Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General (Jeremy Wright)]

The CPS is working closely with the Treasury to manage the impact of the increasing numbers of large and complex cases, including non-recent sex abuse cases, and to ensure that the CPS has the resources to prosecute serious crime effectively and efficiently. Future funding will be determined as part of the spending review process in the usual way.

[Heidi Alexander]

The victims of historical sexual abuse have a right to justice, like anyone else, but, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman says, these cases are complex and require adequate funding. How confident is he that the CPS will be able to cope with the demands on it and can he categorically say that such cases will not be consigned to the dustbin of history for want of extra resources?

[The Attorney-General]

I understand the hon. Lady’s concern and it is important to put on record that every case, regardless of the alleged crime, must be considered carefully by the CPS. The CPS must conduct the appropriate tests on evidence and on public interest, and these cases should be no different in that regard. We must certainly talk about resources, but we also need to talk about what also matters to victims, which includes being listened to in the first place, ensuring that the court process is as conducive as it can be to the giving of their evidence and ensuring that those who prosecute such cases are expert in what they do. All those things are important and we must ensure that the CPS is doing them. At the moment, the CPS is engaged in doing those things.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

As the hon. Lady will understand, I will not have a chance to sum up this debate, so I will respond now, if she will forgive me. I hope that she will look carefully at our “Transforming Rehabilitation” proposals. Part and parcel of those proposals is that young and older people should have support that starts before they leave custody and sees them through the prison gate and out into the community. Many people who receive sentences for the knife crime offences that she is describing have custodial sentences of less than 12 months. As she will appreciate, no licence or rehabilitation automatically applies to such sentences at the moment. We have already changed that and the “Transforming Rehabilitation” proposals will support that.

[Heidi Alexander]

I am grateful to the Minister for those remarks. However, most people would still agree that the level of reoffending in our society is too high. I am pleased that the Government are taking those positive steps, but I know that he will agree that there is still much more to do.

To conclude, this is a difficult issue but, on balance, I believe that the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Enfield North should be supported in the Division Lobby this evening. I will certainly support them.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). He has great expertise in this matter, given his previous ministerial role. I am not sure that I will trouble the Minister with the same level of detail about the proposals. I want to make a short speech on some of the things I have learned about how the probation service operates in my area and about the need for us in Parliament to have a vote on whether the wholesale privatisation of the probation service should go ahead.

In recent weeks, I have visited Lewisham probation trust and met its staff. The Lewisham trust is very busy. It ranks fourth among London boroughs with respect to the complexity and risk of the cases with which it deals. A quarter of the cases it deals with involve young people aged between 18 and 25.

When I spoke to staff, they expressed very serious concerns about the plans to fragment and break up the probation service and, indeed, to privatise great chunks of it. They believe that the proposals actually endanger some of the important and innovative work they are doing. For example, they recently set up a specialist team to deal with the problem of young offenders, whereby staff time is split between the youth offending service and the probation staff so that the two services join up better. They told me that the proposals the Government wish to force through in the next year will lead to huge upheaval and massive duplication, and will make it less likely that the work that is so important in our community for reducing reoffending is moved forward and can bring about the outcomes we all want.

The management of the trust told me that instead of being externally focused on reducing reoffending and protecting the public, over the next couple of months their priority will be to support staff through the transition and to make sure that they move cases between the split services in a way that ensures that no cases are lost and no mistakes are made. That does not make sense to me. The priority for the management and those with experience should be to ask, “How do we reduce rates of reoffending out there in the community?”

What will happen when the case load is split? As I understand it, 70% of the cases will be dealt with by community rehabilitation companies and others will be left with the new national probation service. How will those really difficult decisions be made about the risk that such young offenders present? The people who work in the probation service tell me that such judgments, particularly those about young people, are very difficult to make.

[Jeremy Wright]

The first point I want to make to the hon. Lady is that the proposals we are discussing do not cover young offenders, but only adults. The second point is one that I made earlier, but I am not sure whether she was in the Chamber at the time. It is that in relation to risk assessments and the judgments she describes—I accept that they are difficult—such judgments will be made by employees of the national probation service, who are public sector employees.

[Heidi Alexander]

I fear that the Minister may have misunderstood me. When I spoke about young people, I meant those between 18 and 25. As I understand it, the proposals in the Bill relate to that age group.

Another point that has been made to me by probation staff in Lewisham is that one key to the reduction of reoffending relates is having stable relationships between probation staff and the individuals with whom they work, so that they can build trust and work together to achieve the things that will put those young adults on to a better path in life. If young people are transferred between different organisations because their risk fluctuates, I wonder how there can be that stability in such relationships that I am told is so crucial to the reduction of reoffending.

Some Government Members, particularly the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), seemed to suggest that the Opposition have some ulterior motive for saying that we want to pilot the schemes and to have a vote in this House before these very significant proposals go ahead. I want to put it on the record that our interest in this debate is public safety, what is effective and what works. They ascribe to us motives that simply do not represent our position. We are advocating what is in the best interests of the public and asking how we can really get to grips with reducing rates of reoffending, which are far too high in our country.

[Jeremy Wright]

May I begin by endorsing entirely what the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) and the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said about Paul Goggins? Paul was the first Minister I went to see as a newly elected Back Bencher. I was struck not only by his command of the brief, but by his inherent kindness, his reaction to somebody who was not of his party and his willingness to give me whatever assistance he could. That continued throughout the time that I knew him in this House. As others have said, he will be missed on a personal level by a great many people on both sides of the Chamber. It is right for us to recognise today that he will be missed in debates such as this. The lack of his warmth and wisdom on these subjects and many others will make our debates all the poorer. I know that we will all miss him in the Chamber more generally.

We have had an interesting and informed debate on this group of new clauses. There is no doubt that the substantial burden of the debate on the Bill has been not about the contents of the Bill, which are broadly uncontroversial, but about the wider reforms that surround the Bill. I understand why that is. It might therefore be helpful if I spend a little time dealing with what is at the heart of the Government’s reforms to probation and why we believe they are so urgent. That will relate to the issue of piloting, which has been raised this afternoon.