Private Probation Services

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves]

I agree with that assessment and there is now a situation where there have been substantial job losses, so that a lot of very experienced probation officers are no longer in post. The system is one where staff are overworked and do not necessarily have the skills and equipment that they need.

I will come on to some of the findings of a Unison survey. Unison has 3,500 members working across CRCs and the National Probation Service. It carried out a survey of members who work for CRCs and the 215 responses that it received make for really shocking reading. Twenty-five per cent. of staff said that they only occasionally had the equipment, resources or systems they needed to do their jobs properly; 41% said that they never experienced a manageable case load; 25% said that their CRC never or only occasionally completed community orders within the required time; and 43% said they never felt valued by their CRC.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Does the hon. Lady share my concern that CRCs received extra funding from the Government that was worth £37.15 million in the 2016-17 financial year, but because of the secrecy of the contracts between the Government and CRCs we cannot break that down to the level of individual companies or even receive the details of those contracts?

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. After I have said a little bit about staff and morale, I will go on to talk a little bit about the financial bailout of CRCs, because it is really important that we recognise the additional money that has gone into propping up these failing companies. However, I will complete my points about staff morale and then move on to that issue.

I want to flag up some of the things that probation staff said in response to the Unison survey. One said:

“Chaotic, frustrating and exhausting. Caseloads are too high and I don’t feel as if I do anything to protect the public anymore, I simply process people. Service users…often comment as to how impersonal our service is now and that they feel telephone contact with offender managers is inadequate. Very sad knowing that I used to do good work.”

Another said:

“I have inherited a new caseload since early 2017—many cases have not been contacted for months—one case today I managed to contact had not heard from anyone at Probation for 16 months in a 24-month suspended sentence. It is not good enough.”

Perhaps the most damning response was this one:

“I feel stressed, de-professionalised and ready to give it up. This government have transformed rehabilitation alright. They have ruined it.”

Probation is ultimately a caring profession and it should be viewed as being a bit like teaching or social work. However, it is clear that those who work within the service are being hugely let down by privatised and profit-driven CRCs. That is summed up by the underlying tension between CRCs meeting contractual obligations and their responding to the needs of offenders, with the latter receiving much less attention than the former. Shockingly the Government are now in a position where, as has already been said, they are bailing out CRCs at a cost of millions of pounds. As things stand, CRCs are paid for the volume of rehabilitation activity.

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[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I thank the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) for securing this important debate and introducing it excellently. I declare an interest as co-chair of the justice unions and family courts parliamentary group.

In the 2010 coalition agreement, the Government promised a rehabilitation revolution, but with the privatisation of probation companies, we have instead had a fundamental erosion of the humanitarian principles that underpin meaningful rehabilitation. The Government refuse to acknowledge that their blinkered ideology of privatisation has failed and, in so doing, they are failing with regard to the basic premise of justice as a common good for all of society.

Good offender management is inseparable from quality probation supervision. In its most recent report, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation warns that it had found

“CRCs stretched beyond their capacity”

and that, in many CRCs,

“case management itself is insufficient to enable good enforcement decisions”,

which statistics in the report confirm—only 37% of CRC enforcement cases sampled involved good-quality assessment of the likelihood of reoffending, compared with 83% in the public sector national probation service. It is said that we should not compare CRCs with the NPS, but the most serious crimes lie with the NPS, and when we see figures of 37% versus 83%, there are questions to be answered.

That is wholly unsurprising when we look at how CRCs supervise people, with infrequent meetings, and sometimes only by phone, which breaks the face-to-face relationships that are vital to successful probation work. That lack of meaningful engagement has led to poor decisions in managing breaches of orders. The recent HMIP report also reveals that, in more than half of all inspected cases in which CRCs had returned service users to court, the decision to enforce was not appropriate, compared with just 14% of NPS cases. It appears that CRCs were “seldom” making such decisions on the risk of harm posed or the likelihood of reoffending.

CRCs are private companies. At best, they are motivated by the detail of contract compliance, rather than by the true quality of supervision. The ethos of public service and motivation of care are not their primary drivers. Does the Minister finally recognise that dismantling the probation service and replacing it with a part-privatised model has failed, and will he commit his Government to listening to the professionals when they call for an end to profiting from probation?

It is all very well to talk in statistics, but the failings have real consequences for real families. Almost three years ago, in March 2015, an innocent young man was murdered by an offender who was meant to be under the supervision of Working Links, the CRC operating in Wales. Conner Marshall, an 18-year-old, was staying with friends at a caravan site in Porthcawl, Bridgend when he was attacked in a case of mistaken identity. High on a cocktail of alcohol and drugs, his killer stamped on his face, kicked him in the ribs, stripped him naked and hit him repeatedly with a metal pole. The individual has been jailed for life after having been found guilty of murder. Conner’s killer was on community probation for a string of offences, including domestic violence and animal cruelty. He was on curfew and ordered to attend anti-drugs and alcohol meetings, but failed to turn up to several of them. Procedures were not followed. There were eight missed appointments, six of which were without valid reason. That was eight missed opportunities to rein in the murderer and implement the breach conditions. The opportunities were never taken, and he was not stopped. On behalf of Conner’s mother, Nadine Marshall, I emphasise that at present there are no representation policies for the families of victims in such horrific and tragic circumstances.

The system as it currently operates is not fit for purpose. Less than a decade ago, we were promised a rehabilitation revolution. Will the Minister confirm whether, and if so when, the wheel will finally turn beyond this failed revolution?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Ms McDonagh, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who made interesting points. I welcome his comment about taking back the reins, because that gets to the heart of the matter. Because of the fragmentation of the system, nobody is holding the reins in the way that they once did when looking at the rehabilitation of offenders outside of prison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on securing this debate. This area of justice policy has never had the scrutiny and interest that it deserves from Members or the media, or from anywhere. It is good to see Members in this place taking a lead and putting the spotlight on this issue, because it is so important.

Sadly, the situation today was entirely predictable. It has been a disaster and it was avoidable, but it could be remedied. I know that the Minister was not in the Ministry of Justice when the decisions were taken, so we do not blame him, but he now has the opportunity to reverse some of the decisions that have led to the catastrophe in the service. If he does not take that opportunity, he will be responsible for that and we will hold him to it. If he were to indicate that he might review the system or look at reunifying probation services, I am sure—although I cannot speak for my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain)—that he would have the wholehearted support of Opposition parties across the House.

The warnings about the Government’s mistake came not only from the Labour party, but from staff, the unions and academics, and from people from other jurisdictions where similar things had been attempted. Nobody that I could find thought the Government were taking the right approach.

There was not much scrutiny at the time of how the changes would affect probation staff—the professionals who had decided to dedicate their working lives to working with some of the most incredibly difficult people in society. I have had limited experience of working with offenders, and they are flippin’ difficult. They do not always tell you the truth, so the idea of assessing what they are doing with their lives, what they intend to do next or what control they have over their own decision making, all on the basis of a phone call, is completely implausible to most people with any experience of working with such individuals. We have separated not only offenders, but a group of professionals who were very good at sharing knowledge, supporting one another and working with a mix of offenders. Working with serious offenders all the time is difficult, stressful and emotionally hard work.

The Minister needs to read some of the court reports that detail some of the offences committed by offenders to see how that affects him. I do not think the supervision needed when working with such groups of offenders has ever really been properly provided, but it is even more difficult now, when individuals work with those types of offenders all the time. It is incredibly difficult work. Previously, someone might go into probation and work with some low or medium-risk offenders for a while and gradually take on higher-risk individuals under supervision. That progression and development in practice and that knowledge and understanding have been lost. That is a real loss to the service. We might not be seeing the impact just yet, but we will increasingly see it over time.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

The Government have argued in the past that we had not allowed enough time to review the performance of CRCs, but we are now more than two years after payment by results was brought in, so it is time to review whether it is working effectively or not.

[Jenny Chapman]

I agree: now is the moment. It would have been better to run a pilot, but the Government were determined to embark on a mission that was so fundamentally flawed it was never going to work. Had they been so minded, they could have piloted the approach and gathered evidence of the problems. That would have caused far less damage than selling off half the service in 35 different trust areas in one go and thinking that everything would go smoothly. They removed any opportunity for learning in the process, and that was reckless. It is something that the Government, even if they will not say so publicly, really ought to reflect on and probably should regret.

Selling off all the areas at once was incredibly high risk. The then Secretary of State, the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), was asked at the time why he was so determined to do it. I remember this clearly and was quite shocked. He was asked for any evidence from anywhere to justify such a reckless move, and he simply said that he had inner belief that it would work. He was determined to prove it, and then he went off to run the trains. What the Government did was a mistake. It was stupid and is not something that this Minister would want to repeat. I am sure he is somebody who will look at evidence and take into account the track record of CRCs. He needs to make decisions that will change the current structures.

The whole thing has been based on the flawed premise that offenders fall neatly into two separate groups, but they do not. Risk fluctuates constantly. It takes experienced probation officers to assess that—to notice it, to know what they are supposed to look for and then to know what to do when they suspect the risk might be about to change.

We are talking about an incredibly difficult group of people. Probably everybody here has heard this, but I want to get some characteristics of offenders on the record—27% having been taken into care, compared with 2% of the general population; 49% having been excluded from school, compared with 2%; numeracy and literary levels of an 11-year-old or below at 65% and 48% respectively; 72% of men and 70% of women with two or more mental disorders; 83% of men with a history of hazardous drinking; drug misuse at 66%. We are not talking about people who have just got themselves on the earliest steps to a life of criminality. These are chaotic, confused people, with very little control over what they do. In the sector, they would probably say they are bang at it and are only getting lifted for a proportion of what they are up to. Probation work is incredibly difficult and it relies on the good will, professionalism and experience of an outstanding workforce. To be successful, we need to harness the very best practice in the profession and make that available to all offenders.

The trusts could have delivered that. They were doing a good job and met all the targets they were set by successive Governments. They were independently assessed at the time as excellent. Had the Government wanted them to behave in a different way, such as to work more collaboratively with voluntary and community sector organisations, they should have made that clear to trusts and made that a target. I am confident that the trusts would have been able to deliver on the objectives set them by the Government, even the ambition of wanting to supervise those being released from a prison sentence of less than 12 months. That was one of the objectives the Government set at the time. I do not deny that it was a good objective, but there was no attempt at all to try to achieve it within the existing arrangements. That was negligent and arrogant. It was a bullish approach from Ministers at the time, and it was a real mistake.

This is a complex issue, but it is incredibly high stakes. Splitting the service has been an error. I urge Ministers to listen now in a way that they did not at that time, and to take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the decision and keep the public safe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good challenge, and I will move on to the question of the voluntary sector and how to take good small examples to a bigger scale.

The challenge is what on earth to do about that. How do we address the problems? The fundamental thing is to get back to the basics, which are exactly what hon. Members in the Chamber have discussed. Basics include ensuring that people have a manageable case load, which means not going beyond 50 to 55 cases. They must meet the people in the cases regularly; they must ensure that they not only meet them but put in place a good assessment of the needs of the individual and of public protection; and they must come up with a plan linking that assessment to action. That is before we go on to the other things that we have been discussing, which is how we work with the voluntary sector and wider society. The basics need to happen first.

Around the country we can see that some people are delivering those basics well. Cumbria, for example, which has a CRC, has a good report from the inspectors for doing that. London, as the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge knows well, got a negative report from the inspectors exactly about some of those areas. We will not go into the details and explanations for some of that today. Some are about transition and inheriting a difficult situation, and London has always been difficult for probation services and has more than 30 different boroughs. There are complexities with IT systems and so on. However, we do not want to make excuses. The fundamental question is: can we sort those things out? I believe we can.

I am very confident that we can get to a situation, even in London, which is probably the most difficult area in the country, where we can have manageable case loads, where people can be met regularly, where there is good tracking of offenders—we know where they are and take good enforcement action if they do not turn up to appointments—and where the assessment and the plan are in place. I am very hopeful that, when the next inspection report comes out from the probation inspectorate, we will see those improvements even in London. I expect to be held accountable if those improvements are not recorded in the next report.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I am interested in what the Minister is saying. Will he commit to ensure proper parliamentary scrutiny of how those organisations operate, whatever their name in future? That is not the case at present.

[Rory Stewart]

It would be interesting to know what kind of parliamentary scrutiny the hon. Lady means. There are some pretty good examples of scrutiny—the Justice Committee is doing a report on the probation service and we have an incredibly active, energetic and highly critical chief inspector of probation who is doing an enormously good job which is drawn on by everyone around the Chamber—but I am open to more. Debates such as this one are very powerful ways to hold us to account.

The next issue, as we move on from addressing the basics, is to look at some of the questions the hon. Member for Darlington talked about, in particular how we scale up pockets of really good small practice in individual local areas. That seems to be a huge challenge for everything—not just probation but everything we do with the voluntary sector. It is infuriating to find in most of our constituencies good local providers being pushed out either by contractors coming in from elsewhere or by large charities and voluntary sector organisations. In my case, in Cumbria, they appear to come up from London with hundreds of proposal writers to take over a local council contract, but lack the local skills and knowledge to deliver.

We need to find ways to encourage CRCs to provide both the money that could go to those voluntary organisations—for example, in housing—and the cultural change, as the hon. Member for Darlington is aware, which is to encourage probation officers to let go of the cases to let specialist providers in mental health or housing take over their clients. That can be done but it must be driven through individual CRC by individual CRC. However, that is just the beginning. The big aim is to move from what happens with the individual in the probation office to what happens in broader society.

The real reason we have faced reoffending rates stubbornly stuck at 50% for nearly 40 years is that, in the end, the behaviour of someone coming out of prison is not controlled simply by what happens in the interaction with the probation officer or, when in prison, the prison officer. That is a very individual psychological engagement. What tends to happen is that the probation officer tries to change the behaviour of the individual in the room. However, that individual exists not only in the room but in a broader society. Unless such individuals can repair their relationships with family, society and the state, we will not get into a cycle in which they offend less or, eventually, do not offend at all.

That involves difficult things, with the individual feeling a sense of hope and agency; and that they can take control of their lives and have a sense of dignified participation, not as a labelled criminal but as a citizen in the fullest sense in society. No one in the Chamber has easy answers to how to achieve those things, but we must focus on ensuring that we get everything right, from the basics of meeting, assessment and planning, right through to the broader engagement with society to make that citizen function. We must recognise that the idea of desistance is not a linear path, but it is a path to reduce reoffending and protect the public.

I will conclude with three remarks. First, I pay tribute to the very hard work of probation officers. They are some of our most dedicated and serious professionals. Yesterday in Nottingham Prison I was lucky enough to see the Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland CRC—people who have worked in probation trusts for nearly 30 years. They are based in the prison, telling very powerful stories about the assistance they provide in housing, and they represent exactly why we should be so proud of the work that probation officers do. They have difficult work which, as hon. Members have pointed out, combines the work of a social worker with that of someone who has to implement a court order and protect the public.

Secondly, I pay tribute to Members of Parliament. Their work in this area is often ignored by the public and, sometimes, too much ignored by Parliament. Such work matters deeply, as the hon. Member for Strangford pointed out, both for the individuals themselves on their journey towards improvement, and for the public.

Finally, I undertake to the House that we must focus. The results that we are getting from the inspectors are simply not good enough. I wish to be judged on driving the CRCs back to the very basics of their task, and on opening up to all the innovations and new ideas shared around the Chamber, to ensure that 40 years of stubborn rates of reoffending begin to be addressed, for the sake of individual offenders and the public as a whole.