Draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Damian Hinds)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order 2023.
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. The home detention curfew scheme has been in place for more than two decades and is an important tool in safely managing the transition of eligible offenders from custody back into the community. It does so by enabling certain lower-risk prisoners to be released from prison early, while remaining subject to significant restrictions on their liberty, including a curfew, which is monitored by an electronic tag.
The draft statutory instrument before us forms part of wider changes that we are making to that scheme. Our changes put public protection first, while ensuring closer scrutiny and supervision in the community for those less serious offenders who are ready to be released on home detention curfew. We will be making changes to the eligibility criteria and risk assessment set out in the HDC policy framework, which will mean fewer people are released on HDC overall, the public are better protected, and a clear message is sent to domestic abusers. Tackling violence against women and girls is a Government priority. It is abhorrent and preventable, and an issue that blights the lives of millions.
Certain offenders, such as sex offenders and those convicted of child cruelty offences, are already excluded or presumed unsuitable for home detention curfew. We will add to the “presumed unsuitable” list any offenders currently serving a sentence of imprisonment for 11 offences that are often linked to domestic abuse, such as stalking, harassment, breach of protective orders—restraining orders, for example—controlling and coercive behaviour, and non-fatal strangulation and suffocation. Adding those offences to the list will mean that those offenders will not be considered for release on HDC unless the governor is satisfied that there are truly exceptional circumstances justifying it and that their risk can be safely managed in the community.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for putting women’s safety at the heart of this. Can he give me the assurance that I can tell women in Chelmsford that it is absolutely the case that those who have been found guilty of domestic abuse and other violent crimes against women will be kept in prison and not released in this way?
Damian Hinds
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend and I do want to give her that reassurance—that we are extending the list of people who will be presumed ineligible for this programme to include those 11 new offences. Actually, it is part of a broader scheme and some changes that we brought in last year, which I will come to in a moment. It goes beyond, necessarily, that which a person was imprisoned for; often, we need to consider wider intelligence as well.
Assessment of risks to those at the curfew address is key and will remain so, but it is also absolutely right that risks to the public more generally are taken into account. We will therefore be mandating that public protection as a whole is considered in the risk assessment for someone being considered for home detention curfew, and that all necessary information sharing takes place before a decision on HDC release is made. This builds on changes that I alluded to in response to my right hon. Friend’s question—changes that we introduced last year. Since April 2022, it has been mandatory for the community offender manager to request information from the police and children’s services about domestic abuse or child safeguarding risks associated with the offender or the proposed address, to help to inform the assessment of HDC suitability. Home detention curfew must not be authorised until that information has been obtained and assessed. But we are clear that we must go further, and that is why we are making these changes today.
At the same time, the purpose of the draft instrument is to extend the maximum period of the existing home detention curfew scheme by 45 days. That extends the benefits of the scheme for eligible, suitable offenders, helping to support their rehabilitation in the community with a view to reducing reoffending. That will mean that some people will spend longer on HDC, but no change is being made to the minimum period that someone must have served in custody before being released on HDC.
Although fewer people will be released, the number who are on HDC at any one time will grow because of the longer period to be spent under curfew. There are currently around 1,850 offenders on HDC. The combined effect of these planned changes will be to increase that number by around 300, which means that the prison population at any one time will be lower by around 300.
Our changes pull in both directions on prison population because, while we think it right to exclude those convicted of stalking, harassment and other offences, we also think it right to extend the HDC period for the limited cohort of offenders assessed as suitable for the scheme. When I refer to the “limited cohort”, it is worth bearing in mind that, of the total cohort who could, on the face of it, be eligible for such a scheme, some two thirds do not go on it.
The change will provide a longer transition from custody to community for a smaller cohort of eligible, risk-assessed offenders, allowing them to work towards rehabilitation in the community while remaining subject to strict conditions. The electronically monitored curfew is a significant restriction on their liberty. If the curfew or any other conditions of their licence, such as the requirement to report to probation, are breached, they can be recalled to prison.
Electronic monitoring is also an opportunity for offenders to break habits that have led them into offending previously, improve chances for employment and training, and help to maintain positive relationships. We have enhanced our use of electronic monitoring across the board, which is supported by ever-improving technology and the broader use of GPS tagging, which allows us to monitor offenders when they are away from the curfew address where necessary and not just whether they are at home during curfew hours.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Will the Minister give us a reassurance that the new GPS monitors—the tags—will make it safer to have prisoners at home under curfew, compared with the current situation, and that that will allow victims to feel reassured that, when perpetrators are released under the new system, they will be properly monitored?
Damian Hinds
There are different layers to that extra reassurance about safety. Risk assessment is one part of that and the exclusion of more offenders is another, but the technology itself is an important part of the picture. All tagging technology improves over time, and we also get “learning by doing” effects from its wider deployment.
As well as RF or radio frequency tagging, which is a binary thing that basically detects whether the individual is where they are supposed to be or not—“Are you in your curfew address or not?”—these days there is also the option, where that is deemed appropriate and suitable, of GPS tagging, which can track where an individual actually goes. There are multiple benefits to that—for example, in monitoring exclusion zones or, if somebody is supposed to be going to work on a daily basis, ensuring that that is in fact what they are doing. We also now have alcohol tagging, to detect whether people have complied with an alcohol order.
Home detention curfew is an effective approach for the management of lower-risk offenders, and it allows for their safe and controlled reintegration from prison into the community. I look forward to today’s debate, and I commend the instrument to the Committee.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Home detention curfew is a robust tool that can aid in the supervised resettlement of offenders into society. Our concern is that the Government’s proposed extension is not being made in the interests of reintegration, but that it is instead an emergency measure and a rushed, knee-jerk reaction to prison overcrowding—yet another sticking plaster policy from a Government who lurch from one crisis to another.
The Government’s failure to get to grips with our prison system meant that in December they needed to enact the contingency Operation Safeguard, yet the scale of the problem is so deep that the contingency plan now requires a contingency of its own. That is why we are here today to debate this measure. If resettlement and rehabilitation were truly the Government’s focus, we would not see prisoners locked in their cells for up to 23 hours a day, prison violence at record highs and engagement with rehabilitation programmes at record lows, or prison officers leaving in droves. Those are the problems after 13 years of the Conservatives; and the scale of the problems runs deeper still. Our probation service is a shadow of its former self after 13 years of Government mismanagement, cuts and organisational change.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
I recognise the essential importance of rehabilitation. Does the hon. Lady agree that the opportunity to allow prisoners to spend longer on HDC as they approach the end of their sentence will aid their rehabilitation by enabling them to take part in community support outside prison?
Ellie Reeves
If HDC is done properly, it can work well, but my concern is that this measure is being rushed through, without a properly thought-out process. I will talk a bit about the probation service and the challenges that it is already facing. This measure comes on top of that and will increase its workload further, which is why I have real concerns about how this will work in practice.
The probation service now faces severe staff shortages and unmanageable workloads, and morale is at rock bottom. All of that has led to a failure to monitor dangerous criminals, putting the public at risk. Meanwhile, we hear time and again of prisoners who have been released to sleep rough on the streets or drift back into drug abuse, making them more likely to commit further crimes. And what did we hear from the Government last week? They are forcing 5% of headquarters staff to move back to the frontline.
It is another sticking-plaster policy in response to 13 years of failure, and today’s proposals will likely add a further burden to an already overstretched probation service. They mean that officers will need to complete more HDC assessments, testing the suitability of the proposed release address and examining any previous behaviours by the prisoner on licence or bail. However, the chief inspector of probation recently detailed the current poor standard of risk assessments, with two thirds of those inspected being insufficient. If risk assessments are done quickly, there is a real danger that they will not be completed to the required standard and so the public may be at risk from those released.
We need assurances from the Minister today about what will be done to ensure that the probation service has the capacity to take on the sudden spike in cases from implementing this plan. How will the Government ensure that assessments are not rushed but are properly carried out? Can the Minister confirm that all those released early will have the same checks as they otherwise would have had, including home visits, checks on the proposed release address, and domestic abuse call-outs?
In conclusion, real harm is being done by the chaos in our criminal justice system.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
The home detention scheme was introduced under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and came into force in January 1999. The period has been extended twice—first to 90 days in October 2002 and then to the current 135 days in April 2003. The hon. Lady’s party was in power on those three occasions: the introduction and the two subsequent extensions. Does she not think that the arguments that the current Government are making for this measure—logical arguments, for evidence-based decisions—are probably the same as those that were made when her party was last in power?
Ellie Reeves
I am grateful for those points, but I have outlined in my speech some of the huge capacity issues that we see in the probation service when it comes to properly assessing and managing risk. That is why the Opposition are seeking assurances that the Minister recognises these, and that increasing the amount of time that someone can spend on home detention curfew will not make the public less safe. That is what we are concerned about. There is a capacity issue and it needs to be addressed. We need those reassurances.
Rushed attempts to clear people out of prison are not a replacement for the proper management of rehabilitation. I hope that the Minister will respond to these concerns and outline how the Government will ensure that prisoners are properly risk assessed before release, and how the public will be kept safe.
Damian Hinds
I am grateful to the hon. Lady speaking for the Opposition, to all colleagues who have taken part in the debate and to everybody on the Committee for their scrutiny of the instrument. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West said, the order will extend the benefits of this well-established scheme by changing the maximum period of home detention curfew to 180 days.
To respond to the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge, I must say that I do not recognise some of what she set out. It is the case that we are expanding the Prison Service, and quite rightly so. We are keeping dangerous offenders behind bars for longer, having moved back the automatic release point for the worst offences from half to two thirds. We have seen longer custodial sentences for indictable offences, and it is absolutely right that we must ensure that we have the infrastructure and dedicated workforce in place to manage that.
We are creating 20,000 new prison places, 3,200 of which have already been delivered, while a further 5,200 are already contracted. Those places will come through a mix of different delivery options, including new prisons—one opened last year, and another new, whole prison is due to open in a couple of months’ time. We are also putting in place rapid deployment cells, making extensions, building new house blocks and rightly increasing the capacity of our prison system to ensure that we can house the people who need to be in it.
In toto, the changes in this instrument work in two different directions, as I said earlier. They increase the maximum length of time from four and a half to six months—of course, not everybody gets the maximum—which will take some pressure off prison places, whereas the exclusions we are making, which make more people ineligible for the programme, will increase the pressure on prison places. The net effect will be about 300 places, which one needs to put in the context of a prison population of some 84,000 people. I can give the hon. Member the reassurance that the necessary checks will be made diligently. We are also ensuring that the sequence is right, to ensure that things must have happened before the next stage in the process can go forward.
I echo the hon. Member’s words of appreciation for the dedicated people who do such incredibly important work in our Prison Service and in the probation service. We should see this increase of 300 additional people at any one time in the context of the probation service’s caseload, which is much bigger than many people realise—some 170,000 people are on probation supervision of one sort or another in the community. As with the Prison Service, we are committed to ensuring that the probation service is well resourced, and we are recruiting at pace to ensure that that can happen as well.
In conclusion, we are taking a balanced approach. We will ensure that those who commit serious crimes spend time in prison that reflects the gravity of their offences. We will ensure that we keep the policy under review, as we keep all policies under review, and I will commit to coming back to Parliament in 12 months’ time and reporting on the overall effectiveness of the programme. For other, lower-risk offenders, where they can benefit safely from the long-established and successful HDC scheme, it makes sense that we should allow a somewhat longer period of release, subject to curfew, supporting their transition into the community with a view to reducing reoffending. I commend the draft instrument to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Health Education England (Transfer of Functions, Abolition and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Health Education England (Transfer of Functions, Abolition and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2023.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am grateful to be in the Committee today to debate these important regulations, which are intended to transfer all the functions of Health Education England to NHS England and to abolish Health Education England. They use powers under section 103 of the Health and Care Act 2022 that allow regulations to transfer functions between relevant bodies listed in the Act and to abolish a body if that transfer of functions has made it redundant.
The merger is in line with a recommendation from the Public Accounts Committee back in 2020 to review the effectiveness of having a separate body overseeing the planning and supply of the NHS’s future workforce, which the Department of Health and Social Care accepted.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Regardless of the transition and of who is in charge of education to train the doctors and nurses of the future, we need a lot more of them. Will the Minister assure us that the workforce plan that the Government are going to publish will deliver the doctors and nurses we need to meet rising healthcare need?
Will Quince
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need medics across the NHS in various functions: consultants, doctors, surgeons, allied health professionals, nurses, nursing associates, apprentices and so much more. That is exactly why we commissioned NHS England to undertake a long-term workforce plan. She will know that the Chancellor set out in the autumn statement, and reiterated in the recent Budget, that we will publish that plan very shortly—certainly this spring. It will also be independently verified. It will set out our plan and the workforce requirements for the next five, 10 and 15 years. It needs a bit of patience, but it is a hugely important piece of work because, as she rightly says, the NHS needs that workforce to plan for the future.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Carrying on from what my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet said about the doctors and nurses of the future, one of the very successful things that this Government did five years ago was introduce 10 new medical schools. The one in Chelmsford at Anglia Ruskin University is hugely successful and the first new doctors will graduate in just a few weeks. It has some of the lowest drop-out rates anywhere in the country, and the new doctors want to stay locally. Will the Minister press the case for expanding very successful medical schools such as the one in Chelmsford?
Will Quince
I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. She is absolutely right. I was due to visit her medical school but, unfortunately, because of illness I could not. I still very much hope to do so. She is right that we need to train more medics domestically, although we have international recruitment. We increased the number of doctors we train by 1,500—a 25% increase to 7,500 per year. I urge her to wait just a little longer for the long-term workforce plan, which will set out our requirements for the future and how we go about ensuring that we fill the places and get medics in training. I am conscious that doctors are one of those groups.
Both of my right hon. Friends talked about planning, which is very much at the heart of the regulations. Their intention is to more closely align workforce planning, which is currently the statutory function of Health Education England, with the service and financial planning responsibilities of NHS England. That will enable service, workforce and finance planning to be properly integrated in one place. Nationally and regionally, it will build on the work that has been done to develop the NHS people plan. It will also help to drive reforms in education and training further and faster so that employers can recruit the health professionals needed to provide the right care to patients in the future.
Merging Health Education England with NHS England will simplify the national system, leading the NHS to end the separate lines of accountability that exist for the two bodies. Currently, Health Education England is responsible for workforce planning, education and training, but NHS England is responsible for culture, retention, international recruitment, workforce and leadership. Uniting those functions will help us ensure a joined-up and long-term view of what our NHS workforce needs for the future.
I pay tribute to Health Education England’s leadership and staff throughout the organisation’s 10-year existence. It has played a hugely effective role in the delivery of growth in the number of health professionals trained in England. It has promoted the creation of new roles, such as nursing associates, and spearheaded reforms to professional training workforce growth; record numbers now work within our NHS. It was hugely flexible and effective during the pandemic, including by supporting the deployment of students to the frontline at critical moments.
I am delighted that as of 1 April this year, Dr Navina Evans will become the chief workforce, training and education officer in the new NHS England. Sir David Behan, the chair of Health Education England, was appointed as a non-exec director of NHS England on 1 July. Those appointments are both important, because they will ensure that there continues to be excellent national leadership of NHS education and training.
I know there will be concern in some quarters that the changes pose a risk of budgets being used for other purposes. However, we have put in place a number of measures, including ministerial oversight, to ensure that that will not be the case. I am happy to elaborate on that later if required. Very briefly, we will include objectives on the workforce within NHS England as part of the NHS England mandate. We will continue to monitor and track expenditure on education and training with, as I said, a ministerial chaired board to provide that important ministerial oversight and governance of the workforce in NHS England.
Health Education England and NHS England already work closely together to ensure that the NHS has the workforce that it needs for the future. As I said in response to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet earlier, we have commissioned NHS England to develop that long-term workforce plan for the next five, 10 and 15 years’ time. In effect, that plan will look at the mix, the number of staff required, and the actions and reforms that will be necessary across our NHS to reduce supply gaps and—importantly—improve retention.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I am sorry to have missed the beginning of the Minister’s remarks, but I want to make a case for dentistry in all this. Given that the aim of the draft regulations is to align the workforce more with local need, and that they are designed to improve care standards and workforce availability, will he look at the dental deserts such as Lincolnshire, where we cannot straight-forwardly access NHS dental care? There are more dentists in London than one could shake a stick at—there are even more than there are barbers—yet in Lincolnshire it is very hard to obtain a dentist. Would he look at that in terms of the strategic change that he has described?
Will Quince
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He is right to raise dentistry, because, as he rightly points out, there are dental deserts across the country. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), is looking closely at dentistry, including workforce and supply and the use of a skill mix. Of course, it does not have to be a dentist, as others who have similar qualifications can do a lot of work that a dentist does, including on children. My hon. Friend will publish a dental plan in the coming months, and I hope that addresses my right hon. Friend’s point.
In conclusion, the merger will continue to build on Health Education England’s great work, putting education and training at the heart of service planning for the long term. The draft regulations will simplify the architecture of our NHS at national and regional level and ensure it has the workforce that it needs now and in the future. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and to represent the shadow Health and Social Care team. As has already been noted, the draft statutory instrument facilitates the merger of the body responsible for the education and training of the health workforce —Health Education England—with NHS England. We agree that it is a sensible move. With a wry smile, I conclude that it is yet another of the bureaucratic reforms introduced by Lord Lansley that are now being unpicked by this Government, although it is a sensible choice.
The Government have rightly stated that the purpose of the integration is to improve long-term workforce planning and strategy for healthcare staff recruitment within the NHS. Labour is committed to long-term workforce planning for the NHS and for social care, which would necessitate independent workforce projections. The fact that the NHS has not had a workforce plan since 2003 is staggering. We want the Government to get on and deliver a plan. Our plan or their plan—a plan—would be great. For that reason, we will not oppose these measures.
I wish, however, to raise a couple of points on which I would appreciate some clarity from the Minister. When we debated the merger of NHS Digital and NHS England in January, I made the point to the Minister that we must ensure that talent and expertise are retained. I do so again today. Given that we are looking at an estimated 40% cut in workforce numbers, we need to ensure that NHS England still has the staffing resources it needs to function adequately in this sphere. Will the Minister provide an update on how that work is progressing? What assurances can he give to Members that staff are being treated fairly throughout the process? Can he also set out what specific service improvements he anticipates as a consequence of the merger, and what metrics will his Department use to judge NHS England’s performance within its new remit?
It was recently reported that a £100 million redundancy budget has been set for the mergers, alongside a £13 million contract to PA Consulting to oversee the merger. I do not quote those sums to put the Minister on the spot, but instead to reinforce that public money is being spent, so we need to ensure that we see positive results at the end of the process. That is something we want to see, which is why I ask about it in the spirit of co-operation.
Finally, given that the merger will, according to the Government, put healthcare staff recruitment and retention at the forefront of the national NHS agenda, can the Minister outline when the NHS workforce plan will be published? He gave an indication to his right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet that it would be soon. I am a little more impatient than that, given that we have not had one since 2003. Also, what will NHS England’s role be within that workforce plan when we get it?
The Opposition will not oppose these very sensible regulations.
Will Quince
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support and that of the Opposition Front-Bench team. I will go through his questions in reverse order. First, the NHS long-term workforce plan is coming shortly. I know that is a broad term when it comes to the Government. It is a bit like spring—it can stretch all the way to June and July—but it will be published shortly and it is being finalised. I cannot be more precise than that. It will certainly be soon. We commissioned it, and NHS England drafted and produced it, and will be integral in delivering against it.
He mentioned talent and expertise being retained across both Health Education England and NHS England as the two organisations are merged. He is absolutely that all Health Education England staff will automatically transfer to NHS England. The merged organisation will reduce in size by between 30% and 40% by April 2024. However, it is important to stress that both NHS England and Health Education England have already had recruitment controls in place since July 2022. They also launched an initial voluntary redundancy scheme in January 2023. Of course, we keep a watchful eye on that because we want to ensure that we are maintaining the very best talent and expertise in the area, especially given the importance of workforce to the short, medium and long-term future of the NHS.
The hon. Gentleman asked about performance and how we will monitor performance. That is done in a number of ways. First, on performance and what good looks like, the merger is designed to help us ensure that service, workforce and financial planning are integrated into one place, at both a national and a local level. That is what we are trying to achieve through the regulations. We are also trying to ensure that we drive change in education and training much further and faster than we can at the moment through HEE.
That will be monitored in two ways. First, through robust governance, as we will set objectives and place them on the NHS England mandate. We will also have a ministerial chaired board. I suspect that I—or the occupant of my role, at least—will chair that, but that is not confirmed. Also, we will ensure that we have clear governance plans in place to track and monitor performance going forward. That is particularly important in addressing some of the concerns that people have about the NHS England training budget, given the importance of the workforce to the NHS. I think something like 65% of all the funding allocated to the NHS rightly goes on the workforce—the beating heart of the NHS.
I hope that answers all the questions from the Committee. I thank the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, the representative for His Majesty’s Opposition, and all hon. and right hon. Members for their interventions and contributions. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.