Offender Management Bill

My Lords, it is with some temerity that I stand up and say that I am a somewhat simple soul in that I believe that the management of offenders and the management of the service are one and the same. I agree with my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and other speakers that unless we get that right there will be real difficulty for the service. However, I have a quite different view of where we are. I could be wrong and no doubt my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham will put me right in his response and the Minister may clarify for me where I think I stand, but I simply do not see us in the uncharted waters that everyone else is trying to show. The framework of probation will be the same. I would have liked to see more radical reform, as noble Lords will know, not because I am a great one for change—I have argued significantly against some of the health service and social services changes that have gone on and on and left the services in great disarray—but I argue for this change because I believe that out there the probation services are in the middle of it and, having worked for most of my life in change management with organisations, I know that that is nearly the worst position we could continue to leave the probation services in. Not only is the framework of probation pretty much the same, I think that we have a clear rationale which, as I understand it in relation to the services in the voluntary sector in which I work that touch the probation sector, is trying to find new ways of intervening. I have heard lots of discussion during this debate about those interventions perhaps not being as ““high-class”” as others. The services that I have worked with have been exceptional, with highly trained workers intervening in a way that has set the standard for other probation services. If we had that kind of service we would see greater innovation and greater development. Of course I have the same fears as others about whether large companies will come in and undercut my services. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness yet again to reassure us that what will count will be the quality and not low cost. The commissioning element is all that is really different. There are other small changes in the Bill but its central core is this commissioning element. I have said this before, but I am surprised that the Conservative Benches are not pressing this forward and that they do not see that commissioning and contestability are a way forward in changing and improving skills. They widen the scope of the skill set. At the moment the changes are proceeding at a very conservative pace. On the ground, services are being told that they cannot have the three-year contracts, which they thought they could have, because of the uncertainty. If we delay again, that uncertainty will go on, not just for the probation services, but for all the local voluntary services that are trying to deliver different but quality services on the ground. These groups are not huge. The one I know best, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, is not a huge organisation; it is a specialist foundation. The circles, working with the Quakers, are small organisations. They have managed to hold their positions, and they will do even better if in future they are more able to get their contracts. In my view, the one thing probation does not need is yet another period of uncertainty; but it needs clear knowledge about how to move forward. I am quite sure that my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham will say that clarity is the one thing that is lacking. But I think that on the ground there is room to move forward. What we do not want is rigidity. We have got to get this right, but to get it right we have got to get on with it. We should not change for the sake of change but this is marginal change. Let us make sure that we do move forward, that we remove the uncertainty, build better services for the future, and, by improving services that stop offenders reoffending, make our country safer.