Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Let me start with where I agree with the hon. Gentleman: it is undoubtedly the case that education aids rehabilitation, and where people want to engage in education we support them wherever we can. However, I should point out to him that the changes to the incentives and earned privileges scheme do not affect the number of books prisoners are allowed to have in their cells—that remains 12. Prisoners also have unrestricted access, within sensible safeguards which he would understand on the nature of books it is right to have in prisons, to the library as and when they need it. There is, therefore, no difficulty with prisoners having access to books, and where there is a specific requirement for a particular book that is not in the library, every effort is made to get the prisoner that book.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

As ever, the Minister is being infuriatingly reasonable, but we do know that opportunities for purposeful activity are plummeting owing to overcrowding and falling staff numbers. That makes the ban on having books sent in to inmates all the more senseless, and the Labour party has already committed to reverse the ban. Will the Minister explain why having a ban on books being sent in to prison in any way aids rehabilitation?

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady is being uncharacteristically unreasonable. We are not banning prisoners having access to books. As I have just explained to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), there really is no difficulty with prisoners having access to books. If only that were the biggest problem we face in connection with literacy in prisons, but it is not. What she must consider is whether she is really going to allow people to send into prison unrestricted packages, which, as long as they say “Books” on the outside, she will be prepared to accept at face value. If that is the case, she will have a rude awakening. This is a sensible restriction on packages coming into prison, but it is no restriction on prisoners being able to read or to study, which they can do now and will continue to be able to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

There are undoubtedly issues that arise with every new prison. New prisons in both the public and the private sector, and of all sizes, have encountered these kinds of difficulties. My right hon. Friend is right, too, that it is necessary to pay close attention to the training needs of staff. We will do that—that is already under way—and both the contractors and the MOJ are keen to ensure that these issues are addressed.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I am afraid this prison is two years old now, and we would have hoped to see some progress. The Minister is being way too complacent about the failure of G4S at Oakwood. Given the delay in implementing the probation changes, due to fears of public safety, how do we know that he will not be equally tolerant of failure when he privatises probation?

[Jeremy Wright]

There is no complacency on this issue at all. Let us get the facts right. Oakwood has been operating at full capacity since February last year, and it is not unheard of that prisons—in the public or private sector, as I said—have difficulties of this nature in the first two years of operation. That does not mean that we do not address those difficulties, but it is important to put them in context. If I may ever so gently say so to the hon. Lady, when I was at Oakwood 10 days ago, one of the comments made to me by staff who work there was that it does not help their already difficult job when their workplace is used for party political purposes to exaggerate what is going on there.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman]

Yes, I do. All I am asking for is parity. A public sector provider of these services is subject to a certain level of scrutiny, not least in respect of freedom of information, and when we are spending increasingly vast sums on a small number of private sector providers it is not unreasonable to expect them to be subject to similar oversight. The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to learn that the Government voted against all these measures in Committee, saying that the current arrangements offer enough protection and assuring us that any necessary safeguards would be included in the contracts.

I am afraid to tell the Minister, who is well respected in this House, that it is a little difficult simply to accept even his word on such important issues, particularly given that the Government’s record on outsourcing is so awful. We have already discussed the compelling example of the court translation services contract, and another example fresh in our minds is the running of Oakwood prison.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way and, as ever, for her kind words. I suggest, however, that I am not asking her to take only my word about the safeguards in the contracts. We will publish the contracts in draft so that the House can see for itself.

[Jenny Chapman]

Perhaps, then, if that is the Minister’s attitude, he will be minded to support our new clause 5. It is reasonably worded and if he reads it carefully he might find that he can support it.

Returning to HMP Oakwood, the Government have somehow managed to build a brand new, state-of-the-art prison that seems to be failing on every imaginable front. A surprise prison inspection last year found inmates reporting that it was easier to get drugs than soap on the wings, while the inspectorate report revealed that the inexperience of staff was visible everywhere, with staff unwilling to challenge bad behaviour and many being

“passive almost to the point of collusion”.

As the report continued, indicators of levels of violence were high, there were not enough activity places and the control and supply of medication was “chaotic”. The chief inspector of prisons called the state of the prison “unquestionably concerning”. The Secretary of State was disappointingly somewhat less firm in his criticism, largely dismissing these as “teething problems”. A couple of months later, inmates managed to stage not one, but two rooftop protests. As late as last week, six months after the inspectorate visited the prison, West Staffordshire police were notified of an incident lasting through the night, apparently involving an entire wing being barricaded by inmates.

[Jenny Chapman]

I will attempt to assist the hon. and learned Gentleman. The point is that Oakwood prison is run by one of the would-be providers of probation services.

[Jeremy Wright]

It is not.

[Jenny Chapman]

Perhaps the Minister knows more than I do—I hope he does—but nothing we have read suggests that G4S will not take part in any way in the provision of these services. A statement made on 19 December informed us that it would not be a lead bidder, but also indicated that it might be part of a consortium.

[Jeremy Wright]

Perhaps I can help. The list of prime bidders has now been published, and Members may well find it worth their while to have a look at it. It is true that neither G4S nor Serco appears on the list, but a number of others organisations do, including 10 probation mutuals.

[Jenny Chapman]

But those are lead bidders, and I understand that none of the contracts will be taken on by one organisation alone. There is nothing to prevent G4S and others from being involved in the provision of probation services when the contracts are awarded. The other reason this information is relevant to probation is that it reveals that the quality of the supervision and enforcement of contracts by the Ministry of Justice is not quite what we would like it to be.

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[Jenny Chapman]

If the Minister wants us to accept everything that he has said so far, will he explain why it was a good idea to cancel the trust probation pilots when he did?

[Jeremy Wright]

The pilots that we cancelled were not sufficiently close to the proposals that we are making for us to learn as much as Opposition Members would like us to have learned from their conclusion. That does not mean that we learned nothing from their period of operation. The point has been made from the Opposition Benches that it is possible to learn from pilots even if they are not allowed to run to full term. We certainly have learned from those pilots and from other experiences of payment by results. I will return to that point in a moment.

The Government essentially had two options. We had to decide how to approach the task of tackling reoffending rates within our means. The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) is right that reoffending rates are too high. We could not allow that situation to continue without a response. We could simply have imposed further significant cuts on the 35 probation trusts without targeting our efforts on those with the highest reoffending rates, or we could have brought in innovative approaches to supporting offenders that would also be more efficient and that would allow us to reinvest some of the savings to target support through the gate on the under 12-month group. We chose the latter option. At the heart of our proposals is the aim of opening up the supervision of low and medium-risk offenders to a diverse range of new rehabilitation providers to bring in the best of all sectors to tackle reoffending.

The right hon. Member for Delyn discussed the Offender Management Act 2007. He was here at the time and witnessed the passage of the Act at first hand. He knows that what I have described was the policy of the Government at that time. The Opposition want to forget it now, but they have to be reminded that the powers for which they legislated and to which Parliament agreed in 2007 entirely underpin the reforms that this Government are making. I have explained what Lord Reid said when he was Home Secretary. He made the matter perfectly clear when he said:

“The Secretary of State…will be responsible for ensuring service provision by entering into contracts with the public, private or voluntary sectors. With that burden lifted, the public sector can play to its strengths while others play to theirs.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 593.]

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[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Gentleman is making a slightly different point. I am talking about what authority is given to this Government by the Offender Management Act and, more broadly, what the previous Government thought they were doing when they passed it. The case made by Labour Members is that we have in some way taken that Act and twisted its meaning. It has been taken wholly out of context, and we have a travesty of a representation of what that Act says and means. I have been saying to the right hon. Member for Delyn and his colleagues that what the Act says is very clear, and the Hansard that supports it is also clear. Not only did the previous Government anticipate that such a thing could happen, they chose not to rule out the possibility of its happening. They had every opportunity to do so but they did not take it. That is my point.

More to the point and in connection with further parliamentary approval, the Offender Management Act says nothing about requiring Parliament to approve the exercise of that power. By contrast, section 15 of the Offender Management Act provides that an order repealing or disapplying the restriction of certain functions, including advice to court, to the public sector, must be subject to parliamentary approval. If, when in government, the Opposition had wanted to ensure that the power in section 3 for the Secretary of State to enter into arrangements for probation provision was subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, they could have done so, but they did not.

What is more, the Labour Government were prepared to guarantee that the supervision of offenders more widely would remain in the public sector for only three years, as I have said. Let us be clear: the Labour Government’s position was that the supervision of any offender—not just medium or low-risk offenders—could at some stage be competed for outside the public sector. This Government are not saying that. We say that medium and low-risk offenders should be competed for. Secondly, the Labour Government’s position was that the only element of parliamentary scrutiny of the Secretary of State’s powers to organise the probation service relates to the relatively narrow concept of advice to courts, which this Government do not intend to alter. Thirdly, the previous Government’s position was that the public sector monopoly on providers would be guaranteed for only three years.

The hon. Member for Darlington now proposes a new version of the new clause. I am not convinced that new clause 1 does exactly what the Opposition want, because the word “national” next to the word “restructure”, which is designed to avoid the need for any small change of probation to be debated in the House, does not necessarily apply to the word “reform”. Therefore, we might end up being asked to discuss very minor changes to the probation service. Beyond that, the basic point is that the Labour Government were given the opportunity to ask for a further check in Parliament for the provision but did not do so. It is a little odd that Labour Members now say that they want one.

On the substance of the reforms, we have spoken about the establishment of 21 new community rehabilitation companies in England and Wales. In the first instance, they will be publicly owned for a number of months before we consider whether to transfer ownership to other organisations. It is open to organisations from the private, voluntary and community sectors, as well as organisations currently working in probation trusts, to bid for those first-tier contracts. Part of the payment of those organisations will be based on results, so that we incentivise a greater focus on tackling reoffending and achieving better value for the taxpayer.

A number of the proposals tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell)—he has tabled new clauses 9, 10 and 11—remain flawed, as they were in Committee. As drafted, they would apply only after a competition has concluded, and would not prevent organisations from bidding, which is what I believe he wants to do.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister unsurprisingly comes up with technical reasons why those proposals are deficient, but he knows what my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) is getting at. Will the Minister therefore confirm that he will not accept bids from any consortium that has, as a partner, G4S or any other organisation that is under criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office?

[Jeremy Wright]

I entirely understand what the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is getting at, but I am afraid that I do not dismiss as lightly as the hon. Lady flaws in the proposals that we are being asked to support. If they are flawed, the House should not support them.

Let me reiterate the Government’s commitment to publishing contracts for the delivery of services to low and medium-risk offenders. That includes not just draft contracts, as I have said, but final versions of the future contracts for probation services. I hope that that is some reassurance to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington. Likewise, I reassure him that the Government will include within the contracts for rehabilitation services a provision that enables the National Audit Office to access private providers’ records and documents for audit purposes. Of course, the NAO might require access to the community rehabilitation companies’ financial systems when there is a need for public assurance. That will be reflected in the contracts. That also answers the point made by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier).

The new clauses seek to limit who can bid for contracts by excluding certain organisations. For example, prime providers for the Work programme could be excluded. I am afraid that that would simply reduce the diversity of the market of rehabilitation providers. Many organisations are doing important work within the Work programme, including voluntary organisations working with disabled and disadvantaged people.

The hon. Member for Darlington made a point on fraud, which the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington address. Let me be clear that the Justice Secretary and I are determined to ensure the integrity of future contracts to deliver value for money for the taxpayer. The Ministry of Justice is currently following a proper procurement process and will do so in future competitions. It is that process that should rightly be used to determine who can bid for contracts and who the future providers of services should be. Procurement law permits consideration of issues that affect a bidder’s eligibility, such as fraud, only at the initial prequalification stage, and not after that stage unless a bidder’s circumstances have changed.

In respect of the current competition to identify the future owners of the 21 CRCs, the prequalification stage was completed in December. Even at that stage, we would not have been legally allowed to exclude a bidder on the grounds that they were under investigation for fraud. The grounds for mandatory exclusion under procurement law are that the bidder has, or any of its directors have, been convicted of fraud. The ongoing investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into the conduct of G4S and Serco—which, I remind the House, this Secretary of State initiated—in delivering the Government’s electronic monitoring contracts would not have provided a legal basis for excluding those organisations from the current competition.

[Jenny Chapman]

I just want to be clear about this, so that colleagues on both sides of the House can be clear. Despite all the assurances that the Minister has given here in the past, he is saying that companies under criminal investigation by the SFO will be able to be partners in bidding for provision of services to monitor offenders in the community.

[Jeremy Wright]

The point I am making is that the rules, which pre-existed this Government by the way, are very clear: investigation is not the same thing as conviction. We have made it very clear, however, that we have initiated our own investigations. I have warned the hon. Lady before that she is sitting in a very large glass house and that she should think before throwing stones. This is a contract negotiated by her Government and substantially abused, it would seem, during her Government’s term in office. That abuse was discovered by this Government and acted on by this Government. She is hardly in a position to suggest that we have behaved in any way improperly. In any event, I remind the House that both organisations, Serco and G4S, are not on the list of lead providers.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington raised the question of whether those organisations could act in a supporting role. The answer is that we will want to look very carefully not just at the process of corporate renewal those companies are undergoing at the moment but at the specific bids they are making. However, they are not on the list of lead providers. I remind Opposition Members that we were told not so very long ago that the proposals could never work without G4S and Serco, that no one would be interested in bidding. We have a list of 30 different bidders, comprising 50 different organisations at lead bidder level. The Opposition are simply wrong about the level of interest.

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[Jeremy Wright]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern, but I do not agree with his characterisation of Serco’s contract. As he would expect, we have looked closely at its performance under the contract and, again, I assure him that we will look closely at all those who bid for this work. As with all competitions, the decision to award each contract depends on our being satisfied that bidders can meet our standards in respect of quality of service and price and, in this case too, on our being satisfied about the financial risk being taken to reduce reoffending and ensuring good value for the taxpayer. If we are not satisfied that overall bidders can meet our requirements, we will not award them contracts.

Hon. Members have raised the issue of the management of high-risk offenders, so let me make it clear exactly what will be involved. We are creating a new national probation service to manage directly all offenders who pose a high risk of serious harm and any sexual or violent offenders subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements. After an offender has been sentenced, the NPS will make an initial assessment of an offender’s risk of causing harm, and all offenders assessed as posing a high risk of serious harm will be the responsibility of the NPS. For low and medium-risk offenders, CRCs will be required to manage any risk of serious harm that the offender might present and to have appropriately trained staff and robust procedures in place for the management of cases where the risk of serious harm escalates to high during the offender’s supervision. They will also be contractually required to refer cases back to the NPS if they consider that the risk of serious harm might be escalating. In the end, the decision will be taken by the NPS.

New clauses 5 and 13 deal with reports by the Secretary of State to Parliament and the public on the impact of the reforms we intend to make. I want to reassure the House that the Government are already committed to acting in the spirit of those amendments. We are already considering how we can provide information about reoffending rates broken down by CRCs and the NPS. As Members will know, the MOJ already publishes reoffending statistics, not just annually but every three months, broken down by probation trust, prison and upper and lower-tier local authorities. I am happy to commit to the House that, in the future, the reports will break down reoffending rates for the different CRCs and the NPS. Indeed, as a first step, we have already published on the MOJ website a set of indicative figures to show what reoffending rates and cohort sizes in each contract package area would have looked like had the new structure been in place for the 2005-10 period. We are also piloting the justice data lab, about which I have spoken before, which will give providers the opportunity to match the performance of their cohort with something comparable.

On freedom of information, CRCs will be required in contracts to assist the MOJ in discharging its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act—very much along the lines of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Select Committee, outlined earlier, and in accordance with his Committee’s reports and conclusions.

On penalties, we are developing a performance framework that will include financial penalties for services not delivered to time or to quality. Contracts for CRCs will reflect that and, as I have said, the House will be able to see that this is the case when we publish those contracts in draft. I do not want to lose sight—nor should the House—of the major prizes here: first, expanding support for offenders released from short sentences and, secondly, developing a through-the-gate system for offenders released from prison. I think that that commands a broad measure of support.

That brings me to new clause 6, tabled by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I want to reassure him that as part of our reforms there will be a new resettlement service provided in custody for all offenders before their release. This will be tailored to the individual’s needs, but is likely to include support in finding accommodation, family support, mentoring and financial advice. Services in custody will be underpinned by the changes to the way in which the prison estate is organised. That will mean that, in most cases, the same professional can work with offenders in custody and continue their rehabilitation work in the community.

As the right hon. Gentleman would expect, the Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service are working closely together to ensure that the Prison Service is well prepared to implement these proposals. Right from the outset of these reforms, we established a joint working group on this topic that reports to senior officials and ultimately to Ministers. The working group has commissioned an analytical model of prisoner flows through the prison estate. That allows us to test the impact on prisoner flows and locations from implementing the resettlement prison allocation model. Furthermore, I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the Prison Service is undertaking a full review of facilities and staffing levels at all proposed resettlement prisons. Together all these things will ensure that the changes we are proposing are deliverable and sustainable, which I think is exactly his concern.

On new clause 4, I understand that the case of Opposition Members is that this is a huge leap in the dark and that no testing of what we are doing is or will be going on. That is not the case. Let me set out to the House the key elements that make up our reforms, what we are doing to test them and the steps we have built in to assess how effectively they are working at key stages of implementation.

First, there are the reforms at the heart of the Bill: the extension of licence and supervision to offenders released from short custodial sentences. There are lawyers among Opposition Members, and they will know, and ought to appreciate, that with a change to the sentencing framework of this magnitude, it cannot be desirable to introduce it one part of the country but not another. To do so would risk postcode justice, with some offenders getting different sentences from others.

To expand supervision to the under-12-month group, as we all say we want to do, we need to make the changes at a national level. That means funding those changes at a national level. The savings to fund the changes come from two sources; first, the efficiencies generated by competing supervision of low and medium-risk offenders and, secondly, the back office savings from moving to 21 from 35 CRCs, along with a single national probation service. Competing services in only one area of the country, if that is what is being proposed—I have heard little detail as to what sort of piloting is being proposed here—would extend supervision to short-sentenced offenders but, in every other respect, we are carrying out extensive local testing of the reforms in no fewer than 14 probation trusts. There is also the testing we are carrying out on the new operating model for the CRCs and the NPS. Those tests will enable us to inform how the new processes will operate once implemented. The first round of tests has already started and will continue over the coming months.

Secondly, there is the important fact that the 21 CRCs that we are creating will remain in public sector ownership for some months after their creation until the conclusion of the competition. This gives us further opportunities to carry on testing and to refine the system. Caseloads will not all necessarily transfer at the point the NPS and CRCs come into being, and we have made it clear to trusts that where there is a case for doing so, we will give greater latitude to allow for caseload transfer to operate more slowly than the people transfer process. That will avoid disruption and the type of dangers that that might create, which Opposition members have described.

Thirdly, there is the testing that we are carrying out of our approach to payment by results. We have consulted extensively on this and there are also pilots under way to test different approaches to payment by results. Opposition members would have us believe that there has been no piloting and that there is no piloting. Neither of those two things is true.

[Jenny Chapman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jeremy Wright]

In just a moment. The pilots that we are already undertaking—HMP Peterborough and Doncaster—are providing significant lessons for our wider reforms. Not only that, but they are engaged in another aspect of the reforms—the move to a through-the-gate system supporting the transition from custody to the community. The difference between them and the other pilots referred to is that these are much closer to the model we seek to pursue.

[Jenny Chapman]

I have a feeling that the Minister knows what I am going to ask him about payment by results. If he has done so much piloting and testing and has such confidence in this system, why has he repeatedly refused to tell us what percentage of a contract will be paid regardless of performance, and what percentage the reward element will be? We suspect that it would be very little.

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[Jeremy Wright]

I would say two things to the right hon. Gentleman on that. First, he and his colleagues have busily argued that we should have had more pilots, while some of the pilots we cancelled were less comparable to our reforms than were Peterborough and Doncaster, so he needs to be careful what he is arguing for. Secondly, he is absolutely right to say that the Peterborough and Doncaster pilots were conducted on a voluntary basis. That is because the law does not allow us to impose them on a compulsory basis. That is the law I am inviting the right hon. Gentleman to vote in favour of today, and I very much hope he will do so. Unless we have that law, we will never be able to impose those kinds of provisions on a compulsory basis.

Finally, on the issue of the pace of the reforms—an issue of which others have made much—I want to say two things. First, it is important that those who are employed by probation trusts—my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made this point—understand where they stand. It does not benefit them for us to drag our feet at this point. We need to get on with it so that those people can understand what their own futures hold. Secondly, to reiterate a point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), I make no apologies for the urgency of these reforms: as long as we wait, there will be further cases of reoffending and further victims created. Some 600,000 offences are committed every year by those who are reoffending. That is the problem that everyone here has identified correctly and everyone says they want to do something about. The difference between the Government and Opposition Members is that we know how we are going to do it and they do not have the faintest idea. They do not know how they would pay for it, either. We know that the last Government set out to achieve this, but could not afford to do it within existing budgets. That option is out. We know how we will pay for this; they do not. They have not told us; they should certainly support what we propose.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister talks of paying for the reform. We worked out that we could not afford it at the time, but he has not presented a single bit of evidence to show that he can afford it: we have been presented with no costings whatsoever.

[Jeremy Wright]

I have already explained to the hon. Lady that one of the commercial realities is that we do not disclose such information to those who we hope will bid under the amount concerned, because we want a better deal for the taxpayer. We are very interested in getting a good deal for the taxpayer, and we think that this is the way in which to do it.

The last Government intended to introduce these measures within existing budgets and without contracting out. The hon. Lady opposes contracting out, but we say that that is the way to pay for it. What does the hon. Lady say is the way to pay for it? Or is this, once again, the sort of opportunistic opposition that says “We like the idea, but we do not really want to do it”? I remember—and perhaps the hon. Lady does as well— that on Second Reading the shadow Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), said that if we will the ends, it is very important to will the means. It does not seem to me that the Labour party has done any of that since his Second Reading speech.

By my count, we have engaged in 21 hours of parliamentary debate, and there have been three votes on the principle of our reforms. Opposition Members lost every one of those votes, and they still ask for more parliamentary debate. I wonder how much more of it they feel that they need in order to be persuaded of something that they supported, and legislated for, when they were in government. Now, for reasons of sheer opportunism, they wish to walk away from, and leave abandoned, the victims and potential victims of crime whom our proposals would help.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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[Jeremy Wright]

I want to come to the timetable. Without wishing to get into too much detail on these probing amendments, there are deficiencies within them that would require further legislation in any event. I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but I want to answer the question of the hon. Member for Darlington about what my hon. Friend’s review will be covering. First, we will ask him to consider the rehabilitation needs of ex-service personnel convicted of criminal offences and sentenced to a custodial or community sentence, and the current rehabilitation available to them. Secondly, we want him to consider the process whereby ex-service personnel are identified following conviction, and that goes very much to the point that the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) was making. Thirdly, we want him to consider best practice relating to the rehabilitation of ex-service personnel offenders, including evidence of effective interventions in other countries. Fourthly, he should consult with the cross-government military reference group, which already exists, and report to the Secretary of State within six months. That is an important time frame, because we want to ensure that our reforms are informed by what my hon. Friend and those working with him can tell us. We will publish my hon. Friend’s report and place it in the Library of both Houses so that it is available for all to see. If we were to wait for the conclusion of the Bill process, as the new clauses suggest, that would delay the beginning of the review. We do not want to do that as we want to get going as soon as possible and I hope that that will meet with the approval of the House.

In view of what the hon. Member for Darlington has helpfully said, I do not think that I need to go through the deficiencies we believe that there are in new clause 3. I recognise the intent behind it and we very much support that. We want to ensure that the review produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border can assist us in producing solutions and suggestions that we can make use of in the course of our broader reforms.

Let me say something about new clause 12, tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). He is right that it is hugely important to ensure that domestic violence is treated seriously and that the programmes he has described are implemented effectively. He knows that those at highest risk of serious harm will in any event be the responsibility of the national probation service, and the NPS will also manage all offenders who are subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements. That will include all offenders convicted of sexual and violent offences attracting a sentence of more than a year and all those whose offending leads them to become registered sex offenders.

On the specifics of the programmes that the hon. Gentleman described, I entirely agree with his enthusiasm for a consistency of approach. I hope I can offer him some reassurance, as such programmes would have to be accredited. Accreditation is overseen, as he will know, by the National Offender Management Service, which ensures that the programmes are evidence-based and have therefore demonstrated their effectiveness in reducing reoffending. The programme requirement will continue to be available to sentencers, and the NPS will have a key role in assessing offenders and providing advice to courts on their suitability for such programmes. CRCs will be mandated to deliver the sentence imposed by the court, and that will include the provision of accredited programmes. All offenders, whether they are managed by the NPS or CRCs, will be able to access accredited programmes and other interventions provided by CRCs.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman is reassured by those points. I understand that he would prefer all those programmes to be delivered by the public sector, but I think that he and I would agree that what is crucial is that the standards and quality of those programmes are maintained. We will achieve that by virtue of accreditation and, of course, the accreditation process will still take place within the public sector.

I am grateful for what the hon. Member for Darlington and others have said about Government amendment 5, which I will move at the appropriate time. I am also grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the issue initially in Committee. I also want to take the opportunity to pay tribute, as she did, to Paul Goggins and the contribution he made not only to the amendment but to the restorative justice agenda over a considerable period of time. There are few who can say that they have contributed more to the agenda than he did. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her support, and I hope that there will support on both sides of the House for amendment 5.

The final amendment in the group is amendment 7, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). As he has outlined, the amendment would remove clause 10, which was added in the other place, rightly, by the Government. I am sorry to disappoint him, but it would not be right to remove the clause at this stage. I know that he has a healthy disrespect for consensus, but the fact that almost everybody disagrees with him does not automatically mean that they are all wrong. In this case, I do not think that they are. We should recognise that this is not a sentencing question, as he says that it is—I agree that there is no justification for treating female offenders per se more leniently than male offenders. We are discussing not the sentencing process but the process of rehabilitation that takes place after sentencing. It seems to me that the evidence is clear that how one approaches rehabilitation for female offenders must be materially different, if one expects it to be successful, from how one approaches it for male offenders. That is what clause 10 sets out.

The experience of female offenders is different in a number of ways, whether that concerns the abuse that they might have suffered before committing offences or the rate at which anxiety and depression are suffered. As my hon. Friend said, female offenders have different rates of child care responsibilities from male offenders, so a one-size-fits-all approach will not, in all likelihood, be successful. Let me be clear again that this is not about advocating preferential treatment for women in the criminal justice system or a different sentencing regime for female offenders; it is about ensuring that our reforms remain responsive to offenders’ needs in order to ensure that we turn their lives around and end reoffending.

On that basis, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will see fit not to press his amendment and that Opposition Members will see fit to withdraw new clause 2 and not press their other amendments.

[Jenny Chapman]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 4

Piloting of probation reform

‘The Secretary of State may not undertake a national restructure of the provision of probation services until the proposals have first been subject to an independently evaluated pilot scheme, and the results of that evaluation laid before both Houses of Parliament.’.—(Jenny Chapman.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Probation Service

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken and apologise to some for the fact that I will not be able to deal in detail with what they have said. In particular, I should apologise to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), because she kindly donated two minutes of her time but some of her Labour colleagues have stolen it back. I am sorry about that, but I will do my best to answer what has been said.

There is no contradiction between two things that have been said in this debate. The first is that good work is being done up and down the country by probation officers. The second is that there is a need for change. I accept that a good deal of good work is being done by probation officers, but they, too, would say that we are simply not doing well enough on reoffending rates, which are far too high; half of those released from custody are reoffending within 12 months, despite our spending 70% more on probation over the past 10 years.

There are two key advantages in what the Government propose to do. The first is that we bring innovation and good new ideas into the management of offenders. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned good voluntary sector organisations that do exactly that sort of work. We want to see them do more, and it is important to bring them more into rehabilitation work—our reforms will do that. That point was made by, among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard).

The second huge advantage to what we are proposing is that we bring into the ambit of rehabilitation those offenders who at the moment have very little or no rehabilitation—those who receive sentences of 12 months or less. I detected very little disagreement across the House about that. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) summed up the case for doing that passionately and well; we have overlooked those people and we should not do so because it is not in our interests to do so, as those are the offenders with the highest rates of reoffending and it is very important that we deal with them. It is also important that we deal effectively with support through the gate, so that people do not reach the cliff edge that he so well described.

The question, surely, for Labour Members, not least those on the Front Bench, is this: if they do not like our way of doing those things, which they agree are worth while, what is their way? I heard not a word of an alternative solution to the problems they accurately describe, except of course that the probation trusts should do it all themselves.

Interestingly, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) suggested that we should simply ask the probation trusts to do the work. I was rather surprised to hear that from an ex-Treasury Minister, because it would have an additional cost. I suspect that had I gone to him as a Treasury Minister—he was a very good one in his day—and said that I wanted the probation trusts to do more and wanted the money to pay for it, it is likely that he would have told me to ask the probation system to do better with the money it already received. That is exactly what we are proposing. We must make taxpayers’ money work better; that is hugely important.

Some concerns have been expressed and we take them seriously. I want to pick up on as many as I can. The first concerns the principle of payment by results, which, it seems to me, is perfectly sensible. We want the taxpayer to pay for those things that work and not for those that do not. That is at the root of payment by results. I am confused, however, about the Opposition’s view: is it that we should not have payment by results or that we should have more? Both views seem to have been expressed.

[Jenny Chapman]

On the issue of payment by results, how much of the contract will be paid regardless of the results? Any more than 90% is not payment by results—it is just leaving a tip.

[Jeremy Wright]

As I have said to the hon. Lady before, this is a process that we are going through with those who will be involved in the system—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

No. I have the Act in front of me, and section 3(2) states:

“The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.”

The Act means what it says. If the hon. Gentleman believes that the last Government passed legislation that they did not intend to pass, no doubt he will want to take that up with the former Ministers in his own party who were responsible.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said in the House, referring to this very issue,

“Sometimes we just have to believe something is right and do it”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 318.]

However, leaping in and hoping for the best is a sure-fire way of getting it wrong.

Let us look at the Secretary of State’s record. Only 2% of offenders on the Work programme have found jobs; dangerous offenders are not being properly risk-assessed before release; in a brand-new prison, obtaining drugs is easier than obtaining soap; and mismanaged contracts with G4S and Serco are under investigation for fraud. I could go on. Does all that not represent the triumph of the Secretary of State’s wishful thinking over public safety?

[Jeremy Wright]

I barely know where to start, but let us start here: it is a good idea to read the facts and not the newspaper headlines. What the hon. Lady has described is a travesty of what we are proposing to do. If she is talking about the involvement of the private sector in the monitoring of contracts, she needs to be extremely careful, because she ought to know that those contracts were negotiated by the last Labour Government. She is sitting in a very large glass house and throwing stones in every direction.

I think it important for us all to understand exactly what we are proposing to do, which is to bring new people with new ideas into the provision of rehabilitation for offenders of all kinds. It is important for us to recognise that the status quo should not be what we seek to defend. Reoffending rates are too high, and we need to bring them down. If the hon. Lady wants to defend the status quo, that is up to her, but we intend to improve the situation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Highly respected former chief inspector of prisons Lord Ramsbotham has called on the Justice Secretary to withdraw his plans for probation as they are too complex to be achieved safely. Concerns about public safety meant that not a single Cross Bencher voted with the Government on his amendment in the Lords. The timetable is unrealistic, the IT is not ready and the Department’s risk assessment states that the proposal is unlikely to work. Is it not time for the Government to take stock and rethink before they waste any more resources on this rapidly unravelling plan?

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady will not be surprised to learn that I do not agree with her. This is an important and urgent reform. She must recognise that every single year 600,000 offences are committed by people who have previously committed an offence. Until we start to address reoffending effectively, that number will not come down and we will not avoid the creation of tens of thousands of new victims every year. That is why this is urgent. As far as I understand the position of the hon. Lady’s party, she agrees that reoffending rates are too high, that something must be done about that and that there is a problem with the group with sentences under 12 months, yet we hear nothing from her about what she would do about that if it was not what we propose to do. If she has an alternative, let us hear it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question. He will know that I do not have direct responsibility for the prisons in Northern Ireland, but he makes a good point. There will be examples of good practice across other Administrations from which we can learn, and we will certainly seek to do so.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Unfortunately, there is scant evidence of rehabilitation in the recent inspection report on Serco and HMP Thameside. Instead we hear of bad management, gang-related violence, and prisoners sleeping away the day spending up to 23 hours locked in their cells. We also now have irregularities in the tagging contracts and the sudden resignation of the G4S chief executive. Does the Minister not agree that this is more evidence of why we should be wary of rushing headlong into handing over our probation service to these same companies? A failure repeated outside the relative safety of prison walls would see dangerous offenders walking our streets completely unsupervised.

[Jeremy Wright]

I think that what there is good evidence of is the need for reform. We need to make sure more work on rehabilitation is going on within prisons, as well as more work through the gate and out into the community. As the hon. Lady well knows, the truth is that there are good and bad reports on private prisons, just as there are good and bad reports on public prisons. We will want to make sure that we do everything we can to engage in rehabilitation while people are in prison. More work in prison will certainly help: 800,000 more hours were worked in prisons last year than the year before. Progress is being made, but there is certainly more to do, hence our reforms, which I hope the hon. Lady will support.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Again, that is a realistic concern and one that we will address. It is important that we maintain those crucial local partnerships, and we will expect anyone taking on this work to do that. We will also want to ensure that not only the design of the contracts but the management of those contracts and the relationships with smaller and local organisations, particularly in the voluntary sector, are maintained and nurtured. We will look carefully at all bids to ensure that they do that.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I hope that Ministers are listening to the concern that is coming from Members on both sides of the Chamber about the proposals. Last year, 17,000 offenders were recalled to prison by their probation officer, so that is 17,000 crimes that were prevented and victims spared because of decisions made by probation officers. Am I right in saying that in the future private providers of probation services will lose payments for supervising an offender if that offender is recalled to prison?

[Jeremy Wright]

The clue is in the title. If, under payment by results, a provider gets the right result, they will get a payment; if they do not, they will not get a payment. Let me make it clear to the hon. Lady that under the proposed system, the decisions on recall will be made by public sector probation officers and not by providers, so the responsibility for that decision remains in the public sector where we believe it belongs.

Budget and Structure of the Ministry of Justice

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

Let me start by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Select Committee, for introducing this short but very high-quality and wide-ranging debate. I am also grateful to him for the way in which his Committee drew up the report, and for the scrutiny that it provides of the Department more broadly.

As the House knows, parliamentary scrutiny of Government Departments is crucial to ensuring that they deliver Government policy properly and offer value for money. We have talked about both those things this afternoon. A large number of subjects have been covered, and I shall try to deal with as many as possible. I shall also say a little about the Department’s priorities, which have also been mentioned today.

Last year’s comprehensive report by the Justice Committee on the budget and structure of the Department focused on many of the changes that it has made to bring it closer to the goal of delivering a justice system that is more effective, less costly and more responsive to the public. At a time of continued financial pressure—to which my right hon. Friend rightly referred—finding ways of improving services while delivering even more value for money is, of course, of paramount importance.

There has been a renewed focus on improving financial management throughout the Department, which means that it is set to reduce spending by about £2.5 billion each year over the spending review period. It will achieve that by means of a range of measures to drive down the costs to the taxpayer. On the efficiency side, that has included rationalisation of the Ministry of Justice head office, streamlining our structures and processes, and rationalisation of the court estate. We have also delivered savings through policy reforms, including the reforms of legal aid funding—which have been mentioned—and the criminal injuries compensation scheme. As the Select Committee has acknowledged, the Department has protected front-line services by making the bulk of its savings—some 60%—through ways of working more efficiently. The Department also laid its 2011-12 accounts unqualified, before the summer recess and ahead of the timetable it had originally planned. That demonstrates a significant improvement on previous performance, but there is room for further improvement and the Department is looking to provide that this year.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed raised two specific points about the estimates, the first of which related to the explanation for the £159 million extra for the National Offender Management Service. As he will appreciate, a number of pressures that arise during the year were not part of the MOJ baseline used in the spending review negotiations. Such additional cost pressures will include not only inflationary impacts, but funding for voluntary staff exits—he will understand that there has been considerable change on that front in the past 12 months.

My right hon. Friend’s other point related to the impairments to the court and prison estate. As he knows, the Valuation Office Agency carries out regular reviews of that estate, and the recent downturns in the property market mean that that re-evaluation has obviously had an impact on the Department’s budget. The figure of £520 million or so is substantially explained by that change.

Let me talk a little about the justice system we are trying to design. Creating a transformed justice system requires the Department to go beyond improving its financial management. If we are to construct a justice system that punishes the guilty, protects liberties and rehabilitates offenders, the MOJ needs to continue to work at pace to drive an ambitious reform agenda. Despite the determination of those working within the justice system, there is too much litigation, too many people are reoffending and too much money is spent on systems. So by 2015 the Department will provide services in a completely different way. We are committed to transforming rehabilitation to reduce reoffending—I will discuss that in some detail later— to driving down costs across the prison estate to ensure that it delivers maximum value for taxpayers; making sure that the youth justice estate is appropriate and cost-effective; rationalising the court estate and identifying further efficiencies across the criminal justice system; and continuing to drive down the cost of legal aid and ensure it is focused on those cases that require it. That is what transforming justice looks like.

One of my top priorities within that is the transformation of rehabilitation. That has had a good deal of attention in this debate, so let me deal with the points that have been made. As the House knows, we have consulted on proposals that could open up approximately £1 billion of services to a diverse market; give greater scope for providers to innovate, with payment by results acting as an incentive to focus on rehabilitating offenders, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) was explaining; and change how the commissioning of services is managed.

[Jenny Chapman]

Will the Minister clarify a point for us, because hon. Members who are listening to this debate will not be clear about it? What percentage of the value of the contract will be paid upon the achievement of the targets?

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady knows that we are carefully considering the design of the system, so we will need to determine the appropriate percentage. She will also recognise that it is not going to be 100%, because anyone taking on this work will need to implement the orders of the court and to fulfil licence requirements. The fact that it will not be 100% may have some bearing on the discussion we have been having about the accessibility of this new landscape to smaller organisations, particularly those in the voluntary sector. We will settle on the precise figure having listened to those who may be involved in this landscape, and others, to make sure that we get it right.

Let me deal with some of the points made by the Chairman of the Select Committee. He raised the concern that he and his Committee have about having national as opposed to local commissioning, and I appreciate that that represents a change. It is explained simply by the need to ensure that the necessary expertise and abilities to commission on a payment-by-results basis are held by those doing the commissioning. We think it is difficult to see how that can be done on a local basis, but we think it is important, just as he does, that there are local elements in the commissioning process and that local intelligence is included in deciding what needs to be commissioned. We want to design a system—I hope he will see this coming through the process—that enables us to include that local understanding as well as greater expertise on payment by results. He is also right to say that we must design a system that allows voluntary sector organisations to participate actively.

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes, I understand that entirely. I am saying that it will be important under the system that we are trying to design for local requirements to find their way through the system so that they can be clearly understood. We will try very hard to ensure that that can be done.

Let me return to the voluntary sector organisations, on which we have rightly spent a bit of time in the debate. There are probably two areas in which we need to be careful to ensure that the design of the system is right. The first is in the assessment of the bids that are made for the rehabilitative work that we are discussing. When we consider the bids, we will want to be satisfied not just about their quality and price but about the sustainability of the relationships brought forward as part of the bids. We anticipate that a large number of bids will include more than one organisation and will often include smaller voluntary and community sector organisations. We will want to be persuaded when assessing those bids that the smaller voluntary and community sector organisations will have a sustainable future in the course of the contract. We will want to ensure that the design is right and that we keep our eyes on what is happening in contract management. It is partly about assessing the bids when they come in and partly about assessing how they are implemented over the lifetime of the contract.

[Jenny Chapman]

I think the phrase the Minister is looking for is “bid candy”. I think he is trying to say that he would like there to be more involvement from not-for-profit, third sector and voluntary organisations, but is it not the truth that he has no idea at all of the number of organisations working with offenders in the criminal justice system? He does not know how many there are or what exactly they are doing, so how will he know whether there is more involvement after his reforms?

[Jeremy Wright]

The House will note the hon. Lady’s traditional fondness for central control, but we are not a fan of that. She is right that there is an issue about what is likely to be called “bid candy” in this context, but what she is missing is that that is precisely why it is important for us to consider not just the initial cost and attractiveness of the bid but the sustainability of what might be called the supply chain. We want to design that into the system for precisely the reasons she has given.

Let me move on to the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed about prisoners who receive sentences of 12 months or less. There is broad agreement when the subject is raised that it is a good idea to bring within the ambit of rehabilitative services those offenders who receive such sentences, as at the moment very little provision is made for them. He is right to say that it will come at a cost, but it is difficult to be precise about the cost of that provision, which was another point raised by the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman). Until we have finished designing a provision, we will not know precisely what it will cost.

Another aspect that needs to be clarified by the design process is the sanctions regime. Part of the cost will be incurred by deciding what to do if someone who is under such a sentence and who will be expected to participate in rehabilitation after that sentence does not comply. We must go through a number of processes in the design of the scheme before we can be more precise about the costs, but we confidently expect the cost of incorporating those 46,000 extra offenders will be covered by the savings we can make by competing rehabilitative services for medium and lower-risk offenders. That is one of the central advantages of taking that course.

My right hon. Friend also made the point that it is important to have in the management of the Department the right people with the rights skills to carry out the work we are asking them to. He is right, of course. He will almost certainly know from his review of the work of the Department that we have set up a capability steering group to consider those issues. One of the major issues for us to address is skills in programme and project management. We are very conscious of the need to make sure not just that we bring in new people with those skills where we need to do that, but that we give those skills to existing staff who will come into contact with programmes of various sizes and shapes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Wright]

As I said, we recognise the need to make sure not just that we bring in new people who have these skills, but that existing staff gain those skills, so taking a snapshot of how many have a particular qualification at this point may not be the most helpful way of looking at the issue. We are trying to make sure that civil servants who want and need these skills are given them, and that where there are gaps in the Department and particular skills are required, we plug those gaps.

Let me move on to talk about prison costs. We are keen to push down those costs. Across the custodial estate our strategy is to ensure that we have sufficient places to meet the demand of the courts, while securing best value for money for the taxpayer. We are committed to driving down the cost of imprisonment and to closing old and inefficient accommodation, which will contribute significantly to that. I am surprised that the hon. Lady expressed doubts that such an approach would save money. It seems clear that it would do so. The reason—

[Jenny Chapman]

rose—

[Jeremy Wright]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will explain and then I will give way.

It is a straightforward point that older accommodation is more expensive to run and to maintain. Newer accommodation is much cheaper in both respects. That is one reason why we want to transfer from an older estate to a newer estate. It is not the only reason, but if the hon. Lady wants to intervene, I will give way.

[Jenny Chapman]

My doubt was based on assertions from the Secretary of State that there is going to be some “supermax” prison, yet there is a lack of information about how much that would cost, when it would be built and where it would be. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those questions. If they cannot be answered, I will keep my doubts.

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady is entitled to her doubts but she needs to be fair. We have said that we will look at the feasibility of providing just that sort of prison, although I would not use the language that she used. We are looking for a system of imprisoning offenders that is most efficient for the taxpayer, but not just in financial terms. Also—this is what I was going on to say—newer estate is much more susceptible to providing work in prisons, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) described, and the rehabilitative agenda that we all want to see outside as well as inside the prison gates. I can reassure the hon. Lady that once we have had the chance to have a look at the sites that we might want to pursue for a larger prison and at the economics of doing it, we will give her all the detail she could possibly want, but we are not going to rush into it because, perhaps unlike our predecessors, we do not believe in spending money hand over fist until we get it right. We will make sure that we have got it right first; then we will bring forward our proposals.

Let me move on briefly to youth justice, which was mentioned by the Chairman of the Select Committee. As he said, in February we published our plans for the future of youth custody. Young people who commit serious and persistent offences need to be properly punished and it is right that they are sentenced to custody, but custody is not delivering good enough results. The costs of youth custody are very high, yet 73% of young people leaving custody go on to reoffend within a year. It is not acceptable to spend so much yet get such poor outcomes. That is why we launched our vision for secure colleges that refocus a young person’s time in custody so that it is education with detention, rather than detention with education as an afterthought.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford and the Chair of the Select Committee mentioned the court estate, reform of which is key to a transformed justice system. In identifying ways in which it could operate more efficiently, the Ministry has closed 132 courts—84 magistrates courts and 46 county courts. However, we recognise that there is a need to carry on looking at how our estate is most effectively utilised, and we will want to keep in mind the points that were raised on that. Spending money to keep underused and unsuitable courts and tribunals open is not a good use of taxpayers’ money, so we continue to keep the use of our estate under review to ensure that it meets operational requirements.

The Select Committee is also right to emphasise how important co-operation across the criminal justice is for improving outcomes. In July last year, we set out important reforms now under way across the criminal justice system in the “Swift and Sure Justice” White Paper. We are building on those reforms to ensure that victims have a louder voice and that the criminal justice system commands public confidence.

[Jenny Chapman]

I cannot let that point go without observing that the new victims commissioner will be working 10 hours a month. Is that sufficient to give victims the voice they need?

[Jeremy Wright]

I do not believe that it is the number of hours spent on the job that matters, but what one does in them. The effectiveness of this particular victims commissioner will become apparent. We think we have an excellent candidate for the job and that she will do a first-class job for victims. I am sure that the hon. Lady will support her in that work as she does it.

We want to make optimum use of the available resources so that the criminal justice system is quicker, less bureaucratic and more efficient. Therefore we are working closely with the Home Secretary and the Attorney-General to ensure that we all look at the whole system to tackle its weaknesses. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed was right to say that the Ministry of Justice cannot solve all these problems on its own. We are, as he knows, often described as a downstream Department, and we need to work with other Departments, not just those that I have mentioned, to ensure that we all do the right things to bring down offending and reoffending. He will know that we will shortly publish a criminal justice strategy and action plan to set out how we will deliver further change.

Legal aid is a fundamental part of our legal system but, as the Chair of the Select Committee rightly said, resources are not limitless and publicly funded legal support should be reserved for cases where there is genuine need. The Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 contains reforms that focus help on those cases where there is a genuine need of assistance from the state, and those proposals will be implemented in April. We are determined to protect fundamental rights of access to justice, but we must tackle an over-reliance on the courts and legal system at taxpayers’ expense. That involves directing people towards less stressful and less adversarial means of resolving their disputes wherever possible. I was taken with my right hon. Friend’s point, with which I entirely agree, that if we necessitate the use of lawyers in some of these tribunals, and those tribunals are not operating as they should, that was not the intention and it should not be the way in which we proceed in the future.

We are keen that in addition to transforming the services delivered by the Department, it transforms itself so that it has the right skills structures and agility to operate optimally. As my right hon. Friend and the rest of the Select Committee know well, in 2010, the Department reviewed its operating model, which resulted in more streamlined structures and a reduced work force. However, further reform is required if we are to live within our means in future and operate in the most effective and efficient way possible. We have therefore commissioned a review of the business structures and functions across the Ministry of Justice. That includes our agencies and arm’s length bodies. The review will look closely and critically at the ways in which services are commissioned and provided. In doing so, we want the digital-by-default agenda to be put at the heart of the Ministry’s operations, and for creative ways to embody and implement the principles of civil service reform to be found.

I know that the Select Committee has previously recommended that the different parts of the Department be further integrated. My right hon. Friend referred specifically to the European teams today, and I entirely understand his reasons for doing so. A range of different expertise is represented by different people in different departments, so although we will look closely at any opportunities for rationalisation, in this context, as it happens, the opportunities for rationalisation are not as great as they may at first appear. However, the question of greater integration more generally, as well as the delaying of grade and management structures that the JSC has also sought, is firmly within the scope of the review that we are carrying out.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford for his remarks. He is entirely right that work in prisons is a fundamental part of improving the services we offer in custody and beyond. He is right that working in a prison context allows offenders to develop not only the hard skills but the soft skills that might make them more employable. The idea of working a standard day or more hours in the week are hugely attractive from that point of view. I can tell the hon. Member for Darlington, who I know was concerned about this, that we are delivering more worked hours by prisoners in the prison estate than we were previously. Of course there is more work to be done, but we are heading in the right direction.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because it is important that we understand what is really happening. There is an idea that our prisons are somehow becoming little hives of industry in which prisoners are beavering away, but they are not. In about half the categories of prison in this country prisoners are actually spending more time banged up in their cells and less time doing purposeful activity. Perhaps most worryingly, that includes prisons for young offenders. Officials need to be a little more upfront with the Minister on that issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Wright]

It is a myth that no learning is available about payment by results, even from pilots. It is not always necessary to complete a pilot in order to get something from it. A good deal of learning is available to us from the pilots that have been in operation and, indeed, from the operation of payment by results elsewhere in government. We will take that learning with us in designing the scheme that we are attempting to put in place. The truth is that we could pilot for ever. Piloting in this context is an excuse to do nothing, and we do not intend to adopt that approach because we want to take action to drive down high rates of reoffending. We want to see innovation; we want people to come forward with new ideas within this system. If we expected to have to pilot every single one of those new ideas, we could pilot for ever and never make progress. We do not accept that that is the right way to deal with reoffending rates that are far too high.

Let me return to the point raised by the hon. Member for Darlington and my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis). When we listen to the hon. Lady and her colleagues say that there are difficult budgetary pressures, that the Department is having to cut costs, and how regrettable all that is, we should not allow her to forget the reasons we are having to make these difficult decisions. One would think that we had inherited a benign economic legacy involving piles of cash that we stubbornly refuse to spend, but that is simply not the case. We inherited a note on a Treasury letterhead saying, “I’m sorry there’s no more money”, and a pile of debt. We are doing our very best to deal with the mess that her party left.

[Jenny Chapman]

As I have acknowledged, the Department has a very difficult financial task ahead because of the decisions of the previous Secretary of State. The Minister admits that some of the commitments he has made are uncosted and that he has no idea whether their outcomes will be good value for money. I am trying to help him by pointing that out and steering him in what might be a more sound financial direction.

[Jeremy Wright]

I am extremely grateful for the hon. Lady’s help, but she is missing the point. The problems that we face with the finances of this Department and the Government more broadly have nothing to do with the previous Conservative Secretary of State for Justice; they are to do with the behaviour of the previous Labour Government. That is why we are in the mess we are in, and we are doing our best to get ourselves and the country out of it.

The hon. Lady mentioned the size of the contract package areas and asked about the proposal for 16 of them. We asked respondents to the consultation that has recently concluded whether they believe that that is the appropriate number, and we will consider what they said. It is a starting point, and we will see whether people believe that it is a sensible one. I am sure that there will be arguments about whether we have drawn the map in the right way, and we will consider all those in deciding whether we have reached the right conclusions. We will need contract package areas that are large enough to enable payment by results to operate effectively while not losing the local partnerships and connections that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed mentioned.

Proving what works is clearly crucial in the context of payment by results, and the hon. Lady is right to raise that. She will have seen in our proposals that we are interested in the idea of a justice data lab that will enable those providing rehabilitative services to understand exactly the effects and benefits of what they are doing. In the end, the test of what works will be whether the desired outcomes are achieved. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford rightly said, if they are not achieved, the full contract value will not be paid. That is at the heart of payment by results, and that is why we believe that it is a productive way to go forward.

The Ministry of Justice has made great strides in delivering a justice system that is more effective, less costly, and more responsive to the public. The ministerial team has a clear vision for continuing to transform the justice system over the remainder of this Parliament and beyond. I believe that we can deliver better rehabilitation of offenders, a smarter system of detaining and educating teenage offenders, a cheaper and better prison system, and a legal aid and criminal justice system that commands public confidence—and that, at the same time, we can bring costs down.

I hope that the many Members who take an interest in the Ministry of Justice’s activities—they have not all participated in this debate—recognise the improvements that have been made to how the Department organises itself and delivers its services. I know that the Department remains committed to building on these improvements and working with Ministers to deliver our vision for a transformed justice system.

Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend will know that we are very keen to look not just at direct contracts from Government work but at other work for ONE3ONE Solutions to pursue. We want to make sure, of course, that there is a balance to ensure that ONE3ONE Solutions is not closing out jobs that could be provided to British firms elsewhere. We will want to make sure that it has the maximum opportunities to pursue those jobs within prison that will help prisoners learn skills—both hard skills and soft skills—as this was an agenda that my hon. Friend was successful in pursuing as my predecessor.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Much was made in the Government’s announcement on the prison regime at the weekend of the ability of gay inmates to share cells. As far as I am aware, that is already not permitted, so will the Minister inform us how many gay inmates have been sharing cells with their partners, or is this further evidence of the announcement being designed to chase the headlines?

[Jeremy Wright]

The point that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was making—frankly, I would be surprised if the hon. Lady disagreed with it—was that it is clearly not appropriate for someone to live in that form of domestic arrangement while in custody. It is important that prisons are safe, secure and decent, but it is equally important that their regimes are properly austere and that the public have confidence in the way in which people act while they are in prison.

[Jenny Chapman]

I think the Minister makes my point for me: the Government do not know the figure, and this was clearly about the headlines. However, while the Secretary of State has been fretting over the weekend about the pocket money, the trainers and the overalls of inmates, he has failed to keep the most dangerous prisoners locked up. Indeterminate sentences help keep offenders inside until they are safe to release. The governor of Whatton prison, Lynn Saunders, told The Guardian:

“I think I am fairly liberal in my attitude—I haven’t come across anyone”

serving indeterminate sentences for public protection—

“in this prison who I didn’t think should have an IPP. Not one.”

Why did this Government abolish indeterminate sentences, putting the public’s safety at risk?

[Jeremy Wright]

I think the hon. Lady knows very well that we have replaced IPP sentences with extended determinate sentences. We have also introduced a mandatory life sentence for a second very serious violent or sexual offence. Those are entirely sensible sentencing approaches. The position with IPPs had become a disorganised and chaotic one, which we could not allow to stand. I am afraid that that is another classic example of the last Government’s introducing a measures that they had not thought through properly.

I also think that the hon. Lady is entirely wrong to minimise the seriousness of the need to ensure that the regime in prison commands public confidence. If she believes that the public take no interest in what happens to prisoners while they are there and in the privileges to which they have access, I think she is wrong, and if she believes we should leave the position as it is, she should say so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. We are doing two important things in that regard: first, toughening up the sentencing regime so that the right people go to prison for the right length of time; and secondly, ensuring that there is more emphasis on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. That is the way to avoid the misery that communities incur as a result of reoffending, to avoid making more victims and to avoid extra cost to the taxpayer.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Simon Crisp groomed boys on the internet and possessed and distributed indecent images of children, and earlier this year he was sentenced to an indeterminate sentence. However, had he been sentenced after 3 December, he would not have received an indeterminate sentence, because the Government have abolished them. Does the Secretary of State think that it is right that, thanks to the Government’s decision, there will no longer be anything anyone can do to keep an offender in prison at the end of their sentence even if they are still a risk to children?

[Jeremy Wright]

Extended determinate sentences, which we have brought in to replace IPPs, can include an extended period of supervision at the conclusion of a custodial period. We have done that to deal specifically with cases that cause great concern, such as sexual and violent offences. The hon. Lady is right to be worried, but she is wrong to suggest that no provision has been made to replace what IPPs did.