Budget and Structure of the Ministry of Justice

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Chris Heaton-Harris

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

There is recognition on both sides of the House for the work that National Grid has done on reoffending. It has taken more than 2,000 offenders, given them work, mentored them and found bank accounts for them—the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) is a great proponent of that. That proves that someone does not have to be a senior official in the Ministry of Justice to be able to bring forward a good idea that massively reduces reoffending.

[Jenny Chapman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We can all cite anecdotes and examples of very good practice, but anecdotes remain just that. There is no systemic sharing of good practice. These opportunities should be assessed, evaluated and made available for all the offenders who need them, but the truth is that they are not. According to the Public Accounts Committee, senior officials at the MOJ have a poor record of managing commissioning, so I am not sure about trying to transform the service through that method. At the moment, there is not enough evidence of a good track record to be able to put much confidence in their ability to do that. The problem with the reforms is that they are all of structure rather than of practice. The Government are rightly disappointed in reoffending rates of around 50%, but for nearly three years they have done nothing of any substance to improve the situation.

Let me deal now with payment by results. Instead of importing a failed policy from the Department for Work and Pensions to the MOJ, why not take a closer look at what works in preventing reoffending? For all the academic studies and Government data, the truth is that there is precious little understanding of what really makes a difference. Plenty of organisations are prepared to tell us that what they are doing works and are prepared to buy reports to prove it, but there is very little objective analysis of outcomes of programmes and interventions. As a result of scrapping probation service PBR pilots, the Government are failing to use evidence that they should have to help them to decide where to spend their money. When the Secretary of State cancelled the pilots, he said, “Sometimes you just have to go with your beliefs.” There we have it: Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Justice, our very own mystic Meg.

This simply is not good enough. Interventions in health, for example, are assessed. They are monitored and evaluated before public money is used to provide them, and the same should apply to interventions in criminal justice. The rate of reoffending is stubbornly high, so why are the Government not doing what can be done in health? Why are they not asking for interventions to be evaluated and funded only if they prove to be effective, and then insisting that only what works should be delivered in our prisons and in community sentences? There is too much okay practice, and too little sharing of the very best ideas.

We need to know which are the best interventions, which are the best providers of services, and which are the best prisons. We need a value-added measure for criminal justice. The Government should be investing in ways of assessing the performance of establishments, based on the profile of inmates entering prisons and their future reoffending. Establishments should be accountable for their performance: the best should be given greater freedom to innovate, and the worst should be closed down. Farming out the supervision of medium-risk offenders to private sector providers with no idea whether that will work any better than the current arrangements is reckless, ideologically driven and dangerous, and the Government should think again. They are not showing any interest in practice on the ground, but are preoccupied with structures in the organisations without any evidence that they will make any difference.

The Government’s performance in the management of this Department has been woeful. The Department has failed to submit its accounts on time three years running, it has been subject to withering criticism from the National Audit Office over its ability to commission, it has scrapped PBR pilots—thus losing any evidence that payment by results works—and it has failed to show that its mandarins can manage projects and implement policy.