Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 4—Piloting of probation reform—

‘The Secretary of State may not undertake a national restructure of the provision of probation services until the proposals have first been subject to an independently evaluated pilot scheme, and the results of that evaluation laid before both Houses of Parliament.’.

New clause 5—Provision of probation services: report to Parliament—

‘(1) The Secretary of State must lay before both Houses of Parliament a report on the performance of all providers contracted to provide officers to perform the duties of supervisor or responsible officer as described in this Act after one year of this Act coming into force.

(2) The report must include—

(a) an assessment of the information made available by each provider to the public, and their assistance to the Ministry of Justice in its performance of duties under the Freedom of Information Act 2000; and

(b) an update on what measures were included in each contract to allow the Secretary of State to penalise a provider that fails to perform to national standards or fulfil its contractual obligations, and on what occasions these measures have been brought into force.’.

New clause 6—Review of the effectiveness of prison services in delivering the Transforming Rehabilitation Strategy—

‘The Secretary of State may not undertake to introduce competitive tendering for the provision of probation services until a review of the prison service’s ability to implement the Transforming Rehabilitation Strategy has been conducted, and the results of that review laid before both Houses of Parliament.’.

New clause 9—Contracts—

‘Arrangements made by the Secretary of State resulting from this Act in accordance with which functions are conferred on officers of non-public sector providers of probation services, must include provisions requiring that—

(a) contracts for the provision of probation services from such providers be published;

(b) the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of such providers in discharging relevant functions be subject to National Audit Office assessment;

(c) companies under investigation for fraud may not bid for, nor be part of consortia bidding for, a contract for the provision of probation services; and

(d) companies with the status of prime contractor under the Work Programme may not bid for, nor be part of consortia bidding for, a contract for the provision of probation services.’.

New clause 10—Transparency—

‘Any contract for probation services shall be transparent and available for both public and parliamentary scrutiny, and be the subject of National Audit Office inspections.’.

New clause 11—Prohibition—

‘No company or other consortia shall be allowed to bid for Probation Service work if they are being investigated for fraud.’.

New clause 13—Annual reporting of reconviction rates—

‘The Secretary of State must publish an annual report which must include details of the impact of new supervision legislation for those offenders serving less than 12 months on the reconviction rates of offenders supervised by providers of probation services and as a consequence of participating in any programme or intervention.’.

[Jenny Chapman]

I would like to start with a few words on our friend and colleague, the former Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East, Paul Goggins. Paul served on the Public Bill Committee for this Bill, and I also served with him on two other Bill Committees. I have to say, and I am sure others Members agree and have said it already in this House, that he was the most thoughtful and supportive colleague anyone could ever have hoped to have sitting behind them on a Bill Committee. He advised me and gave me feedback, and he would definitely have been here today making a very strong contribution to our consideration on Report and on Third Reading. If he was here, our deliberations would be much improved.

I worked with Paul on amendments relating to looked-after children. He would have been very pleased to see the Government shift their position on the length of time that looked-after children can remain in foster care and be supported to do so. That is something he should have taken personal pride in. Although he was not the sort of person who would be arrogant enough to have personal pride, I think he should get the credit for this particular change. I know that he would have planned to speak today and that he would have tabled amendments. I am sure his name would have appeared many times on the amendment paper.

New clause 1 will look very familiar to those who have been following the passage of the Bill through both Houses. For a short and welcome period, it was included in the Bill. The Opposition, and I imagine a number of Government Back-Bench Members, would like to see it put back. I will point out from the start that the call for parliamentary scrutiny did not start life as an Opposition amendment. Although the Minister might sometimes think it, it was not cooked up on the Labour Benches just to make his life uncomfortable. The call for parliamentary approval before significant upheaval of the probation service was a Cross-Bench amendment tabled by the noble Lord Ramsbotham who, as colleagues will know, is a former chief inspector of prisons.

Lord Ramsbotham’s amendment was supported by every Cross-Bench peer who heard him speak to it. While the Bill focuses on one element of change to probation, it is flanked by a massive irreversible sell-off of a public service. It appears that the Government were hoping just to push that through under the radar and we think that that is very wrong. The former chief inspector of prisons was concerned enough by the proposals to try to stop that happening and enough noble Lords agreed with him to pass the original version of the amendment. New clause 1 concerns proper parliamentary scrutiny: MPs taking responsibility for a decision that will irreversibly alter the way in which offenders are supervised in the community, and for which there is no evidence and precious little support.

New clause 4 would provide a duty on the Minister to pilot his proposals for probation before rolling them out at what we think is breakneck speed across the whole country. They are conspicuously absent from the Bill. I will briefly remind the House of the Government’s proposals that are causing us such concern. They plan to abolish all local probation trusts; to sell off the majority of services to providers with no experience of probation or supervising offenders; to split up offenders according to risk categories, despite the fact that risk regularly changes; and to roll out an untested payment-by-results model to every region in one go. Probation services will be fundamentally unrecognisable after this upheaval.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

On the pilot, some of us in the House expressed our concerns. I have now looked into the matter a bit further, and it seems that it would take three or four further years properly to conduct a pilot. Would that not be three or four years during which a continual problem would remain unaddressed?

[Jenny Chapman]

The hon. Lady might want to reflect that had the Secretary of State not cancelled the pilots already taking place, we might now have had a year’s worth—the pilots would not necessarily have to last three or four years—of evidence, information and lessons learned that might have proved invaluable to the Minister as he proceeded with his programme.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

Would the hon. Lady accept, then, that there would be some delay to short-term prisoners getting the help they need, if we implemented the roll-out programme she is suggesting?

[Jenny Chapman]

I do not quite follow the hon. Gentleman’s logic. Had we kept the pilots running, we would be exactly where we are now, but with more information on which to base a decision. Also, we could conceivably deliver supervision to short-sentence prisoners without the sell-off and reform the Government seem hellbent on implementing.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that my colleagues’ arguments are against pilots in general, not pilots in this specific case?

[Jenny Chapman]

We are in favour of piloting. We like to have evidence on which to base decisions, and we think it odd that the Government scrapped a pilot that was already set up and of which they spoke very highly when they set it up. That was a very strange decision, and we think the Government made a mistake when they cancelled the pilots.

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Lady’s point about the need to pilot this significant change. She just criticised the Government for making a mistake in cancelling the pilots, but is it not also true that the Offender Management Act 2007, which Labour introduced and which allows Governments to make these changes, did not specify the need for a pilot? Does she accept that that was a mistake as well?

[Jenny Chapman]

I will come to the 2007 Act later, but since the hon. Gentleman has mentioned it now, I shall comment on it briefly. The 2007 Act created probation trusts, and they have now been in existence for several years and actually become quite good—I am sure even the Minister would concede that they are performing very well—but they could perform an awful lot better if challenged and supported to do so. We strongly believe, however, that the 2007 Act should not be being used to abolish the very entities it was set up to create.

On piloting, we have tabled new clause 4 to address the Government’s complete lack of evidence for their proposals. When we ask for evidence for how well the model might work, why it was picked and how much it will cost the taxpayer, we are told that the Secretary of State just believes it is the right way to go about things. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I do not think he is a particular fan, reported its concern that the Government did not appear to consider any other policy options before alighting on this one. It seems that he has had his heart set on this from the very beginning.

Previous Ministers in this Government believed that the proposals should be piloted. In early 2012, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) announced two “ground-breaking” probation pilots to

“help develop…Payment by Results policy”

and to

“test how…public, private and voluntary…partnerships…could”—

“could”, he said—

“drive…reductions in reoffending”.

Had these pilots gone ahead, we would have had more than a year’s experience of this sort of model, but unfortunately the current Secretary of State cancelled them as soon as he took up his post. When we ask, as Opposition Members rightly do, how well these proposals work, there is no evidence with which to answer the question, because the Secretary of State has not tested them, and does not intend to do so, to see whether they work. If he were here, I hope the hon. Member for Reigate would be tempted to vote for new clause 4, because he seemed to support the principle when he was a Minister.

We are left, then, without any evidence and without a pilot, and we have lost the opportunity to test the details of these plans on a much smaller scale and with a manageable level of risk. Inevitably, there will be teething problems and inexperienced providers, there will be failures in communication and there will be glitches in the new IT system. We have just had an hour’s urgent question on the difficulties of introducing a new IT system, yet here we are implementing one at the same time as a wholesale upheaval and sell-off of the service. All this will have to be contended with all at once and on a national scale.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is no doubt aware of the fiasco of the IT service for interpreters in courts, which, dare I say it—ironically—is another Ministry of Justice success story. Does that not underline her point?

[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 ---

[Lorely Burt]

My understanding is that within the CRCs there will be skilled professional people whose job it will be continually to asses the risk factor of low and medium-term prisoners. Would that not indicate that those issues are being covered?

[Jenny Chapman]

I would hope that there will be someone working in a CRC who could assess risk. The point is that whenever we have a transition between organisations, there will be different systems. The relationships will not be so strong and there will be scope for communication failures and for information not to be passed on. That gets to the nub of the concern felt by us and by those working in the sector about where the problems will arise with what the Government are proposing.

The Government have made much of the fact that new and inexperienced providers will only manage those who are low and medium risk. But the Minister knows that low and medium risk includes offenders who have committed sexual assault, burglary, violence against the person, domestic violence and other quite serious offences. All of them will now be under the supervision of companies that have no experience of managing this kind of risk. Alarm over this lack of experience of providers is part of a wider concern not only that the proposal is not fit for purpose, but that some of these potential providers are not properly fit to deliver it either.

The Government are, I know, painfully aware of the MOJ’s record on procuring services and managing contracts. After the somewhat infamous saga—here is the mammal bit—of the language services contract, the PAC concluded that the Ministry of Justice

“was not an intelligent customer”

and the Chair of the Justice Committee reported that “serious flaws” were exposed in the Ministry’s procedures and policies and that the process was a “shambles”. The NAO concluded that the Ministry

“underestimated the project risks when it decided to switch from a regional to a national rollout”

and allowed the contract to be operational before it was ready. I do not need to spell out the extent of the risk to public safety if these sorts of failures are allowed to occur in this exercise.

Perhaps because of all these problems, Ministers have pinned all their hopes on the payment mechanism. They assure us that success is guaranteed because providers will be paid by results. But Members will recall similar claims being made about the Work programme, in which every provider started by failing to meet its targets. Ministers have also so far been unable to tell Members exactly how much of a fee will be paid by results and how much the provider will get up front, regardless of their performance. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) made an excellent point in Committee, when she said that when universal credit had been bailed out the original structures were still in place to provide services that the reforms could not. There was at least some sort of continuity. Given that the Secretary of State is planning to abolish every probation trust in a matter of months, what will be in place to protect the public? Should a provider fail or the entire roll-out have to be halted because of poor performance, nothing would be in place.

The performance of providers and the very real concern about failure brings me to new clause 5, which deals with contract management. It is designed to ensure better performance from providers and much better management of contracts by the Ministry of Justice than we have seen in recent years. I know the Minister will accept that this is needed. Now we come to the bit about the rabbit! The MOJ paid for a rabbit to be licensed as a court interpreter—the commissioning car crash, as it was called, meaning the language service’s contract. The Chairman of the Justice Select Committee concluded that the Ministry’s naivety at the start of the process appeared to have been matched, once the new arrangements came into operation, by its indulgence towards underperformance against the contract.

We will disagree today on how well the Secretary of State and his Department can manage this kind of process, but I am sure that the Minister would agree with the Opposition Front-Bench team at least on the fact that we must not tolerate underperformance if and when these contracts come into force. We cannot allow these problems to happen again in the future. Neither the Ministry’s nor the Government’s records are particularly encouraging on this front. The Justice Select Committee in its review of the budgeting structure of the MOJ reported—astutely, I think—that the Department has a tendency to focus on policy creation rather than implementation. The recent independent review of MOJ contracting reported in December that there were long-standing and significant weaknesses in contract management at the Department. It found that the focus on contracts lessened significantly after the initial procurement and, in some cases, there appeared to be a lack of appetite for continuous improvement. The review concluded that opportunities to mitigate risks and optimise services were being missed.

We have seen first hand the damage done when the Ministry’s attention span fails to keep track of a contract. Our new clause 5 attempts to support the Government to get a bit better on that. Contracts for two major providers and potential failures in probation bidding are currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, after the taxpayer was overcharged by millions for the tagging of offenders who were dead, had been released or, in some cases, had left the country. The prisoner escort contract with Serco has been referred for investigation by the Metropolitan police, and the Ministry’s own review of contracts has led to two more G4S contracts being referred to the SFO. It should not be necessary to mention how unhappy Members on both sides of the House would be if a company under investigation for fraud were to be permitted to bid to manage public protection, so I am sure the Minister will want to assure us that that will not be the case. So far, the Government have not done so.

Opposition Members have proposed a number of safeguards in new clause 5, which we believe should be included to improve the quality of the Government’s reforms. If the Government are hellbent on going ahead, new clause 5 would provide at least some kind of oversight and scrutiny for this House. We want them to pilot the proposals and seek parliamentary approval, which we have discussed. We tabled in Committee a number of measures to help improve the quality of contracts. These included ensuring that all providers of this key public service would be subject to freedom of information requests, that contracts would last for a maximum of five years so that a Government were not able to make decisions binding the entire Parliament that follows them, and that taxpayers’ money should be protected by the inclusion of break and clawback clauses in all contracts.

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

I am listening intently to the hon. Lady’s argument, but how can it have real force if she dismisses the experience of contractual arrangements gained over a significant period of time with organisations such as Turning Point, the St Giles Trust and Catch 22? The argument cannot have force if she dismisses out of hand the quality provision of rehabilitation by these and other organisations. Is she saying that these organisations cannot be trusted with the management of rehabilitation?

[Jenny Chapman]

I do not have a problem with any of the organisations to which the hon. Gentleman refers. The fact that organisations are third sector does not of itself make them good, responsible and right in every case. If organisations are to take on these contracts, they will do so almost entirely in conjunction with other large companies, and it is reasonable to expect them to be open to scrutiny; my experience suggests that they will be.

[Mr Burrowes]

I am trying to get to the point of the characteristics of the organisations that are fit for the purposes involved. One cannot label an organisation as acceptable simply because it is third sector if it is inappropriate. Does the hon. Lady recognise the principle that there is a role for private sector involvement in rehabilitation?

[Jenny Chapman]

Yes, I do. All I am asking for is parity. A public sector provider of these services is subject to a certain level of scrutiny, not least in respect of freedom of information, and when we are spending increasingly vast sums on a small number of private sector providers it is not unreasonable to expect them to be subject to similar oversight. The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to learn that the Government voted against all these measures in Committee, saying that the current arrangements offer enough protection and assuring us that any necessary safeguards would be included in the contracts.

I am afraid to tell the Minister, who is well respected in this House, that it is a little difficult simply to accept even his word on such important issues, particularly given that the Government’s record on outsourcing is so awful. We have already discussed the compelling example of the court translation services contract, and another example fresh in our minds is the running of Oakwood prison.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way and, as ever, for her kind words. I suggest, however, that I am not asking her to take only my word about the safeguards in the contracts. We will publish the contracts in draft so that the House can see for itself.

[Jenny Chapman]

Perhaps, then, if that is the Minister’s attitude, he will be minded to support our new clause 5. It is reasonably worded and if he reads it carefully he might find that he can support it.

Returning to HMP Oakwood, the Government have somehow managed to build a brand new, state-of-the-art prison that seems to be failing on every imaginable front. A surprise prison inspection last year found inmates reporting that it was easier to get drugs than soap on the wings, while the inspectorate report revealed that the inexperience of staff was visible everywhere, with staff unwilling to challenge bad behaviour and many being

“passive almost to the point of collusion”.

As the report continued, indicators of levels of violence were high, there were not enough activity places and the control and supply of medication was “chaotic”. The chief inspector of prisons called the state of the prison “unquestionably concerning”. The Secretary of State was disappointingly somewhat less firm in his criticism, largely dismissing these as “teething problems”. A couple of months later, inmates managed to stage not one, but two rooftop protests. As late as last week, six months after the inspectorate visited the prison, West Staffordshire police were notified of an incident lasting through the night, apparently involving an entire wing being barricaded by inmates.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I am sure it is entirely my fault for being obtuse, but could the hon. Lady try to weave her remarks about the prison into her arguments in support of the new clause because I do not see a connection?

[Jenny Chapman]

I will attempt to assist the hon. and learned Gentleman. The point is that Oakwood prison is run by one of the would-be providers of probation services.

[Jeremy Wright]

It is not.

[Jenny Chapman]

Perhaps the Minister knows more than I do—I hope he does—but nothing we have read suggests that G4S will not take part in any way in the provision of these services. A statement made on 19 December informed us that it would not be a lead bidder, but also indicated that it might be part of a consortium.

[Jeremy Wright]

Perhaps I can help. The list of prime bidders has now been published, and Members may well find it worth their while to have a look at it. It is true that neither G4S nor Serco appears on the list, but a number of others organisations do, including 10 probation mutuals.

[Jenny Chapman]

But those are lead bidders, and I understand that none of the contracts will be taken on by one organisation alone. There is nothing to prevent G4S and others from being involved in the provision of probation services when the contracts are awarded. The other reason this information is relevant to probation is that it reveals that the quality of the supervision and enforcement of contracts by the Ministry of Justice is not quite what we would like it to be.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The statement that was made to the House a couple of weeks ago was explicit about the possibility that G4S and Serco would form parts of consortia. I think that the Minister should make the position absolutely clear.

[Jenny Chapman]

That is certainly my understanding, and nothing that the Minister has said so far contradicts it. Unless we hear something more definitive from G4S, the Ministry of Justice or the Minister today, I think that that must remain our assumption.

The MOJ tends to take its eye off the ball as soon as a contract has been signed, so new clause 5 helpfully provides for a longer-term regular check on the performance of probation service providers. Its scope is really quite limited: it merely requires the Secretary of State to report to both Houses of Parliament on the performance of all providers that are contracted to manage offenders. In particular, the report must include an assessment of the transparency of each provider, and must specify what information it is making available to the public and how reliably it is responding to freedom of information requests submitted to the MOJ. It must also update both Houses on what measures were included in the contracts to ensure that poor performance could be penalised, and on whether any have been invoked.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

In the past, the Justice Committee has suggested not that private companies should be subject to freedom of information requirements, which would be contrary to any working commercial system, but that when writing contracts, public bodies should ensure that they have access—and thus create freedom of information access—to any information that would have been public if the work was still being done in the public sector.

[Jenny Chapman]

We would probably go a little further, but I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says. The new clause merely requires companies to respond in a way that helps the MOJ to meet its own freedom of information requirements.

Opposition Members are becoming increasingly concerned about the blind spot that seems to be developing in relation to outsourced contracts. Given the rate at which the Secretary of State is issuing invitations to the likes of Eddie Stobart to take over justice contracts, more and more information is being put out of the taxpayer’s reach.

Responding to amendments tabled in Committee, the Government argued that the status quo, whereby a contractor is considered to hold information on behalf of a public body, was working well enough. We disagree, and the Minister knows that, in practice, there is information that private contracts choose to keep to themselves while public providers are rightly held to account. That is not a level playing field, and it does not give us, our constituents or, indeed, the press enough power to scrutinise those who are wielding large public budgets and providing front-line public services.

[Meg Hillier]

The heads of some of the big private sector providers recently appeared before the Public Accounts Committee. They expressed a wish for more openness, and some of them told us that they were being constrained in that regard by their contracts with the Government rather than by their own desires.

[Jenny Chapman]

I was not aware of that, but I am very pleased that some of the big providers are taking that attitude.

We have pledged to expand the scope of freedom of information requirements if we win the next election. We should have liked the Government to make a start with probation providers, but, unfortunately, it seems that so far they are unpersuaded. We hope that, as a compromise, they will agree to monitor the extent to which providers respond to their duty to release information to assist the Ministry of Justice with its FOI duties. That will allow us to establish whether the current provisions are indeed sufficient, or whether more needs to be done to make companies accountable to the public.

Finally, new clause 5 requires an update on what measures were included in contracts to ensure that poor performance can be dealt with properly. We are very concerned about that. The Government refused to assure us that break clauses, which allow the taxpayer to walk away if a provider consistently fails to perform to national standards, would be included in all contracts. Instead, the Minister has given his word that underperformance will not be tolerated, and that contracts will include a number of safeguards to protect the quality of the service and the cost to the taxpayer. The new clause would simply allow Members to hold the Minister to that welcome assurance.

The Government’s proposed reforms are ill thought through, risky and, in our view, reckless. We believe that the Government should slow down the process and take the time to get it right. In fact, they may well be right, and if they organised pilots and obtained some evidence, we would be the first to support them. However, if they press ahead with their gamble with public safety, the bare minimum that our constituents must be assured of is that providers will be expected to perform exceptionally well.

New clauses 1, 4 and 5 are intended to build safeguards into the process. They would allow plans to be properly scrutinised, tested, and made fit for purpose. The Secretary of State is taking a gamble with public safety. He is rolling out an untested model in the hands of unqualified providers, and he expects us to be reassured by his inner belief. It is a great pity that the Government are not willing to proceed slowly, to do things properly, and to work with the professionals, and even the Opposition, to arrive at a result on which we could possibly all agree.

[Mr Burrowes]

I am, in some ways, trying to help the hon. Lady’s case. She has referred to “unqualified providers”. I know that she does not want to pick and choose between different sectors, but is she saying that those 10 probation mutuals are unqualified?

[Jenny Chapman]

Absolutely not. I welcome the involvement of probation mutuals. I think that it would have been a great deal easier, less time-consuming, less expensive and less traumatic if some of those organisations had been allowed simply to get on with it without having to form themselves into new organisations. Had the Government’s initial proposal been for all trusts to be able to re-form as mutuals, using the skills, experience, knowledge and relationships that they already have, we would not have needed to engage in this debate today.

We will press new clauses 1, 4 and 5 to a vote. If the Government are so confident about what they are doing, why should they not submit their plans to proper parliamentary scrutiny?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I will be brief because we enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) for some little while. Essentially the point of difference between her and me, certainly in relation to new clause 1 and the new clauses that mirror it, is that she would like to delay the progress of the implementation of the Government’s proposals and I would like them to be implemented as soon as possible.

There has been a considerable amount of to-ing and fro-ing both across the Dispatch Box and between Members of Parliament and their constituents who work within what I loosely term the probation services, by which I mean not specifically the Government agency, but those who carry out rehabilitation services. I have recently met members of staff of the Leicestershire probation service and when I was a shadow Justice Minister I made a point of visiting a huge number of probation offices, meeting both probation staff and those who work not in the Government agencies but in the charitable sector, such as the organisations my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) mentioned in his intervention. It struck me that, by and large, there was a big hole in the way we look after short-term prisoners and repeat offenders. They were released from prison unsupervised, and the sooner we start supervising these under-12-month prisoners the better for them and for their victims and society as a whole.

I can appreciate the political arguments the hon. Member for Darlington advanced. I appreciate that from her pre-parliamentary background she has an affiliation with the GMB and therefore has an interest in—

[Jenny Chapman]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

Well, I hope I have read the hon. Lady’s entry correctly. Perhaps she had better come and see me later and we can get it corrected. In any case, her party has a closer affiliation to the trade union movement than I personally have and my party has. I can therefore understand why she is advancing these arguments requesting pilots and other forms of delay mechanisms, because she does not want these measures to come to pass. I think that argument has been had and the situation now needs to be resolved, however, and I therefore urge her not to press her amendment to a Division. I am far more interested in the results we can achieve for our constituents and those offenders who desperately need the supervision they are currently not getting than I am in the political arguments.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

No doubt that might be one of the collateral reasons, but that does not undermine the point I am making, which is that we need to help these under 12-monthers as soon as possible. If we are to have further statutory brakes on the introduction of supervision, either through the national probation service or through the non-Government organisations—

[Jenny Chapman]

rose—

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I seem to have provoked all sorts of charming people. I give way.

[Jenny Chapman]

I really did not want to intervene and was trying very hard not to do so, but I just want the hon. and learned Gentleman to understand that we are not opposed in any way whatever to the introduction of supervision for prisoners who serve short sentences, but we believe there are other ways in which that could have been implemented without going through this ridiculous process that the Government are hell-bent on pursuing.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

Is it St Francis I am reminded of: “Oh Lord make me pure, but not yet”?

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[Sir Edward Garnier]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have many mutual friends who are members of NAPO. Harry Fletcher is a former assistant general-secretary whom we both know and respect. My point was quietly to tease the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) who happened to say in a parliamentary reference book that she was a member of the GMB, but she tells me that that is not the case. I was not making a substantive point but—

[Jenny Chapman]

rose—

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I do not think that we need to divert into other areas. The short point I am making is that of course there are political differences between my party and Labour over the influence of trade unions. Essentially what I want to get across is that this needs to be done because the victims and the prisoners in question need to be assisted.

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I recognise that those rates have barely changed despite the considerable efforts and very good work of probation officers up and down the country. It has never been part of my argument that the changes are justified because no good work is being done. In my view, good work is being done. None the less, there is clear justification for a change in approach.

[Jenny Chapman]

If the Minister wants us to accept everything that he has said so far, will he explain why it was a good idea to cancel the trust probation pilots when he did?

[Jeremy Wright]

The pilots that we cancelled were not sufficiently close to the proposals that we are making for us to learn as much as Opposition Members would like us to have learned from their conclusion. That does not mean that we learned nothing from their period of operation. The point has been made from the Opposition Benches that it is possible to learn from pilots even if they are not allowed to run to full term. We certainly have learned from those pilots and from other experiences of payment by results. I will return to that point in a moment.

The Government essentially had two options. We had to decide how to approach the task of tackling reoffending rates within our means. The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) is right that reoffending rates are too high. We could not allow that situation to continue without a response. We could simply have imposed further significant cuts on the 35 probation trusts without targeting our efforts on those with the highest reoffending rates, or we could have brought in innovative approaches to supporting offenders that would also be more efficient and that would allow us to reinvest some of the savings to target support through the gate on the under 12-month group. We chose the latter option. At the heart of our proposals is the aim of opening up the supervision of low and medium-risk offenders to a diverse range of new rehabilitation providers to bring in the best of all sectors to tackle reoffending.

The right hon. Member for Delyn discussed the Offender Management Act 2007. He was here at the time and witnessed the passage of the Act at first hand. He knows that what I have described was the policy of the Government at that time. The Opposition want to forget it now, but they have to be reminded that the powers for which they legislated and to which Parliament agreed in 2007 entirely underpin the reforms that this Government are making. I have explained what Lord Reid said when he was Home Secretary. He made the matter perfectly clear when he said:

“The Secretary of State…will be responsible for ensuring service provision by entering into contracts with the public, private or voluntary sectors. With that burden lifted, the public sector can play to its strengths while others play to theirs.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 593.]

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[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Gentleman is making a slightly different point. I am talking about what authority is given to this Government by the Offender Management Act and, more broadly, what the previous Government thought they were doing when they passed it. The case made by Labour Members is that we have in some way taken that Act and twisted its meaning. It has been taken wholly out of context, and we have a travesty of a representation of what that Act says and means. I have been saying to the right hon. Member for Delyn and his colleagues that what the Act says is very clear, and the Hansard that supports it is also clear. Not only did the previous Government anticipate that such a thing could happen, they chose not to rule out the possibility of its happening. They had every opportunity to do so but they did not take it. That is my point.

More to the point and in connection with further parliamentary approval, the Offender Management Act says nothing about requiring Parliament to approve the exercise of that power. By contrast, section 15 of the Offender Management Act provides that an order repealing or disapplying the restriction of certain functions, including advice to court, to the public sector, must be subject to parliamentary approval. If, when in government, the Opposition had wanted to ensure that the power in section 3 for the Secretary of State to enter into arrangements for probation provision was subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, they could have done so, but they did not.

What is more, the Labour Government were prepared to guarantee that the supervision of offenders more widely would remain in the public sector for only three years, as I have said. Let us be clear: the Labour Government’s position was that the supervision of any offender—not just medium or low-risk offenders—could at some stage be competed for outside the public sector. This Government are not saying that. We say that medium and low-risk offenders should be competed for. Secondly, the Labour Government’s position was that the only element of parliamentary scrutiny of the Secretary of State’s powers to organise the probation service relates to the relatively narrow concept of advice to courts, which this Government do not intend to alter. Thirdly, the previous Government’s position was that the public sector monopoly on providers would be guaranteed for only three years.

The hon. Member for Darlington now proposes a new version of the new clause. I am not convinced that new clause 1 does exactly what the Opposition want, because the word “national” next to the word “restructure”, which is designed to avoid the need for any small change of probation to be debated in the House, does not necessarily apply to the word “reform”. Therefore, we might end up being asked to discuss very minor changes to the probation service. Beyond that, the basic point is that the Labour Government were given the opportunity to ask for a further check in Parliament for the provision but did not do so. It is a little odd that Labour Members now say that they want one.

On the substance of the reforms, we have spoken about the establishment of 21 new community rehabilitation companies in England and Wales. In the first instance, they will be publicly owned for a number of months before we consider whether to transfer ownership to other organisations. It is open to organisations from the private, voluntary and community sectors, as well as organisations currently working in probation trusts, to bid for those first-tier contracts. Part of the payment of those organisations will be based on results, so that we incentivise a greater focus on tackling reoffending and achieving better value for the taxpayer.

A number of the proposals tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell)—he has tabled new clauses 9, 10 and 11—remain flawed, as they were in Committee. As drafted, they would apply only after a competition has concluded, and would not prevent organisations from bidding, which is what I believe he wants to do.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister unsurprisingly comes up with technical reasons why those proposals are deficient, but he knows what my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) is getting at. Will the Minister therefore confirm that he will not accept bids from any consortium that has, as a partner, G4S or any other organisation that is under criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office?

[Jeremy Wright]

I entirely understand what the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is getting at, but I am afraid that I do not dismiss as lightly as the hon. Lady flaws in the proposals that we are being asked to support. If they are flawed, the House should not support them.

Let me reiterate the Government’s commitment to publishing contracts for the delivery of services to low and medium-risk offenders. That includes not just draft contracts, as I have said, but final versions of the future contracts for probation services. I hope that that is some reassurance to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington. Likewise, I reassure him that the Government will include within the contracts for rehabilitation services a provision that enables the National Audit Office to access private providers’ records and documents for audit purposes. Of course, the NAO might require access to the community rehabilitation companies’ financial systems when there is a need for public assurance. That will be reflected in the contracts. That also answers the point made by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier).

The new clauses seek to limit who can bid for contracts by excluding certain organisations. For example, prime providers for the Work programme could be excluded. I am afraid that that would simply reduce the diversity of the market of rehabilitation providers. Many organisations are doing important work within the Work programme, including voluntary organisations working with disabled and disadvantaged people.

The hon. Member for Darlington made a point on fraud, which the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington address. Let me be clear that the Justice Secretary and I are determined to ensure the integrity of future contracts to deliver value for money for the taxpayer. The Ministry of Justice is currently following a proper procurement process and will do so in future competitions. It is that process that should rightly be used to determine who can bid for contracts and who the future providers of services should be. Procurement law permits consideration of issues that affect a bidder’s eligibility, such as fraud, only at the initial prequalification stage, and not after that stage unless a bidder’s circumstances have changed.

In respect of the current competition to identify the future owners of the 21 CRCs, the prequalification stage was completed in December. Even at that stage, we would not have been legally allowed to exclude a bidder on the grounds that they were under investigation for fraud. The grounds for mandatory exclusion under procurement law are that the bidder has, or any of its directors have, been convicted of fraud. The ongoing investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into the conduct of G4S and Serco—which, I remind the House, this Secretary of State initiated—in delivering the Government’s electronic monitoring contracts would not have provided a legal basis for excluding those organisations from the current competition.

[Jenny Chapman]

I just want to be clear about this, so that colleagues on both sides of the House can be clear. Despite all the assurances that the Minister has given here in the past, he is saying that companies under criminal investigation by the SFO will be able to be partners in bidding for provision of services to monitor offenders in the community.

[Jeremy Wright]

The point I am making is that the rules, which pre-existed this Government by the way, are very clear: investigation is not the same thing as conviction. We have made it very clear, however, that we have initiated our own investigations. I have warned the hon. Lady before that she is sitting in a very large glass house and that she should think before throwing stones. This is a contract negotiated by her Government and substantially abused, it would seem, during her Government’s term in office. That abuse was discovered by this Government and acted on by this Government. She is hardly in a position to suggest that we have behaved in any way improperly. In any event, I remind the House that both organisations, Serco and G4S, are not on the list of lead providers.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington raised the question of whether those organisations could act in a supporting role. The answer is that we will want to look very carefully not just at the process of corporate renewal those companies are undergoing at the moment but at the specific bids they are making. However, they are not on the list of lead providers. I remind Opposition Members that we were told not so very long ago that the proposals could never work without G4S and Serco, that no one would be interested in bidding. We have a list of 30 different bidders, comprising 50 different organisations at lead bidder level. The Opposition are simply wrong about the level of interest.

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[Jeremy Wright]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern, but I do not agree with his characterisation of Serco’s contract. As he would expect, we have looked closely at its performance under the contract and, again, I assure him that we will look closely at all those who bid for this work. As with all competitions, the decision to award each contract depends on our being satisfied that bidders can meet our standards in respect of quality of service and price and, in this case too, on our being satisfied about the financial risk being taken to reduce reoffending and ensuring good value for the taxpayer. If we are not satisfied that overall bidders can meet our requirements, we will not award them contracts.

Hon. Members have raised the issue of the management of high-risk offenders, so let me make it clear exactly what will be involved. We are creating a new national probation service to manage directly all offenders who pose a high risk of serious harm and any sexual or violent offenders subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements. After an offender has been sentenced, the NPS will make an initial assessment of an offender’s risk of causing harm, and all offenders assessed as posing a high risk of serious harm will be the responsibility of the NPS. For low and medium-risk offenders, CRCs will be required to manage any risk of serious harm that the offender might present and to have appropriately trained staff and robust procedures in place for the management of cases where the risk of serious harm escalates to high during the offender’s supervision. They will also be contractually required to refer cases back to the NPS if they consider that the risk of serious harm might be escalating. In the end, the decision will be taken by the NPS.

New clauses 5 and 13 deal with reports by the Secretary of State to Parliament and the public on the impact of the reforms we intend to make. I want to reassure the House that the Government are already committed to acting in the spirit of those amendments. We are already considering how we can provide information about reoffending rates broken down by CRCs and the NPS. As Members will know, the MOJ already publishes reoffending statistics, not just annually but every three months, broken down by probation trust, prison and upper and lower-tier local authorities. I am happy to commit to the House that, in the future, the reports will break down reoffending rates for the different CRCs and the NPS. Indeed, as a first step, we have already published on the MOJ website a set of indicative figures to show what reoffending rates and cohort sizes in each contract package area would have looked like had the new structure been in place for the 2005-10 period. We are also piloting the justice data lab, about which I have spoken before, which will give providers the opportunity to match the performance of their cohort with something comparable.

On freedom of information, CRCs will be required in contracts to assist the MOJ in discharging its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act—very much along the lines of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Select Committee, outlined earlier, and in accordance with his Committee’s reports and conclusions.

On penalties, we are developing a performance framework that will include financial penalties for services not delivered to time or to quality. Contracts for CRCs will reflect that and, as I have said, the House will be able to see that this is the case when we publish those contracts in draft. I do not want to lose sight—nor should the House—of the major prizes here: first, expanding support for offenders released from short sentences and, secondly, developing a through-the-gate system for offenders released from prison. I think that that commands a broad measure of support.

That brings me to new clause 6, tabled by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I want to reassure him that as part of our reforms there will be a new resettlement service provided in custody for all offenders before their release. This will be tailored to the individual’s needs, but is likely to include support in finding accommodation, family support, mentoring and financial advice. Services in custody will be underpinned by the changes to the way in which the prison estate is organised. That will mean that, in most cases, the same professional can work with offenders in custody and continue their rehabilitation work in the community.

As the right hon. Gentleman would expect, the Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service are working closely together to ensure that the Prison Service is well prepared to implement these proposals. Right from the outset of these reforms, we established a joint working group on this topic that reports to senior officials and ultimately to Ministers. The working group has commissioned an analytical model of prisoner flows through the prison estate. That allows us to test the impact on prisoner flows and locations from implementing the resettlement prison allocation model. Furthermore, I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the Prison Service is undertaking a full review of facilities and staffing levels at all proposed resettlement prisons. Together all these things will ensure that the changes we are proposing are deliverable and sustainable, which I think is exactly his concern.

On new clause 4, I understand that the case of Opposition Members is that this is a huge leap in the dark and that no testing of what we are doing is or will be going on. That is not the case. Let me set out to the House the key elements that make up our reforms, what we are doing to test them and the steps we have built in to assess how effectively they are working at key stages of implementation.

First, there are the reforms at the heart of the Bill: the extension of licence and supervision to offenders released from short custodial sentences. There are lawyers among Opposition Members, and they will know, and ought to appreciate, that with a change to the sentencing framework of this magnitude, it cannot be desirable to introduce it one part of the country but not another. To do so would risk postcode justice, with some offenders getting different sentences from others.

To expand supervision to the under-12-month group, as we all say we want to do, we need to make the changes at a national level. That means funding those changes at a national level. The savings to fund the changes come from two sources; first, the efficiencies generated by competing supervision of low and medium-risk offenders and, secondly, the back office savings from moving to 21 from 35 CRCs, along with a single national probation service. Competing services in only one area of the country, if that is what is being proposed—I have heard little detail as to what sort of piloting is being proposed here—would extend supervision to short-sentenced offenders but, in every other respect, we are carrying out extensive local testing of the reforms in no fewer than 14 probation trusts. There is also the testing we are carrying out on the new operating model for the CRCs and the NPS. Those tests will enable us to inform how the new processes will operate once implemented. The first round of tests has already started and will continue over the coming months.

Secondly, there is the important fact that the 21 CRCs that we are creating will remain in public sector ownership for some months after their creation until the conclusion of the competition. This gives us further opportunities to carry on testing and to refine the system. Caseloads will not all necessarily transfer at the point the NPS and CRCs come into being, and we have made it clear to trusts that where there is a case for doing so, we will give greater latitude to allow for caseload transfer to operate more slowly than the people transfer process. That will avoid disruption and the type of dangers that that might create, which Opposition members have described.

Thirdly, there is the testing that we are carrying out of our approach to payment by results. We have consulted extensively on this and there are also pilots under way to test different approaches to payment by results. Opposition members would have us believe that there has been no piloting and that there is no piloting. Neither of those two things is true.

[Jenny Chapman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jeremy Wright]

In just a moment. The pilots that we are already undertaking—HMP Peterborough and Doncaster—are providing significant lessons for our wider reforms. Not only that, but they are engaged in another aspect of the reforms—the move to a through-the-gate system supporting the transition from custody to the community. The difference between them and the other pilots referred to is that these are much closer to the model we seek to pursue.

[Jenny Chapman]

I have a feeling that the Minister knows what I am going to ask him about payment by results. If he has done so much piloting and testing and has such confidence in this system, why has he repeatedly refused to tell us what percentage of a contract will be paid regardless of performance, and what percentage the reward element will be? We suspect that it would be very little.

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[Jeremy Wright]

I would say two things to the right hon. Gentleman on that. First, he and his colleagues have busily argued that we should have had more pilots, while some of the pilots we cancelled were less comparable to our reforms than were Peterborough and Doncaster, so he needs to be careful what he is arguing for. Secondly, he is absolutely right to say that the Peterborough and Doncaster pilots were conducted on a voluntary basis. That is because the law does not allow us to impose them on a compulsory basis. That is the law I am inviting the right hon. Gentleman to vote in favour of today, and I very much hope he will do so. Unless we have that law, we will never be able to impose those kinds of provisions on a compulsory basis.

Finally, on the issue of the pace of the reforms—an issue of which others have made much—I want to say two things. First, it is important that those who are employed by probation trusts—my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made this point—understand where they stand. It does not benefit them for us to drag our feet at this point. We need to get on with it so that those people can understand what their own futures hold. Secondly, to reiterate a point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), I make no apologies for the urgency of these reforms: as long as we wait, there will be further cases of reoffending and further victims created. Some 600,000 offences are committed every year by those who are reoffending. That is the problem that everyone here has identified correctly and everyone says they want to do something about. The difference between the Government and Opposition Members is that we know how we are going to do it and they do not have the faintest idea. They do not know how they would pay for it, either. We know that the last Government set out to achieve this, but could not afford to do it within existing budgets. That option is out. We know how we will pay for this; they do not. They have not told us; they should certainly support what we propose.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister talks of paying for the reform. We worked out that we could not afford it at the time, but he has not presented a single bit of evidence to show that he can afford it: we have been presented with no costings whatsoever.

[Jeremy Wright]

I have already explained to the hon. Lady that one of the commercial realities is that we do not disclose such information to those who we hope will bid under the amount concerned, because we want a better deal for the taxpayer. We are very interested in getting a good deal for the taxpayer, and we think that this is the way in which to do it.

The last Government intended to introduce these measures within existing budgets and without contracting out. The hon. Lady opposes contracting out, but we say that that is the way to pay for it. What does the hon. Lady say is the way to pay for it? Or is this, once again, the sort of opportunistic opposition that says “We like the idea, but we do not really want to do it”? I remember—and perhaps the hon. Lady does as well— that on Second Reading the shadow Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), said that if we will the ends, it is very important to will the means. It does not seem to me that the Labour party has done any of that since his Second Reading speech.

By my count, we have engaged in 21 hours of parliamentary debate, and there have been three votes on the principle of our reforms. Opposition Members lost every one of those votes, and they still ask for more parliamentary debate. I wonder how much more of it they feel that they need in order to be persuaded of something that they supported, and legislated for, when they were in government. Now, for reasons of sheer opportunism, they wish to walk away from, and leave abandoned, the victims and potential victims of crime whom our proposals would help.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jenny Chapman]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 3—Veterans’ rehabilitation requirement—

‘(1) The Secretary of State must by order establish a pilot scheme enabling courts to include a veterans’ rehabilitation requirement in a community order.

(2) A veterans’ rehabilitation requirement may only be used where an offender was previously a member of HM Armed Forces.

(3) A veterans’ rehabilitation requirement must provide for the offender to be referred to a veterans’ rehabilitation panel at the start of a community order, which will put in place a rehabilitation plan for the offender.

(4) An order under subsection (1) must make provision—

(a) about the membership of veterans’ rehabilitation panels; and

(b) to allow for the requirement to be reviewed periodically by the veterans’ rehabilitation panel at intervals of not less than one month.

(5) An order under this section—

(a) shall be made by Statutory Instrument; and

(b) may not be made unless a draft has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.’.

New clause 12—Building better relationships programmes—

‘It shall be the responsibility of the National Probation Service to provide all Building better relationships rehabilitation programmes for male perpetrators of domestic violence where a court makes an order for participation. It shall also be the responsibility of the National Probation Service to provide any programmes that are deemed necessary for short-term prisoners who have been involved in domestic violence.’.

Amendment 7, page 9, line 41, leave out clause 10.

Government amendment 5.

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[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.

[Mr Llwyd]

I am interested in what the hon. Lady has to say. In 2008, I went out, as an adviser to the Howard League, to see the courts in action. The first such court in the United States was in Buffalo, New York state. Currently, eight years down the road, it still has a 0% reoffending rate, which is absolutely incredible.

[Jenny Chapman]

The right hon. Gentleman clearly has a great deal of experience and expertise in this area. I am heartened by what he has said, which makes the idea of veterans courts all the more compelling. Since the first court was opened, the programme has been replicated across the country, and a number of states have passed legislation providing for the state-wide establishment of such courts. One has introduced changes to allow veterans to be diverted, where appropriate, into treatment rather than prison. That is the mark of simple, systematic support that can make a life-changing difference to an individual.

New clauses 2 and 3 are the starting steps. They aim to start our catch-up with the US and other nations. New clause 3 provides for a pilot of a variation of the veterans court to be trialled in the UK. New clause 2 requires a wide-ranging consultation on the issue as a whole. Both new clauses are reasonably small asks and, if passed, would offer the chance to learn more about the particular needs of veterans and how best we can support individuals to prevent future offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the experience in the United States shows that when such cases go through the courts the judge dictates how the person should be helped? The judge makes the point to the other key agencies that they have responsibilities to the person. For example, if the housing people or health people are failing, the judge can have a go at them. That makes things work much more effectively than saying, “Let’s just sit down and talk about this,” as it provides some direction.

[Jenny Chapman]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who has knowledge and expertise in this area. What he says could apply to any offender, as many of us are concerned that judges are not always as aware of the outcomes of the decisions they make as they could be. This particular idea would also help in that regard.

That might also start to make a world of difference for servicemen and women struggling to find their feet after their service to the rest of us. The Minister’s consultation is welcome, but we would like a commitment from the Government that action will be taken to trial and improve services for veterans who enter the system. As the noble Lord Beecham put it eloquently in another place,

“we should… not allow another situation to develop in which sentiments are pronounced but nothing much happens.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 June 2013; Vol. 745, c. 1565.]

I thank the House once again for the wide-ranging support on the matter and look forward to the Minister’s reply. We will not press these new clauses to the vote, but I would like him to respond carefully to what we have said and give us more assurances than he has given so far on the review he has begun.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Jenny Chapman]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 4

Piloting of probation reform

‘The Secretary of State may not undertake a national restructure of the provision of probation services until the proposals have first been subject to an independently evaluated pilot scheme, and the results of that evaluation laid before both Houses of Parliament.’.—(Jenny Chapman.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.