Home Affairs and Justice

I appreciate having the opportunity to speak at this relatively late hour. Not having heard all the introductory Front-Bench speeches, I shall be circumspect, but I want to make a couple of points nevertheless. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) talked about the trafficking of women for sexual services. I remember having some quite acrimonious correspondence about that with one of my constituents recently. His view was that the proposals were unnecessary, that they represented more ineffective law and that it was wrong to go after the men. I am tempted to send a copy of my hon. Friend's speech to him, so that he can understand the gravity of the situation and the need to do something about this heinous crime, as I described it in my letter to him; that did not go down terribly well, but it was nevertheless my opinion. These activities are too hidden and out of the way, so far as people's general understanding is concerned. Some people think that they do not need to be dealt with, but of course they do. I want to make a couple of quick observations on the overall perspective of the Queen's Speech, followed by some comments that are pertinent to home affairs and justice. There are some appealing Bills in the Queen's Speech. I very much welcome our attempt to put into a legislative framework our desire to remove child poverty. I am also pleased to see the ongoing rationale for local economic development and community regeneration. I am particularly pleased, as I said to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House in business questions earlier, to see that the marine Bill and the new coastal access arrangements are to be brought into statute. There were those who said that that was never going to happen, and that every Government put such measures on the back burner where they would never see the light of day. I am pleased to see that they are going to see the light of day, and I congratulate the Government in that regard. It would be helpful if we could make rapid progress on the floods and water Bill, which was the subject of the second part of my question to my right hon. and learned Friend. The Bill should receive early pre-legislative scrutiny so that it does not have to wait the full parliamentary cycle. Some of us have constituents who cannot afford to wait that long. On home affairs and justice, one is tempted to say, ““Here we go again.”” The Government have legislated regularly on these topics. I shall examine some aspects of the criminal justice system, rather than the legislation per se. Next week is justice week and a number of us will address various justice trade unions on Wednesday to talk about some of the issues that they raise with us. I make no apology for using that as the backcloth for a discussion about where we have got to and some of the concerns that will be expressed to us next week in the context of the trade union approach to justice. The Police Federation, the National Association of Probation Officers and the Prison Officers Association are important representative bodies that we must take along with us when we make changes. I have been lobbied by a number of them. I would have been lobbied last Friday by Unison about some of the changes to the probation service, but unfortunately it was unable to make the meeting. My starting point is that there is at least concern across the terrain about some of the budgetary arrangements affecting probation in particular and other aspects of justice. The probation service's budget has stood still for at least a couple of years. There are those who would say, and I cannot disclaim these figures, that there is effectively a 25 per cent. cut. It is good to hear that we still want to use community payback. I may have my views on whether wearing nice DayGlo-coloured uniforms is the best way to get people to behave, but it is important that we recognise that those people are demonstrably working in the community in a way that brings it home to our constituents that there are different forms of justice, besides sending people to prison. If there are substantial cuts in the probation service budget, one must ask who will supervise community payback and who will ensure that the work undertaken by offenders is properly constituted, measured and scrutinised and that proper outcomes are achieved. This is not to do with legislation per se, but if we do not have the structure of the justice system right, and we do not provide an appropriate budget, it is impossible to pretend that that system can work properly. I raise the issue of the budget and how much money we are spending, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice may want to say something about how the new legislation will pan out if the money is not available to invest properly in that area. Most of that budget goes on people, because of course it is people who supervise offenders and who work in prisons to keep offenders in prison. Anyone who knows anything about the probation service knows that it is an ageing service. I am told that over the next three years a substantial number of probation officers will retire, which means that even if we are spending money on recruitment, we must spend considerably more to have an impact on the service. We need to recruit appropriately in order to have skilled people to take on the work of those who have retired. I am talking about the future. We go on about restorative justice and some of the ideas such as community payback. However, those ideas cannot come to fruition if there are not sufficient people to run the services. I take an interest in this issue, and the probation service in my area has been through some turmoil of late. Our acting chief probation officer has just left, and I wish every success to the new one, who starts in January. As I say, there has been turmoil in the service in respect of knowing who is running it. Again, that is against the background of the National Offender Management Service, and some Labour Members have yet to be convinced that NOMS is the great salvation of the probation service. There is no secret about the fact that most in the probation service still feel belittled at being lumped in with NOMS. Perhaps that was a whizzo managerial idea, but at the end of the day it is the probation officers working on the ground who really make the difference. If there is unhappiness among those staff about NOMS and its structures, we must at least listen to them. My concluding point is about legislation, budgets and people, and how they can make the future of the criminal justice system even more difficult. It would be good to hear that we are giving a period of stability to the justice system so that at least some of the wider questions had time to be answered and some of the changes that took place in yesteryear could be properly evaluated to see whether they were working. However, the changes can work only if the budgets are in place. I make a plaintive plea—not surprisingly, it is universally welcomed by unions that work in this area—not only for stability, but for a budget to ensure that the changes introduced in the past have time to work through. As I said, there are difficulties in getting to the bottom of the figures in respect of what we really know about the budgetary expenditure. It would help if there were a debate—an Adjournment debate, perhaps—to look at how the probation service is working within the wider criminal justice system. I hope that we will get clarity. I am not necessarily against change, which may be for the better, but I am against change that cannot work because it does not have the allied expenditure to ensure that there is forward movement, so that there is better provision and offenders are properly treated and so that our constituents know that the criminal justice system is getting better. We have to invest in the service to ensure that that is the case.