill by adding the Secretary of State, when exercising his functions for ensuring the provision of probation services, to the list of partner authorities who will be placed under a duty to agree and have regard to local area agreements. That amendment states that the power to delegate, established in Amendment No. 42, also applies in this case. We have drafted the amendments in this way because we know, after speaking to organisations such as the Local Government Association, that we must ensure that all parts of the commissioning system are accountable under the new arrangements. This would not be achieved simply by transferring the duty to probation trusts or by giving a general duty to the Secretary of State, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has suggested in his amendment. I am sure that he will have more to say on that. In practice, these government amendments mean that the duties relating to local area agreements will rest on the regional offender manager as the representative of the Secretary of State. The regional offender manager will then delegate that duty to the lead provider, which in most cases will be the probation trust. The lead provider will engage with other partners in the local strategic partnership to agree and implement the local area targets. This will be strengthened by the commissioning process. Regional offender managers will be under a duty to ensure that lead providers are appropriately funded to fulfil their obligations under the LAAs, and lead providers will be under both a statutory and contractual duty to meet those obligations. The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill also places partner authorities under a duty to provide information and to have regard to reports by the relevant local authority overview and scrutiny committees. Our amendment places both the regional offender manager and the lead provider under a duty to co-operate with the relevant overview and scrutiny committee as regards the relevant targets in the local area agreements—although, in most cases, it will be the lead provider in the first instance. This is crucial, because it ensures that both lead providers and regional offender managers can be scrutinised by local communities for the way in which they deliver the relevant local priorities. The amendments ensure that probation providers will be placed centre-stage under the new arrangements to deliver local priorities to local people. On that basis, I hope that noble Lords will feel able to support the amendments. I have taken a little time in my explanation. When I responded on the earlier amendments, I tried to indicate why the duty to co-operate was clear, but I hope that noble Lords will see how in these amendments we have sought to reinforce and underline that duty so that it will be real, immediate and accountable. I beg to move.