Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

David Burrowes Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Champion]

I support what the Minister says, but there are two points to make. First, we have not been presented with the costs, so we do not know whether it can be afforded. Secondly, I do not agree with the premise that that is the only way to go forward.

Although I would not choose it, we are not fundamentally opposed to commercial companies tendering for and running Government contracts, as long as they are proved to be the best provider. We are also not at any level against voluntary organisations being involved. Indeed, a number of such organisations are providing specialist services in Rotherham, and we want that to continue. I am sure that that is happening across the country. This is not an either/or situation.

I want to use this debate to challenge some of the Government’s reasons for this massive overhaul of our judicial system, in the hope that even just one person in the Chamber will listen to some of the evidence that we are putting forward and question the assumptions that are being made. The underlying assumption is that the existing system is not fit for purpose, yet the National Offender Management Service published a report in July 2012 that demonstrated that the quality of the probation service was either good or exceptional in every single probation trust. After the probation service as a whole won an award for excellence in 2011, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who was Minister for prisons and probation at the time, said—

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Lady has attended the debates on this subject. She was here for the Opposition day debate and she served on the Bill Committee. Plainly, the focus of the Bill is the provision of rehabilitation for short-term offenders. Will she provide statistics on who is looking after those short-term offenders and on their reoffending rates? Is it really acceptable to defend the status quo?

[Sarah Champion]

I agree that it is unacceptable that those people are not getting support now. I would like to go further and start their rehabilitation in prison. I would like there to be a complete system, so that when people come out they will be able to engage much better in society and will not reoffend.