Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede]

My Lords, I am making a guest appearance on the Front Bench and am in the unenviable position of making a speech that is far more moderate than the tremendous speech made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

It is common ground between all political parties that reoffending rates are far too high. This problem is particularly severe for prisoners who serve sentences of less than a year. It is also common ground that if reoffending can be reduced, this will reduce the number of victims and the overall cost to the criminal justice system. It is worth recording that the probation service is not responsible for those leaving prison who have served sentences of less than a year, so it would be wrong to blame it for the current high reoffending rates, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said. The figures we have heard this afternoon are stark. The most prolific group among those committing some 600,000 crimes are the 60,000 or so people who receive sentences of a year or less, as we have heard from a number of speakers today. Some 60% of this group are reoffenders and many go on to reoffend multiple times. Certainly in my experience as a magistrate, the vast majority of people I have sent to prison have offended multiple times while serving community sentences. It is comparatively unusual to send somebody to prison who has never offended while serving a community sentence.

The Government’s stated objective is to drive down reoffending. They will use the Offender Management Act 2007 to privatise large elements of the probation service. That measure and this Bill will provide private supervision in the community for the majority of offenders. The Government’s objectives can be divided into two parts. The first is the privatisation itself with payment by results, about which we have heard, which comes across as little short of an article of faith on the part of the party opposite. The second part is the administrative mechanism by which this is to be achieved. Under the Bill, there is to be a welcome expansion of support for offenders who leave prison having been sentenced to a year or less in custody.

On the first objective, the Government intend through this privatisation to make sufficient savings to fund the expansion of support for those leaving prison. On the Secretary of State’s figures, some 45,000 offenders will gain support financed through these savings. The Government cite the example of Peterborough Prison, where additional support has been provided to leavers financed by social impact bonds. I have read the independent assessment of the project and agree that there is good reason to be encouraged by it, although the project it is in its early days. Surely, the central point is the additional money provided for the project. That is the main reason why it is successful. As we heard from my noble friend, the Secretary of State himself is a repeat offender when it comes to the Work Programme, and he is unsurprisingly very cagey about the commercial arrangements likely to be entered into with the service providers. Surely it is appropriate for the House to know the scope of the payment-by-results contracts, their likely structure or even the Government’s definition of payment by results in this context. I know very well from my own experience that drawing up large complex contracts where both parties are breaking new ground is an unnerving experience. There is every reason to believe that things could go wrong, so it is reasonable for the House to be given reassurance on the structure of the contracts to be entered into.

It is, of course, regrettable that the pilot schemes initiated by the previous Secretary of State were abandoned by the current incumbent. I also believe that commissioning should be managed to maintain a diversity of providers. This point has been made and I know that it is addressed in the strategy document issued by the Government last week. I make the simple point that the greater the number of contract packages, the greater the scope for smaller service providers.

I return to the Bill and the Government’s second objective, as I have characterised it. This raises a whole raft of practical questions about the competences and qualifications of those who will support the offenders in the community, their payment and responsibilities in the event of breach. Indeed, as we have heard, 25% of offenders move between different case offender levels. What happens if, for example, an offender starts drinking? Would that be reported to the court? It is of central importance that the courts have faith in the probation service providers to bring to court in a timely manner offenders who have breached their conditions. I am not sure that any member of the public will distinguish between people being supervised in the community who have served a short prison sentence and those being supervised in the community who are on community sentences. There is a risk that the project could be undermined if there is inadequate supervision of those who are released from prison sentences.

It is worth reflecting that the Government are proposing to transfer many thousands of probation staff to different employers. A number of noble Lords have mentioned the invaluable work done by the probation service. It has to be said that under the new arrangements members of the probation profession will get a narrower range of experience as there will be a binary system, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Beecham. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, referred to the possibility of a probation officer charter. I do not know whether he proposes to take the idea forward in the Bill but it is an interesting one. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle spoke about the dissipation of expertise through the new arrangement. The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, wants an assurance from the Minister about the future prospects of the probation service. I was interested to hear him ask for that. However, I think it would be very difficult for the Minister to give that assurance given that those staff will be employed by the private sector.

It is also worth saying that co-operation on the ground between the various providers is key to the success of this venture. Nothing must be done which undermines this. A number of noble Lords have said that this is really centred around the local authorities working with a number of providers. It is the day-to-day management of these different providers of housing, YOT, social services and so forth, which is key to making any community sentence successful. I also note that the noble Lord has made positive comments about restorative justice, and it is said that he will be giving new comments about that in due course.

A number of organisations have contacted me about the centralisation of the commissioning process. First, I welcome that the police and crime commissioners will be part of the selection process of new providers. However, I want to mention one organisation in particular, and that is London Councils. It is particularly concerned that this would not be an appropriate arrangement for it. In London the PCC is the mayor, there are 33 local authorities, and there is an existing structure which could be used for the commissioning process. The Government often state their commitment to local services, local decision making, and local accountability. This is a question which I intend to explore at a later stage of this Bill.

I want to say, in brief, a word about the perspective of the courts on this. They are of course the sentencing body. Clearly, the recently introduced LASPO arrangements, whereby prisoners on sentences of less than one year are unconditionally released at the halfway point in their sentence, are to be reversed. Now there will be requirements on release. The standard requirement, as we have heard, will be a rehabilitation activity requirement, and the courts will have new breach powers. I make a number of comments on this. First, when the sentencer announces the sentence in court, it should be very clear what actually is to be said, because it is not always clear to magistrates and judges what one should actually say about the length of the period in custody, the period on licence and the period on supervision. I know from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that his ministry will be working with the Judicial College and working out suitable arrangements for this.

We had a number of very interesting comments in this Second Reading debate, and I want to address a few of them. First, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, quite rightly talked about the huge importance of education. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, set out how important it is. I used to be a trustee of the Wandsworth prison visitors’ centre and we provided to all the prison visitors education facilities at some cost—computers and the like. I have to say, very depressingly, that they were almost completely unused by the visitors to Wandsworth prison. While I wholeheartedly agree with the objectives, I note that the group of people we work with can be resistant when we are trying to introduce education programmes.

A number of noble Lords spoke about other matters which could be introduced to this Bill. We heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Healy, about women offenders not being specifically discussed. We also heard a very interesting idea from my noble friend Lord Beecham about a court for veterans, which I hope he will take forward.

I want to raise a point that was mentioned by a number of Peers. That is the possibility of an increase in the overall custody levels because magistrates or sentencers would be using a custodial sentence for people who breach these sentences. In my experience, magistrates use custodial sentences as an absolute last resort. This is not a new problem. It is a very real dilemma when one has a repeat breacher of a community order, for example, for perhaps a relatively minor matter, but they just do not comply with the provisions of the community order. I believe that magistrates should, as a very last resort, have the possibility of enforcing custody, otherwise there will be even less incentive for certain people to comply with their community order.

Finally, I want to pursue the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, about the transition from youth to adult, and the work from the YOTs to the probation service. This was not addressed by any other Peer. It is a very important and practical point, and as the noble Baroness very rightly said, the YOTs—the ones I have worked with—have a more nurturing role, if you like, in trying to help young people. When they move to the probation service, it is quite often an unpleasant surprise for them. I hope we may explore that more fully.

In conclusion, we have the introduction of a payment system which is untested anywhere in the criminal justice world, the abandonment of the pilot schemes, and the removal of the 35 probation trusts and their replacement with a centralised commissioning service. We will judge this Bill in the wider context of the Government's rehabilitation strategy. We agree with many of the specific provisions of this Bill itself. Reducing reoffending while maintaining public safety must be any Government's objective, but ill-thought-out policies based on an unproven ideologically driven funding policy risks the very services which this Bill seeks to enhance.