Probation Service

David Burrowes Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

Either the risk register says there is an 80% risk, which should alarm us, or we should be alarmed at the Justice Secretary not publishing the risk register so that we can see for ourselves what the Ministry of Justice’s own officials say. The MOJ agrees with us that the proposal should be tested first. Pilots were set up in the Wales, Staffordshire and West Midlands probation trusts. The MOJ’s press release from 25 January 2012 trumpeted, “World leading probation pilots announced” and quoted the excellent then Minister, the hon. Member for Reigate, as saying:

“These ground-breaking pilots will for the first time test how real freedom to innovate, alongside strong public, private and voluntary sector partnerships, could drive significant reductions in reoffending by those serving community sentences.”

The key word, of course, is “could”. This was a test—one could say a ground-breaking pilot—but what did the current Justice Secretary do in the first week in his job, just nine months later? He pulled the plug on the pilots, opting for full national roll-out, declaring war on evidence in the process. As both judge and jury, he decided that the plans will reduce reoffending, without bothering to wait for any evidence. The headlines generated were, in his view, worth the gamble with public safety.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sadiq Khan]

I shall make some progress first.

The Justice Secretary seems to come out in a rash at the mere suggestion that he should pilot the plans. Back in January, when I challenged him on that, he put his gut before hard facts and evidence when he said:

“Sometimes we just have to believe something is right and do it”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 318.]

That from the man who brought us the Work programme. He will forgive me if I do not base my opinions on what we should do with a probation service employing thousands, supervising hundreds of thousands and serving millions on his hunch, because his hunch led to billions being spent on a Work programme that performed so badly that someone who was unemployed stood a better chance of being in work after six months if they had not been on it. The Public Accounts Committee’s verdict on the Work programme was that

“providers have seriously underperformed against their contracts and their success rates are worse than Jobcentre Plus”.

[Sadiq Khan]

Fast forward two years and the same model has resurfaced in probation, but this time the fallout from failure is of an altogether different magnitude—[Hon. Members: “Give way!”] Madam Deputy Speaker, you know that I am extremely generous in giving way to colleagues on both sides of the House. It is just a shame that it took an Opposition day debate to drag the Justice Secretary here to discuss his plans, which we are quite keen to scrutinise. I will make some progress before giving way.

The Economist hit the nail on the head when it stated:

“If the work programme fails, the cost is higher unemployment; if rehabilitation of offenders fails, the cost is worse: more crime. Which is why those now-disregarded pilots were set up in the first place.”

As if that is not criticism enough, the article goes on to refer to the Justice Secretary’s plans as “half-baked”.

[Mr Burrowes]

I know that we have had a bit of political knockabout, but can we clarify what we agree on? The right hon. Gentleman says that he is in favour of change, but on the previous Government’s watch I did not notice any change in the appalling reoffending rate for short-sentence prisoners, which was some 60%. Does he not welcome the fact that short-sentence prisoners will now have statutory supervision for 12 months to drive down reoffending for the benefit of local communities and, indeed, for offenders?

[Sadiq Khan]

The hon. Gentleman has some audacity. The Conservative party voted against the Offender Management Act 2007, in which we tried to change how probation works. Which voting Lobby did he go into? Was he with us? No, he was not, so I will take no lectures from him on our plans to reform probation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, what we hear is a party that has changed completely. When Labour Members talk about the outsourcing agenda, they tend to forget that they were the people who drove the outsourcing agenda. They were the people who said that prisons could and should be run in the private sector. They were the people who said that electronic monitoring could and should be run in the private sector. A volte-face has taken Labour back to being an old-fashioned left-wing socialist party, and they are now pretending that none of that happened, but I can assure them that it did.

[Mr Burrowes]

Do not the Opposition have a one-sided view of expertise? From my involvement in the criminal justice system as a defence solicitor, I know the expertise of probation officers. That needs to be shared and transferred, and they need to be able to bid for contracts, but we have to recognise that expertise is not just in the public sector—there is expertise in the voluntary sector and the private sector. For example, is anyone saying that St Giles Trust, which supports people into work and housing, does not have expertise? Let us have a balanced view about allowing more people to be involved in the business of rehabilitation.

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is what we hope to achieve. This is not about handing probation to big companies, but bringing in the right expertise from the private, voluntary and community sectors to reinforce the work of the public sector, and to bring new ideas and approaches to rehabilitation. The great irony is that in the debate on the Offender Management Act 2007, Labour Members talked about the benefit of bringing together the skills of the public, private, voluntary and community sectors. Owing to the new, union-dominated agenda they are pursuing, they have abandoned all that and are now saying that anything that involves anybody else is simply not good, and that is not good enough.