Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Gibson for tabling the amendment, which highlights the importance of probation staff in relation to the new arrangements provided for in the Bill. I begin with a few words about best value. Last week, my noble friend wrote to noble Lords setting out our approach to best value in more detail, but I emphasise that this is absolutely not about awarding contracts to the lowest bidder. Of course, value for money is important, but the emphasis is on value; we want to focus on outcomes, raising standards and cost-effectiveness, not simply cost-efficiency. We want to give other providers the chance to show what they can do, but only where they can demonstrate that they are better placed to deliver. The best value process will be used to improve the quality of probation services across the board, which I am sure is what all noble Lords seek to achieve. I will now address the position of staff. We have frequently paid tribute to probation staff and we have expressed our appreciation of the difficult, dangerous and often thankless work that they carry out on behalf of us all, and I do so again now. Probation staff have delivered the improvements in service delivery of recent years, and probation staff will carry on delivering the even greater improvements that we look for in the future. None of what we have in mind will be possible without them. We are determined to ensure that proper safeguards are in place to protect the position of staff. Many of those safeguards are set out in Schedule 2 to the Bill, which provides for terms and conditions to be protected in the transfer from boards to trusts and in any future transfers to alternative employers thereafter. My noble friend has raised a specific point in relation to the best value code of practice on workforce matters in local authority service contracts. I also highlight the code of practice on workforce matters in public sector service contracts, which applies to contracts let by central government. As I am sure my noble friend will appreciate, it is almost identical to the local authority code, except where the latter makes express provision for local government matters. This code, rather than the local authority code, is in fact more relevant to contracts for probation provision. However, the purpose of both codes is the same. They both set out an approach to workforce matters in public sector service contracts that involve a transfer of staff from a public sector organisation to a service provider, or in which staff originally transferred from a public sector organisation as a result of outsourcing are TUPE-transferred to a new provider under a retender of a contract. The aim is to protect the terms and conditions of the public sector staff transferring and to prevent the emergence of a ““two-tier workforce””, dividing transferees and new joiners working beside each other on the same contracts. Both local and central government are required to ensure that the code that is relevant to them forms part of the service specification and conditions for all such contracts, except where specific exemptions have been announced. The codes recognise that there is no conflict between good employment practice, value for money and quality of service. On the contrary, quality and good value will not be provided by organisations that do not manage workforce issues well. The Cabinet Office code of practice on workforce matters in public sector service contracts does not have statutory force as such, but compliance with it is considered to be mandatory for all central government departments. The National Offender Management Service already incorporates the code in those contracts which it lets directly for services that involve transfers of staff. It will also incorporate the code in the contracts with trusts, to ensure that trusts in turn incorporate its provisions in any relevant contracts that they enter into. There is therefore no need for further statutory provision in this regard and, with that reassurance, I trust that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment.