Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving us another opportunity to discuss the important issue of how contractual arrangements will operate, particularly with regard to smaller providers. He is quite right that on the last occasion, to be helpful, we produced quite extensive documentation which noble Lords did not have an appropriately long time to look at. However, we hoped that they would have had sufficient time by Third Reading and that I would be able to explain the way forward to the House with this sample document in their minds. The noble Lord’s amendment envisages the production of model contracts, with different models applying to providers from different sectors. I absolutely understand the concerns that have prompted the approach in the amendment, but it is not the right way to achieve what we all want. I shall explain why. Noble Lords will recall from our debates on Report that the National Offender Management Service is developing a contract for probation services using the concept of generic terms and conditions under which the appropriate schedules and service specifications will sit. This will allow commissioners to be clear about what they require from lead providers and from organisations to whom lead providers subcontract. This will include provisions to ensure the protection of employee rights, including the requirement to abide by the Cabinet Office code of practice on workforce matters. However, these contracts will, as the noble Lord has indicated, also need to cater for a range of different factors such as variations in the type, size and location of services to be delivered, so they will have to be tailored to meet the local environment in which they operate. This is vital if we are to ensure that contracts maximise community engagement, deliver local as well as regional and national priorities, and foster innovation—all of which the noble Lord and others have commented on. There can therefore be no one-size-fits-all approach, which is why the proposed model contracts are not appropriate. Nor are different approaches for different sectors the right way forward. We need a system that supports a contracting process that is fit for purpose. If, for example, we were to request a provider to do work for £1,000, the checks and documentation required should be significantly different, and perhaps less complex, than if we placed a contract for £10 million. The use of flexible contracts within a framework, rather than model contracts, will allow probation trusts and other providers to develop innovative ways of delivering services, which is particularly important. I know that the noble Lord, among others, has commented on what will happen about small organisations which will target their efforts on perhaps a small group of offenders or victims who may need particular help and support that others cannot provide. We would not want to drive those people from the market because they give a lot of innovation, help and support. We need to keep that richness if we can. Work is under way on the development of new agreements. The draft scoping document and service level agreements provided on Report, together with early stakeholder consultation—we are going out and asking people what they think about these models—are informing our thinking on which elements of the contract can be used to encourage innovation and flexibility. Detailed consultation will be held with the first wave of probation trusts as the contracts develop before formal negotiations begin. Although I understand absolutely the concerns that have been expressed about the process of awarding contracts and how they may put the voluntary and community sector at a disadvantage, we are determined that that should not happen. The National Offender Management Service is working with colleagues across government to look at ways of reducing the burdens and barriers to contracting for the voluntary and community sector organisations generally. NOMS is now committed to paying voluntary community service organisations on a full-cost recovery basis to ensure that they are not unwittingly subsidising public sector organisations. We have heard that theme for quite some time, and it needs to be better addressed than we perhaps have had an opportunity to do in the past. NOMS is supporting probation boards and trusts in its subcontracting by providing guidance and hands-on assistance on how to procure services, including the development of a generic set of terms and conditions. A wide range of commercial workshops are under way to ensure that boards and trusts provide fair and transparent tendering processes with minimum bureaucracy. NOMS is also starting work with providers from the voluntary and community sector to develop and sustain small-scale providers. We recognise that many such organisations do not want to enter into consortia or to bid for work as a provider at a national level, and we want to cater for that too. One of the key objectives of these reforms is to enable the voluntary and charitable sector, in all its diversity, to play a greater role in the delivery of probation services. We are determined to work closely with the sector to make sure that this happens. With these assurances, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, will understand that we have fully taken into account the import of what he seeks. The framework and the flexibility will better deliver what he wants from this situation—we want to achieve the same thing—than a sample contract, which may not precisely meet the needs of any given local situation. I know that that is what the noble Lord wants. With that, I hope he is content that we certainly have fulfilled our purpose at Third Reading and that we have clarified the detail, and will feel able now to withdraw his amendment.