15:58 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 215 / Noes: 186 - Amendment 1 agreed.
16:57 - Division on Amendment 2 - Ayes: 188 / Noes: 209 - Amendment 2 disagreed.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, far from being tedious or boring, I found that an extremely interesting intervention, and I look forward to the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. My noble friend is quite right to draw attention to the Offender Management Act 2007, because the plans that we have for the probation service are provided for on a legislative basis in that Act. The Bill before us is not, as we have fully acknowledged from the beginning, about the reorganisation of the probation service. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, the powers to do that were helpfully left for us in the 2007 Act by the previous Administration.
Under the 2007 Act, the Secretary of State may contract, with a probation trust, providers from the private or voluntary sector, or he may provide probation services directly. The Secretary of State intends to use the powers conferred by that Act, together with his common law powers, to create and sell companies, and to transfer the delivery of a large proportion of the probation service to the private sector via contractual arrangements involving the formation and sale of a number of new community rehabilitation companies. That is the basis of the approach.
Of course, this has not come out of a blue sky. The department’s rehabilitation reforms, like any other major government project, are subject to additional scrutiny by the Cabinet Office and Her Majesty’s Treasury, and through the Government’s Major Projects Review Group. Her Majesty’s Treasury approval is required for projects outside Parliament’s delegated authority, and the programme team is finding this full engagement of particular use in learning from the experience of other government departments.
Therefore, I do not accept that this matter has not received very thorough preparation, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. This major piece of legislation is being managed quite properly. Ultimately, after all the rhetoric, the sting was in the tail. The noble Lord does not want this Bill to proceed and neither does the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. That is good opposition politics.
Lord Beecham
I am sorry but that is not the position. I am certainly happy that the Bill should proceed. An improved version of this Bill should proceed, and one of the improvements is contained in this amendment.
Lord McNally
One problem with piloting this Bill is that I am supposed to sit here and listen to all the aspersions about the capabilities of my department and the intentions of my Secretary of State, as well as all the other brickbats that are thrown. However, if anybody takes on board anything like the full intention behind the amendment, it will be clear that the two noble Lords want to throw a considerable spanner in the works. If that upsets them, I am very sorry but it is true. I remain committed, as I hope the House does—it gave the Bill its Second Reading and went through Committee—to what I have always seen as the deal that this Bill puts forward.
That deal is that we are putting forward a major reorganisation of probation in a way that releases the resources to provide care, guidance and support to a very important section of those who have been sentenced to fewer than 12 months—the group that is most likely to reoffend and to get into that whirligig of crime that we are trying to break. I say that each time the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, tables one of his amendments to delay the Bill. We are putting this forward with good intention, with a great deal of preparation and work, and with a clear determination to put before the House as much information as we can. We are developing a case and we will go into a certain amount of commercial negotiation but with the full acceptance that we are doing something very radical. To use the statistics from a leaked report, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, just did, is not worthy of him.
I know that the noble Lord gets upset when he is attacked, yet when one rereads his speech one sees that he is very willing to dish it out. He throws out figures of 80% of this and 60% of that when he knows as well as I do that we are talking about a specific management tool that was used and developed by the previous Labour Government inside government, not to assess definite threats or problems but to identify issues that need further work. That is what the process is.
We have had it before with other Bills—this sudden idea that somewhere inside government these risks are being hidden from the public and Parliament, when the Opposition know full well that what is being gone through is an exercise that enables those who are working on these various bits of policy to identify which particular area of policy they need to develop, do work on and make proposals in relation to. It is not, and never was, a forecast of what is going to happen. It is disingenuous to suggest to the House that that is what it is.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was right to look at the amendment as it stands. It is very widely drafted. It states:
“No alteration or reform may be made to the structure of the probation service”,
but that would not just encompass national changes to a new framework; it would also mean that probation trusts in the current model could make no change to their set-up, however minor, without parliamentary approval. I do not want to dwell on this, but I ask the noble Lord to think carefully about whether that kind of parliamentary micromanagement is sensible in legislation.
I turn now to the detail of the changes that we are proposing. First, let me put on record that the Government recognise the excellent work that is done by the probation professionals across the country. I have said that time and again from this Dispatch Box. Our proposals for reform seek to build on those achievements, not to minimise them. We are doing that in two ways: first, by extending rehabilitation to all offenders who need it through the provisions in this Bill; and, secondly, by seeking to restructure the way in which these services are delivered by opening up the delivery of probation services to a wider market and by bringing the retained public sector probation service into a national entity. These latter elements of our reform proposals are crucial to the core aim of our proposals: to break the cycle of reoffending. We do so for three reasons. The first is that by opening up the provision of rehabilitation services to the private and voluntary sectors, we are seeking to promote additional innovation and investment. Despite the excellent work and commitment of those supporting offenders within the public sector, we are unable to achieve this fully under our current structures.
Secondly, by restructuring the public sector probation service into a national entity, we are focusing public sector resources on areas where it is most needed: on protecting the public from harm and providing clear and impartial advice to sentencers. By managing this service nationally, we are seeking to drive excellence across the country, bringing all delivery of these services up to the level of the highest performers.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, through both elements of this structural reform we are seeking to drive efficiency and savings in current practices and to provide the necessary investment to open up provision to all those who need it. I remind noble Lords that we simply cannot afford to expand rehabilitation to short-sentence offenders without these savings.
I now turn to the detail of the structural reforms that we are proposing. We are committed to maintaining a strong local delivery structure within the public sector probation service. Although current trusts have clearly built excellent relationships with other local delivery partners, much of this local working does not take place at the level of the 35 existing trusts but within the 150 local delivery units that sit beneath them. Our firm intention is to retain a strong local delivery structure based on these units, providing clear representation and involvement within both local authority and criminal justice areas.
Senior managers in the new organisation will have a strong presence within the National Offender Management Service and the Ministry of Justice, with directors for both England and Wales sitting on the NOMS board. Probation has often been viewed as the junior partner within NOMS, and this reorganisation is an opportunity to remedy that.
For probation functions that are being competed for, we are committed to retaining the skills, expertise and experience of operational staff currently within trusts. We are working closely with unions and associations representing probation providers to ensure that any process of selecting staff for the new structures is fair and minimises disruption as far as possible. We have also been engaging with interested parties to develop proposals for a professional body for the probation profession, and are strongly supportive of this idea.
We also recognise how crucial working in partnership is to the successful rehabilitation of offenders, and how probation trusts are integral to many of these excellent local partnership arrangements, including integrated offender management. The Government are determined not to disrupt this, and we are clear that contracted providers will need to demonstrate how they will engage effectively with key local partners when they are bidding for contracts.
As I set out in my earlier correspondence to noble Lords, we have already consulted extensively on the proposals in Transforming Rehabilitation: A Revolution in the Way We Manage Offenders. We received almost 600 formal responses to the consultation and held 14 consultation events that were attended by over 800 stakeholders, and the views received were invaluable in informing the reforms set out in the strategy published on 9 May. Both the transforming rehabilitation consultation document and the strategy were presented to Parliament, and we continue to welcome further interest from parliamentarians in these reforms.
I recognise the expertise that many Peers have on these issues, and I am committed to ensuring that noble Lords are kept informed of and involved in these reforms as they are taken forward. A number of other supporting documents have been and will be published that are available via the Ministry of Justice website: namely, the summary of responses to the consultation, the payment mechanism Straw Man and the prior information notice. In order to make them more easily accessible, I will place copies of these and all future documents giving further detail about the design of the new system in the House of Lords Library. I am happy to arrange an all-Peers meeting as and when we publish further documents. If it would be helpful to Peers, I will also explore through the usual channels the possibility of an opportunity for further parliamentary debate on these proposals outside the realm of this Bill.
In short, I am absolutely committed to ensuring that the Government engage with Peers and other parliamentarians as we develop the detail of our reforms. However, I stress again that the significant benefits that these changes will deliver, including the extension of rehabilitation to short-sentence offenders and the creation of “through the prison gate” resettlement services, are affordable only as part of a wider package of reforms. I hope that Peers will be able to support the Government in taking these reforms forward.
I hope that these points of detail will provide noble Lords with some reassurance as to the structural changes we have proposed, and in light of this I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Richard
Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps he can help me with one small issue concerning the risk assessment. If you have a risk assessment, surely it follows that risks have to be assessed. The noble Lord says, “No, they do not have to be assessed; they have to be identified”. Why does he make that distinction? It goes to the essence of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is making. If there is an assessment of risk, surely we are entitled to see it, not to be told merely that certain risks have been identified but, as far as we know, remain unassessed.
Lord McNally
Of course, part of the problem is that it is described as a risk assessment by journalists. As I said before, a variety of exercises is carried out by the project development team, using various combinations of some of the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, plucked out—in fact, it was a third source because they came from a leak to a journalist to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to the House. So I ask the House to decide how accurate they are.
Of course, the Opposition cry, “Tell us”, but they went through similar exercises on big projects when they were in government. They realised that this was work in progress and it remained part of the management team’s work-in-progress tools. It is not a document that would give help to anybody in terms of what the noble Lord is talking about as risk. It is not about that kind of thing; it is about looking across the piece to see where the emphasis of work and development has to go.
The Countess of Mar
My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, following his comments about his noble friend Lady Hamwee’s remarks about the probation service, he twice at least used the phrase “the probation service” in his speech. Can he say what he was covering in that phrase? In addition, has he not considered that a major stumbling block is the fact that we do not know how much this is going to cost? My noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, both said that we need to know the cost. The Minister has made no mention of the cost.
Lord McNally
We are working within a very strict budget. Because we have other commitments as far as the overall expenditure of the department is concerned, we have also said that we will be spending a little less than the £1 billion that is spent on probation at present. We believe that with our experience of piloting other schemes we can bring that down. But that will unfold as we test against the market. One of the reasons why we cannot give the precise figures is that we will be going into negotiations with commercial operators who would very much like to know in advance what our baseline would be, along with our other financial operations. We know the figures in broad terms and, as we have said before, while this will make some savings, it is the flexibility, the hard bargains that we were able to drive with the private sector, and the efficiencies that we will introduce which will bring the costs down.
Yes, we all use the term “probation service” rather loosely. What my noble friend Lady Hamwee drew attention to was that there is no definition of it in statute, and therefore she was warning the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, of a possible defect in his amendment in calling it as such.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, perhaps I may put a point to the Minister. No doubt he will recollect that at the end of 2010, the National Audit Office calculated that the cost of reoffending lies between the parameters of £9.5 billion and £13 billion per annum. Is it not therefore a reality that, even with the best will in the world and the most accurate attempt at analysis, it is impossible to arrive at any meaningful figure for what these new and revolutionary changes will bring about? It is not a question of not showing your hand in what might be a commercial negotiation that will have to follow, but that the figures are virtually unquantifiable and could mean massive public loss.
Lord McNally
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention, which probably was not intended to be helpful, but certainly was. That is because these are the stakes we are playing for. I do not doubt the figures he has given and indeed I have seen them. Reoffending costs this country between £9 billion and £14 billion, so let us not say that we are going to aim to prevent 50% of reoffending. If we could get it down to 40%, just think what that would mean in hard cash. That is the prize we are aiming for. Of course it takes some radical thinking and means taking risks that are outside the box—that is exactly what we are doing. When there is a new idea, it is a lot easier to throw spanners in the works or to say what is so often said about any new and radical idea, “Let’s have a bit more time to think about it and take it all a bit more slowly”. We have put a lot of work into this project and, as we develop and unfold it, we are willing to share information with Members of this House and others. However, the noble Lord is quite right that, as well as the impact on offenders who are taken out of the cycle of crime, and apart from the impact on victims who will avoid the crimes that the rehabilitated will not commit, there really is big money to be saved by carrying this through. I am as enthusiastic and confident about it now as I was when we started, and I hope that the House will feel the same as it did when it gave the Bill an overwhelming Second Reading.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply and I thank all those who have taken part in this short debate. I have to admit to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that I had not considered the details she outlined as far as the legislation is concerned. I had always assumed that the existing national probation service was the National Probation Service. Absolute logic suggests that I should go away and rethink the wording of the amendment because we must get it correct if we are actually going to put something through.
I should say to the Minister that I am not opposed to the intent of this Bill and I never have been. Indeed, I started my speech by saying that. The Cross-Benches are not the Opposition and I rather resent being called the Opposition purely because we sometimes go against what the Government propose. I am simply concerned to do all that I possibly can to encourage the Government and to make certain that we can be convinced by the Government that every possible examination has been carried out into whether what is proposed is possible and practical and that as little damage is done as possible to the existing public services, which have given such outstanding service for so long.
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for a number of things that he said, in particular that we will have a debate. As he appreciates, one of the frustrations of this Bill is that it is not actually about the proposals—it is about the tools of the proposals. The legislation would suggest that although we can say what we like about those tools, it does not matter a damn, because the Secretary of State is going to go ahead anyway, encouraged by the legislation’s permission for him to do so. In that case, we would be denied any chance to have our say and to put our expertise and intent at the service of the Government. I am also very grateful for his explanation of what was going on, because we have not heard that before. I am very grateful that he will put copies of the things in the Library, because I suspect that many noble Lords do not actually follow everything that is on the internet in the way that officials might hope.
There is no need to involve a third party in the distance between the leaks and me—I received the documents last Thursday and have them in my possession now. I was laying my assessment of Ministry of Justice documents before the House and not a journalist’s interpretation of those documents. My concerns were, I think, quite reasonable. We were presented with a Bill on 9 May, on which we started work, but these assessments of risk were dated 21 May, which suggests that they came after the Bill. That is something about which I still seek reassurance.
I am extremely sorry that the Minister should have suggested that I am not happy to take it as well as give it. As he knows perfectly well, this refers to an incident—which I did not wish to lay before the House—when I complained to him that he had attributed views to me when I was not in the House and therefore unable to answer. I do not believe that we should conduct our business that way.
In view of the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has raised, I have some concern about this, but I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will know that I have been concerned about a payments-by-results service, not least because of the threat, as I see it, to innovative, interesting, small-scale provision which is delivered so effectively by a number of organisations that are very often—because this is the way with the voluntary sector—working on something of a knife edge. I have had reassurances, which I have very much welcomed, about the financial arrangements being such as to support small organisations which—I do not want to be pejorative towards them—may feel that they are lurching from month to month not being entirely certain that their income is sufficiently stable. They are also at a disadvantage compared with bigger organisations when it comes to a bidding war. There are a lot of sectors where some sort of beauty parade is undertaken. Sometimes, the money gets spent on the beauty rather than the content, and that is what wins the contract. I say again that I have heard reassurances about support for small organisations for part of the bidding process.
I want to take this opportunity to ask my noble friend for reassurance about something that struck me only earlier today. It is entirely likely that large outsourcing companies—we know the various names—will bid for some of the contracts. We also know that the proposed changes to criminal legal aid are likely to mean that the same large organisations may, through different parts of their workforce, bid to undertake solicitors’ services under the new legal aid contracts. What occurred to me was the danger of a conflict of interest, whereby two parts of the same organisation are representing an offender and providing rehabilitative supervisory services. I am using this occasion to ask my noble friend for an assurance about the solidity of the Chinese walls that will be required to be put in place, and the monitoring of them, if these two parts of the Government’s proposals go ahead more or less at the same time and more or less hand in hand.
Lord McNally
My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to joust with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, as he is such a well read man and we heard about the Kaiser “dropping the pilot”. However, I like to think that the Opposition’s support for the Bill, which he again gave fulsomely at the end of his remarks, is like the rope that supports the hanging man—in saying that, I look to Lenin rather than the Kaiser—and so he introduces another amendment which would at least throw a considerable spanner in the works, if not wreck the Bill.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, that I, of course, consider the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to be a saintly man. However, my reading of Lives of the Saints makes me well aware that one or two of them were quite capable of landing fairly lusty blows. Therefore, I have never equated saintliness or sanctity with pacifism or a lack of willingness to trade blows. If noble Lords read today’s opening speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, they will see that it contained a few lusty blows directed at the Secretary of State and the department, but is none the worse for that. I am sorry that, acting in their individual capacities and making up their minds individually, not a single Cross-Bencher managed to support me in the Division, as I understand it, but that is the nature of things.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, really should stop reading spy and thriller novels because his speeches are based entirely on sinister facts. As regards the FOI request, our refusal to release the relevant information was based on the criteria in the Freedom of Information Act, which the Labour Government crafted. As he well knows, that procedure gives the Government the opportunity to develop policy before premature disclosure occurs. As in the previous debate, the noble Lord saw all kinds of sinister motivations behind the use of a management tool which his Labour Government developed in Whitehall to allow those developing policy not to make predictions but to test possible dangers before making policy public. We have published the process of evaluation of our pilots at Peterborough and Doncaster and our justice reinvestment pilots. We do not have formal evaluation reports of the other pilots because they were discontinued. However, we have learnt from the process of designing the pilots and we are applying that learning process to the design of the new system. That is part of our policy development process.
I have known the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, keep the House going for a long time over one wrong word in a piece of legislation so it is a little rich for him to ask what is in a word. I again make the point to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that we have given considerable assistance to small innovators in the voluntary and charitable sectors. We want to make sure that they play their full part. We are running a two-part £500,000 grant to voluntary organisations to overcome the barriers to their participation in the rehabilitation reforms. We will open up the delivery of probation services to a far wider range of potential providers, including the voluntary sector. We are keen to see partnerships between voluntary organisations or between private and voluntary providers coming forward for contracts. We continue to develop a strategy to support the voluntary sector to participate in future competitions and are working closely with the Cabinet Office to develop the capacity and capabilities of voluntary organisations to deliver payment by results contracts.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I will make one very brief point in relation to this. Of course, one has sympathy with the overall notion that it is important that the classification of offenders as low, medium or high-risk is carried out with a great degree of care. However, I would suggest that the classification reflected in the title of the new clause as proposed in the amendment,
“Low, medium and high risk offenders”,
is more likely to be accurate than the classification in proposed subsection (2) of the amendment, which deals with the classification of offences. The reason for that is found in the words of proposed subsection (2), which says that,
“the definition of a low or medium risk offender shall not include offences of a violent or sexual nature, stalking or domestic violence”.
That would mean that any ordinary common-law offence of assault, any assault occasioning actual bodily harm or any low-grade affray would take an offence out of the classification that would enable the offender to be classified as low or medium risk. These classifications need to be capable of fine-tuning and I have serious doubts whether it is appropriate for that fine-tuning to be given effect by a classification that merely considers the offences rather than the offenders.
Lord McNally
My Lords, this has been a brief debate but I fully appreciate and accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that it is an important one and I hope that I can respond constructively.
I thank my noble friend Lord Marks for his intervention. It is questionable whether the kind of fine-tuning in this area to which he referred is done at arm’s length. It is done by the professionals on the ground.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has referred in a number of his interventions to the Chief Inspector of Probation, Liz Calderbank, and the concerns that she has expressed. I make it clear that we have carefully considered the points she has made in response to our consultation. Our strategy document specifically sets out how we will seek to ensure that some of her concerns are met. The Secretary of State has met the chief inspector to discuss her concerns and she will continue to make an input as we develop this policy.
Another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, was the importance of victims. We share that concern. We are retaining the victim liaison role for all cases to which it applies. We are committed to ensuring that the reformed system is responsive to the needs of victims, and we decided it was right that the public sector should continue to exercise its experience and professionalism in conducting this role.
In discussing these areas, it is easy to exploit public emotion and concern when one refers to sex offenders, murderers or rapists. Let us be clear: every offender who poses a high risk of serious harm to the public will continue to be managed by the public sector probation service. Public sector probation professionals will decide on the allocation in each case. They will retain management of every offender who poses a high risk of serious harm to the public and every offender who falls under the multiagency public protection arrangements—or MAPPA. We will not get into second guessing the judgment of probation professionals about who poses a high risk of serious harm but we will have a very clear set of rules.
The public sector will have overall responsibility for public protection and the Ministry of Justice will ensure the effective management of risk of serious harm. We will set out clear expectations and standards in service level agreements and contracts with both the public sector probation service and market providers. Day-to-day responsibility for managing the risk of serious harm that an offender poses sits with the organisation allocated the case management according to the standards set. This will be the public sector in the case of those who pose a high risk of serious harm and contracted providers in the case of those whose risk of harm is assessed as medium or low.
Let me reassure noble Lords that this matter of risk has been foremost in our minds when designing the new system. Although the majority of offenders will in future be managed by contracted providers, we are clear that every offender who poses a high risk of harm to the public will continue to be managed by the public sector National Probation Service. We are also clear that it will be professionals in the National Probation Service who assess the risk posed by every offender at the outset. By the way, I take pride every time I read the words “National Probation Service”. One of the good things that will come out of these reforms is a National Probation Service with the esteem and professional recognition that it deserves.
We have already recognised that the public will want reassurance that those who have committed the most serious sexual and violent offences will be managed by the public sector probation service. That is why we have said that anyone managed under multiagency public protection arrangements will remain with the public sector, whatever their risk level. That includes offenders who have committed serious sexual or violent offences and other offenders who may cause serious harm to the public. The proposed amendment would go further, requiring all those who have been convicted of violent or sexual offences, stalking or domestic violence to be treated as high risk regardless of the length of sentence imposed. Many of those individuals will already fall to be managed by the National Probation Service under MAPPA, but we believe that a blanket approach like this goes too far and would not be effective in identifying those individuals who need the most careful management. Indeed, it would mean major changes to the way the current probation framework deals with offenders. While I am sure that is not the noble Lord’s intention, I hope it will help if I explain how risk is assessed and managed, and why this amendment would cut across professional discretion.
Assessing and managing the risk posed by offenders is a complex job involving a great deal of professional expertise. It needs to take a wide range of circumstances into account. The offence of which an offender has been convicted is only one of the relevant factors and is not always a good indicator of risk. There will be many others: age, criminal history, education, employment, substance misuse, interpersonal issues, and accommodation status, for example.
It is vital that the experienced professionals can use their expertise to make the right decisions to protect the public. I believe that it should be those practitioners, rather than Parliament, who should decide what constitutes a high risk of harm. Automatically deeming high risk an offender who has committed a particular offence could mean subjecting that individual to supervision that is significantly in excess of what is warranted. Indeed, there is a possibility that for low-risk offenders, providing overly heavy supervision and intervention might actually increase rather than decrease their risk.
It might also provide some reassurance if I set out in more detail how the process will work once the initial allocation has been made. During our consultation, we were told that splitting the management of offenders between the National Probation Service and the contracted providers would require clearly defined responsibilities and accountabilities at every level and a clearly defined process for managing rapid changes in offender risk. We agree, and we have built those into the design of the new system.
We are developing a risk management system that is both proactive and responsive to changes in risk. At the heart of our system is the recognition that at an operational level those managing an offender must have day-to-day responsibility for managing the risk of harm posed by that offender. This will be the National Probation Service in the case of those who pose a high risk of serious harm and contracted providers in the case of those whose risk of serious harm is assessed as medium or low. However, we also recognise that risk of serious harm can change during the course of a sentence, and we are putting a series of safeguards in place to ensure that changes in risk are picked up and appropriately acted on and that responsibilities are clear at every level.
We will pursue an approach that will build on existing good practice. We already know that good quality offender management practice supported by clear policies and close multiagency work are the necessary building blocks for effective risk management. The new National Probation Service and providers will be required to interact and work together to ensure a cohesive approach to managing risk.
I turn to the detail of the process we envisage. The National Probation Service will conduct an assessment at the outset, which will determine who manages each offender. It will be the National Probation Service in the case of those who pose a high risk of serious harm, and contracted providers in the case of those whose risk of serious harm is assessed as medium or low.
During the course of the sentence, providers will be required to risk-manage the offender within their case load We will place contractual obligations on providers to ensure that they have appropriately trained staff and organisational policies for the management of risk of serious harm. Where there is a significant change in circumstances that indicates an increase in the risk of serious harm, the contracted provider will be required contractually to refer the case to the National Probation Service. It will be for the National Probation Service to confirm whether the risk of serious harm is high.
If a decision is reached that the risk of serious harm has escalated to high, the responsibility for the management of the case will transfer to the National Probation Service. Where case transfer happens, this will be achieved in such a way that it does not destabilise the offender. Involvement with the provider could continue, while the case responsibility will be with the National Probation Service.
I am confident that the measures that I have outlined will provide a robust system. I understand that noble Lords share that desire to ensure that the new system builds and improves on the good practices that now exist. However, I come back to the point that it is the skilled and experienced practitioners in the public sector National Probation Service who are best placed to make the risk decisions.
As I said at the beginning, I welcome this intervention, particularly with the noble Lord’s assurance that he does not intend to divide on this amendment. I make no apologies for going into detail in my reply, which I hope will be of assistance to him and to the House in seeing how we are developing this matter.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that very full explanation of the Government’s approach, and I derive a reasonable degree of comfort and assurance from it. I am not entirely convinced by the concept of the National Probation Service as an improvement on the more localised service that is currently being delivered through probation trusts at local level. I was not a great admirer of the previous Government’s decision to create the National Offender Management Service either. The Minister and I are apparently at one about that.
Lord McNally
I remember our debates on that decision. Part of the problem with the last reorganisation was what we said at the time would be the downgrading of the probation service by having no national voice. That is the real win in this reorganisation: the probation service being where it should be, at the top table and with direct access to the Secretary of State.
Lord Beecham
I can certainly see the case for an arrangement of that kind, but the operational workings of the service are better driven at a more local level, with the service being involved in the relevant areas— as I said, I think there are 35 at the moment—by engaging with the other partners, which are a necessary part of dealing with the problems of offenders. That includes magistrates, who I understand will no longer be involved in this process, and there is some concern about that among magistrates. It also includes other government departments, such as the DWP, local authorities and the voluntary sector operating at a local level.
I continue to have reservations about the nationalisation of the service, as it were, which again might differentiate me from Lenin. I am reasonably assured by the process that the Minister describes, but on the more substantive issue I still have some anxiety, which may be shared generally, about the process of identifying a change of category and the reference upward to the probation service, however constituted, particularly if there was a large jump from a lower-risk case, which might well be supervised by a contractual or voluntary organisation at a comparatively low level of skill, which might make it more difficult to detect the change. Without suggesting further pilots, since these are not in fashion at the moment, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister at some point, perhaps just informally, whether the transition will be kept under review and an effort made to collate the experience across this scheme to see how it works over a reasonable period.
The other question that arises is how this arrangement of transfer will affect the contract. I suppose it should not be assumed that a transfer of risk necessarily means that the provider has failed in their contractual obligation, because there might not be another offence. Again, I appreciate that we are talking about cohorts, but there are some significant numbers here. Given that 250,000 people are to be involved, I do not know how big the cohorts are to be. I am not asking for an answer to this now—again, perhaps it could be by letter—but if there is a change of category so that at different times you have two separate organisations with responsibility for part of the cohort, how will that impact upon the payment system? Are there any incentives, perverse or otherwise, in that context? For example, if somebody was a bit difficult at the lower level and if there are large numbers, it might be convenient to move them up to the probation service. Will that have an implication for the funding?
That is a rather separate point, I admit, and not covered by the precise terms of the amendment, but it is perhaps worth exploring. However, in the circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McNally
My Lords, we could have a debate now, although it is a very thinly attended House, but it may assist the House if I explain that the reason why I am not bringing forward a government amendment now, as I said in Committee that I would, is simply to do with the machinery of getting clearance through something called HAC. I am not sure whether it is still a secret that Cabinets have committees, but that stands for the Home Affairs Committee. It is my intention to table an amendment for Third Reading, which I hope will cover the concerns expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. I promise to consult him on that amendment, and that might be the occasion for a full debate on the subject, perhaps with the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, restored to health and ready to make a contribution.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, despite that important announcement, I want to say a very few words in support of the amendments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. When we are taking into consideration the special needs of women and the fact that they might have been subject to domestic violence and have all sorts of other problems that need special attention, we should also remember the damage that imprisonment is likely to do to their family and the potential damage to future generations of children, who are much more likely to offend. I did not intend to take up time; I just wanted to remind. The Minister might like to remember those points when addressing the points that he has told us he is going to address.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, this is an amendment that I moved with my noble friends in Committee, and I do not propose to repeat extensively the arguments that I put then. They are in essence that the present options for sanctions under new Section 256AC that are available to a court upon breach of supervision requirements are in essence punitive and involve a short term of imprisonment, a fine, an unpaid work requirement or a curfew. We stress that the court may well find it necessary and more appropriate on investigation of a breach of supervision requirements to have regard to the rehabilitation of the offender so as to make desirable changes to those supervision requirements. The court having investigated the breach will be in the strongest possible position to make such a recommendation. I have in mind in particular the power of the Secretary of State to make requirements to participate in particular activities in accordance with instructions given by the supervisor: drug-testing requirements, drug appointment requirements and so forth.
When we proposed the corresponding amendment in Committee, my noble friend the Minister was kind enough to say that we had made a sensible and practical suggestion. He promised to examine the technicalities of the process and to return to the matter at a later stage. Therefore, I now look forward to hearing from him the results of that examination. I beg to move.
Lord McNally
My Lords, my noble friend has accurately reported my remarks in Committee, which did not, he will have noted, commit me to bringing forward a government amendment; I have taken legal advice on that. However, I am grateful to him for the characteristically clear and reasoned way in which he has made the case for Amendment 9.
I said in Committee that my noble friend’s amendment seemed a practical suggestion and I undertook to take it away and examine the technicalities of the process. I am happy to say that on the issue of principle that the amendment raises, the Government are persuaded by my noble friend’s arguments.
There might well be circumstances in which a court dealing with breach concludes that the rehabilitation of the offender would be better addressed by a variation of the Secretary of State’s supervision conditions. The Government agree that it should be possible for courts to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State and that there should be a process for acting on that recommendation. This should apply whether or not a court decides to impose a sanction for breach. In other words, a court could impose a sanction and recommend that future supervision conditions be changed, or impose no sanction but make a recommendation.
That brings me to the question of how we best achieve this. I have sought advice on the legal position. There is nothing in law that would stop a court making a recommendation of this sort. A magistrate or district judge could do this simply by stating their opinion about the requirements that the offender is subject to when summing up.
An explicit provision for this in the Bill would therefore be unnecessary. It could be seen as restricting the discretion of the court to make recommendations in other areas where no specific power exists. It could also mean putting in place a new specific court process for making the recommendation, rather than the relatively informal process that would occur now.
To my mind, the more important question is how we put in place a process within prison and probation services for ensuring that a court’s recommendation is acted upon by those setting supervision conditions on the Secretary of State’s behalf. There is a precedent for this. Probation and prison instructions already set out a process for cases where courts make recommendations about future licence conditions at the point of sentence. This involves probation staff present at court recording the recommendation and passing it to prison governors.
There is a presumption that governors should implement the court’s recommendation, except in cases where the offender’s circumstances have changed between sentence and release. I am happy to make a commitment that we will put in place a similar process for breach of supervision, with a similar presumption that those setting conditions should act on the court’s recommendation unless there are exceptional circumstances. To make sure that courts are aware of their ability to make recommendations to the Secretary of State, the Government will also discuss with the Sentencing Council whether it could include this in future guidance on dealing with breach of supervision.
In summary, I reassure my noble friend that he has made a persuasive case. I know he believes that it is better to get the processes right and get these things done properly at the sharp end rather than simply write things into the Bill. What I, as a layman, initially took to be a very good idea has been confirmed as such by the professional and legal advice that I have been given. I am not sure whether a Pepper v Hart judgment could be applied to what I have just said, but it is a very clear indication that we want to put the noble Lord’s very good suggestions into practical effect. I hope that I have reassured the noble Lord in that respect.
Lord McNally
“( ) Section 219(1)(b) applies as if the reference to the responsible officer were to the supervisor.”
Lord McNally
Viscount Slim
My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for the quick conversation that we had on this subject of veterans’ courts. From that conversation I took away two points. The first was that the Minister is still not overly keen on having a trial of veterans’ courts. Secondly, but perhaps more importantly, he said that something had to be done about this subject.
I draw the noble Lord’s attention to the military covenant. The right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State for Defence has to make a report at a prescribed time on the state of the military covenant. In his meetings with various ministries to gather information, I would have thought that the Ministry of Justice would be paramount in the thinking and discussion to find out what the plan is for young veterans who do not have or need a custodial sentence but who need rehabilitation. What is the plan from the Ministry of Justice to achieve this? I also remind the Minister that, with the coalition deciding to get rid of 25,000 soldiers, this problem will get much worse. There has to be a plan. All I am asking is that if the Minister still does not wish to trial veterans’ courts, which I would be sad about and which I consider probably the best way to move forward, the Ministry of Justice must come up with a plan and a decision on how this problem will be handled. Therefore, I sit down and await the Minister’s plan.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I am particularly grateful for the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, put forward this amendment and for the contribution of the noble Viscount, Lord Slim. Both contributions show the value of chats outside the Chamber; they bring rich dividends. I should say to the noble Viscount that I still have my doubts about veterans’ courts but I shall return to that later in my remarks. I accept fully, and it was clear from the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that there is no division between us about our commitment to fulfilling the military covenant. As the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, made clear, the Ministry of Justice has a positive part to play in ensuring that in carrying out that covenant we address the problems faced by ex-servicemen who fall foul of the criminal justice system to see whether and where they need specific assistance in rehabilitation.
I am cautious because I think that we have to be clear about the nature of the problem. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to the American experience and I am not afraid to look at where good ideas have worked in the criminal justice system in the United States.
However, let us be clear: a minority of offenders in the criminal justice system served in the Armed Forces before being convicted. NOMS works with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Health to ensure that ex-armed services offenders can access appropriate support and rehabilitation services. All probation trusts routinely supervise and provide offender management for former Armed Forces personnel sentenced to community orders. But on the latest statistics available—this is why it is important to get things into perspective—the number of regular veterans in prison is estimated to be 2,820. That is about 3.5% of the prison population. About 5,860 offenders in the community, approximately 3.4% of community offenders, had served in the regular Armed Forces. In both cases, more than 75% are ex-Army, the others being ex-RAF or ex-Navy.
In prisons and in the community we are dealing with a very small number of people. Another statistic that I have seen is that 99% of those are men, which is not surprising. But that is the nature of this. However, as I told the noble Lord in our meetings in the Lobby, one of the characteristics of this Government is that when someone has a good idea we respond to it positively and constructively. In a way, we are doing that immediately. I know that the noble Lord and his honourable friend David Anderson MP, the Member for Blaydon, will be meeting my right honourable friend Damian Green to talk about the treatment of ex-service personnel in the criminal justice system.
As my noble friend Lord Ahmad said in Committee, we are aware of concerns about ex-service personnel in the justice system, but we need to make clear that the vast majority of the men and women who served in the Armed Forces go on to lead successful law-abiding lives. Indeed, it is often their experience in the services that provides them with the necessary skills and ethos to succeed in civilian life. But some ex-service personnel struggle in civilian life and it is right that we do what we can to ensure that the transition from the Armed Forces to civilian life is supported. I draw attention to the good work that the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces already do in this field, and the important work of the voluntary sector.
For those ex-service personnel who do end up in the criminal justice system and ultimately in prison, there is already specific support. Guidance on dealing with ex-service personnel in prison has been produced by the Ministry of Justice and the MoD along with the British Legion, SSAFA and rehabilitation organisations such as Nacro. In most prisons, we now have veterans as custody support officers.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned in Committee the problem with some offenders making up or exaggerating their service records. We need to ensure that we are able to identify as early as possible offenders with a genuine service history. We will also expect new providers of probation services to provide tailored services for such offenders, including addressing the particular needs of ex-service personnel. My noble friend Lord Ahmad said in Committee that we would not bring forward government amendments in the Bill to create a new veterans’ court. I also want to make it clear that this does not mean that we have ruled out a pilot of the veterans’ court. We have in fact not ruled out anything in this regard. I should also clarify that it is unlikely that a pilot of a veterans’ court would actually need new legislation.
What we need to do is give some careful thought to the best way to support ex-service personnel in the criminal justice system. It is clear that the amendment is designed to enable the Government to make a further commitment to look at the issue of veterans in the criminal justice system, and that I am happy to do. It remains unclear whether the proposal is to create a body to divert, where possible, ex-service personnel from the criminal courts or a criminal court with specifically experienced judges—more akin to a drugs court or a youth court—or whether it is a body designed to oversee the rehabilitation of ex-service personnel offenders sentenced by the criminal courts. Further work needs to be done on this matter, but I hope that, due to the way I have responded, the noble Lord will accept that we are being constructive.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I had hoped that there would be a clear acceptance of the notion that a trial should be made of the veterans’ court concept. I appreciate that it is probably not necessary for legislation for this purpose, but there has to be a peg on which to hang the proposal and this was a suitable example for such an exercise. Given that we are not talking about large numbers and that it would obviously be sensible but not essential to pilot such a scheme, and that the costs would be minimal, I find it difficult to understand why the Government cannot say that they will look at all the issues and give this particular concept a go to see what works. The measure would be, as has been the case elsewhere, whether it results in reductions in the reoffending rates.
As the Minister said, we are not talking about vast numbers of people, and it should be perfectly possible to mount such an exercise and for the Government to give an indication that they will do that. The Government are not slow to announce other initiatives when they choose to—in particular, the Ministry of Justice is not slow to introduce a wide range of proposals and act upon them.
I find myself, as I was in Committee, somewhat disappointed with the response.
Lord McNally
The noble Lord is being uncharacteristically churlish. I do not see how far I can go. I have already told him that the number of people is very small. Where would this court be established? What would it do? Which problem would it address? I have said that these issues can and should be discussed and that we will take them forward on an all-party basis and look for positive solutions. He must realise that I cannot go any further than that. I cannot say, “Right, we will set up a pilot in Newcastle”, and have them all sit round the room, not quite sure what they were there to do and what problem they were addressing. This needs a lot more work. It is an interesting area. We have responded as constructively as we can. The noble Lord has made progress; he should enjoy his success rather than continuing to grumble.
Lord Beecham
I am sorry that the Minister adopts that tone. I am sure he is personally warm towards this proposal. Whether that goes for other Ministers, I do not know; perhaps we will find out. I hope I have not given the impression of being churlish. We are approaching Armed Forces Day. We ought to be in a position to give a clear indication that what is ultimately a fairly simply project—the American precedent is perfectly straightforward, clear and inexpensive; the outcomes are easily measured, and it would be likely to be successful—will be undertaken. I do not ask the Minister to say definitely today that there will be a pilot project or some kind of experiment with a veterans’ court, I just find the tone less positive than perhaps our previous conversations had led me to believe it to be. Perhaps, far from being churlish, I was being a bit naive in interpreting what the noble Lord was saying.
We have a little while until Third Reading. I hope that we can make some progress, given that it is not a huge problem and that the ask in expenditure and organisation is not huge. However, I must reserve the position to bring something back at Third Reading. Of course I appreciate that it would have to be slightly different from this amendment, but I hope that is not necessary because I would like to go through the same Lobby as the noble Lord for a change on an issue of this kind, particularly given the client group that we are talking about.
I will not seek to test the opinion of the House this evening, but I do not rule that out if there is no clear indication of a positive attitude, which would not bind the Government for all time but would allow us to see whether we can learn from that American experience. I am not saying that it would necessarily be the outcome that one would hope for, but I hope that we will have an opportunity to find that out. In the mean time, I withdraw the amendment.
Lord McNally