Offender Management Bill

Perhaps I should start by assuring the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that I am totally at one with my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, and that I have every intention of doing everything I can to ensure that this Government win the next election, as I am sure the noble Baroness will do from her side of the House. I hope that she will be as successful as she was the last time, and that we will repeat the same position. The amendments do give us an opportunity to talk about a difficult and important issue, and I very much thank the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, for tabling them. I am sure she will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that she very much posits them to enable us to clarify and understand where we actually are rather than for their technical niceties. I hope that by responding to them I will be able to provide the clarity that the Committee needs. The amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, and of my noble friends Lady Gibson and Lady Turner seek to achieve similar ends, albeit by slightly different means. The restriction, which we will debate shortly in more detail, means that the Secretary of State will not be able to enter into a contract with any non-public sector provider for the court work that the Probation Service currently does. The provision could be repealed only after a vote by both Houses of Parliament. However, we added Clause 4 in the other place to meet some very specific concerns about the particularly sensitive area of advice to the courts—advice on which the rest of a sentence might depend. We acknowledge that there are anxieties about possible conflicts of interest. The amendments, of course, go much further. I should also clarify our reasons for giving that assurance. The assurance reflects our desire to move cautiously, as well as our view that the non-public sector providers do not yet have the experience or expertise necessary for this important core area of work. We want to make it clear that we do not think that this will change in the next three years. My noble friend Lady Gibson made a point about the importance of best value. Best value means looking for the entity or person who is best able to deliver that service. If the public sector is best able to deliver that service, then of course it should continue so to do. Who is best able to perform the service is a judgment that can be made . I turn first to the amendment in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, and the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Wallace. Were this amendment to be passed, the only aspect of probation services that could be commissioned directly from a non-public sector provider would be the work which probation does in conditional cautions, giving assistance to persons remanded on bail and giving information to the victims of those charged with or convicted of offences. The noble Baroness clearly could not intend that as there simply would not be a practical basis on which we could move forward. These areas of work constitute a small proportion of the overall probation workload. If the amendment were passed, virtually all services could be commissioned only from the public sector even if a provider from the charitable, voluntary or private sector were able to demonstrate that it could do a better job. The noble Baroness highlighted some of the areas in which the charitable and not-for-profit voluntary sector is doing a fabulous job, and I know that all of us would wish it to continue doing so. The amendment would make it much more difficult, if not impossible in practice, for services to be commissioned across geographical and organisational boundaries and make it more difficult to create consistency for offenders between prison and probation and to deliver economies of scale in, for example, areas of specialist provision. Because of the way in which the amendment is phrased, my noble friend Lord Warner rightly alerted us to the danger. It would cut us off from an opportunity to use those who could assist in a very beneficial way. The cumulative effect would make it harder for organisations such as Nacro, Turning Point, and Rainer, which have so much to offer, to make their full contribution and to supplement public service probation provision in the way that they, and we, would like.