Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I apologise in advance to those who have participated in this interesting and useful debate, because I will not have the chance in the time that is available to go into the issues in the detail that I would ideally like.

Let me begin with new clause 2. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) for what she has said about the nature of the amendments, and I hope that will curtail what I need to say about them. I pay tribute not just to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) but to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) and many others across the House for the extensive interest they have shown in this matter. I know that they will want to interact with my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and express their expertise to him.

I agree that our armed forces do a difficult and dangerous job. We should also be clear—I know that no one has suggested otherwise in the course of this debate—that service in the armed forces does not inevitably lead to a life of crime following a return to civilian status. Undoubtedly, however, there are those who struggle with the transition, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said, it is also true that those with a service background are less likely to commit offences than those who do not have such a background. We should also recognise the considerable support that the armed forces, as an employer, offer to those who are returning to civilian life.

The prison and probation services already work with ex-service personnel, and my hon. Friend will want to look at that and perhaps suggest further improvements. We are doing more in prisons to identify veterans as early as possible, and all prisons should now have a veterans-in-custody support officer to co-ordinate and assist in that task. The proposed probation reforms offer an opportunity to do better in that regard, and to encourage all sectors to work together to identify service personnel and offer the assistance that we can. I recognise entirely, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd and my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) have said, that a variety of organisations already do good work with offenders, but there is always an opportunity to do more. The review that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border has been invited to lead will, I hope, give us that opportunity.

[Alison Seabeck]

rose—

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady will have to be brief.

[Alison Seabeck]

What I have to say is very pertinent. If there is no enabling clause in this Bill to bring forward any suggestions that come from the hon. Gentleman’s review, how long will it take for the necessary changes to be put in place, and is that something we should be considering?

[Jeremy Wright]

I want to come to the timetable. Without wishing to get into too much detail on these probing amendments, there are deficiencies within them that would require further legislation in any event. I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but I want to answer the question of the hon. Member for Darlington about what my hon. Friend’s review will be covering. First, we will ask him to consider the rehabilitation needs of ex-service personnel convicted of criminal offences and sentenced to a custodial or community sentence, and the current rehabilitation available to them. Secondly, we want him to consider the process whereby ex-service personnel are identified following conviction, and that goes very much to the point that the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) was making. Thirdly, we want him to consider best practice relating to the rehabilitation of ex-service personnel offenders, including evidence of effective interventions in other countries. Fourthly, he should consult with the cross-government military reference group, which already exists, and report to the Secretary of State within six months. That is an important time frame, because we want to ensure that our reforms are informed by what my hon. Friend and those working with him can tell us. We will publish my hon. Friend’s report and place it in the Library of both Houses so that it is available for all to see. If we were to wait for the conclusion of the Bill process, as the new clauses suggest, that would delay the beginning of the review. We do not want to do that as we want to get going as soon as possible and I hope that that will meet with the approval of the House.

In view of what the hon. Member for Darlington has helpfully said, I do not think that I need to go through the deficiencies we believe that there are in new clause 3. I recognise the intent behind it and we very much support that. We want to ensure that the review produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border can assist us in producing solutions and suggestions that we can make use of in the course of our broader reforms.

Let me say something about new clause 12, tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). He is right that it is hugely important to ensure that domestic violence is treated seriously and that the programmes he has described are implemented effectively. He knows that those at highest risk of serious harm will in any event be the responsibility of the national probation service, and the NPS will also manage all offenders who are subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements. That will include all offenders convicted of sexual and violent offences attracting a sentence of more than a year and all those whose offending leads them to become registered sex offenders.

On the specifics of the programmes that the hon. Gentleman described, I entirely agree with his enthusiasm for a consistency of approach. I hope I can offer him some reassurance, as such programmes would have to be accredited. Accreditation is overseen, as he will know, by the National Offender Management Service, which ensures that the programmes are evidence-based and have therefore demonstrated their effectiveness in reducing reoffending. The programme requirement will continue to be available to sentencers, and the NPS will have a key role in assessing offenders and providing advice to courts on their suitability for such programmes. CRCs will be mandated to deliver the sentence imposed by the court, and that will include the provision of accredited programmes. All offenders, whether they are managed by the NPS or CRCs, will be able to access accredited programmes and other interventions provided by CRCs.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman is reassured by those points. I understand that he would prefer all those programmes to be delivered by the public sector, but I think that he and I would agree that what is crucial is that the standards and quality of those programmes are maintained. We will achieve that by virtue of accreditation and, of course, the accreditation process will still take place within the public sector.

I am grateful for what the hon. Member for Darlington and others have said about Government amendment 5, which I will move at the appropriate time. I am also grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the issue initially in Committee. I also want to take the opportunity to pay tribute, as she did, to Paul Goggins and the contribution he made not only to the amendment but to the restorative justice agenda over a considerable period of time. There are few who can say that they have contributed more to the agenda than he did. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her support, and I hope that there will support on both sides of the House for amendment 5.

The final amendment in the group is amendment 7, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). As he has outlined, the amendment would remove clause 10, which was added in the other place, rightly, by the Government. I am sorry to disappoint him, but it would not be right to remove the clause at this stage. I know that he has a healthy disrespect for consensus, but the fact that almost everybody disagrees with him does not automatically mean that they are all wrong. In this case, I do not think that they are. We should recognise that this is not a sentencing question, as he says that it is—I agree that there is no justification for treating female offenders per se more leniently than male offenders. We are discussing not the sentencing process but the process of rehabilitation that takes place after sentencing. It seems to me that the evidence is clear that how one approaches rehabilitation for female offenders must be materially different, if one expects it to be successful, from how one approaches it for male offenders. That is what clause 10 sets out.

The experience of female offenders is different in a number of ways, whether that concerns the abuse that they might have suffered before committing offences or the rate at which anxiety and depression are suffered. As my hon. Friend said, female offenders have different rates of child care responsibilities from male offenders, so a one-size-fits-all approach will not, in all likelihood, be successful. Let me be clear again that this is not about advocating preferential treatment for women in the criminal justice system or a different sentencing regime for female offenders; it is about ensuring that our reforms remain responsive to offenders’ needs in order to ensure that we turn their lives around and end reoffending.

On that basis, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will see fit not to press his amendment and that Opposition Members will see fit to withdraw new clause 2 and not press their other amendments.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

It is first worth pointing out that we have toughened up the work requirement, so we will now expect people sentenced to community payback to go and do it very soon afterwards. We expect them to do it for four days a week and we expect them to do it properly. If they do not, they will have breached the order and there will be consequences. The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that there will be other elements to a community order which can properly be seen as punitive, whether it is a restriction on movement, an exclusion order from certain places or a financial penalty. There is a range of options available to the court, but we think—and I think his constituents would think—that each order should include a punitive element.

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

The Minister has talked about potential breaches if—as we would probably expect—an increased number of orders are made. What risk assessment has his Department carried out to determine the likely percentage of breaches, and what would be the impact on the Prison Service of having to find additional places?

[Jeremy Wright]

It does not follow automatically that if someone breaches an order, the penalty would be a period of imprisonment, although that is possible. I think the right thing is to say to people: “If you receive a period of unpaid work as a punishment, we expect you to do it and to do it properly. If you don’t do it properly, you will find yourself back in court, and you may find yourself going to prison.” That is absolutely the right approach.