Rehabilitation of Offenders

John Glen Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I understand full well where the hon. Gentleman comes from politically. The problem with his argument is that the legislation that enables me to make these proposals was passed by the Labour Government.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I welcome the statement and the Justice Secretary’s sense of mission and purpose. However, on payment for results, I ask him to be cautious of creating perverse incentives to meet targets, and to ensure that the measures are sufficiently nuanced to take account of the behavioural challenges in getting difficult categories of offenders fully clear of reoffending. The measures must be sophisticated enough to deal with such complexity.

[Chris Grayling]

That is a very important point. We took careful heed of the responses to our consultation on this matter. The mechanism for payment by results will contain two elements: an overall reduction in the reoffending rate of a cohort of offenders referred to a provider, and a measure for the overall reduction in the number of crimes committed by that cohort. That will mean that a prolific offender cannot simply be parked in the corner and ignored: there will be a financial incentive for a provider to work with every offender.