Land Registry

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Walker. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson)—my father represented that seat, so I understand some of the specific constituency issues he has mentioned. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) managed to secure this debate.

The hon. Member for Peterborough is absolutely right that there was a period under the previous Government during which a number of us who were involved with land registries in our constituencies had meetings with the then Minister, Michael Wills, to express our concerns. The economy was then in a downturn and the Land Registry was finding things quite difficult financially, for a whole range of reasons, but the position has now changed, as has the potential trading position. As the hon. Member for Peterborough pointed out, there is potentially now scope for money to go back into the Treasury, because the Land Registry is a successful enterprise.

The proposal suggests splitting away the Land Registry policy arm—comprising around 30 staff—and having a commercial delivery arm. The options for the latter are set out: a GovCo, a joint venture partnership or contracting out. All those could lead us down the route to eventual privatisation, which is a major concern for all of us.

At the moment, we do not have clarity—indeed, there is quite a lot of confusion out there. It is partly due to the compressed nature of the consultation, but there are also issues involving Ministers’ approval for the Land Registry board to go ahead with a target operating model, which could lead to a significant rationalisation or downsizing of the organisation. However, we do not know what is in the TOM, as it is not public. It is difficult for people to make a submission to a consultation when the ground rules are not properly known and available. We could be saying that we want to do X, when in fact, according to suggestions and proposals in the TOM, Y would be a far more sensible route. The information is not available for people to respond intelligently to the consultation.

A number of organisations have mentioned the length of time available, which is not adequate as more and more small businesses come out of the woodwork. I have had a couple more letters today, on the back of the 90 that I have already received. I take the point made about differences in response, but more than 90 people have got in touch with me, and I am encouraging them all to feed into the consultation. From my perspective, this is all rather back to front. I know that the Minister’s colleagues felt a few weeks ago, rather perversely, that it would be misleading to provide any more detail. Does he take a different view?

Let us look at the implications of drastic change. Is the Minister aware that a decision to remove posts from cities such as Plymouth will pose problems? Plymouth is still heavily dependent on the public sector. The Government have the view that if they remove public sector jobs, they will be backfilled by the private sector, but a recent Centre for Cities report flagged up the fact that Plymouth is probably in a slightly different situation. Our peripherality makes it difficult for us to attract new business, and our issues with transport in recent weeks—the south-west has effectively been cut off—do not send out the message to private sector businesses, “Come and set up in Plymouth.”

Some 650 jobs sit in our Land Registry; there is a slight difference—about 50 full-time equivalents—between the figures provided on the ground to me and the figures in a parliamentary answer. Those jobs are well paid. They contribute to our economy significantly. More importantly, we have about 100 highly skilled IT people there. Plymouth has no capacity to soak up those people if they are not employed at the Land Registry. That would be a loss to the city, so I hope that the full socio-economic impact of any change, downsizing or moving of offices around the country would be seriously considered.

One option is a GovCo, which would require people to be imported to fill capability gaps. Is it the Minister’s intention to offer enhanced salaries, terms and conditions, as the Ministry of Defence has done? If so, I assume that she is aware of the huge mess that the GoCo has left in its wake. The Treasury is still baulking at offering the MOD freedoms and flexibilities. The union PCS says in one of its briefing notes that it assumes that the ability to vary pay will depend on the model chosen. At the moment, the Government’s own model, chosen by the MOD, is running up against the buffers. It would be interesting to know whether the Minister has the Treasury’s go-ahead to offer enhanced terms and conditions to people in a GovCo in this circumstance.

What is the Minister’s view on the experience of the Forensic Science Service, which has pursued a similar option? Can he confirm that the assumed benefits of being commercially competitive did not in fact materialise? Why does he feel that the Land Registry is different?

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. What does she think the motivation might be for pursuing that line of approach? If the Land Registry were making a loss, performing poorly or not providing customer satisfaction, perhaps we could understand. Why does she think the Government are intent on following this particular course?

[Alison Seabeck]

That is a good question. As the hon. Member for Peterborough said, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? We need to understand from the Minister exactly what the benefits of fixing it will be, or whether it is purely ideologically driven, leading in the long term to privatisation.

In Plymouth, the registry’s computing centre has been recognised as an award-winning success. There has been very little turnover of specialist staff, all of whom have an experienced Land Registry background, and unlike other Government computing centres in London, it does not constantly lose staff to the private sector. It is not an exaggeration to say that the registry’s successful computerisation of the land register, its fast online inquiry services and the development of online lodgement succeeded where others in Government, dependent on major outsourcing to private IT companies, have failed. We must look at what we do well, nurture it and learn from it.

Like other Members, I have been lobbied by organisations such as the Local Land Charges Institute and those involved in independent land searches. All have serious issues with the proposals, not least because of the target operating model and the fact that it has not been made public. I would welcome the Minister’s view on whether the options proposed will fragment the local land charging function, as those organisations feel it will. The LLCI feel that it will result in a poorer service to the property-buying public. Clearly, there are a range of views on the subject, but the property-buying public are stuck in the middle, and nothing that we have heard—either fact or rumour—inspires confidence in the process being undertaken by the Government and the board.

Members of the Property Codes Compliance Board feel that the proposed changes will negatively affect those involved in the house-buying process and affect the market and small and medium-sized businesses, as we have heard from hon. Members. Their view is that SMEs will be disproportionately affected by what they see as Government transferring current activity into a private-sector monopoly. They also express their concern about the accuracy of the impact assessment.

There are complaints all round about the consultation, involving its accuracy, the timing, the process, the questions and the fact that a significant part of the picture has not been painted for those responding. I have not received a single representation from any organisation or individual in favour of the proposals. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend is completely right. Serving on the Public Accounts Committee, she will be familiar with the manifold problems that the MOJ has with commissioning and procurement. I will refer later particularly to the court interpreters contract and the inclusion of small mammals, which hon. Members might find surprising.

We have recent experience of the fallout from a botched implementation. At the end of last year, universal credit was slowed down, for its own good, after being poorly managed and heavily criticised and after wasting what was predicted to be millions of pounds of taxpayer money. The Work and Pensions Secretary assured Members that the programme would eventually work because under the timetable they were

“testing the system and learning first, and then finally implementing it.”

When I asked him, he said that I needed

“to understand the difference between an approach that rolls something out at every stage and learns from it”—[Official Report, 10 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 139-144.]

and an approach that rushes something in and sees it fail. Well, I think he is right, but I am well aware of the difference. It is just a pity that he has not had the same discussion with the Justice Secretary.

After the recent track record of the Ministry of Justice in mismanaging procurement processes, the PAC recommended that the Ministry

“should draft and implement future contracts so as to minimise transitional problems, for example through piloting and rolling-out new systems gradually.”

The NAO agreed and reported that steady regional roll-outs would allow the Ministry to limit the effect of poor performance. But rather than learning from past mistakes and introducing his reforms at a sensible pace, the Secretary of State is instead opting for a national roll-out at breakneck speed. The operating model for the reforms was published only in September, yet if it all goes to plan trusts are supposed to be abolished by April. Lord Ramsbotham described the timetable as a party political time frame

“that pays no attention to practical reality.”

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is certainly reinforcing concerns raised by officers in Devon and Cornwall about the way in which this is being handled. Although they are unhappy about the whole process, they would be prepared to consider operating within a pilot to see whether it had legs, to put it crudely. Does she agree with that?

[Jenny Chapman]

It will not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I do agree. I visited the pilots when they commenced and was impressed with the entrepreneurial attitude taken by trust chief execs and the desire to make them work. For all that the professionals involved had misgivings, the desire in the probation service to make whatever it is dealt work for the benefit of victims of crime and the offenders it works with is quite overwhelming. It is such a shame that those very organisations that have developed to become quite outstanding are going to be abolished.

Lord Ramsbotham said that the time scale paid no attention to practical reality and he is absolutely right. The Chair of the Justice Committee has said that there are

“significant risks in the pace at which the government intend to implement the programme.”

The Minister’s own officials describe the timetable as “aggressive” and a number of probation trust chairs have written publicly to the Secretary of State to advise that he must delay his plans or risk inevitable public protection failures. The chairs of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire probation trusts have, in turn, warned that the timetable is risky and unrealistic and has serious implications for service delivery.

The Ministry of Justice’s own assessment of the implications for service delivery are bleak. A leaked copy of the Department’s risk register reported an over 80 per cent. chance of an

“unacceptable drop in operational performance.”

We have been over this—I have lost count of the number of times that the Minister and I have had this conversation —so I know he will reply that it is not the Government’s practice to publish departmental risk registers. But as the information is already out there, does he not think that it would be beneficial for the Secretary of State to come to the House to discuss the possible risks with Members? I would like to know what an

“unacceptable drop in operational performance”

might look like when we are talking about the supervision of dangerous offenders in the community.

The area of the proposals that has raised the most professional concern is the issue of risk management itself. These are people who are in the risk management business. The Government’s plans will fragment the service and split up offenders based on their category of risk, with low and medium-risk offenders being managed by new providers while those deemed to be high risk stay with the public sector. The problem with that split is that risk is not static and regularly shifts. Around a quarter of offenders change risk category during their order and they do not just change it once or in incremental steps. Low risk can become high risk almost instantaneously if an offender’s circumstances change. The Government are institutionalising into this system a break, which we think is dangerous, where offenders whose risk escalates will have to be handed over to a different provider at the moment they are most volatile, with all the risk that that brings in terms of time delays and communication failures, which we know from other areas cause real problems. That is an unnecessary and, worse, a dangerous layer of bureaucracy that the Government should be doing all they can to avoid. The chief inspector of probation has warned that

“any lack of contractual or operational clarity between the public and private sector will, in our view, lead to systemic failure and an increased risk to the public.”

We find that deeply concerning.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman]

To begin with, I shall briefly mention Government amendment 5. This welcome proposal deals with the provision of restorative justice as part of a community sentence. I observed in Committee that it had become something of a tradition in justice Bills for the Government to show support for restorative justice and for the Opposition to try to push them a little further. We duly tabled an amendment in Committee that would add restorative justice explicitly to the Bill, with the aim of encouraging its use. The Minister was supportive, assuring the Committee that he would go away and consider the amendment. On this occasion, he has not disappointed us.

There is much cross-party support for the use of restorative justice, not least because of the high satisfaction rates it has received from victims who have been offered it. We know the Government intended that restorative justice would be able to be used as part of a rehabilitation activity requirement, and the Minister has now taken care to add that explicitly to the Bill. I know that Paul Goggins, who spoke in Committee in support of this, would have been very pleased that the Minister has done so. We welcome the amendment and I thank the Minister for the care with which he considered the issue.

New clauses 2 and 3 concern the involvement of veterans in the criminal justice system and stand in the names of hon. Members from both sides of the House. These provisions deal specifically with the rehabilitation of armed forces veterans who become involved with the criminal justice system, aiming to improve the support we are able to give them. The new clauses were tabled last week, since when there has been a flurry of activity from the Government, which I will discuss shortly. I thank all hon. Members who added their names in support of these new clauses, and I am sure they will join me in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for his work in raising awareness of the issue.

Most of us, and especially me, can hardly imagine the experiences that some of our servicemen and women deal with on a day-to-day basis, but we all know, and can appreciate, that the transition back into civilian life is not always easy. Happily, most of those who return from service will never need the particular support we are discussing today, but some will. The purpose of our proposals is to ensure that all our veterans are properly supported when they come home. Those making the move back into civilian life can face problems that include homelessness; drug and alcohol addiction; family breakdown; and mental health difficulties.

The north-east, where my constituency is, has a proportionately higher level of recruitment to the armed forces than any other region. A collaborative review of the mental health of veterans by north-east councils found that in the younger population—the under-45s—members of the ex-service community were three times more likely to suffer a mental health disorder than the general population. Some of those who fall on tough times upon their return will, unfortunately, become involved in crime or offending behaviour. As Lord Ramsbotham, president of the Veterans in Prison Association, has said, we are often talking about

“the person who has fallen on hard times through trying to come to terms with civilian life and needs particular help to enable them to re-engage.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 June 2013; Vol. 745, c. 1562.]

The intention of our proposal is not to let people off the hook or turn a blind eye to serious offences, but where adjustment does prove difficult, and an individual’s criminal behaviour could be linked to their military experience, we believe that those underlying problems need to be addressed to prevent further offending. The military covenant recognises that members of the armed forces, and their loved ones, can be left disadvantaged because of their service, and veterans have made a unique contribution to our country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central recently put it, the support we offer in return needs to extend to every area of a veteran’s life.

There are varying estimates as to the number of ex-service personnel who are in the criminal justice system. The Ministry of Defence estimates that veterans make up about 3.5% of the prison population, with a similar percentage under supervision in the community. Unfortunately, we have only estimates and unreliable data rather than a detailed understanding of the veteran population, which is an indication of how far we have to go to support those ex-service personnel who break the law.

[Alison Seabeck]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there was a similar problem in the GP service? People with mental health issues turned up at surgeries but were not identified as former service personnel. Clearly, ensuring that that information is available at some point in the process is important.

[Jenny Chapman]

It is difficult to develop policy sensibly without having the information to inform decisions. One thing we want to achieve in this debate is a commitment to gather the data that we need to make those decisions in a more structured fashion. The specific issue of rehabilitative services for veterans was first raised in debate on this Bill last summer by Members in another place. Noble Lords had taken inspiration from the United States, from which we have a lot to learn on this issue, and laid down amendments calling on the Government to establish a pilot of a so-called veterans court. Veterans courts are now quite well known in the United States, but, as yet, we have not used them here.

A veterans court is staffed entirely by ex-servicemen and women, and deals with veterans charged with non-serious offences. As it was explained in the other place, a veteran who has committed an offence can be referred from the trial court to the veterans court. Under the system, the court assigns a fellow veteran as a mentor and systematic efforts are made to help the offender deal with a range of problems with which they are struggling to cope, such as substance misuse, mental health issues, lack of housing, anger management, skills, jobs and family breakdown. Other problems can be addressed in that way. The veteran is expected to attend monthly hearings so that progress can be assessed. Failure to co-operate leads to recall by the trial court and the possibility of a custodial sentence being imposed. The reported results of the courts are extremely impressive. The state supreme court in Pennsylvania reports an average reoffending rate for courts in its counties of just 1%. In other reports, rates vary from 10% to 30%, which is substantially lower than rates for custodial sentences.