Prisons Competition

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Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I will consult those who negotiated the details of the contracts and write to my hon. Friend with an answer to that extremely pertinent question.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The Secretary of State will be aware of the recent report on HMP Bronzefield, a privately run women’s prison. It found seven cases of self-harm per day, one woman who self-harmed 93 times in a month, and one woman who was kept in segregation for three years with very little human contact. Health care was shockingly poor, with no female GPs, and pharmacy services were tortuous and inconsistent. How on earth can it be for the public good to extend private sector prisons?

[Mr Clarke]

Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons does extremely valuable work and over the years has exposed things that can be praised or strongly criticised in both public and private sector prisons. If we look back over the years, we see that no rule and no measure can be produced that shows that either sector is overwhelmingly likely to produce praise while the other is overwhelmingly likely to produce criticism. We must look at the inspectorate’s reports, take them seriously and ensure that where there are serious problems they are addressed. In my opinion—with respect—it is extremely out of date to say that what is wrong in such a case is the fact that the prison is private, whereas when another prison is criticised it somehow does not matter so much because it is public. The whole point of contracting and competition is that one specifies the quality one wants and the right price for the taxpayer, and then the inspectorate system ensures that real failings are addressed—and at the same time, we sometimes have penalties in the contract if providers fail to deliver.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

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Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend’s point is well made. However, the police and crime commissioner, who will have a mandate, could be more assertive. That is the basis and thrust of the chief constables’ concerns. I cited the example of London. The Mayor of London stood on a manifesto of placing uniformed officers on public transport and tackling knife crime. Whether that cut across the operational independence of the Met has been debated but not resolved, but it is significant that those things have happened, and the Metropolitan police have willingly implemented them. We must accept that, to some extent, there are areas of negotiation and shades of grey, which is why all parties agree that it would be a mistake to try to define in statute the notion of operational independence.

However, equally, we are all agreed—as I indicated on Second Reading, the Government were already minded to do this—on drawing up a protocol, as the Home Affairs Committee recommended, to try to set out the precise roles of the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable in the new arrangements, and to broaden the protocol to cover the role of the police and crime panel, given that that is new, and the role of the Home Secretary. It is worth stating that the Government’s intention in introducing that reform is not to abandon the tripartite, but to rebalance it, because we feel that it has been too distorted in the past, particularly in relation to the accrual of power by the centre and the Home Secretary.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Can the Minister enlighten us as to what would happen if someone breached the protocol?

[Nick Herbert]

May I come to that in a moment? I will address the status of the document shortly.

As I mentioned earlier, the Home Office has set up a transition board to discuss how the present system will migrate to the new one. One of the issues that we are discussing is the protocol; that work has begun. ACPO has nominated Chief Constable Adrian Lee of Northamptonshire police to be its representative. He will sit on a working party, alongside Home Office officials and representatives from other organisations including the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives, to discuss the issue. Work is therefore ongoing.

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I want to turn to the status of the document. New clause 5 seeks to set out the memorandum of understanding in secondary legislation. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) asked what the consequences would be of not following the protocol. We envisage that this will be an extra-statutory document, and that it will be issued in the form of guidance. I am certainly willing to consider what the legal status of the document should be, and whether it should have some kind of statutory imprimatur, but we really need to see what it looks like first. We need to understand how granular it will be, and whether that would effectively define operational independence in a way that, so far, everyone has made it clear we should not so define it. I reassure the hon. Member for Gedling, however, that this matter should be considered, and I have no doubt that the other place will have a view on it.

[Mr Llwyd]

I thank the Minister for replying to my question in such short order, and in as much detail as he could muster. If he is saying that some form of legislative vehicle might encompass the protocol, would not regulation by statutory instrument be the obvious answer?

[Nick Herbert]

I repeat that we do not envisage this being a statutory document. It was originally called a memorandum of understanding by the Select Committee, and I do not think that the Committee’s recommendation envisaged it being a statutory document. Its purpose is to clarify the roles and responsibilities in law. In other words, it will be seeking not to set law but to explain what the law is. The danger is that we will be drawn into a means of setting law, when all the parties involved have so far said that we should not seek to define operational independence by statute. They have said that we should leave the matter to the understanding of the courts and the existing case law.

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[Mr Llwyd]

On the question of granting a warrant on the basis of flimsy evidence, is the right hon. Lady aware that, according to the Director of Public Prosecutions, there have been only 10 applications in the past 10 years, of which only two were granted?

[Ann Clwyd]

That was to have been my very next point. It is amazing that in the past 10 years, there have been just two successful applications for arrest warrants, and that they were then either withdrawn or not acted on.

Oral Answers to Questions

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Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the competition for community pay-back. The first competition will be for the London area, where the boundaries overlap precisely with those of the London probation trust. That will give those probation trusts that need to get together to make a collective public sector bid involving a number of trusts the time and opportunity to put an effective bid together.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Is the Minister aware of the evidence that was given to the Select Committee on Justice about the whole issue of competition and/or commissioning providers and so on? Those points have been very well made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). Is the Minister aware that if there is a conflict of interest then, prima facie, the whole system will be unlawful? Does he realise how important it is to separate those functions, because the probation trusts do not have a clue where they are going?

[Mr Blunt]

This is an area of change for probation trusts, and the competition for community pay-back, which we inherited from the previous Administration, is an exemplar of that. I look forward to the opportunity to review all the evidence that has been given to the Justice Committee and I shall come to a view on the basis of the evidence that has been received. I will give my own evidence and take questions in due course in the Committee, presumably at greater length than is allowed here.

Reforming Civil Justice

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Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We have just completed a consultation on our estate, and we have announced the closure of a number of courts. We aim to reduce back-office costs and the unnecessary expense that flows from different jurisdictions. Obviously we keep the proper usage of our estate under continuous review, but I do not expect the proposal to have any significant effect on the future of the courts that survived the consultation that we carried out a few months ago.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I accept the need for rationalisation of the jurisdictions of the county courts and High Courts. I also accept that, ultimately, mediation will be a good thing. However, evidence from the Access To Justice Action Group provides numerous instances in which poor people will be excluded altogether following the change in the no win, no fee arrangements, and I am desperately worried about that. The evidence contains no special pleading. It is excellent evidence, and I ask the Ministry to re-examine it in due course. If something is not done, this will prove to be a benefit match for the insurance companies only.

[Mr Clarke]

We considered very carefully the large number of responses to the consultation document, many of which opposed changes based on Sir Rupert’s proposals. Most of them came from plaintiff solicitors, but I do not dismiss them on that ground, because I share with those solicitors an interest in proper access to justice. We considered whether modified no win, no fee arrangements could be justified in that context.

There are two questions to be asked: have we affected people’s access to justice, and have we affected the profitability of practices that engage in no win, no fee with a reasonable level of success? Most of the responses that we received dealt with much more complicated questions, but I believe that we have retained proper access to justice while lowering the costs—and therefore, unfortunately in some cases, the profit margins—to more reasonable levels.

Legal Aid Reform

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Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on securing time for this important debate. I declare an interest as one who has in the past undertaken publicly funded work both as a solicitor and as a barrister.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Justice, which is ably chaired by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and which is currently conducting research into this issue. We have received an unprecedented amount of evidence from concerned groups, and I shall voice some of their concerns in the limited time available to me.

I believe that the proposals in the Government’s consultation document are unethical, and will have long-standing and drastic effects on the make-up of our legal system. They will effectively pave the way for the creation of a “market” for the supply of legal assistance, and I believe that the quality of the assistance that is available will decrease. As a result, the wealthiest in society will be okay while those who are not wealthy will not.

The consultation document notes—with, I believe, unintended irony—that

“access to justice is the hallmark of a civilised society”.

We must do all we can to uphold that principle, but the proposed reforms will cause the legal aid market to be driven by cost rather than by the needs of clients and the quality of advice that they are given. I believe that a move to fixed fees for all cases will result in suppliers taking only the least complicated cases, which will mean that the most vulnerable will be more frequently left without legal advice. The need to generate profits will lead to firms taking on unqualified staff, which in turn may well lower the quality of service.

Gwynedd Law Society has written to me drawing attention to a real danger in Gwynedd and Anglesey, where, for a population of approximately 190,000, only 10 firms currently provide civil legal aid. There are no large firms in the area. Most of those firms assist clients in both Welsh and English.

The cuts in legal aid will be felt deeply in many areas of society, but the worst effect will be on the most vulnerable, which is extremely worrying. There is a letter in The Times today signed by a number of experts in family law, among them Stephen Cobb QC, chair of the Family Law Bar Association, and David Allison of Resolution. I cannot read the letter into the record, much as I should like to, but I commend it to Members.

Family lawyers will undoubtedly be giving up in droves, creating advice deserts, and it is our children who will suffer. I have with me several case studies showing that under these proposals mothers will be able to do nothing where children are not returned to them in certain circumstances. I find it very worrying that legal aid will be removed for ancillary relief in divorce cases. Most pressingly, ancillary matters such as child custody and maintenance will not be dealt with sensibly, and it is difficult to overestimate the devastating effect this will wreak on children caught up in these disputes. Indeed, the psychological effects that can be wrought on children when care is not taken in resolving disputes can be deep and long lasting. The justice system has a duty to protect the most vulnerable in our society—that was, of course, one of the founding principles of legal aid. Who are the most vulnerable in society? I would say that it must be our children. Overwhelmingly, the impact of the proposals on the most vulnerable members of our society will be catastrophic. I am talking about people receiving advice on debt, housing and welfare, as well as children standing in the middle of these disputes.

We must not allow these changes to be made. In the name of decency, ethics and providing decent cover for those less able to look after themselves, we cannot allow them to be made. We must not hold such an integral component of our justice system hostage to efficiency savings. If we do so, the effects will be brutal.

I ask the Minister to respond to one last point. I hope that this consultation will be a real one. The one on court closures left me underwhelmed, because it was deeply unimpressive, flawed and probably pointless.

Oral Answers to Questions

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Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I appreciate the comprehensiveness of the replies, but greater economy would facilitate progress.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Does the Minister appreciate that those who practise welfare law have traditionally not been highly paid, and does he realise that swathes of firms are likely to disappear? Who will stand in that breach, because those who are most in need are the least likely to be helped in those circumstances?

[Mr Djanogly]

We believe that a cultural change is needed. We need to move away from the immediate rush to lawyers and courts, whether through mediation or, if a court alternative is required, a conditional fee arrangement, rather than legal aid. Much more should be made of those alternatives.

Courts Service Estate

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Tuesday 14th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

My hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) secured an Adjournment debate in July, and I think he accepted the need to make savings, but urged Ministers to consider the wider impacts. There is a high density of county courts in Staffordshire and west Mercia. Burton sat for 199 days in 2009-10, and there are no members of the judiciary based permanently at the court. Although facilities are adequate, closure would mean that Her Majesty’s Courts Service would not be liable for an additional investment of around £450,000. None the less, I would of course be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter further.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The maintenance figures used by the Minister to justify closures in Wales were wildly inaccurate. On the second attempt he got them wrong again, and on the third attempt they were wrong yet again. He is using fairytale figures to support his arguments. The closure of Pwllheli magistrates court—which was vehemently opposed by the Lord Chief Justice, the presiding judge and everybody who knows anything about that area of Wales—leaves my constituency with one court to serve a patch that measures 100 miles north-to-south and 100 miles across. Is that local justice?

[Mr Djanogly]

Having considered the matter, we believe that local justice will be maintained in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. The fact of the matter is that Pwllheli magistrates court has a very low utilisation rate—29% in 2009-100—offers limited facilities for victims and witnesses, and is only partially disability-compliant. The work undertaken at that court can be easily accommodated in the recently purpose-built Caernarfon criminal justice centre, which offers far superior facilities for all court users.

Oral Answers to Questions

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Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

Yes.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The Minister will know that it is a basic human right for people to be incarcerated as near as possible to where they reside. When will the Government comply with that basic requirement by providing a prison facility for north Wales, especially as we understand that Shrewsbury prison is to be closed? Such a prison would serve the whole of mid-Wales as well as north Wales, and, as the Minister knows, its establishment is long overdue.

[Mr Blunt]

I am not sure that I recognise that as a basic human right, but it is certainly operationally sensible. Providing support for prisoners when they are incarcerated away from their families is an important part of assisting their rehabilitation into society. However, speculation about which prisons might or might not close in future is not appropriate at this stage. We will conduct a review of prison capacity in the light of the Green Paper and the responses to it, and only at that stage—

Guantanamo Civil Litigation Settlement

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Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, I can give a straightforward, positive answer to both those questions. Yes, that is undoubtedly the case, and my hon. Friend has accurately stated the position.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I thank the Justice Secretary for giving me advance notice of his statement. Given the need to preserve confidentiality in relation to the settlement, how long does he think that that confidentiality will be preserved, bearing in mind the two serious leaks from his Department this week?

[Mr Clarke]

Exactly the same thoughts have crossed my mind, but I am bound by the confidentiality agreement and I must hope that everyone will abide by their legal obligations. However, I share the hon. Gentleman’s uncertainty.

Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

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Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am giving the right hon. Gentleman a prompt, but I am sure that he does not need it.

Short-sentenced prisoners frequently end up in custody after repeated community sentences. There is a need to examine why community sentences are breached and why some offenders continue to offend. We concluded that that was partly because the sentences are under-resourced. There are waiting lists for offender behaviour programmes and assessments for mental health and treatment. Probation officers typically have extremely large case loads, and often we are talking about people with completely disorganised lives who just do not get up in the morning. What they need is not a very short prison sentence but someone to bang on the door and get them out doing the community programme that they are supposed to be carrying out. They need someone to exercise some authority.

In the course of the inquiry on probation, we have spoken to ex-offenders, and what they said was very illuminating. They made it clear that they needed probation officers to challenge them, not simply to offer friendship and a cup of coffee, however desirable it is to establish a relationship. They needed probation officers to challenge them because, as they openly admitted, their behaviour needed challenging. Their unwillingness to do some of the things that they needed to do to turn their lives around needed someone with authority to challenge it.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The right hon. Gentleman will recall that a fortnight or three weeks ago, we visited the Lambeth project—the so-called Sapphire project. In that project, if a person did not turn up for the unpaid work part of the probation order, he was visited by a police officer to get him out of bed. That is not a bad idea, in the circumstances.

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to focus on what we saw in practice. The Committee has tried to make it its business to get out and look at what happens in practice and what works. I commend the reports of our public evidence sessions and our future report on probation, which I hope will be as valuable in its own way as I think the report is that we are considering today.

Of course, we know what happens in the United States. When the federal Government want to do things, they offer money to states to do them. They do not have the power to make them, so they offer them money. They can use the grants system under the Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act 2009 to support or persuade state and local governments to analyse criminal justice trends to find out what is driving the growth in their local jail and prison populations; to develop tailored policy options to reduce corrections expenditure and increase the effectiveness of current programmes to make communities safer; and to measure the impact of those changes and develop accountability measures.

We found evidence of the potential for geographically targeted local initiatives to reduce expenditure if such partnerships and the agencies that make them up, including probation trusts, are free to use resources more flexibly. That is in line with the Government’s emphasis on localism and the withdrawal of ring-fencing from local government. The first reaction of some people involved in the services is horror that a ring-fenced grant might now be used by the local authority for some purpose other than that for which it was originally introduced, but unless we give agencies, including local government, some freedom to move money around between different projects, innovative policies will not be developed. In this area, if agencies can work together and move money around a bit to where it is most effectively used, we can make progress.

We talked about needing to get in early. The Government made announcements yesterday in relation to school funding and pre-school education for disadvantaged children. That is a crucial area. Not just the criminal justice system but many other parts of our system are crucial in determining whether some youngsters get involved in crime. Giving youngsters a better start is a key way of reducing the likelihood of their being drawn into criminality. The concept of justice reinvestment includes the concept of early intervention. The child who has to be excluded from school has stepped on to the escalator that can lead to repeat offending and regular imprisonment in the future, so such initiatives are very relevant to justice reinvestment.

However, there is a risk that the financial climate will threaten existing initiatives that are proving promising. There is the Diamond initiative. I am trying to remember whether Sapphire and Diamond are the same scheme or two different ones, but obviously jewels are thought a good way of illustrating the fact that these are very valuable initiatives.

[Mr Llwyd]

I am advised that it is actually the Diamond initiative.

[Sir Alan Beith]

So we are talking about the same one. The Diamond initiative is delivered jointly by the Metropolitan police, local authorities and the London Probation Trust. Built on the principle of justice reinvestment, it has reoffending rates of 28% within six months of release from custody. That compares favourably with the 43% figure for those who have not received that intensive support and monitoring.

However, under the previous Government, there was a decline in crime reduction funding through local area agreements to local community safety partnerships. Those intensive options require partnership commitment and resources, which may be less readily available following yesterday’s comprehensive spending review. I am anxious to hear what the Minister can say by way of reassurance on that. Until the Green Paper is published, it is unclear how the new Government will enable those partnerships to fulfil their statutory responsibility to reduce reoffending under the Policing and Crime Act 2009.

We proposed that if the Government could identify moneys that could be used to create a national justice reinvestment fund, there would be an incentive for local partnerships to think creatively about ways of reducing crime and the use of imprisonment, pooling resources at local level and spending money in geographically targeted areas using the results of justice mapping. That technique, which was pioneered in the US and has been tried out quite a lot in Gateshead, for example, measures local needs and the existing flow of resources to particular communities.

The Government’s aspiration to introduce payment by results draws on the experience of Kansas in implementing justice reinvestment approaches. It is not clear whether the Government will go about it in the same way, but some of the options that the Committee has been suggesting could be accommodated in the sort of programme that the Government are talking about. The national investment fund could be part of the big society bank, for example.

If the Government are to place greater emphasis on evidence-based, targeted approaches, determined at local level, means need to be found to provide practical support to local areas in analysing trends, devising new policies and programmes and measuring their impact. A cross-disciplinary centre of excellence, like the Social Care Institute for Excellence, could provide robust economic modelling of what is effective in reducing crime and inform the development of a national justice reinvestment plan. I hope that the Government consider that cross-departmental approach.

All of this has implications for sentences. There remains a great deal of geographical disparity in the consistency of sentencing, to which the Lord Chancellor drew attention in his King’s college speech. Youth courts in some parts of the country are up to 10 times more likely to impose custodial sentences for certain crimes than their counterparts elsewhere. That cannot be explained by social and demographic factors alone.

It is often said by the judiciary that the sentencing of individual offenders should not be driven by the availability or otherwise of resources. In practice, of course, it is, but that is usually because of the scarcity of suitable alternatives to custody in a given area. Prison is always there; alternatives are not always there. It is nevertheless necessary to find a way in which recognition of scarce resources is built into the sentencing process.

We are concerned that sentencing policy, and the Sentencing Council, does not address the need for sentencers to have regard to the available resources and the relative costs of their sentencing decisions. There are few other public servants who are not required to be accountable to the taxpayer in relation to the value delivered for the money that they spend. In order to have such regard, however, sentencers need data on the cost-effectiveness of their decisions and on the outcome of sentences. We have been surprised at how little information comes back to the judiciary about the overall impact of the sentences that they pass.

I spoke earlier about the media and about the public debate on sentencing. The public rightly see prison as a necessary means of dealing with extremely dangerous people who would be a threat to public safety were they not in custody but, in many cases, public safety is not the major issue. A custodial sentence and its length seem to have become the only means that the public and the media feel they have of asserting the seriousness of the offence. That is why we see so many headlines in the press saying, “Yobs only got six months,” or “Con man got less than a motoring offender.” The relative significance of crimes is measured by the sentence length. When the community or victims want to assert that they will not tolerate a crime, they look for a way of expressing that abhorrence, and a longer custodial sentence seems to serve that purpose, even if it is of little or no use in ensuring that the offender does not commit further crimes.

For offenders who do not need to be in custody, we need strong community sentences to be recognised as a punishment—not as a soft option. For some offenders they already are, but there is a media obsession with custody that is not justified by custody’s record in reducing reoffending. We are in a new situation, and there is a real chance to change things in a way that could reduce reoffending and make people safer from crime, at less cost.

In conclusion, we need to know three key things from the Minister. First, are Ministers ready to continue what the Lord Chancellor has started, by openly taking on the “prison works” argument and demonstrating that for many offenders custody is too costly and too ineffective to contribute as much to public safety as well-planned alternatives can? Secondly, how will a shift from the use of custody in appropriate cases be achieved, given that changes in sentencing principles will not work unless alternatives are widely available and the judges and the public are confident in them? Finally, and most important, how will Ministers prevent cuts in the Ministry of Justice budget from putting a roadblock in the way of the reforms that the Committee has advocated and to which the Government are now committed? What will be the impact of yesterday’s announcements on the ability of Ministers to deliver the policy shift that they have signalled? I hope that the Committee, in its work, has provided an underpinning of substance and intellectual coherence for what I see as a radical policy shift of real potential value to the safety of the people of this country. I am very interested to know whether the Government will be able to continue that initiative.

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[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) who, like me, is a new member of the Justice Committee. I was not a member of the Committee that produced this very important report and I congratulate everyone involved in it, including the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) who, as well as being the Chairman of the present Committee, was the Chairman of the Committee that produced the report.

The report is a very thought-provoking piece of work and a very useful contribution to the discussions about criminal justice that we inevitably have in this place—and obviously we should be having those debates. [Interruption.]

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[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

We are sorry for the technical interruption. We are not allowed to add extra time, but Mr Alan Beith has kindly accepted a reduction in his response time. I shall now call the Front-Bench spokesmen at approximately 4.57 pm.

[Mr Llwyd]

According to a Ministry of Justice letter leaked last Friday, 14,000 MOJ jobs will be lost, 11,000 of them from the front line. If we are to believe the letter, 60% of those reductions must be made within the next two years. The cost of the redundancy drive will reportedly reach £230 million. Although 85% of that reduction is estimated to be voluntary, it will no doubt be as voluntary as walking the plank.

Meanwhile, 50% of the redundancies are expected to be achieved through natural wastage. Where exactly do we expect those workers to go? The National Offender Management Service will lose 9,940 jobs: 760 from its headquarters and the rest, presumably, from the prison and probation services. Delivery of restorative justice seems like pie in the sky when we consider the bleak road ahead. By March 2014, the justice budget will be cut by 23%, which seems to undermine once again the opportunity for justice reinvestment.

We hear that in the face of those cuts, the Ministry of Justice also wants to cut prison places. The Ministry’s aim is to reduce receptions into custody by 18,000 a year by 2014—indeed, the package of cuts is predicated on a reduction in the number of prisoners—but how can that be achieved? I am afraid that it is more likely that the cuts will lead to an increase in the number of prisoners, especially when slashes in staff numbers are combined with cuts to courts, prosecutors and clerks. The same number of prisoners will be held on remand, but probably for longer.

The premise of the cuts is therefore flawed, and the cuts may well undermine the worthy and proper notion of justice reinvestment. Equally, there are logistical problems with the time scale, as the cuts are expected to come into play by 2014. I spoke yesterday to Mr Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers; I see a wry smile on the Minister’s face. I have no doubt that the Ministry of Justice expects that the new infrastructure will be put in place by 2014, but NAPO’s opinion is that it will take at least five years to be anywhere near ready. However, that is a matter of debate. The time scale for the cuts is not practicable and risks undermining and damaging our justice system.

We also hear that a large proportion of rehabilitation work will be outsourced to voluntary and private organisations on the basis of payment by results. Where exactly are those volunteers meant to come from? Magistrates courts committees have complained that court orders cannot be made out to private companies. I think that that is true. What would happen in the event of conflicts of interest? On Tuesday, I met Mr John Thornhill and other representatives of the Magistrates Association. If short-term prison sentences are to be avoided, they are concerned that personnel will not be found to oversee defendants.

Although I agree that the Lord Chancellor is right to attempt to avoid the overuse of short prison sentences, that cannot be done without a substantial direct investment in the probation service. When I first qualified as a lawyer in the early 1970s, the local town of Dolgellau had three probation officers. We now have one for half the county. Need I say more? Furthermore, as I said to the Lord Chancellor in a recent sitting of the Justice Committee, the private concerns that receive payment by results will inevitably be profit-driven. They will not want the awkward recidivist cases, that is for sure. That is where I believe probation officers’ skills should come into play.

I understand that many departmental settlements were finalised only a few hours before the announcement of the spending review yesterday. How can we discuss justice reinvestment properly, even in theory, when community reinvestment is being cut? We are expected to set up a private system that we do not agree with, which will take years, while cutting back on probation staff. I am afraid that those drastic cuts have not been properly thought through. As was said earlier, this might be an opportunity missed.

In its report, the Justice Committee presented the case for various essential reforms, which now seem further away than ever. The report tasked the Government with committing to a significant reduction in the prison population by 2015. That is the reduction on which the cuts are predicated, yet ironically, the cuts render such a reduction less practicable. Following on from the Corston report in 2007, the Committee report also tasked the Government with implementing Baroness Corston’s recommendations on reducing the number of female prisoners. A reduction in the number of prisoners whose crimes were driven by mental illness is also overdue. The CSR mentioned those goals, notably in pledging to introduce proposals to invest in mental health liaison services at police stations and courts in order to intervene at an early stage and divert those suffering from a mental illness into treatment. That is welcome, but will the Minister expand on it? Will related pledges to target the causes of female incarceration be honoured?

The Committee report warned that spending more on rehabilitation will not work while the prison estate is overcrowded. How timely that warning now seems. We cannot expect the criminal justice system simply to work out its problems by itself. Time and investment are needed to reform how the sector functions. As I have said, we cannot merely expect the number of prisoners to decrease as if by magic while cutting staff numbers across the piece.

The report noted that a coherent strategy must be developed by the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and other Departments to target the allocation of resources and reduce crime. I agree, of course. Targeting the causes of crime is essential to reducing the number of people in prison. We must build on and improve the community sentencing structures already in place and seek the advice of probation staff who know the area thoroughly and professionally.

For too long, probation officers have been undermined and marginalised in the NOMS set-up. Instead of making cuts and outsourcing to voluntary organisations, we should focus on improving the probation service that we know and respect by reducing the paperwork that probation officers must do and increasing the time that they spend with offenders. Currently, probation officers spend an average of eight minutes a week speaking to people under their orders. That is ridiculous. What can be done in eight minutes a week? I have no idea.

I have a suggestion. It might be radical, but I have seen it in practice. A few weeks ago, I went to Buffalo, New York, which has a veterans court. Veterans who have offended are referred to the court and come under the watchful eye of Judge Russell. Typically, they have committed high-grade misdemeanours or low-grade felonies and are facing perhaps 18 months in prison. They are given the opportunity to attend the veterans court. If they take it, they are assigned a probation officer and, crucially, an ex-service mentor. For 18 months or less—it is sometimes 15 months or in very rare cases 12 months—they are expected to go to court every three weeks to explain how they are getting on. They are drug tested every fortnight and if they are clean and sober—to use the words they use in the States—at the completion of the course, they graduate. They are given a glowing character reference and any reference to the offences is scrapped. If they are not already in work, they are given work, and they are treated with respect for how they have handled themselves during those months.

I was absolutely struck by the whole thing. I went to the States thinking, as a lawyer, that everyone should be equal before the law and questioning why veterans should have a different course of action—although I have been campaigning for them and will continue to do so for those veterans who unfortunately are in prison, often for reasons beyond their control. The scheme is predicated on having a volunteer mentor who is an ex-serviceperson and a probation officer—or the American version of that—who can put in the necessary time to deal with the offender.

I have just mentioned the result of that scheme to hon. Members. May I tell them what the reoffending rate is? Courts at the federal level are looking at that district court because of its success. For the past three years, the reoffending rate has been 0%. If that is not something to consider, I do not know what is. I submit that the scheme could be adapted to what we are talking about today. It does not have to be a veterans court; it could be any other form of court. The scheme is labour intensive, but if we weigh up the savings to society, the taxpayer and everyone—and indeed to the individual who has his or her life turned around and is back in the mainstream—it is remarkable and worthy of study.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Is the hon. Gentleman familiar with the work of Alan Lilly of the Cheshire probation service? I saw him last week in Cheshire—he is a friend of mine and we served together—as I am interested in the work he is doing there on a veterans scheme. I am particularly interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the American experience. We will try to draw those two experiences together.

[Mr Llwyd]

I am grateful to the Minister for that very positive response. I shall send him a booklet—if one exists—about the scheme. I know Mr Lilly; I serve on a committee with him. Indeed, under the auspices of the Howard League for Penal Reform, I went to the States as a member of a panel and am due to report to the Government. I am happy to send the evidence to the Minister, because it is remarkable and worthy of thorough investigation.

[Mr Blunt]

I would be grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s reflections as a lawyer on treating people differently in the criminal justice system. If he has any suggestions about how one might address that issue, I would be grateful to hear them.

[Mr Llwyd]

As I said, I went to the States with a preconception that I would not approve of the veterans court. However, other courts refer to that court as a means of disposal. Other courts deal with ex-service people who have committed such offences, and if they think that the person concerned would benefit from Judge Russell’s assistance, they are referred for disposal to the veterans court. In effect, it is not a twin-track system for any class of society, but it is a different disposal. The scheme is well worthy of examination.

[Alun Michael]

The problem cited by the Minister is a lawyer’s problem, rather than a practical problem. There should not be too strict an adherence to the tariff as anything other than a starting point for sentencing. The tariff should be calibrated according to what will work in the particular set of circumstances, as well as according to the nature of the offences. That is a much more intelligent way of approaching these matters.

[Mr Llwyd]

I realise that the right hon. Gentleman has a great deal of experience in the field of sentencing and I take on board what he says. I commend the set-up I have mentioned to everybody here today, because it is well worthy of examination and it could be adapted for use in England and Wales.

We also need to change the way in which we approach punishment, particularly in respect of less serious offences. The Committee wisely said:

“We are concerned that an unthinking acceptance has evolved of punishment—for its own sake—as the paramount purpose of sentencing, and as the only way of registering the seriousness with which society regards a crime.”

In my view, there is a one-eyed approach to the matter, which may be a product of tabloid mania over the issue. It is very difficult to have a reasonable and reasoned debate about the issue without being drowned out and dictated to by the unwelcome drum beat of the tabloid press. The key elements of sentencing have always been and still are: punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. All three are vital to a humane and purposeful sentencing strategy. Sadly, at the moment, scant time is paid to rehabilitation, which is key if we are going to get away from the revolving door scenario, which plagues society, the taxpayer and all of us.

If we take a different line regarding justice, we must consider the proposals in the report, which suggests shifting resources towards rehabilitation services, not cutting them. It also suggests investing in what it calls “prehabilitation”—in other words, preventing more crimes from taking place. That would mean pouring extra resources into areas outside the criminal justice system. Social exclusion, low educational engagement, substance misuse, mental health problems, unemployment, the lack of social housing and other issues must all be tackled.

People who fall into the criminal justice system are often caught in a vicious cycle, particularly those incarcerated on short-term sentences. Evidence shows that people serving short-term sentences are far more likely to reoffend and that they do not learn anything from their experience in prison. A vicious cycle can be interrupted and can become a virtuous cycle. Improving preventive measures, such as effective investment in housing, employment and alcohol and drug services would reduce the burden on the Ministry of Justice’s purse. Such an approach would also involve local and central agencies proving that we can work together in a big society—or whatever the term might be.

Evidently, the impact of the spending review on these plans will be fundamental and possibly uncompromising. Reinvestment is simply not possible if there is no money to reinvest. How can we know where the money will be after 2014? Considering the negative swing we will see as an effect of the cuts to probation, clerks, court clerks and court services, the burden on the prison estate will only become greater by 2014. I hope that I am wrong, but the cuts have been rushed. They have not been properly thought through and the position has possibly been compromised because other Departments have been given preference—although I do not know whether that is the case. Such an approach is simply not going to work. I desperately hope I am wrong, because we all know that justice is essential to the well-being of our communities.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunt]

I can well understand, given the quality of the inheritance that we received, why the right hon. Gentleman would be anxious for me to pursue that line.

Let me comment on some of the other contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) made the point that we can be either smart or stupid about our attitude to crime. He spoke about the need for confidence in community sentences, to which I want to return.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) was kind enough to take interventions from me in relation to his experience of a veterans court in the United States. I re-emphasise that I shall want to consider the evidence that he provides to me in that area. I just caution him to be slightly careful, in terms of commenting on leaks, numbers of job losses and everything else, about taking the opinion of some trade unions in this area too directly. Their record of accuracy is not highly precise. The National Association of Probation Officers over-estimated the number of veterans in the justice system by about a factor of three.

[Mr Llwyd]

No.

[Mr Blunt]

Yes.

[Mr Llwyd]

With respect, I can answer that straight away. NAPO estimated that about 8,500 service veterans—9%—were in prison. The Government scoping exercise excluded those under 21, reservists, of whom there are many in Afghanistan as we speak, women and those who served in Northern Ireland. If we process them back in, the figure is 9%.

[Mr Blunt]

I fear not. A very careful study by the Defence Analytical Services Agency assessed the number at 3.5%, but let us not be diverted by that. I was making a wider point about the reliability of the people whom the hon. Gentleman was adducing in evidence. I think that as the position becomes clear with regard to the consequences of the spending review, the probation service will realise that the Lord Chancellor has batted for it in a particularly effective way. If we are to address issues and change the balance in relation to short sentences—we do not expect any savings in terms of the prison system if there are changes in patterns and fewer people being given short sentences—the first thing to say is that we will not end the capacity of the magistracy and the judiciary to use short prison sentences if they feel that that is necessary, but we would obviously hope that their use would be reduced. That means either community sentences or longer sentences. Those are the two alternatives that arise from it, so it would be unwise to assume any reduction in the overall number of prison places required, as a result of a change in policy in that area, because some of the changes will involve people going to prison for longer so that they can be effectively rehabilitated within the safety of custody.

The other point that I want to make to the hon. Gentleman is that the public sector is not the only source of money. I commend to him the social investment model that has begun at Peterborough; it is a model that we will wish to widen. If we can get external investors to invest, so that savings can be made—that is much at the centre of the principle of the justice reinvestment report—it frankly does not matter where that extra capacity comes from.

In the end, this is not about just money; there is an enormous capacity in the community. In the voluntary sector, the charitable community and the private sector there are people who want to give their services, in whatever form, to the Ministry of Justice and to the state, to help us with the task of rehabilitating offenders. At the moment, our system is not very good at making it easy for those people to give their services, or to sell them to us, on a not-for-profit or indeed a for-profit basis, to grow this country’s capacity to deliver rehabilitation. The responsibility that sits on me now, in terms of designing the policies—on rehabilitation in particular—that we will present in the Green Paper, is to create a system that will make it that much easier for us to draw on the capacity that is sitting out there in the country; to ensure that in co-ordination with the existing state services, in probation and elsewhere, we can deliver a much more effective rehabilitation package than we do today. This is not about replacing those services but about adding to them.

The other half of that process is to ensure that all the existing state services, particularly those delivered at a local level, are co-ordinated that much more effectively, to deliver the interventions that are needed to address the multifaceted problems that normally afflict most people who are on a cycle of reoffending and who need particular help to break free from that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) referred to our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and to the very good report that he oversaw as chairman of the Commission for Social Justice. Early intervention is not about just the criminal justice system but about what I have described as the entire life cycle of the offender and the potential offender, and that is why I have a place on the Social Justice Cabinet Committee, which is chaired by my right hon. Friend, precisely to start making interventions earlier and earlier in the process. It is about trying to keep children out of care. It is about looking at the whole business of family intervention programmes for when the indicators start arriving, such as when children are excluded from school and are sent to pupil referral units. Good work was done by the previous Administration, and I happily acknowledge that, but we have to encourage a culture in which we invest early to prevent problems later. At the same time, we are of course left with the responsibility of dealing with the problems that we have now, which is why it is essential to create extra capacity, in whatever form we can.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who I think will make a welcome contribution to the work of the Justice Committee, acknowledged that the previous Administration were perhaps not as tough on the causes of crime as they might have been. When the then Leader of the Opposition coined the slogan, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,” that slogan was empty, as is now clear in his own diaries and in his account. The policies to deliver on that had not been developed when the slogan was coined in 1994, and that is one of the dangers of dealing in rhetoric without there being the reality underlying it and—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is chuntering. The policies began to be developed from that point on, but at that point they did not exist. One has to be careful about the catchphrase that sounds great but does not have the policies—