Transforming Rehabilitation Programme

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Robert Neill

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall, for what I believe is the first time. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) for securing this important debate. Probation can often get pushed to one side in favour of discussing prisons, but I believe that the probation service is the key to unlocking the reduction in reoffending that we all want to see.

Many Members have observed that the implementation of the programme was rushed. There were pilots, which Labour supported. One such pilot took place in Wales, and I think I visited every one of them as they were about to begin. It was hugely disappointing to find that the work put into setting up those pilots was to be for nothing, because the models tested in the pilots were not to be implemented by the Government. Therefore, great time and energy and some expense was wasted, but we are where we are.

The Government were warned by experts—my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon put this well—that we were losing an opportunity by abolishing probation trusts. They were not stodgy, stuck-in-the-past public sector organisations that did not want to change; they were one of the most entrepreneurial public agencies anyone could hope to find, with dynamic, charismatic chief officers and chairs, and boards with strong private sector representation, which were run competitively. They all wanted to be the best. As has been said, they were all good or outstanding. They were working well and had huge capacity to deliver many if not all of the outcomes that the Government sought to achieve through the ridiculous splitting of the service that they seemed determined to embark on.

I want to highlight the observation made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon about the split being born entirely out of political necessity. The Government knew fine well that they could never win public support for the wholesale sell-off of the service when medium and high-risk offenders were to be subject to supervision in the community—where we and our constituents live. The fear was that those offenders would not be properly supervised, and because the Government knew that was a risk, they invented the ridiculous, artificial split of the service along risk lines, when we all know that risk is dynamic.

Anyone who has ever worked with offenders will know that a low-risk offender does not always stay a low-risk offender. Risk changes. It can change quickly and unpredictably, and the people best placed to make such assessments are probation officers. They have the relationship with the offender and they have proven time and time again that they can spot such changes. When changes occur—they could result from a new relationship, drinking, a mental health issue or losing a job—the triggers must be communicated immediately.

I am getting to be rather fond of the Chairman of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). He is quite an avuncular character, but I would caution him against smothering the Minister with love.

[Robert Neill]

Will the hon. Lady tell me what I have been doing wrong?

[Jenny Chapman]

The point I am trying to make is that the Minister needs to answer some serious criticisms about programme’s implementation. It behoves all of us, from whichever side of the House, to make problems known to him, although I have to give him his due. These are not problems of his making: he inherited the programme, and I like to think that he would not have liked to have seen this nonsense implemented, because I know he cares deeply about what happens in the community and what happens to offenders, and he cares about victims, too.