Probation Service

Debate between Lord Blunkett and George Mudie

Wednesday 13th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mudie]

My hon. Friend has taken the second part of page 2 by making an important point that I was just about to address.

It is no secret, and it is accepted, that reoffending rates are high. The figures for the period between April 2010 and March 2011 show that more than one in four criminals reoffended within a year, which is a reoffending rate of 26.8%, marginally up from 26.3% in the previous year. Over the 10 years in which records have been kept, the reoffending rate has gone down.

It is sad but interesting that the Secretary of State used a higher figure when making his statement to the House. He said that, in 2010, “nearly half” of those leaving prison reoffended. He was correct—the reoffending rate for those leaving prison is around 47%— but that suggests the overall reoffending rate is double what it actually is. It would have been more straightforward had he used the 26.8% figure to justify the programme.

It is interesting that the Ministry of Justice’s annual figures break down those figures. Some 26,000 of the 56,000 people who left prison reoffended, but 18,000 of those 26,000 were not covered by the probation service because they were serving sentences of less than 12 months, which is the point my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) made. If the aim is to eliminate or reduce reoffending, why must the Secretary of State use a figure attractive to him rather than giving a true reflection of the situation?

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend on securing this debate, and I apologise to him, to Members and to you, Mr Crausby, for not being able to stay all the way through. Does my hon. Friend think that that is why the Treasury is so worried about the proposal? Would it not have been more logical to have tested and piloted the proposal for offenders serving less than 12 months with the probation service, given its growing expertise in working with the social enterprise and voluntary sector, in defined areas that coincide with police areas, so that people could work together? Instead we have prime contracts, detached from the community and the problem, with Serco and G4S taking over virtually all public services.

[Mr Mudie]

My right hon. Friend raises a number of points that I hope I will have time to touch on. They are all valid, not because they are in my speech but because they are important points about the attack on the probation service.

Any real scrutiny of the Ministry of Justice figures demonstrates that the reasons for our disappointing reoffending rates are complicated and numerous, but it is wrong and unfair to place them at the door of the probation service. As I have said, a major proportion of reoffending is outside the statutory remit of the probation service. I pay tribute to the proposal in the White Paper to bring it within the probation service’s responsibilities for the first time. It is one thing that I straightforwardly applaud.

Although I wish for improvement, due to those facts, and because of the quality and professionalism of the probation service, I am not convinced that there is a pressing need for the upheaval suggested in the consultation document, or for the pace and scale of change. I want to make it absolutely clear that reoffending figures should unarguably be improved, and that the proposals to address short-sentence prisoners are long overdue and welcome. I have no dogmatic opposition to the use of the private and voluntary sector in rehabilitation. My concerns are overwhelmingly about public safety, protecting the existing good work of the probation service, questioning the suggested and untested payment-by-results methods that will be introduced to the private sector, ensuring that management and structure changes are sensibly modified to suit the proposals and, importantly in this age of austerity, ensuring that the costs are acceptable. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, the costs are starting to worry the Treasury.

Against that backdrop, it is critical that these large-scale reforms of our rehabilitation and probation policy are well thought through, investigated from all angles and brought together on a basis that puts evidence first. What is before us is none of those things. It is hasty, ill thought through, dogmatic, cobbled together and risky. I have indicated my concerns, and I will expand on them.

First, the Secretary of State describes the approach as revolutionary, but there is a clear need to demonstrate that the policy changes are evidence-based. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), started a number of pilot schemes in that area of work, which were abandoned within days after the present Secretary of State took office. When questioned by the Select Committee on Justice, the present Secretary of State admitted that he was unable to provide MPs with any evidence to support his change in policy. He excused his peremptory ending of the pilot schemes by stating that it

“will take us much of the rest of this decade to see through to a conclusion, evaluating the data and coming up with an analysis. We are talking about the core principle of trusting the professionals and making them take a bit of the risk themselves”.

We are less worried about the professionals than about the public taking the risk of the proposals.

When pressed by the shadow Secretary of State to produce evidence to justify, for example, the controversial payment-by-results proposal, the Secretary of State derided what he termed the Opposition’s obsession with pilots, saying revealingly:

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

That warms the heart, but it worries us to death.