Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Meg Hillier and Lord Hanson of Flint

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments.

I am also worried about some of the companies that might come into this. I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, and I challenged the big public sector providers that appeared before us recently on whether they would bid for contracts in areas where they had no experience. They all denied that they would, but we have seen, in the Public Accounts Committee, in other Committees and on the Floor of the House, example after example of companies that bid for contracts because they are good at bidding but that do not actually have a background in delivering the relevant service. They then have to backfill by recruiting people to take on those jobs. I have dealt with the Minister on constituency matters and know him to be assiduous, and I am sure that he will bear that point in mind, but I think that it is worth reiterating that it is a very serious matter. Companies should not be bidding for huge contracts in areas where they have no experience because that fragments the service.

Fragmentation can be good where there is specialism, where there are smaller contracts, perhaps run by specialist voluntary sector groups, or indeed by private companies if they have the necessary level of expertise, but they have to work together. We are in danger of seeing another approach whereby the MOJ and the Government put out big contracts and the smaller specialist providers simply do not get a look in. They might get the odd crumb from the big contractors’ table, but they will be squeezed out. That is particularly true in mental health, one of the local concerns in my constituency.

There is an important concern about local accountability. I am a great supporter of extending freedom of information in the first instance, even with limitations, to private sector companies that deliver public contracts paid for by the taxpayer. It should be the tax pound that determines whether there is freedom of information, not the nature of the delivery body. Most parties in the House support some degree of contracting out, but we need to ensure that transparency is built in. Companies have told the Public Accounts Committee that they are in favour of a much greater degree of transparency, so perhaps the Minister will take this opportunity to challenge them to stand up for what they say and make that part of the bidding process.

New clause 4 is important—I will not repeat all the arguments Members have made—because we need proper scrutiny. If we look at reoffending as a whole, we see that there are other ways of looking at it, for example by looking at mental health support or the Work programme. We know that offenders who come out of prison with a job are less likely to reoffend, but does the Work programme, which is provided by another Government Department, go into prisons to ensure that offenders have jobs for when they leave? Perhaps we should be challenging them to step up to the mark and provide job opportunities as a major plank of what we all want to see: less reoffending, particularly by offenders given short-term sentences.

In summary, the Public Accounts Committee has seen far too many poorly managed large Government contracts. The Cabinet Office is pushing hard to see that procurement is done in a different way that allows smaller companies a bite of the Government contract cherry and to stop the big companies being able to snaffle public money without being held properly to account. This is an opportunity for the Minister to consider, even at this late stage, allowing something in the contract to ensure that the big companies are required to work effectively with the small companies and not, as many of them do, to dodge their responsibilities later by saying, “Actually, we can’t quite deliver what we promised, so we’ll do it differently, but we’ve taken it all on.” That is often how they get around that. That will need constant monitoring and an audit of what happens with the contract. If this is to go ahead, I urge the Minister to tell us how the Government plan to audit the impact and the delivery of the service.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I begin by echoing the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) about our late colleague Paul Goggins. I followed him as a Justice Minister, doing the job he did when he was in the Home Office and had responsibility for probation, and I know how well respected he was in the sector, by officials and the community at large. I also had the pleasure of sharing time with him as a Northern Ireland Minister, where he was also well respected. This is my first opportunity to put that on the record in the House. I will attend his funeral on Thursday, along with many colleagues across the House, to pay my final respects to Paul for all his work.

I wanted to speak in this debate for several reasons. Nobody disagrees with the Government’s general premise for dealing with offenders sentenced to 12 months or less in prison. They are often prolific offenders who go on to reoffend. They are often tomorrow’s serious offenders. It was an aspiration we had when I served in the Ministry of Justice to try to reduce their reoffending. We need to involve the voluntary and private sectors in supporting rehabilitation work for individuals who go to prison and come out within 12 months. Housing associations, voluntary providers and employers all have a role to play. That can be done in a positive way by the voluntary and private sectors.

Let us therefore not have a debate today on the difference between the Government and the Opposition on the need to involve some elements of the voluntary and private sectors. Instead, I want to raise my concerns about the issues addressed by new clauses 1 and 4. New clause 1 would ensure that we put a parliamentary brake on reorganisation, pending proper parliamentary scrutiny, and new clause 4 would put in place a pilot to test some difficult and serious matters in relation to which mistakes—they will be made, because that is the nature of the business the Minister deals with—will have a real impact on the community at large.

New clause 1, which I fully support, would prevent the Government from selling off or restructuring the probation service unless the proposals had first been laid before, and approved by, both Houses of Parliament. It is no secret that if the Government did that this year, they could put a Bill before Parliament and get it through before the general election. They could have it scrutinised and probably, because of the votes they have in this House, get their way. I object to the Government using the Offender Management Act 2007 to achieve that objective. I declare an interest, because I was the Minister who took that Act through the House. At the time I was pressed strongly by many Members on my own side, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), on whether it meant the privatisation and break-up of the probation service. I was pressed very hard about whether it meant, in practice, the abolition, ultimately, of probation trusts.

I gave assurances during the Bill’s passage through the House and I want to repeat them today, not because they have not been heard here before, but because they support what my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington says in new clause 1 and are worthy of repetition. On 18 July 2007, I, as the Minister, said from the Dispatch Box:

“There will be a mixture of commissioning. Some will be at national level, because in certain cases and with certain contracts that will be the best way of securing a strong and efficient service. There will also be a strong role for those commissioning work at regional level. As my hon. Friend surely accepts, economies of scale will sometimes be necessary, and some services will be best purchased and commissioned at that level. However, there will also be a need for local probation trusts to act not just as service deliverers but as commissioners of services from the voluntary sector, or from others, providing a proper service to help prevent reoffending at local level.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 352-53.]

I said that in support of what my noble Friend Baroness Scotland and the then Lord Chancellor, my noble Friend Lord Falconer, said in another place when introducing the Offender Management Bill. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that. I am very pleased that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) is present, because I said it in response to a Lords amendment that he supported and that sought to do exactly what the Minister is seeking to do now to the probation service. We rejected it and I put it on record that the Offender Management Bill would not be used for that purpose.

I would be grateful if the Minister reflected on Pepper v. Hart from 1992. Legislation can be interpreted according to what a Minister said at the Dispatch Box about what they thought about a particular interpretation of a Bill. My assessment is that during our deliberations on the Offender Management Act, I, on behalf of the then Government, rejected from the Dispatch Box an amendment that sought to do what the Minister is now doing; supported the aspirations of my noble Friends Lord Falconer and Baroness Scotland; and spoke in support of retaining probation trusts to commission at a national, regional and local level. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has said, it is an abuse of this House for the Minister to try to use that legislation to secure his objective.

Will the Minister—just for me, so I can sleep easy in my bed—put on public record the legal advice he has received that says that he can do what he is doing, so that we can test his interpretation against the potential interpretation of lawyers outside the House under the terms of Pepper v. Hart?