Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The deportation process should mean that these people are not entitled to re-enter the UK. Of course, the increased sharing of data between European police forces is one way of ensuring that we know who they are before they try to enter the country and that they do not return. My hon. Friend and I share the same ambition of ensuring that people who have committed terrible crimes in other countries simply cannot come to live here.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

The Lord Chancellor is correct in describing the chief inspector of probation as a man of great integrity, because his report yesterday contradicts somewhat the description of the Transforming Rehabilitation programme that the Lord Chancellor has just provided us with, even though the chief inspector’s wife runs half the service now. The chief inspector said that splitting the probation service in two has caused problems with process, communication and information sharing—I am not being funny, but some of us have been saying that for quite some time. Is it not now about time the Lord Chancellor woke up to the reality of his risky, shambolic privatisation?

[Chris Grayling]

I do wish the hon. Lady would get her facts right. She just said that the chief inspector’s wife is running half the service at the moment, but of course that is not true. The service remains, as of today, entirely within the public sector, and she might get her basic facts right. Had she read that report, she would have seen that the chief inspector identified a number of long-term systemic problems that predate any change we have put in place and were ensuring underperformance. He said that it was necessary to move to a steady state—in other words, to complete the reforms and get things bedded in for the long term—as quickly as possible.