Prisons Competition

George Howarth Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I was immensely encouraged by what I saw on my visit to Peterborough. I have discussed Peterborough widely elsewhere, and there was tremendous enthusiasm for the social impact bond that raised the ethical investment that has gone in to the project and for the determination to deliver it on the part of the St Giles Trust, which is the partner, the YMCA and the other people who are involved. We are finding this enthusiasm reflected elsewhere, and I hope—Peterborough being another private sector prison—that public sector prisons will get equally keenly involved. There are people in the public sector prison service who wish to contract on such a basis. I hope that payment by results will take off, and social impact bonds are one model for raising important capital to get them under way.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I welcome the inclusion of reoffending rates in the Doncaster contract. Can the Secretary of State assure the House that Serco will not be allowed to cherry-pick which offenders it takes at Doncaster, so that it will be possible to make meaningful comparisons between that establishment and other institutions?

[Mr Clarke]

I think I can. A cohort will be allocated rather than some carefully selected group, so a positive result will reflect some move in reoffending rates, with the consequent reduction in the number of further crimes and victims. I give credit to Serco, because when I went to Doncaster I broached the subject slightly tentatively there, because we were already in a competition process and Serco could just have proceeded perfectly ordinarily on the basis it had already agreed for the tenders with the previous Government. Yet Serco was positively enthusiastic, and I think it sees the pilot as a way of finding out whether it can enter into more such arrangements elsewhere in the criminal justice system.