Offender Management Bill

moved Amendment No. 10: 10: After Clause 3, insert the following new Clause— ““Charities (1) In making arrangements under section 3 the Secretary of State shall ensure that no less than seven per cent of probation services other than restricted probation provision, measured by the financial cost of services, shall be provided by charities within the meaning of the Charities Act 2006 (c. 50). (2) The Secretary of State may by order amend this section so as to increase the percentage specified in subsection (1) of probation services which shall be provided by charities.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Minister is aware of my concern about the funding of voluntary organisations; this is not the first debate in which I have raised the matter. The amendment relates to the role of the voluntary sector in providing probation services. This issue was debated in Committee andI have taken into account the comments of noble Lords. The amendment I am proposing now has been redrafted for the purposes of Report stage. The proposed new clause requires that at least7 per cent of probation budgets other than restricted probation provision as defined in Clause 4 should be used for services provided by charities. During the last discussion in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was surprised that I proposed the figure of7 per cent until I pointed out that it was the figure suggested at the time by the Home Office. The amendment is supported by two co-ordinating bodies for voluntary agencies working with offenders, and I am glad that the noble Baroness has given them a good report. The bodies concerned are Clinks and the Corporate Alliance for Reducing Re-offending. In Committee, some noble Lords expressed the fear that a requirement of this kind could be regarded in practice as a ceiling rather than a minimum, limiting the contribution to charities of 7 per cent of probation budgets. The charities with which we have consulted are unimpressed by that argument. They point out that they have never seen anywhere near7 per cent of probation services budgets devoted to voluntary sector partnerships, and therefore the figure would represent considerable progress. Moreover, the clause makes the point by enabling the Secretary of State to increase the minimum percentage level by statutory instrument if it seems appropriate to do so as time goes on. At earlier stages there has been unanimity across the House that voluntary organisations play a vital role in the rehabilitation of offenders. The sector is particularly expert in delivering high quality services in the areas of accommodation, employment, education, mentoring, addiction issues, mental health, work with offenders’ families and community engagement. NOMS has developed targets to get more offenders into employment and sustainable accommodation, improve their education and involve them in drug treatment programmes. If these targets are to be achieved, the involvement of voluntary and community organisations is crucial. Yet the history of the past few years shows that the Probation Service has often been reluctant to engage the voluntary sector in partnership except when it is required to do so either by legislation or by centrally driven targets. Until 2001, the Probation Service had an official target to devote 7 per cent of its resources to voluntary initiatives. This was not a statutory requirement and the service never quite achieved that percentage. However, the existence of even a non-statutory target pushed up the proportion of the service’s budget devoted to such partnerships to around 5 per cent. Regrettably, the 7 per cent target was removed in 2001. After that, the proportion of the probation budget spent on contracts with the voluntary and private sectors combined plummeted to less than 2.5 per cent. Faced with the threat of contestability, the Probation Service has recently begun to remedy this by adopting a target of devoting 5 per cent of its budget in 2006-07, and 10 per cent in 2007-08, to partnerships with the voluntary and private sectors. The Government’s principal argument about the evolution of targets is that of best value, and that is understood. They argue that charities should not be given work if it can be provided at better value by the public or private sectors. Of course no one can dispute that. The problem is that, in reality, even when charities can provide better value the process of contestability could prevent them getting contracts to work with offenders. The amount of bureaucracy which has them tied up in paperwork and so on could be a tremendous disadvantage to any of the voluntary organisations. By specifying a minimum level of contracts with charities, the new clause would guard against the risk of the voluntary sector’s unique contribution being squeezed out of the process. Past experience shows that unless the Probation Service has to devote a significant percentage of its budget to voluntary sector partnership it is unlikely to do so. By requiring it to do so, the amendment would guard against the risk that charities will be squeezed out of work with offenders, in complete contradiction to the Government’s stated intention of involving the voluntary sector more extensively in the rehabilitation of offenders. The purpose of the amendment at this late stage is to seek from the Minister an explanation of how she sees the expansion of the role of voluntary organisations and what kind of resources will be available to them in future years. I beg to move.