Offender Management Bill

This has been a very interesting debate. I have listened very carefully to all the contributions made. I am trying to draw the threads together. I thought the points offered by noble Lords sought to find a golden thread but were at the same time disparate. I was also encouraged by what noble Lords said. We are all searching for something of a holy grail about how the contract and commissioning process should work and to find a way in which we can ensure that things improve and that we get that constant process of improvement. I am greatly encouraged by that. It is particularly nice to hear my noble friend Lord Judd offering some words of understanding and, I think, praise for the approach being adopted. The noble Lord appreciates with his vast experience, particularly in the voluntary sector, the way in which the voluntary sector and non-governmental organisations can bring innovation and fresh approaches and ways of working. Having heard all of that, I then listened very carefully to what the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, had to say. She said that she was very much in favour of national standards. I made it clear in my earlier commentary that we were in favour of minimum standards. But then she went on to say that while she was a supporter of those she was worried that the Government would apply those standards too narrowly and that we would regress in some way. I invite the Committee to have a more encouraging view of what we are trying to deliver here. We all understand that there is the same set of problems, and we are all after the same set of objectives—to improve the way in which we care for, treat and approach the management of offenders. There is an understandable fear that somehow we will not be rigorous enough in applying terms of contracts; but that, on the other hand, we may get the disbenefits of flexibility. That is why I am more than happy with the way in which we have argued through our amendments. To try to pick up some of the points to which the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, referred on her amendment, the first part of it requires standards to be made by regulation. We think that that is inappropriate. It is not consistent with current practice. I recollect that practice is very much informed by standards that the Secretary of State has set out, and that has worked well in the past. What we have tried to achieve is based on wide consultation within and across the service and we think that we have always approached this openly and transparently. We have benefited from that. In essence, we are building on current good practice. The noble Baroness also made the case for financial penalties—over and above other penalties, it seemed to me. I would argue that our approach is more graduated. I argued earlier that financial penalties are appropriate, and I am very familiar with that culture; I had to implement CCT, and I did not always like it. However, although we could ultimately end the contract, before we got to that point we could exact a financial penalty. We could also seek to negotiate to vary the terms of the contract if that was sensible in the light of experience because the service was not as it had been described in the original documentation. In his amendment, my noble friend Lord Judd seeks to qualify the areas covered by the national service agreement. That takes us back to our previous debate. Here, I argue that my noble friend misunderstands the purpose of standards, which are primarily about delivery. Of course he is right that the quality and experience of those trained to carry out the contract, their work, their background knowledge and so on is very important, but we cannot begin to stipulate that in legislation. That is where we need to strike a balance and I argue that we have the balance about right. This is not a perfect science; it is an iterative process; it is something that we have to turn to at all times. However, we have adopted an approach that means that we set minimum standards, set in essence by the Secretary of State; that we set them at the highest possible level; that they are understood across the service; and that we built on experience based on current provision. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked: could the provider get standards changed? Would there be room for negotiation? Of course it would be open to any provider to suggest to NOMS at headquarters level that a standard or standards be changed if it thinks that that would help to improve performance. That goes back to the issue to which I referred earlier. In the operation of a contract, in the light of experience, it is important and necessary to reflect on that and, perhaps, to vary the way in which the standards of service are to be delivered. Ultimately, that will be for the Secretary of State to determine based on the advice of those who are closest to the service and understand exactly how the service should operate. The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, asked about the operation of the old National Probation Directorate. In essence, the headquarter functions that the National Probation Directorate used to carry out are now carried out at the centre of NOMS in the Ministry of Justice. They have not gone away—they are still there and are still very important—and the director of probation remains the line manager for the 42 chiefs of the Probation Service. I think that I have answered the various points that were made in this debate. It was a very valuable debate, and it will inform the way in which we operate this policy. However, we should ensure that we retain the necessary flexibility. Because of that, it would not be right to put the standards into the Bill in the way in which noble Lords have argued. Indeed, I think it would be extremely unusual if we were to do so, particularly in the light of my experience of operating contracts at local government level. The noble Baroness will be well aware of those issues from her own political experience in the past. I understand some of the concerns that have been expressed about the way in which the service will operate through the commissioning and contract process, but, with the knowledge and experience that we have gained in this field and in other parts of the criminal justice system, which have benefited from this approach, we can have considerable confidence in the way in which this policy rolls out. On Question, amendment agreed to. [Amendments No. 71 to 81, as amendments to Amendment No. 70, not moved.]