Elfyn Llwyd
Main Page: Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)Department Debates - View all Elfyn Llwyd's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberI am now looking for stunning succinctness. I call Mr Elfyn Llwyd.
I shall try to stun you, Mr Speaker.
The Secretary of State knows that the relationship between probation officer and offender is crucial to the rehabilitation process. How will he assure the House that opening up to the private sector will not undermine that crucial relationship?
In all these things, I take the view that the status of the person involved—whether they are classified as public sector or private sector, or who exactly they work for or which union they belong to—is a slightly subordinate issue. This is a rather sterile debate of a few decades ago about whether there should be private sector or public sector provision. What matters is the quality of what is done, the quality of the person, the relationships they develop, and what is available to them to make a community sentence more effective.