Oral Answers to Questions

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

12. What professional development support his Department plans to put in place for those supervising offenders in the community.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

The national probation service will continue to use the probation qualifications framework to ensure the competence of its staff. For the new community rehabilitation companies there will be a contractual requirement to have and to maintain a work force who have appropriate levels of training and competence. On 3 December we announced that we will be setting up a new probation institute that will promote the sharing of good practice to those working across the probation profession.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. How much investment are the Government making in the new national probation institute?

[Jeremy Wright]

We are contributing some £90,000 towards the cost of setting up the probation institute. The remainder will come from the Probation Association and the Probation Chiefs Association. I am grateful to them and to the probation trade unions for working together so successfully to bring forward the proposal, which we entirely support and which will help to underline the professionalism and continuing professional development of those who work in rehabilitation.