Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“ProbationProbation service reform: Parliamentary approval
No alteration or reform may be made to the structure of the probation service unless the proposals have been laid before, and approved by resolution of, both Houses of Parliament.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, as I have said on a number of occasions, this is a curious Bill. While the whole House welcomes its intentions, many of us are deeply alarmed at the absence of detail about their cost and how and whether they can be implemented in the timeframe depicted on page 34 of the so far undiscussed Transforming Rehabilitation White Paper. I have received many letters of concern about this, including a number from serving members of the National Probation Service, who are understandably worried about what is being done to them and their service, 31 of whose 35 trusts are adjudged to be performing well, with the remaining four performing exceptionally well.

Last Thursday, the Minister was kind enough to e-mail me a copy of the revised impact assessment, which I have to admit I find as disappointing as its predecessor, because it is still so thin on analysis of impact, cost or risk. I note that, yet again, the Government’s justification for not releasing more details is that to publish estimates would put contractual negotiations at risk and so prejudice the effectiveness of the competition for delivery of offender services. Indeed, compared with what has been put to Ministers, as disclosed in articles in the Times and Guardian today, it feels rather more like a ministerial pat on the head of a recalcitrant child.

In drawing the attention of the House to the inadequacy of the initial impact assessment, I questioned whether, because it was published on the same day as the Bill and the White Paper to which it referred, it had been available to Ministers during their analysis of risk, or added later. I have to ask the same about the draft strategic risk register, prepared for a rehabilitation programme board on 21 May, referred to in the articles. If a board saw a draft only 12 days after the Bill was published, when were the risks that it assessed seen and discussed by Ministers?

I presume that the impact of these risks was excluded from the impact assessment, because it refers only to the Bill, not to the whole programme—a clever piece of parliamentary games playing. In asking the Minister when he and his colleagues considered these risks, I also ask whether a proper business plan for the implementation of their ambitious proposals has been drawn up, telling Ministers—and so the public, whom it is their duty to protect—exactly how, when and by whom they are to be implemented.

That leads on to the question of why, throughout this Bill’s progress, I have felt so deeply uneasy about the way in which this House is being used. We all want reoffending to be reduced, but we do not want to see any programme with that end fall flat on its face because understandable concerns about the viability of untried theories, in the uncertain world in which many offenders live what can only be described as chaotic and dysfunctional lives, have been ridden over roughshod in the desire to satisfy a party politically directed timetable that pays no attention to practical reality.

There is also the importance of taking people with you, particularly those whom you employ. Loyalty, like responsibility and accountability, is a two-way process. You cannot expect people to be loyal to you unless they know that they can rely on your loyalty to them. The loyalty of the probation service is being pressed to limits that would make every soldier shudder. Indeed, since 9 May, they, I and others who have asked questions have felt rather like that Chinese student who, trying to stop something relentless, climbed on to a tank in Tiananmen Square, whose crew could appreciate what he wanted but were not be deflected from their directed purpose.

I wonder whether the real reason why the Secretary of State is unwilling to reveal an objective assessment of the impact of his proposals is that he dare not, because they are so undermined by the sheer scale of the risks as assessed by his own officials in the Ministry of Justice. He cannot have welcomed the chairman of the Justice Select Committee in the other place saying last week that the Ministry of Justice, responsible for carrying out his ambitious plans, displayed naivety about the contracting out of key services and lacked the capacity to know what it was doing.

In Committee I tried to encourage the Minister to delay further consideration of the Bill until we had had a more satisfactory impact assessment, and answers to the many questions raised at Second Reading, many of which matched risks raised by officials, who described the whole process of transforming the National Probation Service as a,

“complex, large-scale change programme to be completed within an aggressive timetable”.

As I have long suspected, the change programme that has been laid before us is far from complete, because officials say, in a document issued only this month:

“We are undertaking further work on statutory responsibilities, to determine if there is an obvious split between the public sector probation service and competed Providers, and will come back with further advice on this, including on how we ensure that providers meet these obligations”.

Surely it is a bit late for that, when work on the Bill is so far advanced.

Officials spell out a breathtakingly long list of details of what this complex unresearched change programme entails, which, according to the White Paper timetable, have to be completed in little over a year. Those include the implementation and testing of the new operational model, but not payment by results, by three probation trusts; the establishment of the so-called new probation service; the establishment of 21 government companies; the recruitment and appointment of new senior management teams for the National Probation Service and the government companies; the allocation of staff into roles in the new organisation; and the transfer of 18,000 staff to new employers. Probation trusts are to have agreed the national and competed functional split, and identified the proportion of staff and assets to be allocated to the public sector or government companies, by the end of August, and to have implemented the new operating model, while remaining contractually responsible for delivery by public sector and competed functions, serviced by a single corporate support, by next April. Trusts are to cease responsibility for delivery, and all staff and other assets are to be transferred to the public sector, or government companies, by next August. Ownership of the government companies is to be transferred to successful bidders from October.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention, which probably was not intended to be helpful, but certainly was. That is because these are the stakes we are playing for. I do not doubt the figures he has given and indeed I have seen them. Reoffending costs this country between £9 billion and £14 billion, so let us not say that we are going to aim to prevent 50% of reoffending. If we could get it down to 40%, just think what that would mean in hard cash. That is the prize we are aiming for. Of course it takes some radical thinking and means taking risks that are outside the box—that is exactly what we are doing. When there is a new idea, it is a lot easier to throw spanners in the works or to say what is so often said about any new and radical idea, “Let’s have a bit more time to think about it and take it all a bit more slowly”. We have put a lot of work into this project and, as we develop and unfold it, we are willing to share information with Members of this House and others. However, the noble Lord is quite right that, as well as the impact on offenders who are taken out of the cycle of crime, and apart from the impact on victims who will avoid the crimes that the rehabilitated will not commit, there really is big money to be saved by carrying this through. I am as enthusiastic and confident about it now as I was when we started, and I hope that the House will feel the same as it did when it gave the Bill an overwhelming Second Reading.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply and I thank all those who have taken part in this short debate. I have to admit to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that I had not considered the details she outlined as far as the legislation is concerned. I had always assumed that the existing national probation service was the National Probation Service. Absolute logic suggests that I should go away and rethink the wording of the amendment because we must get it correct if we are actually going to put something through.

I should say to the Minister that I am not opposed to the intent of this Bill and I never have been. Indeed, I started my speech by saying that. The Cross-Benches are not the Opposition and I rather resent being called the Opposition purely because we sometimes go against what the Government propose. I am simply concerned to do all that I possibly can to encourage the Government and to make certain that we can be convinced by the Government that every possible examination has been carried out into whether what is proposed is possible and practical and that as little damage is done as possible to the existing public services, which have given such outstanding service for so long.

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for a number of things that he said, in particular that we will have a debate. As he appreciates, one of the frustrations of this Bill is that it is not actually about the proposals—it is about the tools of the proposals. The legislation would suggest that although we can say what we like about those tools, it does not matter a damn, because the Secretary of State is going to go ahead anyway, encouraged by the legislation’s permission for him to do so. In that case, we would be denied any chance to have our say and to put our expertise and intent at the service of the Government. I am also very grateful for his explanation of what was going on, because we have not heard that before. I am very grateful that he will put copies of the things in the Library, because I suspect that many noble Lords do not actually follow everything that is on the internet in the way that officials might hope.

There is no need to involve a third party in the distance between the leaks and me—I received the documents last Thursday and have them in my possession now. I was laying my assessment of Ministry of Justice documents before the House and not a journalist’s interpretation of those documents. My concerns were, I think, quite reasonable. We were presented with a Bill on 9 May, on which we started work, but these assessments of risk were dated 21 May, which suggests that they came after the Bill. That is something about which I still seek reassurance.

I am extremely sorry that the Minister should have suggested that I am not happy to take it as well as give it. As he knows perfectly well, this refers to an incident—which I did not wish to lay before the House—when I complained to him that he had attributed views to me when I was not in the House and therefore unable to answer. I do not believe that we should conduct our business that way.

In view of the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has raised, I have some concern about this, but I wish to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

This amendment is designed to promote the Government’s policy effectively. It is not designed to undermine its objectives or to prevent it; it is designed to ensure that we have a developed, piloted system, which is workable and cost-effective, in the interests of the whole community and of achieving the Government’s objective. I beg to move.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I do not want to add much to what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has just said, because he has covered everything. However, I notice that, in a recent letter to us, the Minister mentioned that results were to be paid for after one year. I suspect that this is very welcome to both the voluntary and private sectors, which will be competing for payment. The voluntary sector would find it very difficult to go for longer without payment. However, as the Minister knows, reoffending rates always used to be measured after two years. Indeed, if you follow the reoffending rates after that, you find that they decline over time. Therefore, is it not rather premature to come to a judgment after one year? Could the Minister say whether it is intended that, if an offender goes on to reoffend two or three years after release, the company that has been paid will be expected to make a repayment for reoffending that happened later?

[Lord Goodhart]

My Lords, I was strongly supportive of Amendment 1, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. However, there was a defect in that amendment, which was disclosed by my noble friend Lady Hamwee. Therefore, it seemed sensible, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, appeared to propose at one moment, that he should withdraw that amendment and come back with another version at Third Reading. For some reason—I would be interested to know why—he did not do that, but pressed his amendment to a vote this time. The result was that the amendment was passed and cannot be changed, except by the House of Commons when it goes back there. It would have been much better if we could have decided a better version of Amendment 1 ourselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, I would like to express my general support for what the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has proposed and said and also for that which has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. I venture to suggest that anyone who has experience of dealing with young offenders in the courts would come to exactly the same conclusions as they have expressed. They have very good reasons to advance their comments. The position of those aged 15-plus to 18 is a particularly difficult area which has been neglected largely by the approach of the criminal justice system until now. I particularly urge that what the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has said about that group is taken into account.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendments so comprehensively spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater. One reflection on what she has been saying about consistency and continuity has come to me about the involvement of the probation service with the supervision of young adults which it admittedly has not been very good with in recent years.

One thing that worries me about the thought of the professional probation service in future being responsible only for high-risk offenders is that young probation officers are not going to have the chance to cut their teeth on the low and medium-risk offenders on which they build up the expertise which they can then go on to apply to the higher risk offenders. One of the cases that is frequently quoted against the probation service is the case of a man called Sonnex who murdered while he was on probation supervision. He was under the supervision of a very young and inexperienced probation officer who should not have been put in charge of so serious an offender. I hope that the Minister will reflect on this and on the importance of career development for the National Probation Service, particularly for those who have to deal with this very important group of young adults.