Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Chris Leslie

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I tend to agree with my hon. Friend. We have to get to a position in which those people who are charged with the rehabilitation of offenders have a much freer hand to deliver the interventions that will be effective for the offender who is in their care. If we over-prescribe exactly what has to be done from the centre, we will have a much less effective system. That process will be central to the rehabilitation revolution of delegating responsibility and authority for these decisions to a local level.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

While I would not go as far as the Minister’s party in terms of rehabilitation for prisoners, is it not better to have resources going into rehabilitation so that we save money in the long run? When I spoke to those who work at Nottingham prison in my constituency, they were very concerned that the cuts that will be implemented tomorrow could mean that prisoners will be locked up for much longer periods with no rehabilitation services.

[Mr Blunt]

I detected a degree of contradiction in how the hon. Gentleman presented his question. He does not want to go as far as we would on the rehabilitation of offenders, but then asks us to go the distance. That is exactly what we will do. It would be wholly short-sighted to cut our capacity to deliver rehabilitation of offenders, and that is why we will enable a system that gets the whole country—including the voluntary, not-for-profit and the private sectors, as well as the existing state services—to work together to deliver effective rehabilitation of offenders and effect a step change in the delivery of what is a critical public service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Chris Leslie

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. Today’s probation trusts possess the nation’s professional expertise on offender management. We want to release all our capacity—public, private and voluntary—to effect a revolution in how we provide for rehabilitation of offenders. No organisations are better placed to deliver that than today’s probation trusts. I hope that they seize this chance, which is why I have asked the Probation Association and the Probation Chiefs Association to work urgently with my officials to help shape our Green Paper proposals. I am confident about what probation trusts will be able to achieve.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I recommend the Minister deal with the point that I believe the hon. Lady was raising. In Nottinghamshire, there is certainly a strong case for a probation trust, but irrespective of whether we have a particular type of structure on offender management, do not the cuts to the prison budget—and, indeed, as we have heard today, the cuts to the probation service—show that the big society to which he referred is actually a euphemism for allowing prisoners to roam free within the community at large?

[Mr Blunt]

No, it is not. The hon. Gentleman and all his right hon. and hon. Friends are going to have to get used to the fact that we are going to do things rather differently. We are going to pay for outputs, not direct inputs or have targets or over-control our public services by instructing them precisely how to achieve their objectives. One way in which we are going to increase our capacity for offender management is, I hope, to enable probation trusts to be able to affect the involvement of the whole community—including the private, the voluntary and charitable sectors—to increase our nation’s capacity to deal with offenders and to rehabilitate them effectively.