Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship for the first time.

I want to pay tribute to the wide experience we have across the House in relation to criminal justice. There are criminal defence solicitor practitioners such as me and my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), there is the Justice Committee Chairman, who has served in this House for 40 years, throughout that time championing the cause of rehabilitation, and there is the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), who has a good track-record as a Minister. It is a great shame, however, that we cannot unite cross-party around offender rehabilitation.

Members are saying that they agree, in their different ways, with the principle and substance of this Bill, but we cannot unite on it. Everyone who has been involved in this area, whether as a criminal defence practitioner, a Minister, a Select Committee Chairman or a constituency Member, will know what to make of what the shadow Justice Secretary referred to as an anomaly, which was the closest he got to an apology for the previous Government leaving this huge area unreformed. At long last we have a Government who are making offender rehabilitation the centrepiece of a criminal justice Bill.

Every year Members spend time in this House and in Committee scrutinising yet another criminal justice Bill and putting more offences on the statute book, responding, perhaps, to popular––or populist––demand, but not getting to the crux of the problem, which is offender rehabilitation and sky-high reoffending rates. What a shame that we cannot unite today to give a Second Reading to this Bill even though we agree on its main principle, which is tackling short-term sentencing and ensuring that rehabilitation is mandatory.

I pay tribute to the probation service, and many concerns have been expressed on its behalf. I know it well, as representatives of the service have come to see me recently, and I also know from my 20 years as a criminal defence solicitor about the excellent and diligent work done by probation staff. We have heard about the long hours they work, and how they deal with complex cases and issues. They cannot just tick a box to get someone out of the cycle of crime, and probation service staff are willing to go the extra mile and engage with non-criminal justice services to ensure someone gets into work, restores family relationships and addresses all the other areas that we know serve to drive down reoffending.

Although we must ensure that we keep those skills in the service and that the measures in this Bill support that, we must also recognise something we have not heard enough of: what members of the public, both victims and taxpayers, think when they see reoffending rates in respect of short-term sentences of 58%. That is failure. That is 58% service failure, and if any other service or business—although some people do not like talking too much about business—had a 58% product failure rate, people would say, “We have to do something about this.”

This is a catastrophic failure by the previous Government, not merely an anomaly. This is a massive gap in the previous Government’s policy in relation to criminal justice, despite the best efforts of the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East. Although they put custody plus on the statute book, they failed to implement it and ensure we could provide a better service to our constituents. They are the people who have had to live with and put up with—sometimes as victims—people coming back and repeating crime, as a result of that failure.

It is all very well saying, “We failed because of cost. We don’t have the cost”, but we heard no answers from the Opposition as to what they are going to do about that, apart from making this political point about clause 1. All they could say was, “We tried to put it on the statute book. But we did not do anything about it—we did not implement it—and we could not do it because of cost.” That is not good enough—it is not good enough for all those people are the recipients of that 58% failure rate—and we must do more. Whenever there is a 58% service failure, there is a need for change. There is a need for leadership change, and we have got that, because we now have a Secretary of State who is willing to be bold and radical, and wants to do something about the situation. That is why I applaud the principle of this Bill, which is about offender rehabilitation. However, we also need to change how we do that.

What is the bottom line here? Sadly, we have a dividing line, which is going to become evident at the Division, between those who support the Second Reading and the principle of the Bill—those who say that the status quo is unacceptable—and those on the side of the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who says, “The status quo is acceptable. We are just going to have to talk to the probation service.” He is going to talk, but what more? He is saying, in effect, that we should sideline this issue of service change for another 18 months and not get on with the job. We can talk about the issues of implementation and about how we need practically to carry out the principle of the Offender Management Act 2007, but why is he wanting to have dividing lines at this stage?

All hon. Members would like to see more mentoring to ensure that people actually get “through the gate”. I understand that 65% of offenders say, “If I had that mentor who took me through the gate, it would have a dramatic effect on my offending.” We cannot just have the status quo. As I mentioned in an intervention, there are cases where the private, voluntary and public sectors provide mentoring, but they are all too infrequent and the mentoring is voluntary, not mandatory. At its heart, the Bill is saying that there will be mandatory supervision, and that is about mentoring. We will not just have the same situation, whereby what people see through the gate is not that mentor who takes them into rehabilitation, but the drug dealer waiting for them, or their mates who are going to get them back into the same cycle of crime. For the sake of these people, we are not going to put up with the status quo tonight.

Sadly, 62% of these offenders will not get into employment after their release, and that status quo is also unacceptable. They are going to go on jobseeker’s allowance, and attempts will be made to get them back into work through the Work programme and other schemes. All too often, they get back into the only career they know, which they have learned all too well in prison: a repeated career in crime. That is not acceptable.

Nor is the status quo acceptable in terms of drug misuse, which, as we all know, is prolific. We know that 64% of prisoners will have taken drugs in the four weeks before going into prison. We can intervene and do all we can in prisons, and good work is going on in rehabilitation wings. RAPt—the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners trust—and other agencies are doing good work trying to ensure that we turn people around in the captive community of prison. However, what we need to do is ensure that when they get out of prison they are released into the hands of drug treatment providers and have the appointment that is going to be mandated in this legislation. That matters greatly and it shows why the status quo is not acceptable for these people, too. Too often, not only are they not getting off drugs, but they are getting more addicted to them in prison. If we cannot sort these people out in prison, we need to do more to ensure that we get them off drugs when they get out.

We have not heard so much about families in this debate, but 200,000 children in England and Wales have a parent in prison. That is extremely significant, as is the fact that at least 40% of these prisoners say that if there was that family support—those visits from family—when they are in prison and, crucially, continued support when they are released, it would have a dramatic effect on whether they reoffend. The status quo is unacceptable not only for the offenders, but for their families—their children. The evidence of intergenerational crime is growing, and for those children it is not acceptable for us to sit and argue around the edges today; we must take a stand and say that the status quo is unacceptable.

I declare an interest as a criminal defence solicitor. In some ways, I have a perverse interest in not voting for the Bill’s Second Reading tonight. In many ways, my trade has an interest in this reoffending cycle continuing, my filing cabinet being full, with lots of new clients coming through the system. In many ways, it is not in my interest to vote for Second Reading, but it clearly is because I have a duty to ensure that we do all we can to prevent reoffending. I will be on the side of the public and victims, who want to do more.

We have the framework in the 2007 Act that enables us to put in place the contestability to allow proper rehabilitation. In some ways, what I heard in some of the speeches from Opposition Members is a throwback to the olden days, but if they listened to what their colleagues said many years ago, they would hear very different things. If they had listened to the speeches made by the then Home Secretary in 2006, they would have heard the following words:

“There is only so much that internal reform of the probation service can achieve”.

They would also have heard:

“There is no need for all of these jobs to be done by the same agency…we need to match appropriate skills to appropriate tasks to free up professional probation officers to focus on the most serious criminals in the community.”

Those words were a precursor to the 2007 Act. How things have changed in the Labour Opposition’s rhetoric now; they are certainly going against the principles behind the 2007 Act.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

On that quote from the debate around the 2007 Act, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that those words were aimed at the establishment of probation trusts and not at their abolition, which is what this Bill will lead to?

[Mr Burrowes]

The quote’s focus is on matching appropriate skills to appropriate tasks. We must ensure that the skills of probation staff are properly matched, not only so that they can deal with serious criminals, but so that we can use the best people around to secure rehabilitation for short-sentence offenders. Of course probation staff are going to be needed. They are going to be in the front line, because they are the experts, to ensure that the new organisations that are working to deliver payment by results are going to do the job. Of course, they are not going to ignore these skills, but we need to focus on how we can match the appropriate skills to the demands we face.

We face new demands, because we have recognised that there is unfinished business here. Dealing with offenders on short sentences is unfinished business that we cannot simply ignore by saying it is a matter of costs. We need to find a way, a model, to deliver rehabilitation to these people. Payment by results has been mentioned, so I will go into a little more detail about that mechanism because I have some experience of it. We should not ignore the value of paying for success. It may provide an opportunity and, indeed, a profit for some companies, but success will be measured by a mechanism of ensuring that offending is reduced, but that has a dramatic effect on people’s lives, on rehabilitating the individual and on the public, the victims and the taxpayer.

Taxpayers hearing this debate will think the current situation extraordinary. They will say, “Is it the case that in law we do not have to rehabilitate or supervise released prisoners who were serving less than 12 months? When we look at the cohort of the most prolific, who are causing the most damage in our community, is it not extraordinary that it has taken this long, and this amount of debate on and scrutiny of different criminal justice Bills, for us to have, at last, a principle that we must mandate supervision of this category? Why was this never in place before?” They may then even ask the Opposition, who want to divide the House on Second Reading, why they are trying to stand in the way of progress and of the principle of rehabilitating this cohort.

Clause 1, which took up some time while being scrutinised in the other place, is relevant in the sense of dealing with implementation, but it is impractical to suggest that we must come back before the House when any change is made to the probation service. To my mind, although I respect the experienced people who moved clause 1, it is more in line with an early-day motion to which people can sign up to make a political point, to make a noise and to show concern. It does not have practical value. We must get serious about how we can implement our approach practically.

I agree with the principles of the Bill. It is properly focused on the taxpayer, who has not had much of a mention, on the victim and, indeed, on the offender, to ensure that we consider the results and outcomes so that we do what we all want to do—that is, reduce offending—whether the work takes place in the private, public or voluntary sector.

We must be careful in how we approach the private sector. G4S and Serco are bandied about as though we were going to throw out the private sector from any relationship or involvement with rehabilitation, but it is also important not to trash the 70,000 G4S employees or those employed by Serco. I do not understate the serious investigation into some of the contracts, but we are also dealing with contracts on rehabilitation, getting people through the gate and mentoring. I mentioned the transitional support service in Wales, which deals with women and men. It has been evaluated independently as a most effective model, which is producing great success. The problem is that the system is voluntary, whereas the Bill is about making it mandatory, as well as the schemes operating around the country.

We have work in prisons; for example, Altcourse prison has an employment programme that provides 40 hours’ work in prison. Years ago, many a Minister would have dreamed about that and it happens through G4S and the private sector. We must recognise that those contracts must happen in partnership with those in the public and voluntary sector so that we can deliver and upscale the good schemes, as we are now mandated to.

I want to refer to some of the requirements on drugs and alcohol rehabilitation. I particularly welcome the mandated requirement for drug rehabilitation appointments. That is needed and should happen for appointments not just in the statutory service but in the voluntary service. The great hidden army delivering rehabilitation—the “Anonymous” groups—would also welcome such a move. That happens in other countries: they specify directionally that requirements should include an appointment at an “Anonymous” group. I would welcome that.

I welcome the flexibility in the Bill on rehabilitation activity requirements but, as I said in my intervention on the Justice Secretary, it is important that we also recognise the value of the specific requirements under previous legislation, not least those on mental health and alcohol and drug rehabilitation. Indeed, the alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement is still in force and is being piloted, and I would not want us to lose that valuable measure. I want an assurance that we will be able to do that properly.

The court also has a crucial role. Drug rehabilitation requirements have been ordered in some cases and, for one reason or another, have not been delivered on the ground. The court has had to come back and say that they are a requirement of the court that must be delivered. There must be reviews by the court, which has a crucial role. Yes, we need flexibility for those delivering rehabilitation, but the courts have an important part to play.

Finally, we must consider implementation carefully. I recognise the concerns that people have raised about payment by results, but we have already been there. The Work programme has been mentioned, but I want to mention the drugs recovery pilots. I have had a particular role in helping to model those pilots and in seeing how they have worked out, particularly in my patch, Enfield. It is important to recognise that this area is complicated, that such schemes take careful local design and that the matter must be handled with care. I recognise that, but it is also important that we are not fixated on the price mechanism, the amount that is paid and whom it is paid to. One lesson learned from the pilots has been that the service has been transformed. They have linked together not just the drug treatment providers but those who want to support people into housing and employment. The service change brings those organisations together under a payment mechanism.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am very interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying about payment by results and drugs initiatives. He is right that lessons are being learned through piloting. Is he not concerned that the 70% sell-off of probation to be delivered by payment by results is being done with no piloting whatsoever?

[Mr Burrowes]

My point is that there have been many different pilots in the past few years that have considered different ways of ensuring that we are more driven by outcomes than by process. One of the great failures of the previous Government, not least on drug treatment, was that it was all based on process and on ticking a box. Indeed, the so-called payment by results was payment by activity, driven not by rehabilitation and outcomes but by the numbers of people getting into treatment. That is why it is important to recognise that payment by results has a crucial role to play across all public services, but will vary from service to service. We must therefore handle with care how we deliver payment by results on criminal justice.

I want to offer some advice on the LASARS, or the local area single assessment and referral systems—we are all into acronyms when we have service changes. They have had a particularly good effect, not least because they are locally based. They are also based on single assessments and many of us involved in the criminal justice system will be all too aware of the repetitive assessments throughout the system that lack continuity and delivery of change. LASARS allow a single assessment in the criminal justice and non-criminal justice worlds. Payment by results offers us the opportunity to get away from the criminal justice mindset in that regard. Public health interest concerns, mental health concerns and educational concerns must be dealt with under a wider remit than that simply required by a criminal justice model. That is why we need to make the most of the opportunity offered by the LASARS, which would help refer people to the right places through a single assessment.

Co-design is also important and we must recognise its value. One such example can be found in London, where the Mayor, Boris Johnson, has helped pilot Project Daedalus, which focuses on the rehabilitation of young offenders through the resettlement wing at Feltham. That cohort had appalling reoffending rates at 70%, yet through the scheme he did so much better. The project was radical in that there was a resettlement broker who could negotiate with employers, accommodation providers, drug rehabilitation providers and others to try to ensure that rehabilitation was delivered.

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[Kate Green]

No, that is not my point. My point is that we are going into a wholesale rearrangement of the public probation service—a service that has existed to manage the totality of risk, and take overall responsibility for it. That is what is being broken up. It is extremely important that we do not go down that track without proper parliamentary scrutiny of the implications and consequences, and that scrutiny is what clause 1 seeks to achieve.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister was being rather cheeky, because we had a whole Act to reorganise the probation service and establish trusts. The Government are attempting to dismantle the probation service without any parliamentary scrutiny whatever.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

There are concerns about the contracting structure that will be introduced as a result of the Bill. I want to repeat some of the concerns that have been expressed about the way in which the contracts will be priced. It has been presented by the Lord Chancellor this afternoon and more generally as predominantly a payment-by-results model which will seek to introduce new private funding into a marketplace where, within the public sector, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) pointed out, it would be difficult to find those levels of additional funding, particularly in these times of public spending constraint.

The point is that a very small proportion of these contracts, it seems, will genuinely be payment-by-results contracts. Substantial elements of these contracts will be subject to meeting court requirements, which means that there will have to be enough money in those contracts to ensure that those court requirements can be adequately met by the contractors. That, for a start, will leave relatively little room for manoeuvre in pricing a more discretionary element and an element that is about payment by results.

It is also the case, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, that within the existing spending envelope not only are these providers to manage about 150,000 existing offenders subject to supervision, but to take on board a further perhaps 50,000 within the context of the same funding envelope. That is not credible. It means either that we will have a very poor quality of intervention and/or cherry-picking, with a substantial number of those offenders receiving no support of any value at all.

I am also concerned about the way in which the pricing structures will respond to what a number of hon. Members have talked about—the changing risk profiles that we see when offenders are subject to supervision. As others have said, offender risk profiles are not static. Risk profiles can vary. Offenders can be beset by a range of external pressures and circumstances—bereavement, loss of a job, ending of a relationship, becoming homeless and so on—all of which can take a relatively stable low to medium-risk offender and suddenly catapult them into being high risk. At that point, we understand that the low or medium-risk offender would switch from being supervised by a non-statutory provider into the public probation supervision system. They would be supervised within the statutory sector.

But I do not think we have been told—perhaps the Minister will intervene on me if he has information to share about this—how that would be reflected in the pricing and the reward for the private contractor, and what additional resources would be made available to the public probation service if the risk profiles that had been assumed in the initial pricing of the contract turn out not to be what is experienced in practice.

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[Kate Green]

I am not sure that I have totally understood this. It seemed that the private provider would retain any income attached to the result—the outcome—although we do not know what proportion of that overall payment to the private provider will be for the result and what will be a fixed payment for having to carry out the basics of supervision. It is welcome that the Minister says that resources will follow the offender, and therefore that if there is extra activity to be carried out in the public sector, the public sector will receive the necessary resources to carry out that work, but I am not quite clear where that funding will come from if the private provider is also to be remunerated in full for the work that it has carried out and for any ultimate outcome that may be achieved. Perhaps the Minister will be able to provide more detail as the Bill proceeds on its parliamentary passage. It would be useful to understand the cash flow and funding models in more detail.

Concerns have been expressed about the way in which prisoner risk categorisation will be undertaken. We have quite a long established system—OASys, or the offender assesment system—for determining levels of risk. It is being suggested that one of the things that the Ministry of Justice may wish to do is to revisit that risk assessment system to try to change the profile of the offender base so that more offenders can be deemed to be low or medium risk and supervised in the private or non-profit sector rather than, as would be suggested on current risk assessment tools, within the public probation service.

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to this issue. As I understand it, a new risk assessment tool will be introduced at the same time as these reforms take place. Is she concerned, as I am, that this would be the worst possible time to introduce that change?

[Kate Green]

We have clearly heard the same rumours. It is important that we understand what the new risk assessment tool will look like, what the implications will be for the overall risk profile of this cohort of offenders, and whether we can expect to see some significant shifts in the way that the level of risk is identified and assessed.

[Kate Green]

Perhaps I am overcomplicating what is being proposed by the Government, but it seems to me that the whole financial structure and the way in which that relates to risk assessment is very unclear to Members—certainly to Opposition Members. It would be helpful, during the passage of the Bill, for the Government to make that clear to us so that we can understand the true financial as well as the risk consequences of what is proposed.

[Jenny Chapman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kate Green]

I will give way one more time, then I want to move on to another issue.

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend is very generous in giving way and I am grateful. The problem is that we will not have the opportunity to go into these issues in more detail as the Bill progresses because none of the concerns being raised is in the Bill. That is the point of our amendment.

[Kate Green]

It is clear that we need much more time to scrutinise these proposals properly and, sadly, that is not what we are being offered by the Government tonight.

I turn to an issue that has been raised by a number of hon. Members, mostly Government Members, about the opportunities that exist for probation trusts in some form to bid for the new contracts. It is pretty clearly understood in my area that they will not have that opportunity to bid. It is baffling to me that, when they are doing such good work already, we would not want to give them the opportunity at least to compete for those contracts. They might not be successful, but surely where we have good models of provision in the public sector, we would want to enable them to put themselves forward in competition with other potential providers.

It has been said, rightly, by a number of hon. Members that there will be the opportunity for probation trusts to set up different kinds of legal structures—co-operatives, mutuals, shadow structures and so on. I am not sure why we think there is any particular advantage to the public in forcing them to go down that route. Again, I cannot help but believe that it will create extra cost and extra complexity. Nor is it clear to me that we know what these mutuals and co-operatives will and will not be allowed to bid for.

It would be helpful if the Minister commented on that in his response and told the House how he envisages these entities coming into a system when the contracting is beginning to take place already, before many of them have had any chance to get off the ground.

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[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

The Bill will enact the provision set out in the coalition agreement to

“introduce a ‘rehabilitation revolution’ that will pay independent providers to reduce reoffending”.

It is supported by both partners in the coalition. I think that it is an ambitious Bill, and one that is sorely needed.

The offenders who are most likely to reoffend on release from prison are precisely the ones targeted in the Bill—those serving 12 months or less—but until now those people have received no help at all: they are just let out of the prison gates with the princely sum of £46 in their pocket. They need support. They need somewhere to stay, gainful employment and a dedicated professional concerned with their welfare.

The power to make contractual arrangements with any person or body to provide probation services was set out in the Offender Management Act 2007, but the previous Government never saw fit to bring it in. What a pity. How many lives could already have been turned around since 2007 if more offenders could have had the kind of support we are bringing in only now?

The basics of the Bill have already been outlined by the Secretary of State, and I certainly do not intend to go over them again. I will use the time available to address some of the concerns that have been put to me, and which I in turn have put to the Secretary of State and his team.

The Secretary of State has already explained that the provisions set out in clause 1 had already been debated and agreed under the previous Government in relation to the 2007 Act. If this Government are happy to accept those provisions, I am unable to see why, when we have consensus on both sides of the House, we need to legislate again. We are using the powers already given to us by the previous Labour Government to unlock resources from the private, charitable and voluntary sectors while opening up support to offenders who have served prison sentences of less than 12 months. Even if we were to accept the clause, I do not believe it would be particularly helpful. It is drafted very widely, and my understanding is that even if we were to accept as it as drafted, many subsequent small changes would need the approval of both Houses of Parliament.

On drug testing, I have been approached by DrugScope, which is concerned that by imposing drug testing under supervision for a 12-month period for short-term offenders we are

“setting them up to fail”,

because they will have more opportunities to fall foul of the system, be re-incarcerated and start the whole cycle all over again. That could be the case, except for two factors. First, magistrates will have a wide range of options open to them, including taking no action at all. However, drug testing will alert supervisors to the problem so that remedial help can be given. Secondly, they would normally have to fail a test several times before action would be taken against them. It is understood that drug addicts have lapses, and the aim is to help, not hinder, their progress under rehabilitation. That is already a condition of the existing licence, so it is not a material change.

Concern has been expressed about the inclusion of class B drugs in the testing regime. After all, many people who take drugs such as marijuana do not offend just to feed their habit. The fact is that there is still a strong correlation between ex-offenders who go on to reoffend and the consumption of class B drugs. For example, people might go back to their old haunts to obtain them and take up associating with other offenders. Some 48% of offenders who go on to reoffend use class B and C drugs in the month before custody, compared with 30% who never used drugs before imprisonment. Why tempt fate?

Another area of concern relates to the assessment of risk, which a number of hon. Members have mentioned. The fact is that risk can fluctuate wildly at times of chaos in someone’s life. There seems to be a belief in some quarters that community rehabilitation companies will be assessing the risk category of murderers, rapists and paedophiles. My understanding is that that is not the case. All those categories will remain the responsibility of the new national probation service. Furthermore, the oversight of all risk assessments in the low and medium-risk categories will remain the overall responsibility of the national probation service. A condition of tender acceptance is that the organisation has properly qualified people in place to assess changing risk.

Many concerns have been expressed about who will run the system, who the bidders will be and what real value they will be able to add to what is already an exceptional probation service for longer-term offenders. Let me say that now I would be dismayed if my Government contemplated considering a bid from any organisation that was under investigation for defrauding the taxpayer on other outsourced services. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] It is a fair question: if the existing probation service does such a good job, why introduce other players into the field? Why not just extend the existing service?

[Jenny Chapman]

The hon. Lady is making a very carefully considered speech, and the Minister has also heard her concern about G4S and Serco and their ability to compete for contracts. Will the Minister take this opportunity to confirm that they will not be able to bid for those contracts?

[Lorely Burt]

It is above my pay grade to comment on the Minister’s thoughts about the complex circumstances with regard to a specific contractor. He has, however, heard what I said and the “Hear, hears” of my honourable colleagues.

To return to the widening of the service, the Government’s answer is that introducing the private sector and competition to the market will drive down costs, which will release the money to widen the service to those shorter-term offenders who get little or no supervision at present. I hope that that equation will work. We are not privy to the analysis the Government have used. I am prepared to go with it, because I want this new system. I want short-term prisoners to be looked after on release and to have the opportunity to turn their lives around, and I want society as a whole to benefit from reduced reoffending.

What sort of organisations will they be? What does the private sector know about finding homes and jobs and helping ex-prisoners build new lives? My understanding is that the new organisations will probably be consortiums of private businesses, charities and not-for-profit organisations. A lot of tonight’s debate has been about whether the probation trusts will be able to tender for private sector contracts, but I understand that it is not appropriate for them to do so, because they are Government funded and such contracts involve risk. However, could my hon. Friend the Minister explain under what circumstances existing probation trusts or, indeed, existing probation officers could join consortiums, because their expertise will be in great demand and highly valued?

There are other concerns about whether the private sector will manipulate the system for gain. It is, after all, in it to make a profit. I hope that my Government have learned from the past failures of other privatised schemes under, perhaps, both Labour and Conservative Governments. I hope that grass-roots organisations will not be pushed, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) has said, into less-than-good deals for the delivery of their part of the programme.

The programme must deliver real results. We know that the best schemes of this nature have achieved up to a 12% decrease in offending rates, and I hope that consortium bids will approach that best-in-class target. The percentage of the payment at risk is also very important. It must be a substantial proportion of the fee in order to drive the consortiums into putting everything into working together so as to enable offenders who want to turn their lives around to be able to do so.

Finally, I want to dwell on the repercussions of the changes for those who work in the probation service, because they are anxious that they will find themselves either under the constant stress of having to deal with high-risk offenders or, potentially, out of a job altogether. I am assured that the need for our excellent probation officers will be greater than ever and that there will be more work for them to do, not less. Those who do not want to work with high-risk offenders will find that their skills and expertise will be welcomed in the community rehabilitation centres to which they can be transferred. Will my hon. Friend the Minister outline the scheme under which those transfers will take place? I understand that it is a Cabinet Office scheme that is at least as good as the TUPE transfer, but I would be grateful for any clarification.

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[Mike Wood (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), but I want to go back to the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), who is no longer in his place. He regretted the fact—he said it was a great shame—that we could not all come together in agreement on this Bill. I would have thought, however, that by the time he spoke it was totally apparent—it certainly is now—that, on the issue of reducing recidivism, which would be beneficial to all parties and to the whole of society, there is enormous agreement on both sides of the House that supervision of and support for petty offenders should have been introduced a considerable while ago, certainly under the previous Government. I, like many others, regret that they did not find the money to do that.

I also think that there is almost a consensus that, in some cases, it would be beneficial to have extra licence requirements for those who have served sentences of up to two years. I think, therefore, that there is a great deal of consensus about what we are told is the whole corpus of the Bill. Where the consensus falls down is on the means by which to achieve those high ideals and aspirations.

None of what the Government say they want necessitates the privatisation of the probation process and the destruction of our first-class professional probation service. Indeed, as we have heard repeatedly throughout the debate, if the Government were serious about their objectives, they would be turning to the probation service, not undermining it. They would be looking to the people who have proved that they can deliver those kinds of objectives, not doing the very reverse.

The Government should be looking to services such as my own in west Yorkshire, which consistently rates among the best. I place on record my thanks to Karen Ledger and Andrew Sinclair from that service for their briefings to me, which have been extremely useful, and to Gail Wilson, a constituent of mine who wrote to remind me that in 2013 alone the West Yorkshire service has received the Investors in People gold award, is the only trust in the Stonewall top 100 employers index and has won three Butler Trust awards, and that, at the same time, between 2005 and 2013, it reduced reoffending by 14%. As we have heard, every probation trust throughout the country has met and continues to meet every target that the Government have set. The Government rate them good or better than good. That is why the consensus falls down.

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend rightly points out that trusts are consistently awarded good or excellent ratings on inspection. Does he agree that now is the time to raise the bar and ask more of our trusts, such as asking them to deal with short-term prisoners, and not to be abolishing the very trusts that are performing so highly?

[Mike Wood]

That is exactly the way forward. Were those extra requirements to be introduced, the probation service would meet them. Despite the attempt to obscure the reality of the Government’s plans, we learn that the probation service will not even be given the opportunity to do so, for some completely fallacious reason to do with not risking public money. That comes against the background of a Bill that will risk £20 billion of public money by giving it to untried and untested private companies. It is true that were the extra responsibilities and work to be offered to the probation service, it would meet the challenge.

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[John Glen]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about the challenge of freeing people from drugs. As a magistrate for six years, I was deeply frustrated at the recurrent sentencing of the same individuals, knowing that typically someone would have to go through a programme six or seven times. I do not want it thought that Conservative Members think the solution is to send everything out to the private sector. I do not believe that. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) indicates that he thinks that that is what the Government believe, but I do not believe it. We are arguing for a recognition that all types of provision can lead to better outcomes; we do not have an ideological fixation that says that the way we have always done it must be the way of the future, but with enhanced targets.

I want the Government to learn the lessons from my experience at the Amber Foundation. It has a realistic view of what can be done with offenders, particularly young offenders with a history of drug or alcohol dependency, in a limited time frame. Short-term interventions will frequently be insufficient, as what is needed is a long-term investment of focused effort and patience.

Turning to the calibration of the payment-by-results system, I am aware that any move to a system opened—sensibly, I believe—to the possibility of private provision is looked upon with grave reservations by many working in the sector, but I hope that many of those who have spoken, mostly Opposition Members, will be assured by the Government’s inclusion of a measure of total reoffending in a cohort within the proposed payment-by-results formula. We do not want a system that incentivises providers only to take the low-hanging fruit of easy cases, and I am confident that the Government will deal with that this evening, but in the light of my earlier comments, I think that that needs to be spelled out clearly and that the payment-by-results system will need careful calibration.

The Amber Foundation explained that the support it could offer young offenders was sometimes constrained by the narrow time conditions attached to funding. A 12-month window for results will not always be sufficient for someone on the long and difficult road to mature, responsible, drug-free, crime-free independent living, particularly those who have had an appalling start in life and spent several years living on the wrong side of the law. Will the Minister therefore consider including an additional mechanism to reward long-term reduction in reoffending in a cohort? Will the Government also look at an option for the sentencing institutions to recommend a longer supervision period within a residential or closer-working environment?

I hope that the Minister will be able to address those minor points in his closing remarks. I am nevertheless enthusiastic about the Bill’s aims and the framework that the Government have proposed to achieve them. It is vital that we tackle reoffending rates, and the Bill shows that the Government are serious about and committed to doing so.

In these very tricky areas of public policy, it is inevitable that change will be uncomfortable. It has been suggested in a number of contributions today that pilots could be set up across the country, and that we could extrapolate from those pilots the information necessary to design the perfect system. Of course, that would have some appeal if we wanted to avoid taking any risks whatever, but it is unreasonable to suggest that Ministers are oblivious to the history of combined understanding and experience across the probation service and the range of front-line practitioners on the ground.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, because he is making a thoughtful and considered speech, but the fact is that the combined experience, as he puts it, is deeply opposed to the reforms, which is why many people were on strike last week.

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[Mr Llwyd]

I am sure that it could be paid for by the delivery of some savings here and there in other parts of the budget.

[Jenny Chapman]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Minister might like to consider this: about a third of the budget of probation trusts is top-sliced, which they are unable to control, and which pays for things like estates, and it might be better employed in delivering rehabilitation services?

[Mr Llwyd]

I accept what the shadow Minister says, but I want to say something to the Minister. I respect him as a Minister who does engage with people when they debate with him; I have great regard for him for that. However, I have to say to him that given that he does not know the cost of this farrago he is going into, he should not ask me about costs. [Interruption.] Well, it is first of all incumbent on him, being in government, to come up with figures, not to test figures put forward from the Opposition Benches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

This has been one of the better-informed debates in the House that I have had the privilege to take part in, largely thanks to the amendment that was tabled by the Opposition, because it has provided colleagues with the opportunity to debate the sell-off of the probation service. The Bill, which seemed for some time to have gone missing and which it is good to welcome back, does not deal with the sell-off at all.

We can add this reform to a long list of rushed and regretted legislation, which includes that on the Child Support Agency, the private pensions that were mis-sold, dangerous dogs and the poll tax. All those disasters were foreseen and some had laudable aims, but they were all the personal obsession of a single Secretary of State—spot the coincidence.

The Bill provides for the post-release supervision of offenders who serve less than 12 months in custody. It makes some changes to community and suspended sentence orders and drug testing. That is all fine. Contrary to the Government’s wishes, the Bill also includes a clause to require the scrutiny of their planned sell-off of the probation service. I will come back to that later.

As has been said, the Opposition support the introduction of supervision for offenders who serve less than 12 months in custody. We know that supervision and support after release are effective in challenging reoffending and managing risk when done properly. That is why the last Labour Government sought to bring in custody plus. Offenders serving short sentences who are not currently supervised by the probation service have the most prolific reoffending rate of any group. By extending services to that cohort, the Secretary of State is agreeing that supervision works. We wholeheartedly welcome that view.

To continue to focus on areas of agreement, other provisions in the Bill will introduce increased flexibility in the structure of community and suspended sentence orders, widen the scope of drug testing after release and introduce a drug treatment order for those on licence. We are happy to debate the merits of those proposals and look forward to examining them in Committee. We also welcome the inclusion of a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the needs of female offenders in commissioning services. That group has been conspicuous by its absence in other legislation and it is welcome to see that trend broken.

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), whom I congratulate on supporting the amendment, raised questions over the future supervision of offenders, the risk that they pose and the inevitable dangers that are inherent in the Government’s plans. I am sure that a Committee of the House would be willing to engage with those and many other issues, but I am afraid that there will be no such opportunity if the amendment falls.

Particularly disappointing is the Government’s determination to prevent Members from having the opportunity to debate the wider, risky upheaval of probation that precedes the Bill’s implementation. The Opposition cannot accept the roll-out of plans that are rushed, untested, uncosted and pose serious risks to public safety. From his speech it is clear that the Chair of the Justice Committee has serious reservations about the risks of this proposal.

The Government plan to hand over dangerous offenders, including violent and sexual offenders, to companies with no track record of providing probation services, and to a time scale that those responsible for implementing the changes have described as “unworkable”, “unrealistic” and “unacceptably risky”. The plans will for the first time fragment responsibility for offenders, adding a totally avoidable layer of bureaucracy to decisions on public safety. The proposals have not been tested to see whether they work and have not been subject to parliamentary scrutiny—a situation that clause 1 puts right. Clause 1 provides that the Government may not alter the structure of the probation service unless their plans have been first laid before, and approved by, a resolution of both Houses. It was inserted by Cross-Bench and Labour peers in another place, and when introducing the clause, former chief inspector of prisons Lord Ramsbotham summarised his concerns thus:

“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 have been ridden over roughshod, in the desire to satisfy a party politically directed timetable that pays no attention to practical reality.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 June 2013; Vol. 746, c. 659.]

Those debating this issue in the other place agreed with Lord Ramsbotham’s assessment that the Government have so far failed to prove the viability and affordability of the Secretary of State’s plans and voted in favour of putting a brake on proceedings. Many Members agreed with that suggestion of caution, including my right hon. Friends the Members for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), and my hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), yet it has not been heeded. It has since been reported that the Secretary of State does not believe that we should pilot what he describes as “a revolution”. After the severe problems that the Government have recently experienced in the costly roll-out of universal credit, colleagues can join probation chiefs, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee in disagreeing with that rather stupid assessment.

I hate to break it to the hon. Members for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), but nothing in the Bill requires responsible officers in future to be qualified, experienced or even trained. In summary, Ministers are not at all interested in the competence or quality of provision. Colleagues in the House are not assured that the Secretary of State and his Department can answer questions about the safety of their constituents—questions that the Government do not want to answer.

Opposition Members are deeply concerned by the lack of detail from the Government on the cost of the Bill. What resources will the Department need to pay for the supervision of 50,000 extra offenders each year, how much will the contracts cost and what percentage will be paid by results? Even more concerning is the lack of knowledge, owing to a lack of interest in testing the model on the operational side. For example, how long will it take to swap responsibility for a high-risk, volatile offender between G4S and the national probation service?

The Secretary of State should be able to come to the House and answer those basic questions, and he should certainly answer them before he asks the House to nod through the sell-off of the probation service. The core of the Bill is welcome, but by cancelling the probation pilots, the Secretary of State has pulled the foundations from beneath it. The Government are abolishing local trusts, preparing to accept bids from providers under investigation for fraud and contracting an untested model in a Department that has repeatedly had rings run round it by G4S and Serco.

In the light of that, the Opposition are right not to trust the Secretary of State’s gut feeling. There has been no piloting, no parliamentary scrutiny, no commitment that those under criminal investigation cannot bid, no costings and no interest from the Government in the competence of providers. Ministers cannot say that they have not been warned. For those reasons, I hope hon. Members vote in favour the amendment.