Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Jeremy Wright Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I will finish my point and then give way.

If the end or purpose of the policy was better value for taxpayers without compromising professional standards or public safety, the means are in place with probation trusts, which have made savings of around 20% over the past five years and helped to reduce crime rates and maintain protection for the public.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

I will give way to the Minister and then to the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti).

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[Jeremy Wright]

I am following the right hon. Gentleman’s argument closely. He was a member of the Government who passed the Offender Management Act 2007. If, as is his contention, the previous Government believed that probation trusts could do all those things themselves, why did the Act allow for competition? Why did it not prescribe that all probation work should always be done by probation trusts?

[John Healey]

The Minister was in the Chamber for the Opposition day debate last week and will have heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who was the Minister responsible for the 2007 Act. In July 2007, he mentioned

“trusts remaining public-sector based and delivering services at a local level”.—[Official Report, 18 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 354.]

Essentially, the 2007 Act was not about abolishing local probation trusts, nor about trying to commission services from the centre from a desk in Whitehall; it was about using local partnerships and local professional expertise to secure the best mix of support that offenders needed and that the public required to keep them safe and protected from harm.

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[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend raises an interesting point. Probation trusts want to do the work they already do, including with offenders who serve custodial sentences of less than 12 months. They require all their officers to be qualified to work with medium-risk offenders—the group the Government want to put out to the private sector—which is one reason why the results for reduction in reoffending have been so good in the past five years. I see no reason why probation trusts should not be able to bid to provide the service my right hon. Friend talked about. Ministers say, with a sweep of the hand, “They cannot possibly deal with the uncertainty of payment by results,” but that is not the case.

[Jeremy Wright]

rose—

[John Healey]

Let us hear from the Minister why probation trusts should not be allowed to bid under their own terms for the work he wants to put out to contract.

[Jeremy Wright]

I think the right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well what the answer is. A probation trust, as a wholly public body, cannot compete under a payment-by-results system, because that would put public money at risk. Of course he understands that.

[John Healey]

That is absolute nonsense. Public bodies, like local authorities, have reserves to deal with uncertainties. Why does the Minister not take a look at the legislation passed by his Government on local authority funding, which is based increasingly on business rates and contains an element of risk? Good, prudent public authorities can manage those risks, and there is no reason why probation trusts should not be able to bid for this work and do it as well as they do the work with the offenders they are already responsible for supervising.

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[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson). I am sure he will be pleased that he seemed to evoke a range of responses from different parts of the House.

Whether the Justice Secretary likes it or not, we are debating two issues here this evening. First, there is, of course, the Bill itself, whose central aim would, I think, be broadly welcome, although a number of important questions have been raised that the Minister will need to address in his response; I am sure he will. The second issue is the fundamental change to the probation service that Justice Ministers are bringing about. It is all very well for the Justice Secretary to say that all this is being done under legislation brought in by the previous Government. He cannot deny that some elements of what he proposes for the probation service relate directly to this legislation, not least to the extension of supervision, which is the principal aim of the Bill.

The link between the two issues has been made explicit in two ways—first, by the amendment tabled by Her Majesty’s Opposition and, secondly, by clause 1, which was thoughtfully introduced by the House of Lords, and under which there should be no reform of probation without the approval of both Houses. I was surprised by the rather dismissive attitude of the Justice Secretary towards clause 1. If, on the one hand, there is growing concern among those who lead and deliver the probation service, the police and crime commissioners and many others, while on the other hand Ministers have real conviction that their approach will work, what does the Justice Secretary have to be afraid of? If he cannot put his proposals with confidence to both Houses, subject them to scrutiny and gain an affirmative vote from both Houses, he should not be bringing these proposals before us at all. If he is so convinced that his proposals will be so successful, he should get behind clause 1 and be supportive of it.

We have a conscientious prisons Minister, but in truth Ministers must be becoming increasingly concerned about the implications of the scale of the reforms they are seeking to introduce. They know that their proposals are unpopular; they know that there is widespread concern about the changes they want to make; and, frankly, they are running out of road. This headlong rush to introduce a wholesale change to probation has to be achieved within a year’s time in order to fit the political timetable of getting it done before the general election. Frankly, I think this is a recipe for a car crash; even now, I would urge Ministers to reflect further on that.

Opposition Members are not the only ones making this point. As I have mentioned and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) mentioned in his speech, senior representatives of the probation service are making it clear that these changes could bring about a major threat to public safety. There are serious concerns, too, about this false separation between low and medium-risk offenders on the one hand and high-risk offenders on the other. That flies in the face of the professional experience of those who deliver the probation service. We know that risk is dynamic—it changes over time and there has to be a way of managing it—but it seems to me that the Government’s proposals do not cater for that level of dynamic risk.

It is interesting and instructive to look at the figures put out over the weekend by the Justice Secretary himself to justify the changes that he is making. In 2011, according to him, 356 adult offenders released from prison sentences of less than 12 months committed serious violent offences, while 2,482 offenders serving the same term came out and committed serious acquisitive crime, including robberies, which are serious crimes against people. Those are serious crimes carried out by people who sound to me as if they might be—no, must be—high-risk criminals. Unless the Minister is going to correct me, under these proposals, when such individuals come out after serving their short-term sentences of less than 12 months, they would be among the low and medium-risk group, not the high-risk group. It looks as if the Minister is going to correct me, so I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

[Jeremy Wright]

I can help the right hon. Gentleman and correct him on that. When those people are released, they will be subject to a risk assessment by the national probation service, and the NPS will make a judgment as to whether they are high, medium or low-risk offenders—and they will be allocated accordingly.

[Paul Goggins]

That is reassuring to an extent, but my point is that risk is dynamic—it changes—and that the assessment carried out prior to release might be different from that carried out a month after release or six months after release. There is not the fluidity in the system that would allow the management of that risk among the different groups. That is my point, which I hope the Minister will reflect on further.

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[Kate Green]

The timing is of serious concern, and is driven more by electoral imperatives than a desire to make sure that we devise a system that is effective and right.

There is much to welcome in the intentions behind the Bill. Like many others who have spoken, I warmly welcome the wish to introduce post-release supervision for those serving short-term custodial sentences. As many have said, there has been a gap in our system up till now, and it is good to begin to explore ways in which it could be filled. I am also pleased to see a provision in the Bill on considering the needs and circumstances of women offenders. We have been pressing for that since Baroness Corston’s excellent report; it is approaching five years since it was published. It is welcome to see that making an appearance in the Bill.

However, those welcome objectives in no way justify a pell-mell destruction—a wholesale dismantling—of the public probation service that is not founded on logic, and does not appear to be founded on good or consistent evidence. That is why clause 1, with all its flaws—I accept some of the flaws that have been suggested—is important. We should not pursue these far-reaching changes without proper parliamentary scrutiny of the detail of what will be put in place. If the Minister would like to come forward with ways to improve the clause, and suggest to what degree that parliamentary scrutiny is appropriate, I would be happy to hear what he has to say, but it seems quite wrong to continue down the track of implementing the proposals when such serious concerns are being expressed.

[Jeremy Wright]

This is probably an unfair intervention, as I see that the hon. Lady does not have a copy of the Offender Management Act 2007 with her, but does she know where in that Act anything comparable to clause 1 appears?

[Kate Green]

No, that is not my point. My point is that we are going into a wholesale rearrangement of the public probation service—a service that has existed to manage the totality of risk, and take overall responsibility for it. That is what is being broken up. It is extremely important that we do not go down that track without proper parliamentary scrutiny of the implications and consequences, and that scrutiny is what clause 1 seeks to achieve.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

There are concerns about the contracting structure that will be introduced as a result of the Bill. I want to repeat some of the concerns that have been expressed about the way in which the contracts will be priced. It has been presented by the Lord Chancellor this afternoon and more generally as predominantly a payment-by-results model which will seek to introduce new private funding into a marketplace where, within the public sector, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) pointed out, it would be difficult to find those levels of additional funding, particularly in these times of public spending constraint.

The point is that a very small proportion of these contracts, it seems, will genuinely be payment-by-results contracts. Substantial elements of these contracts will be subject to meeting court requirements, which means that there will have to be enough money in those contracts to ensure that those court requirements can be adequately met by the contractors. That, for a start, will leave relatively little room for manoeuvre in pricing a more discretionary element and an element that is about payment by results.

It is also the case, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, that within the existing spending envelope not only are these providers to manage about 150,000 existing offenders subject to supervision, but to take on board a further perhaps 50,000 within the context of the same funding envelope. That is not credible. It means either that we will have a very poor quality of intervention and/or cherry-picking, with a substantial number of those offenders receiving no support of any value at all.

I am also concerned about the way in which the pricing structures will respond to what a number of hon. Members have talked about—the changing risk profiles that we see when offenders are subject to supervision. As others have said, offender risk profiles are not static. Risk profiles can vary. Offenders can be beset by a range of external pressures and circumstances—bereavement, loss of a job, ending of a relationship, becoming homeless and so on—all of which can take a relatively stable low to medium-risk offender and suddenly catapult them into being high risk. At that point, we understand that the low or medium-risk offender would switch from being supervised by a non-statutory provider into the public probation supervision system. They would be supervised within the statutory sector.

But I do not think we have been told—perhaps the Minister will intervene on me if he has information to share about this—how that would be reflected in the pricing and the reward for the private contractor, and what additional resources would be made available to the public probation service if the risk profiles that had been assumed in the initial pricing of the contract turn out not to be what is experienced in practice.

[Jeremy Wright]

rose—

[Kate Green]

I sense that the Minister is going to offer me some information.

[Jeremy Wright]

I accept the invitation. On the first of the two points that the hon. Lady raised, in relation to what happens to the income for the provider if someone moves out of the medium and low-risk category and into the high-risk category, the answer is that that individual will stay within the cohort for payment-by-results purposes, so there is no financial incentive—that is the purpose of this—for the provider to move someone on to the public sector. On the second issue that she raised—how the public sector attracts the money to do the extra work with the extra people—the money should follow the individual.

[Kate Green]

I am not sure that I have totally understood this. It seemed that the private provider would retain any income attached to the result—the outcome—although we do not know what proportion of that overall payment to the private provider will be for the result and what will be a fixed payment for having to carry out the basics of supervision. It is welcome that the Minister says that resources will follow the offender, and therefore that if there is extra activity to be carried out in the public sector, the public sector will receive the necessary resources to carry out that work, but I am not quite clear where that funding will come from if the private provider is also to be remunerated in full for the work that it has carried out and for any ultimate outcome that may be achieved. Perhaps the Minister will be able to provide more detail as the Bill proceeds on its parliamentary passage. It would be useful to understand the cash flow and funding models in more detail.

Concerns have been expressed about the way in which prisoner risk categorisation will be undertaken. We have quite a long established system—OASys, or the offender assesment system—for determining levels of risk. It is being suggested that one of the things that the Ministry of Justice may wish to do is to revisit that risk assessment system to try to change the profile of the offender base so that more offenders can be deemed to be low or medium risk and supervised in the private or non-profit sector rather than, as would be suggested on current risk assessment tools, within the public probation service.

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[Mr Llwyd]

When something is driven by the profit motive, I am afraid that cherry-picking is going to occur. Common sense dictates that that is likely to happen; the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

The thinking behind the 2007 Act was that the probation trusts would be at the very core of the work, and would effectively be able to commission as and when necessary. It seems to me that that was an entirely different animal from what we are discussing today. Despite the Bill currently stating that parliamentary approval will be needed before any change takes place, the wheels are already turning. At the end of September, probation trusts were given notice of the Government’s intention to terminate their contracts by 1 April 2014. It will soon be too late to step back from these proposals. If we do not, however, in March 2014, 35 trusts will be closed and replaced by a centrally run public sector service that will work with only high and very high-risk offenders. That will account for just 30% of probation work.

Probation trust leaders were told in September to undertake a 28-day consultation with their staff on the process of splitting trust staff and resources to create the new community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service. No recommendation on the processes involved or the terms of the resource split has yet been agreed by probation trust employers, unions or the Government. Staff have not been told the terms of any voluntary redundancy scheme or what access will be granted to the local government pension scheme either for existing staff or new recruits. They have been given no information on how their roles will change after the reforms have been introduced. There is a real risk that many of the best staff will leave the profession. Unsurprisingly, then, in October, 84% of NAPO members voted for direct action. This is only the third time that the union has voted for direct action in its 101-year history. It has not taken this step lightly.

Contractors who offer services for the lowest price regardless of quality will no doubt be responsible for supervising 70% of probation, which is the low to medium- risk offenders who are most at risk of reoffending. Everybody agrees, by the way, that something should be done about them, so it is not an issue of either the status quo or this change. We all agree that something needs to be done, but it is how it is done and who is accountable for the work that matter.

Nearly 70,000 of the 140,000 cases that will be outsourced to private contractors will be offenders convicted of violent or sexual offences—specialist and sensitive cases that demand expertise and dedication from trained professionals. What they will get instead will be companies that may have a perverse incentive to allow reoffending to increase so that they can increase their profit margin. The gravity of the outcome of these proposals cannot be exaggerated, and all this is happening in spite of the fact that probation trusts are performing as well as they are. The Ministry of Justice’s own figures show that all 35 probation trusts have “good” or “excellent” performance levels and are hitting all their targets.

Reoffending rates for adult offenders under supervision by probation are the lowest they have been since 2007-08. In October 2011, the probation service was awarded the British Quality Foundation gold medal for excellence. Reoffending by those under probation supervision has been falling every single year since 2000. Despite the uncertainty felt by probation staff at present, the latest Ministry of Justice reoffending data have shown that the service’s high level of performance is in fact continuing.

Today, the Ministry released figures showing that 234 serious crimes, including violent and sexual offences, had been committed in Wales by short-sentenced offenders who had been released from prison in 2011. Its rather misleading press release failed to point out that the Government had ruled out the option of handing responsibility for them to the probation trusts in the past. However, both the Ministry’s press release and the one from which the Sunday Express quoted yesterday underline the fact that that is a highly dangerous course of action.

Instead of entrusting those offenders to the care of the professional probation service, the Government will deliver them to privateers who will be untrained and, no doubt, preoccupied by the profit motive. That hammers home the point that the Government’s reforms represent a victory of dogma over common sense—and there will be problems. As the Magistrates Association has made clear, the management of risk for offenders whose categorisation changes from medium to high and high to medium will be made far more difficult. The association has warned that offenders’ categorisation can change from medium to high rapidly if their circumstances change.

There is also a real risk that communication gaps will occur between community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service, probably leading to delay and possibly endangering the public. The Magistrates Association has pointed out that the staff of community rehabilitation companies may not be trusted by the police to handle confidential intelligence once they are managed privately. As we have heard, there is even a fear that sentencers will be less inclined to use community orders in the light of previous experiences with privately managed contracts—such as those involving Capita/ALS for interpreters and Serco for prison escorts, not to mention the G4S contract—and that that will result in an increase in the prison population and all the associated costs. We should not forget that probation trusts will be replaced by a model that is largely untested, as the “Transforming Rehabilitation” programme has not been piloted in the UK or in other jurisdictions.

Even the Justice Secretary’s Department is aware of the risks. The internal risk register, which was leaked to the press but which the Ministry of Justice still refuses to publish, warns that there is a more than 80% risk that the plans will lead to

“an unacceptable drop in operational performance”

and to delivery failures.

I have a copy of another risk register, compiled by Policy Exchange. It states that there is a “very high” risk of a failure to deliver the programme either in scope or within the time scale set by Ministers, as well as a very high risk of a reduction in the performance levels of trusts and community rehabilitation companies during the change process. The register emphasises that that would be due to insufficient capacity and the extent and speed of the structural changes being proposed, changes on which the Ministry of Justice has already embarked. There is also a very high risk of a reduction in performance levels following the departure of the trusts, partly owing to the MOJ’s failure to establish a robust operational design that has been fully tested. Moreover, the register states that there is a danger of the

“superficial appearance of the programme’s success masking fundamental failures in service design and practice.”

Those are damning words.

The reasoned amendment that I have co-signed declines to give the Bill a Second Reading for the reasons that I have cited. No part of the amendment supports the status quo. We need to do something about the 12-months cohort, but the Bill is certainly not the answer. The Government have already been told that there is a common-sense answer, namely to extend the remit of the probation service so that probation trusts can supervise offenders sentenced to less than 12 months in prison. However, the Government have chosen not to do that.

[Jeremy Wright]

I understand that that is what the right hon. Gentleman wants, but can he explain how it would be paid for?

[Mr Llwyd]

I am sure that it could be paid for by the delivery of some savings here and there in other parts of the budget.

[Mr Llwyd]

I accept what the shadow Minister says, but I want to say something to the Minister. I respect him as a Minister who does engage with people when they debate with him; I have great regard for him for that. However, I have to say to him that given that he does not know the cost of this farrago he is going into, he should not ask me about costs. [Interruption.] Well, it is first of all incumbent on him, being in government, to come up with figures, not to test figures put forward from the Opposition Benches.

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; I know he is short of time. The point is that I know how I will pay for it, but he does not. [Hon. Members: “How?] I will pay for it by the competition process. It is very interesting: the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), speaking for the Opposition, thinks we can do this through “estates”. Would the right hon. Gentleman be comfortable with the closure of probation premises, because that is what “estates” means?

[Mr Llwyd]

There could be some realignment, and there could be some savings here and there, of course, but there would have to be some increase in probation staff; that is an obvious point. As the Minister knows well, every change costs money and the better change would be to extend the remit, put in more properly trained probation officers and start from that point, not risk public safety in the awful way he and his colleagues are now doing.

I urge everyone who respects the probation service and who wants to ensure public safety to vote for this reasoned amendment today.

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[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I shall try not to lose us any more time. I always seem fated to be called to speak in a debate when a time-limit has been applied. Also, I usually seem to speak to an empty Chamber, but I have a few Members to speak to today.

It is a pleasure to speak on the Second Reading of this Bill, and there have been some useful contributions so far. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), I regard myself as a critical friend of these proposals. No one can dispute the figures, and I make no apology for arguing that something must be done. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) appeared to suggest that that was a bad approach. I think that when we have a cohort of prisoners who are getting no rehabilitation support because their custodial sentence is less than 12 months, something should be done. I think there is general agreement on that on both sides of the House. We cannot go on giving people £46 cash-in-hand and just hope for the best. That is why these proposals are an important first step.

None the less, I recognise the level of concern that exists on both sides of the House and in the wider community, which is interested in these issues, not least the Prison Reform Trust, of which I am a trustee. There is a deep underlying concern that these proposals may inadvertently lead to an increase in the prison population as sentencers play safe and send people to custody in order to access rehabilitation services that they fear may not be available if they go for a community sentence. That is a genuine fear that we have heard expressed today, and I would like the Minister to try to nail it. What guidance can he issue to the judiciary and magistrates to remind them that existing sentencing guidelines will remain in force, so custody remains an option only when the offence justifies it? Furthermore, can he ensure that that guidance makes it clear that the level of support available to an offender does not vary depending on whether it is in a custodial or a community setting?

Those assurances would help many who are concerned that these proposals may lead to an increase in the prison population, and it will emphasise that these reforms should not be portrayed as being to the detriment of community sentences. Indeed, given these concerns, I would welcome hearing from the Minister how he sees community sentencing playing a greater role in the future.

We have also heard a lot about the probation service’s fears about the changes, and I want to raise a couple of points that may alter the balance of the debate somewhat. For a very long time now the probation service has argued for parity of esteem, within the Ministry of Justice, with the prison sector. The 35 local probation trusts have never felt that they have argued with one voice in the way that the prisons sector can in the Ministry of Justice. Creating a national probation service, and creating a probation institute to enhance that profession’s qualifications and opportunities, is a good thing. It provides an opportunity for the thousands of well-respected, highly professional probation officers who are out there.

We can all refer to excellent voluntary organisations that engage in rehabilitation work. As Christmas is coming, I can recommend Fine Cell Work. It produces excellent embroidery, cushions and needlework, which can be fantastic for relatives or friends. I suggest that hon. Members visit its website today. Fine Cell Work has a purpose, because it trains people for a career after they leave custody. The Clink is another good example of an excellent voluntary organisation. It is about to open its third restaurant inside a prison, at HMP Brixton—perhaps we can all go for a Christmas dinner at some point, if it opens early enough. Its reoffending rate is 12.5%, which is one that many would dream of in terms of this debate.

I recognise the concern expressed by hon. Members on both sides that the smaller community groups may struggle to cling on in this new competitive environment. A fortnight ago I made this point, but I will make it again: Ministers and Opposition spokespeople must look carefully at what is being proposed by Clinks, which is the trade body for the hundreds of voluntary providers in our prison system. It has some specific proposals about where risk can be located in the supply chain to enable more of these many smaller groups to play a crucial role. That particularly relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) about the smaller groups that help women offenders and other minority groups of offenders. That is an important thing and I hope that the Minister can respond to it.

The speed of reform is certainly daunting and ambitious, and I would be naive not to suggest that. In a way, it makes me think of the work capability assessment, although I would rather not necessarily have to do that. The previous Government sensibly asked Professor Harrington to undertake regular reviews of specific aspects of the WCA that were causing concern—one year it was mental health, another year it was fluctuating conditions. That tweaked the WCA to improve it, perhaps not to the extent that Labour Members might like but it was a useful self-correcting mechanism to improve a process. I would very much like to see something similar in this area. I recognise that we have Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation, but how will the Minister task it to provide regular reviews of the progress of these reforms, identifying thematic areas that might need attention? Such an approach would greatly enhance the House’s confidence that these reforms will be properly scrutinised and improved as they go along. The iterative element to these proposals will be crucial, just as it was on the WCA.

I am also highly concerned about the potential for large numbers of breaches, with the impact assessment talking about a need for 600 extra places and a cost of £16 million. Nobody who is concerned about the size of public spending should treat that lightly. I want to hear a bit more from the Minister about how we can ensure that breach is not an automatic conveyor belt. Provision was made in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 to allow offenders to go before a court to explain why they did what they did and then the court would have the option to do nothing if it thought that what it had heard so convinced it. Disappointingly, I understand that that was not commenced—indeed, it was removed in the Crime and Courts Act 2013. Will the Minister say whether that can be looked at again to ensure that we do not have this automatic escalator of breaches, whereby we end up with more people in prison than should be there? I am particularly concerned about the much younger age group, who often have learning disabilities or communication delay of some sort. They often seem to be in a Catch-22 situation, where they have a complex set of requirements placed on them which they cannot possibly hope to understand. I know the Government, in the other place, made a commitment in response to Lord Bradley to have “easy read” statements of what the requirements are going to be. Can the Government update us on the progress of that, because I fear that without them we will see far more breaches that cannot be explained in front of a court to the satisfaction of the court?

Also, I remain slightly concerned by the role youth offending teams will play in the new landscape. Someone turning 18 while in custody, having been sentenced as a minor, will be transferred to the national probation service. For many of the vulnerable young people in my constituency, that will be quite a culture shock.

[Jeremy Wright]

I am conscious of the time and that I might not have the chance to get to this later, so I can give my hon. Friend the instant reassurance that in the case of the individuals he is describing, a decision will be made on each about whether it is more appropriate for the national probation service or, indeed, the CRC to manage it or for the youth offending team to continue to do so.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the Minister for that response and hope that the youth offending team will still have a voice in that process rather than just being passive.

Most importantly, in terms of the numbers involved, we all frequently discuss the role that mental ill health plays in causing offender behaviour. The numbers in prison with a mental health diagnosis, an addiction problem or a dual diagnosis is significant. It is striking that, despite the fact that we have a specific mental health rehabilitation order, for the last year for which I have figures only 1% of disposals consisted of such an order—that is only 783. That cannot be because we are not aware of the problem; clearly, we are, and many detailed reports have considered the structural issues that mean that the capacity for meeting that need simply is not there.

Bearing in mind what we have heard from Members on both sides about cost, as well as the fact that providing treatments for these vulnerable groups costs more, will the Minister consider whether the mental health rehabilitation orders, which might be far more costly, need to be provided in a slightly different way? Otherwise, we might see a repeat of the current situation, where we have the need and the knowledge but do not seem to be able to supply the rehabilitation treatment to the people who most need it.

Clearly, I have just listed a long line of concerns, as is my way in such debates. None the less, I am highly supportive of the Government’s direction of travel on this Bill. I am very supportive of the Minister individually and I join Members on both sides in saying that we know that his heart is in the right place and we trust him to deliver the Bill properly.

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

It is a great pleasure to respond to the debate. It has been a good and wide-ranging debate, but it is about to reach a very strange conclusion, because there is no real disagreement on the Bill’s contents. All hon. Members I have listened to this evening agree—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) mentions clause 1. He is in favour of it, but he is about to vote against it. I am not sure he realises that, or that the effect of the amendment is to decline to give the Bill a Second Reading, including clause 1. I do not believe that the Opposition understand the effect of their reasoned amendment.

There is good reason for the consensus we have managed to achieve: it is vital that we extend rehabilitation to those sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment or less, who currently receive none. As my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) has put it, the status quo is unacceptable.

The debate has concentrated not on the contents of the Bill, but on the wider reforms that the Government propose. I accept that we must get important aspects of the reforms right. It is important to have quality standards and to ensure that those who provide the work have properly trained staff. We will ensure that they do. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) has said, it is important that there is inspection of all providers, from whatever sector. That, too, will be done.

It is right to say, as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) has said, that risk is dynamic. She is right too that assessments of risk will continue to be done by probation officers in the public sector. There will be contractual obligations on all providing those services to refer back to the public sector if they believe there to be a change in risk.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have said that it is important to maintain local partnerships in the criminal justice system. They are right. Included among those relationships is the relationship with police and crime commissioners. We will have contractual obligations for all providing those services to participate in statutory partnerships. We will expect more than that. We will expect providers to show us, in the course of the bidding process, how they will engage with all appropriate partnerships.

Opposition Members have expressed concern that the public bodies, such as the police, will not share information with private sector organisations. I do not know how they think private sector prisons operate currently—institutions that were in place throughout the 13 years of the Labour Government. Exactly those interactions have continued to take place.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) made a number of points. He is right that contract management is important. As I said a moment or so ago, and on exactly the point made by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on the so-called “bid candy” problem, bid assessment is important. It is vital that, when we assess bids, we do so properly for the sustainability of relationships between larger organisations and smaller ones, particularly those in the voluntary sector.

Hon. Members have made a great many comments on the pace of the reforms, which we discussed two weeks ago in the Opposition day debate. I repeat that I make no apology for proceeding apace with the reforms because, for as long as we wait, victims will continue to be created as a result of the reoffending that we could otherwise prevent. I do not believe that that is sustainable.

In answer to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, it is important that we get on with the reforms so that we can give probation officers certainty on their personal futures. On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull, we fully expect that transfers to the NPS and to community rehabilitation companies in April will be made without any compulsory redundancies and on terms directly comparable with TUPE.

The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) raised understandable concerns about sentencer behaviour. As he would expect, we have spoken to senior sentencers. A number of points are relevant, a couple of which were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. First, sentencing guidelines remain in place. All sentencers are expected to follow them and sentence to custody only when they believe it is appropriate. Secondly, the same level of supervision will be provided from the same provider whether someone receives a community order or a custodial sentence. There is no distinction and it is important to bear that in mind.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston was right to focus on through-the-gate provision. A broader part of our reforms is to institute what we call resettlement prisons, to enable all prisoners to be met by a rehabilitation provider in the closing stages of the custodial part of their sentence, and then be supported by that same provider through the gate and out into the community. That will provide the continuity she is looking for.

My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) made the point that it is important to design a payment-by-results system that does not involve cherry-picking. We will do that through a combination of mechanisms that will reward those who stop reoffending altogether, but reflect an element of reward for reducing the amount of reoffending in the cohort—that is crucial. It is right that we pick up on the specific needs of women. As I think has been recognised, that is already covered in the Bill.

There seems to be broad agreement that we need to act, but action has a cost and that cost was too high for custody plus—the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East was straightforward in saying that. We propose a simpler system. We propose not just the opportunity for innovation to be brought into the management of offenders—by the voluntary sector, and, yes, the private sector—but, crucially, the opportunity to make the savings necessary to provide for looking after the 50,000 offenders a year who everyone who has spoken agrees should be looked after.

If not by that method, how should that be done? Those who speak from the Opposition Front Bench have criticised our approach, but offered no alternative. Under pressure, the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) tells us that there may be savings to be found in the estates part of the probation budget. I hope she appreciates that that part of the probation budget involves the provision of probation facilities and premises. If she is suggesting closing some, I look forward to seeing a list. I am sure she will explain to the probation service why it is right to close them. The Opposition say this can be done without competition, but they do not say how. They sign up to a reasoned amendment that declines to give the Bill a Second Reading

“because the implementation of the proposals in the Bill”—

which I remind the House they entirely agree with—

“depends on the Government’s proposed restructuring of the Probation Service”.

If we cannot do it by means of restructuring the probation service, how are we to do it? There is no answer.

There is, of course, good work being done by the probation service and by probation officers up and down the country. Every time I speak on this subject I say so, and I am happy to do so again. That will still be in the system we are designing, but my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) is right that it is not true that state sector probation officers are the only ones who can do the job well. That is what is really behind the majority of the opposition to the reforms that we have heard today. It is not, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) said, that the reforms are a triumph of dogma over common sense. It is the other way around: it is the opposition that is a triumph of dogma over common sense—the view that the private sector can never do a good job, regardless of how good the offer may be.

Serco and G4S have been mentioned many times. I can offer the House this assurance: if Serco and G4S do not come out satisfactorily from the audit processes, which this Government instituted, they will not receive any contracts. Their apparent abuses relate to contracts negotiated by the previous Labour Government, and they took place under their regime. We are the ones sorting that out. The Offender Management Act 2007, passed by the previous Government, is clear: it gives us the authority to pursue the line we are pursuing. They would rather forget that, but they passed the 2007 Act and should know what it says and understand its consequences.

The Opposition support an amendment they never wrote; they support it in preference to an Act they passed; and they do all of that so that they can vote against a Bill that, broadly speaking, they agree with. What a mess. They should support this Bill.

Question put, That the amendment be made.