Probation Service: Chief Inspector’s Reviews into Serious Further Offences

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, last Tuesday, the Minister Damian Hinds gave a Statement commenting on the Chief Inspector of Probation’s independent review of the probation service’s management of particular cases. In that, he referred to murders in the most distressing of circumstances. While the report rightly draws attention to probation failures in process and practice which led to these deaths, I want to ask the Government how we got to this position.

In 2014, the Government embarked on their disastrous privatisation of the probation service. In 2020, they abandoned this experiment and brought it back under state control. For 100 years, probation had benefited from local connections, a degree of local autonomy and professionalism. Unfortunately, in 2020, instead of reinstating local links, the probation functions were squeezed into the Civil Service. The independence and ability to speak out about local issues has gone. On-the-ground contacts with voluntary organisations and essential services such as housing have gone. The very things that are proven to prevent reoffending are gone. Heavy workloads, high vacancy rates and newly recruited, young and inexperienced staff who lack managers to guide their complex work are all factors that lead to mistakes. Ultimately, they endanger the public. This deterioration only makes more pointless deaths likelier. Does the Minister agree that we should reinstate the links to local government so that housing, health, the police and voluntary organisations can play their part?

I agree that strategic direction and inspection must be a central government responsibility, but local management is the best chance for reviving the probation service. Information sharing across services would improve if data about any individual offender were held in one place. This would allow better-informed risk assessment and supervision. Why have the Government still not introduced this centralised database?

The fact is that the Government knew about the problems highlighted in this report but failed to act on them, so they must shoulder their fair share of responsibility. It is right that the chief probation officer has apologised. Will the Minister accept responsibility and apologise not just for the service’s failure but for the Government’s failure to tackle the severe staff shortages and excessive case loads that contributed to what went so tragically wrong?

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, these two appalling cases have shocked and horrified us all. Our deepest sympathies go out to the families of the innocent victims. These reviews record a catalogue of mistakes, miscalculations and failures to act. In view of the Lord Speaker’s ruling, I shall not go into the detail of McSweeney’s case.

In Bendall’s case, against a background of domestic abuse dating back to 2016 and a clear risk of sexual abuse of girls dating back to March 2020, he was assessed in a pre-sentence report in June 2021 as a medium risk of serious harm to the public and, incredibly, as a low risk of harm to partners and children. The so-called fast delivery pre-sentence report was described in the review of his case as “inappropriate”—an understatement, I suggest. As a result, for an offence of arson Bendall was given a suspended sentence order with an electronically monitored curfew requirement that he reside with Terri Harris and her children. The probation service had made no contact with Ms Harris before Bendall’s sentencing and no assessment of the risk to her and her children. In September 2021, he murdered Ms Harris, who was pregnant, her two children and an 11 year-old friend of theirs, raping one of the children.

We can date the parlous state of the probation service to its disastrous privatisation in 2014 and the inevitably challenging attempt to reverse the damage in 2021. However, it is still plagued by a lack of resources and dismally low morale. Of course, we welcome the extra £5.5 million per year for more staff to access domestic abuse and child safeguarding information, but why is it so late? How will the Government ensure that this new investment addresses poor information sharing and the lack of consideration for the welfare of children?

The extra £155 million per year for more probation staff will help, particularly if it really does yield a net extra 4,000 probation officers over three years. However, Andy Slaughter MP pointed out in the House of Commons that more than 50% of probation officer posts in London are vacant. Does the Minister agree that filling the vacancies with suitable candidates is a huge challenge? Retention of experienced officers is also vital; as is high-quality training and building confidence that officers are fully informed and that their decisions are not impossibly pressured. In the other place, Sir Robert Neill, the chair of the Justice Committee, pointed out that these issues had all been highlighted by his committee in April 2021. Will the Minister explain how the Government now plan to tackle all these extremely difficult issues?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure the whole House will join me in expressing once again our deep condolences and sorrow to the victims in these two cases. I will not, if your Lordships permit, go into details which have already been set out in the House of Commons and have been mentioned today. However, I repeat unreservedly on behalf of the Government the profound apology for serious failings in probation supervision in these two cases already made by my right honourable friend Damian Hinds MP, Minister for Prisons and Probation, in the House of Commons on Tuesday 24 January. The chief probation officer has also made that apology to the families concerned.

As the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Marks, have already said, the primary duty of the Government now is to do all we can to address these failings and ensure, as far as possible, that this kind of thing can never happen again. As the Chief Inspector of Probation found in his highly critical reports, the central problem in both these cases was that the level of risk was not assessed properly. Both criminals concerned were assessed as medium risk when they should have been assessed as high risk in light of their long and often dangerous criminal histories. However, the questions we have to address, which have rightly been raised, are: what are the Government doing about it and how we can move forward from here?

First, at a very high level, the probation service has been reunified with a view to raising standards. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, mentioned the history of this matter and mention has also been made of the privatisation of the service. The Government believed it right to bring that arrangement to an end, and are currently engaged in restoring, reinforcing and improving the service.

The Government recognise that the probation service needs more staff, and an additional £155 million has been invested in that endeavour. This has led to an increase of 2,500 trainee probation officers over the last two years, and a further 1,500 officers are to be recruited by the end of March 2023. I am advised that that is on track.

More specifically, in relation to the circumstances of these specific cases, the Chief Inspector of Probation has produced two detailed reports which in turn have engendered two action plans by HMPPS published on 17 and 24 January respectively.

In the case of Bendall, the report made 17 recommendations, all of which have been accepted, and most have already been actioned. I will briefly run through the steps that have been taken so that we can understand what is in progress.

First, domestic abuse inquiries must be routinely carried out in all cases where an electronically monitored curfew is being considered, with a detailed assessment of any risk of harm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I cannot confirm it at this moment. My understanding is that such information should be available if it is recorded in the police record, and not just if there was a consequence—so if a call-out had occurred, even if there was no further action. I ask the noble Lord to allow me to confirm that to be absolutely sure that I have understood the question and given the correct answer.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

I am terribly sorry to interrupt again but, to follow that up, because it is a very important point, the Statement talks about this money being spent

“to recruit more probation staff who are specifically responsible for accessing domestic abuse information held by the police,”—

with which the Minister has dealt—

“and children’s safeguarding information held by councils”.

When he goes back, it is important that he finds out whether information held by councils on domestic abuse would also be researched, because that can also be very valuable to the probation service.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My understanding is that that is the case but, again, I will confirm it to make absolutely sure that we have the right information for your Lordships. As the noble Lord rightly emphasised, one of the further recommendations is that a child safeguarding inquiry be carried out in all cases where the person concerned either lives with or is likely to have contact with any relevant child, and there are new training and procedures to achieve that.

There are further specific measures to ensure the safety of children, involving a separate section in the OASys—the offender assessment system; a new child safeguarding policy framework; revision of training in producing pre-sentence reports to improve the quality; more support and mentoring for trainee probation officers, with new learning tools and opportunities; and a better framework to guide senior probation officers when allocating cases to more junior probation officers.

Those recommendations are complemented by the report relating to the case of McSweeney, which has 10 further recommendations. It proposes first a thorough review of the processes for assessing the risk of harm, because what went wrong in these two specific cases was that the risk was underassessed. As I understand it, that was partly because not all the information that was on the system was properly assessed or accessed by the relevant staff. It was also, particularly in one of the cases, partly because relevant information was not properly shared between the various elements, particularly the Prison and Probation Service in the community. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, rightly made the point about how important it is that we have a consolidated system in which all information is available to everyone, so that nothing falls through the cracks or is missed.

That is essentially part of the recommendations, particularly in the McSweeney case, for improved processes to ensure that all information on past behaviour and current risks while in prison is shared in a timely and effective manner, particularly between the prison offender manager—the probation officer looking after the prisoner in prison—and the community offender manager who will be responsible for managing the person concerned in the community. That includes better procedures and allocation of cases before a prisoner is released, so that there is proper communication between the relevant prison offender manager and the relevant community offender manager so that there is continuity and overall management when a prisoner is released. It also includes the tightening up of all recall decisions being signed off by a senior probation officer within 24 hours, which was one of the problems in one of the cases, and close monitoring of the licence conditions. So a range of steps are being taken.

I will briefly turn to the questions that your Lordships quite understandably posed. In his reports, the inspector does not make a link between the effect of the previous privatisation arrangements and these particular cases. I do not think I am revealing any secrets if I say that the Government came to the view that the earlier arrangements were not working properly and the situation had to be reformed, which is why the probation service was reunited.

On the local links question, I have every reason to suppose—but, again, I will clarify this with the service and write appropriately to your Lordships—that, although the emphasis has perhaps moved to more central management, as is probably inevitable in the present modern circumstances, one should not underestimate the importance of local links, particularly with the voluntary sector. I will ascertain and obtain further information on how that particular important aspect is being addressed, in answer to the question of how far the links to local government agencies are being reinstated or used—this is an important question, and your Lordships need to know the answer, so I will endeavour to give more detail on it.

I have addressed the importance of the information on an individual offender being held in one place and combined, which will improve information sharing. In the brief time available, I have done my best to explain how the information sharing will be improved. It is true that filling the relevant vacancies is a large challenge, and it is particularly so in London, where some areas have had particular difficulties—I am sure that noble Lords are broadly familiar with the situation. Some senior management has had to be replaced, and various remedial action plans are in force to address this; it is all taken extremely seriously. I hope and trust that we will see significant improvements as the increasing staff gradually gain experience and come through the system. There has been a remarkable increase in the number of recruits in the last two or three years.

All in all, the Government’s position is that a great number of positive actions are being taken. I have apologised deeply and sincerely for these particular incidents involving these victims, to whom our hearts of course go out. I do not think I am in a position to give a wider apology than that but I will put one matter in perspective. I am sure it is your Lordships’ experience that, within probation services and prison services, we have many dedicated professionals who go the extra mile to ensure our safety and look after their charges. When things go wrong, they are as devastated as the rest of us. I would not want it to be thought that the front-line staff, whom I personally salute, are under undue criticism in these cases. I hope I have explained the steps being taken to improve the system at all levels and to avert future tragedies of this kind.