Liaison Committee Report

Debate between Lord Beith and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Gentleman leads me into areas covered by other Liaison Committee reports on Select Committee effectiveness, but I think that I can reasonably say that the role and effectiveness of Select Committees have changed significantly over the course of this Parliament, in part as a result of a series of reforms agreed prior to the last general election and then brought into effect. That is the model that has led us to propose the civil service commission in this case.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s statement, which I think is a welcome step forward. Following the previous question, I agree that Select Committees need more definitive powers. I think that they should be able not only to set up commissions, but, if necessary, and in extremis, to introduce their own legislation when the Government refuse to do so. We need to shift the balance of power towards Parliament and away from the Executive as far as we can. Following the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), what consideration has been given to the size, quantity and value of private contractors working on civil service functions, often core functions, and does he believe that that undermines the whole role of the civil service, as a Government-employed service, in giving robust advice to Government, rather than commercially driven advice and running of services?

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Gentleman is a much-valued member of my Justice Committee and himself provides evidence of the valuable work that can be done in Select Committees. The extent to which services should be either carried out directly by Government or contracted out to the private sector is a matter of legitimate political argument, although Governments of quite different political persuasions have extended the role of the private sector in that regard. One thing that united Select Committee Chairs from different political backgrounds was the point that the civil service must have the necessary equipment for effective contracting when those processes are engaged in and that at every stage it should tell Ministers what they need to hear, not just what they want them to hear.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Beith and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir Alan Beith]

I give way first to my hon. Friend.

[Sir Alan Beith]

My hon. Friend would be surprised if I did not take rural issues into account, given that I represent the most sparsely populated areas of England.

I give way to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is a member of my Select Committee.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I look forward to the evidence session tomorrow morning. Would it not be far better if the Secretary of State delayed further consideration of this proposal until after our Committee has examined the issue and produced a proper report on it so that there is an evidence base for the legislation?

[Sir Alan Beith]

It is our intention to report quickly on these aspects of the probation changes. There has been a considerable delay since the Bill completed its passage through the Lords, as was referred to by the shadow Secretary of State. Although the process for implementing the Government’s changes is fairly rapid, the consideration of the Bill has been relatively leisurely by parliamentary standards. It is my intention that the Select Committee will still influence the shape of what emerges.

When the Justice Committee reported on the probation service in 2011, we said that a more seamless, through-the-gate approach to dealing with offenders was vital and that less of a probation officer’s time should be wasted on bureaucratic processes that do not involve direct engagement with offenders. We saw potential in payment by results, but some dangers as well.

We also wanted something that the Government do not intend to give us, which is local commissioning. That would enable decisions about what is provided to be taken in the context of local circumstances so that we no longer have the absurd position whereby prison is a nationally provided free good, in that it does not engage local authorities through the provision of any expenditure. It is a national expenditure, whereas almost all other kinds of provision have to be financed and funded locally.

The Justice Committee reported earlier this year on women offenders. I welcome clause 11, which relates to the concern expressed in our report that the system was designed to meet the needs of male offenders and must make appropriate provision for women offenders. The argument is not that women who commit criminal offences are less guilty than men who commit criminal offences, but that the circumstances that generate the offences committed by women and the means by which women can be guided towards not committing further offences are often different. That is another area in which we have given advice that is relevant to the Bill.

There are some important questions about the Bill and the structure of the probation service that will be necessary to support it that must be considered. The first is whether there is a market out there. Are there enough potential providers that could take on the contracts and that could engage, as is necessary, with the wide range of charities, voluntary organisations and other bodies in which there is expertise? [Interruption.] I heard a reference from the Labour Benches to G4S and Serco, and the contracts of both those companies, which were brought about under the previous Government, are now the subject of serious fraud inquiries. One implication of that is that a number of companies may effectively be excluded from the bidding process. We must await the outcome of the inquiries as we cannot reach conclusions at this stage, but even were the process still going on, it would exclude at least two major companies working in that field.

Interpreting and Translation Services

Debate between Lord Beith and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 20th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Gentleman is an assiduous and welcome member of my Committee, but I would not make the rather rash claim that we could meet the savings that the Government want to make in the costs of legal aid out of getting this contract right. However, we should be getting it right and so far that has not been achieved.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am also a member of the Committee, so I am pleased that we are debating this report. When the Ministry comes back to our Committee, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that it would be helpful if it came with an analysis of the amount of money lost by the non-attendance of interpreters, which my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) mentioned, and the collapse of trials and all the costs that are loaded on to all three parties: the court, the prosecution and the defence?

[Sir Alan Beith]

I would welcome a reasonable estimate from the Ministry, but I should like it to devote most of its effort to moving from the bad situation that we have now to a better one. I would not want all its management to be occupied with collecting the figures, but if it starts to claim significant savings, I am afraid that we will all want to insist that some of those costs are set against those claims.

Quite a lot of off-contract booking is going on—courts have to do it to meet the need to go ahead with a trial —but we need more information because we do not know how extensive it is. Of course, that too is an extra cost item.

Interpreters’ organisations have been compiling dossiers of instances where court proceedings have been disrupted by failings in the interpretation service. Such information should be systematically captured by the Ministry. We recommended that there should be a user satisfaction measure, and the Ministry replied that it would discuss this with Capita and other partners. I should be grateful for an update on these discussions.

A lack of basic management information has contributed to the Ministry’s apparent inability to monitor and drive better performance. For example, there are costs of defendants being remanded in custody, additional legal aid costs and all the rest of it. We thought that the Ministry

“must get a better grasp of the costs of underperformance”.

I shall not quote the savings figures that the Ministry quotes, which are seriously at risk because of the additional costs involved.

The Minister could provide further clarification on how much of the expenditure of £13.3 million in the first year is accounted for by off-contract bookings. Perhaps she could let us have that information later, if not today.

We noted in our report that the problems arising in relation to the contract must have meant the Ministry’s incurring additional administrative costs as a result of the higher than expected level of oversight that has become necessary. The Ministry in its response gave a figure for staffing costs of the core project of £315,000 between January 2012 and March 2013, but it did not give an estimate of additional costs that it might have incurred.

We should not assume that there was some golden age under the previous arrangements for court interpreting. We concluded in our report that, despite clear administrative inefficiencies, there does not appear to have been any fundamental problem with the quality of services when sourced under the terms of the then national agreement. It is understandable that any Government would consider whether there were more efficient, cost-effective ways to provide the same service, but the principle must be to provide the same level of service. The Government signally failed to achieve that objective.

We said that there

“was clear potential for problems with ALS’ capacity to deliver on its promises which were not adequately anticipated or dealt with either by the Department or by the contractor itself”.

ALS was a small undertaking, visibly lacking the capacity to undertake anything as major as the entire national court interpreting provision.

The Ministry’s naivety at the start of the process appears to have been matched by its indulgence towards underperformance against the contract once the new arrangements came into operation. In introducing the new framework agreement, the Ministry has alienated many experienced court interpreters. The contract may have achieved a net book saving in its first year of operation, but it has not, on the available evidence, achieved any improvement in service to the courts. Indeed, on the information available to judge performance, which continues to be rather defective and limited, there has been a deterioration in performance and a negative impact on the ability of the courts to do their job properly.

The whole saga has been an inglorious one. It might almost have been constructed as a cautionary tale of what a Department should avoid in undertaking a procurement and contract management process. And this is a Department that intends to undertake several such processes, some of them much larger even than this one, so some lessons have to be learned pretty quickly. The standard of court interpretation needs to be restored, preferably by bringing back those whose experience can return the service to the standards that the courts used to expect.

Justice Committee Report: Youth Justice

Debate between Lord Beith and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 14th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith]

The idea that we can sort out the problems of a young person who is committing serial, prolific crimes through a process that does not take much time is just a mistake. It takes time to address these problems. We have looked, for example, at the Willow unit at Hindley and a whole series of ways of trying to turn round the lives of young people. I am afraid that the short, sharp shock is an illusion. There is no proven way to deal with prolific young offenders other than by giving them a lot of attention over a significant period.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for chairing the Committee through the fascinating experience of undertaking this youth justice inquiry. Will he comment on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and say at what point a young person who has committed a fairly minor offence or a more major one would have it written off? We do not want a society in which misdemeanours undertaken by young people, for all kinds of reasons of poverty, naivety or whatever else, follow them for the rest of their lives, damaging their career prospects and us as a society.