Probation Service

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, deserves to be congratulated, not only on having secured the debate this evening but on the masterful way in which he introduced the subject. I found myself in great sympathy with the points he made.

I confess to the House that I feel very sad. If I was asked to pick an exemplary area of effective public service in British social history, I would pick the probation service. It has dedicated people of quality; people of education, training and practical experience. They do not just run a system or prove themselves as efficient in economic terms, but they have a mission to relate to the individuals, the young men, women and children —and not only young—who are their responsibility, and to work with them as individuals, trying to enable them to become productive. Rehabilitation is a sort of artificial word—it does not get to the human centre of all this. They enable these people to become constructive members of society, to feel that they belong to society, and to grow in confidence. I see that all that is in jeopardy because of a preoccupation with change—as far as I can see, almost for the sake of change.

Look at what has happened in recent years. We have seen reoffending down and the 35 probation trusts in England and Wales have been described as being good or exceptional. Why change a situation that is going so well? We have also seen—this is crucial—that reoffending has been coming down. The latest set of statistics published by the Ministry of Justice shows that for everyone under probation supervision, the probation service will reduce reoffending by 5%. The fall in reoffending has been even higher: when the figures for those serving community sentences are separated from those released from custody, there has been a 6% reduction for those serving community sentences. This is positive; it is not dramatic but is steady progress, which matters in this area. It is about working with people as people, not dramatic schemes against artificial targets.

I am sure that all of us commend the work of the Howard League. I was very struck by a paper it prepared for this debate which posed certain questions that we ought to take very seriously. The league says that in the context of this being a huge change to our justice system:

“Risk is key to the Transforming Rehabilitation proposals—who will supervise people under sentence will be determined by their risk level, with high risk cases remaining in the public sector and all low and medium risk cases (the vast majority) being transferred to private providers. Despite the central importance of risk levels to the proposals a risk assessment … is yet to be published, or possibly even developed. Furthermore”—

and the noble Lord referred to this—

“probation officers are currently being asked whether they would prefer to stay in the public sector or move to one of the 21 ‘Crime reduction companies’ … but they are not being provided with any information with which to make this decision. Probation officers do not know who their employers will be … what they will carry out or what the terms and conditions … will be. It is unacceptable to put forward radical plans that are central to public safety with so little detail about how it will work and how it will affect the people involved”.

I have another concern which I will share with the House. I have spent a great deal of my life in the voluntary sector. I was a director of Oxfam, which is quite a significant organisation. I am sure that if these proposals go ahead, a lot of voluntary organisations will have a great contribution to make. They will bring a great deal of sensitivity and commitment. However, I am anxious. Why? The real centre of purpose in the voluntary sector should be experimentation. It should be about becoming a catalyst for society as a whole, about vision and new approaches. Increasingly, the voluntary sector is being asked to become an extension of the public sector—subcontracting to get the work done more cheaply than it would be done under existing arrangements is usually a governing factor. That is the objective; rather like privatisation, we shall have to wait and see whether it will work out like that.

I am concerned that all this may be affecting the historical culture and ethos of the voluntary sector. It may be becoming a subcontracting culture as distinct from an innovative, imaginative, visionary, sensitive, dynamic purpose-challenging society with new experiences. I think of a very practical example. I have referred to my experience at Oxfam and other organisations in the voluntary sector, and I had for nine years the joy of being national president of YMCA England and Wales. I became particularly struck by the work the YMCA was doing with young offenders. I remember going to a young offender institution where it had won a contract to work. This, of course, was under the previous Government; I am not disguising that reality—it is a fact. The contract was to get young people into jobs—into work. It was judged by the Home Office in terms of how successful it was in getting those results against targets. What the team was discovering, as sensitive, imaginative people, was that some of those with whom it worked were not ready to go into a job straight away. They needed a lot more support and preparation for making a success of their life. To get them into a job straight away might be a recipe for disaster.

The YMCA therefore began to do more work on this area because it thought that it was its responsibility. It was told in no uncertain terms to stop doing that because, if it did not meet the targets on getting people into jobs, it would lose the contract to somebody else. This is the sort of problem I see ahead. These are the practical problems of the front line. I would like to hear much more reassurance from the Government on this.

I finish as I started: I think it is a word that can be used too loosely, but I genuinely feel we are at a tragic stage. We are about to tear up and remove something with a tremendous sense of purpose, of loyalty and of contribution to society, but above all of contribution to the individuals with whom they are working, for a system unproven with so many questions still unresolved. I do not understand why we are making this leap into something which is far from proven as a sensible way forward.