Offender Management Bill

moved Amendment No. 28: 28: After Clause 15, insert the following new Clause— ““Probation report (1) Within a period of six months of the coming into force of this Act, the Secretary of State shall lay a report before both Houses of Parliament containing— (a) a review of the proposals contained within the report published on 11th December 2003 ““Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A New Approach””; (b) the collated responses to the consultation document ““Restructuring Probation to Reduce Re-Offending””; (c) a review of the responses referred to in paragraph (b); and (d) proposals for reform of the Probation Service. (2) The Secretary of State must include in a report under subsection (1) notification of when he will exercise his power under section 40(1A).”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, following the earlier admonition of the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General, I shall not repeat what I said in a letter to her, but she knows my sentiments. Since the Bill was launched in this House there have been several changes of Ministers and ministries. Noble Lords who know the railway line between Edinburgh and Newcastle will know that one of the things you pass on the left-hand side is the Bass Rock. I am very glad that throughout the Bill we have had our own Bass Rock in the form of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, whom I am delighted to see in his place, where he has been throughout. He represents continuity in the process. As I said at Second Reading and in Committee, my purpose in tabling this amendment is not to kill the Bill but to seize the opportunity presented by the creation of the Ministry of Justice and the appointment of new Ministers to review the evidence not just in this Bill but in a large number of other Bills—54 in total—and in a huge amount of other legislation that is associated with it. Last night we were due to have debated for the fourth time an amendment to the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill. Shortly before we were due to start I received a request from the Secretary of State for Justice to defer that debate until he had had time to consider the Bill as it stood. In discussion with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats it was very easy to agree to that and to welcome it. Indeed, I took the opportunity to pass to the Secretary of State a suggested date which he might consider, which I would have mentioned on the Floor of the House. I welcomed the request because it seemed evidence of a willingness to engage in constructive debate. We have just listened to theStatement about the Prime Minister’s intent to have a national debate on many constitutional issues. My amendment seeks further debate about the management of offenders within the criminal justice system. This Bill had at its genesis a paper by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, but that report was based on a false premise that there would be a stable prison population. Indeed, both he and the then Commissioner for Correction said that the National Offender Management Service, as suggested, could not come to pass unless there was a stable prison population—and there has not been one ever since. Therefore, in many ways, NOMS had a flawed beginning. However, that is not to say that we do not agree with the principle of the proper management of offenders throughout the time that they are in the hands of the criminal justice system or with the partnership of the voluntary, private and public sectors in providing their treatment. We have agreed that throughout our discussion. However, the problem with this Bill is that it is not about the management of offenders; it is about the management of the management of offenders, and in particular the introduction of a new way of commissioning probation services. Therefore, it is a falsely named Bill. Why does that matter? One of the reasons that the Government put forward for not being keen on including custody in the corporate manslaughter Bill was that they were sailing into uncharted waters and that they needed to test the temperature before they went further. We are in uncharted waters in the Offender Management Bill. The only country in the world that has gone down the route that has been proposed is New Zealand and that resulted in a gross increase in prison numbers, which worried their Government so much that it has been dropped. Since this Bill was launched—I forget which number it is; the number of Bills now reaches 54, which is more than there had been in the previous 100 years at the Home Office—No.10 Downing Street issued a paper called Building on Progress: Security, crime and justice. It is the fourth policy review on this matter and has six chapters, including one of reform of the criminal justice workplace. In addition, it announced a term of reference for another review by the noble Lord, Lord Carter. He has done Wembley, he has done a legal review and he is now reviewing prisons. One of the things that he has been asked to do is to assess the management and efficiency of public sector prisons. Surely that has a key part to play in offender management, which is allegedly the subject of the Bill, yet the Carter review will not be included in the conclusions of the Bill. The management of public sector prisons has a huge impact on the rehabilitation of offenders, which is what we agreed a lot of the Bill is all about. If that was not enough, last week, as a leaving present, the former Prime Minister landed on the desks of those who cared to pick it up the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. It is a monster of 129 clauses and 23 schedules, and it included the suggestion that there might be a commissioner for offender management and prisons. That has not come near the statute book. My case is that, frankly, this is the wrong time to take this Bill—when it is taken in isolation—because it does not take into consideration what is included in all the others. I am currently a member of the Regulators Select Committee, and we are looking particularly at financial regulators. One of the things that has been brought to our notice is that the worst aspect of the whole process is something called the regulatory impact assessment, which is required to be done on every new piece of regulation, and they are very badly done. Indeed, the National Audit Office reviewed regulatory impact assessments and pointed out that they are badly done and that, because they are badly done, they have an impact on what the regulation is meant to achieve. I have drawn attention to the regulatory impact assessment on the Bill. We have not drawn up a league table of regulatory impact assessments but the one on this Bill would figure pretty near the bottom of the league. It says that the options are to ““do nothing”” which means that, "““we would be unable to realise the full benefits of the NOMS reform programme””," or to implement in full, which, "““would allow the us to take forward the reform agenda””." But it does not explain at all the impact on costs, the impact on other services, the impact on the voluntary sector or the impact on all the people who are working to rehabilitate offenders, or whether this process would improve. It is merely about whether the Government’s proposal would be taken forward. I do not believe that that is what a regulatory impact assessment is all about. I have been delighted to hear during the course of this debate that organisations such as the CBI and some private sector companies are very willing to come forward and be involved in the contracts. I am delighted that organisations such as Turning Point and some of the large voluntary sector organisations and the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations also want to take part. Of course they do, but that is not the whole story. There is a whole myriad of other small organisations, which do an enormous amount of work in this field. I have been associated with a number of them. I heard yesterday, for example, of a study 10 years ago into the provision of proper nutrition in a prison. It proved that proper nutrition and diet produced a reduction in offending behaviour in prison of 40 per cent. We spent 10 years trying to be allowed to replicate that—10 very frustrating years dealing with people who say that they support the voluntary sector. Meanwhile, the Dutch came in, took our evidence, went away to Holland and published their reports yesterday showing that there was a 47 per cent reduction—we had underestimated. I mention that because, over and again in the sector, the arts organisations and small organisations dealing with particular aspects do not feel included in what is happening. They want to be sucked into the dialogue. Therefore, the purpose of my amendment is not to stop what is happening but to say, in welcoming it and the arrival of a Ministry of Justice that has to focus on all these issues, ““You don’t have to rush ahead with the Bill. You’ve got a crisis on your hands at the moment of too many prisoners and probation officers who need to be handled now by what you have. Introducing a long, drawn-out change to the commissioning process will not help you solve that problem today. Get on with today and, in the mean time, use the opportunity to look at all the evidence, all the things that have been said on the Bill, all the attention that has been drawn to the items that have been left out of the Bill, all the links to other services such as education and healthcare, and the detailed involvement of the voluntary sector. Then let’s have a proper debate within the criminal justice system to see that what emerges as the national system for the management of offenders is robust because it consists of a coalition of the willing, who feel that they’re willing because they’ve been involved””. My amendment is designed to suggest that the new Secretary of State should accept that and seize the opportunity presented. Then he should conduct that inquiry and engage with the House, knowing that when he does so everyone—certainly everyone whom I have spoken to—is minded to go along with the general proposition, but is dissatisfied by the detail that has been presented. It is in the spirit of seizing an opportunity to get something right in relation to all the other things that are on the table, rather than in isolation from it, that I beg to move.