Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I wish to speak briefly to new clauses 1 and 4, both of which I have co-signed with Her Majesty’s official Opposition. The Government do not want new clause 1 in the Bill because they are concerned that, in due course, they will not win the vote in either House of Parliament because, frankly, what they are proposing does not add up to much. At the end of last year, the official Opposition held a debate on the Government’s plans to restructure probation work and, until that point, the Justice Secretary had refused to answer for his plans on the Floor of the House. During that debate, many of us outlined why we thought it baffling that the Government should want to target the probation service, a service that is so high performing and where the numbers speak for themselves.

The Ministry of Justice’s own figures show that none of the 35 probation trusts is currently showing cause for “serious concern” and none “require development”; and that 31 of the trusts are “showing good performance” and four are “performing exceptionally”. In 2011-12, victim feedback was positive in 98% of cases; 80% of orders or licences were completed successfully; and 49% of offenders were in employment at the end of their orders and 89% were in accommodation. Reoffending rates were better than predicted in both England and Wales, and the probation service met all its targets in 2012. The service achieved a successful completion rate of 81% for participants of sex offender treatment programmes and exceeded its completion targets on domestic violence interventions. In October 2011, the probation service became the only public sector organisation to be awarded the British Quality Foundation award. The board said that the service was

“on the right path to achieving and sustaining excellence and essentially to being the best providers of these essential services.”

The reoffending rate among those sentenced to more than 12 months but less than four years is 36.2%, while among those serving between four and 10 years it is 30.7%. As we know, the reoffending rate for individuals sentenced to less than 12 months—the cohort that currently, by and large, receives no supervision, despite some probation trusts asking for the authority to take control of them—stands much higher, at 58.5%. That takes us to the crux of the argument. Everybody in this Chamber agrees that something has to be done, but we disagree about how it should be done, because what the Government have proposed is untried, untested and downright dangerous.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I endorse everything the right hon. Gentleman is saying about the excellent service that the current probation service provides. Is not part of the problem that the Government are failing to address a major problem, which is the reoffending by people with mental health conditions? If we tackled mental health and mental health services rather than imprisoned people, we could cut some of that reoffending more dramatically than we could by privatising the service.

[Mr Llwyd]

The hon. Lady, who has taken an interest in this subject for many years, as have I, is absolutely correct. I would go a bit further and say that if we dealt with mental health problems and drug addiction, we could empty about 40% of prisoners from prisons tomorrow without any danger—had we got the safety net out in the community.

The Government are taking a drastic step without having any proven record of any possible success. Unlike with some services that are privatised, there is an inherent danger to the public in all this. I agree fully with the Opposition when they say that we want the thing tried and tested. That is not a political scam to try to stop it. I would like it stopped, but let us also be honest and say that we are where we are and we should at least see whether these plans will work. That surely is a common-sense thing to do, but time and time again, in the Public Bill Committee and in all the other debates, we have been unable to persuade the Government to pause and to think carefully about why they initiated their two pilots previously. Why did they do that if they were that unconcerned and the pilots were bound to succeed?

The Secretary of State, who drifted in and out here today, in typical fashion, has said in some debates, “You do things sometimes because they are right.” I am sure that is right, but it is a bit risky to have a messianic view of life and say, “Because they are new and are being tried now, they have got to be right. What’s right is right.” That is absolute balderdash and I am afraid he will eat those words in the next two or three years. I hope not, but there will be a danger in this system.

As we are all aware, what will be left of the public sector probation service will work with victims, hostels and offenders who pose a high risk of harm. The remaining 70% of cases—the low-risk and medium-risk offenders—will be managed by the private sector under the model that we are talking about. The point has already been made that such risks vary—they can vary from day to day or from week to week. I do not know how the system will be managed, but co-location has been mentioned. I am not sure whether that will work, but, again, it is a matter of crossing one’s fingers and hoping for the best.

There are serious concerns about the payment-by-results model, most of which I will briefly outline with regard to another amendment that would compel the Government to pilot the plans before implementing them across the board. To some relief, we find that G4S and Serco will not be coming in on this, although they do know a lot about criminality.

Under the proposals, private companies will be responsible for the majority of cases involving domestic violence, sexual offences, burglary, robbery, violence against the person and gang-related crimes. That is highly sensitive work, which clearly requires trained professionals with experience of how to deal with victims and perpetrators of such complex crimes. It is highly unlikely that the private sector will prioritise holistic initiatives such as work with victims of crime. I am afraid that it will be driven by profit rather than levels of care. Many individuals who come into contact with the probation service have one or more mental health problems. They may have suffered abuse, have substance misuse issues, literacy problems and poor educational attainment. Such people need to be signposted to the proper avenues for care and support. They are highly damaged individuals and require special attention.

The proposals will compromise public protection and provide a perverse incentive for private companies not to put resources into decreasing offending behaviour. There are also numerous possibilities for conflicts of interest, the tackling of which is the aim of another amendment that I have co-signed.

The Social Market Foundation has argued that payment by results incentivises an increase in offending. To understand that, it is important to note that the Government have decided that a private company will neither be penalised nor rewarded for an increase or decrease in offending of 3% either way. Ostensibly, that is to take account of the fact that external factors can have an impact on offending rates. In practice, however, it would mean that private companies would have to achieve a 4% decrease in offending before being rewarded. They will simply not invest that amount of money when there is no guarantee of a return on their investment. Unfortunately, it is far more likely that the companies will make a profit by delivering court orders in the cheapest way possible by opening call centres. Understandably, the National Association of Probation Officers—the experts on this—is worried, and legitimately I would say.

The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) referred to the GMB union. It is a question not of union versus anybody else but of what works and what does not work. NAPO has had experience over many years, and I have already referred to its successes.

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[Meg Hillier]

I thank the Minister for that clarification, particularly the first point, which is indeed good news. I was not a member of the Public Bill Committee and so might have missed some changes that have been made.

[Mrs Moon]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Meg Hillier]

Yes, but I will just finish responding to the Minister’s intervention.

On the Minister’s second point, I hear what he says, but there is always a risk that someone might be miscategorised and dealt with by an employee who is of a lower grade. The Minister says that they will be qualified, but they will be of a lower grade than fully qualified probation officers, and that decision might need to be made in the other direction. Perhaps he can reassure us on that point when he responds.

[Mrs Moon]

I should have waited for my hon. Friend to finish responding to the Minister before seeking to intervene, because she has just covered the point I wanted to make. It is not about the level of skills, but the qualification, because the qualification provides a background of knowledge that enforces and informs the way in which a probation officer acts. Someone who is deemed to be skilled might actually be unqualified, so it is important to have the qualification and the experience and skills.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments.

I am also worried about some of the companies that might come into this. I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, and I challenged the big public sector providers that appeared before us recently on whether they would bid for contracts in areas where they had no experience. They all denied that they would, but we have seen, in the Public Accounts Committee, in other Committees and on the Floor of the House, example after example of companies that bid for contracts because they are good at bidding but that do not actually have a background in delivering the relevant service. They then have to backfill by recruiting people to take on those jobs. I have dealt with the Minister on constituency matters and know him to be assiduous, and I am sure that he will bear that point in mind, but I think that it is worth reiterating that it is a very serious matter. Companies should not be bidding for huge contracts in areas where they have no experience because that fragments the service.

Fragmentation can be good where there is specialism, where there are smaller contracts, perhaps run by specialist voluntary sector groups, or indeed by private companies if they have the necessary level of expertise, but they have to work together. We are in danger of seeing another approach whereby the MOJ and the Government put out big contracts and the smaller specialist providers simply do not get a look in. They might get the odd crumb from the big contractors’ table, but they will be squeezed out. That is particularly true in mental health, one of the local concerns in my constituency.

There is an important concern about local accountability. I am a great supporter of extending freedom of information in the first instance, even with limitations, to private sector companies that deliver public contracts paid for by the taxpayer. It should be the tax pound that determines whether there is freedom of information, not the nature of the delivery body. Most parties in the House support some degree of contracting out, but we need to ensure that transparency is built in. Companies have told the Public Accounts Committee that they are in favour of a much greater degree of transparency, so perhaps the Minister will take this opportunity to challenge them to stand up for what they say and make that part of the bidding process.

New clause 4 is important—I will not repeat all the arguments Members have made—because we need proper scrutiny. If we look at reoffending as a whole, we see that there are other ways of looking at it, for example by looking at mental health support or the Work programme. We know that offenders who come out of prison with a job are less likely to reoffend, but does the Work programme, which is provided by another Government Department, go into prisons to ensure that offenders have jobs for when they leave? Perhaps we should be challenging them to step up to the mark and provide job opportunities as a major plank of what we all want to see: less reoffending, particularly by offenders given short-term sentences.

In summary, the Public Accounts Committee has seen far too many poorly managed large Government contracts. The Cabinet Office is pushing hard to see that procurement is done in a different way that allows smaller companies a bite of the Government contract cherry and to stop the big companies being able to snaffle public money without being held properly to account. This is an opportunity for the Minister to consider, even at this late stage, allowing something in the contract to ensure that the big companies are required to work effectively with the small companies and not, as many of them do, to dodge their responsibilities later by saying, “Actually, we can’t quite deliver what we promised, so we’ll do it differently, but we’ve taken it all on.” That is often how they get around that. That will need constant monitoring and an audit of what happens with the contract. If this is to go ahead, I urge the Minister to tell us how the Government plan to audit the impact and the delivery of the service.

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[Mrs Moon]

I, too, have listened with great patience to the hon. Gentleman and have considered whether it is worth bothering to intervene. However, I must reiterate the point on community sentences and the selective passage he has read out. The fact is that eight out of 10 women who receive prison sentences have committed non-violent offences. That is why they have less onerous conditions in their community sentences. I draw his attention to the Corston report and the Prison Reform Trust report, “Lacking Conviction”. Instead of getting out more, he needs to stay in and read more.

[Philip Davies]

To be perfectly honest—I am trying to think of the polite way to describe that—what the hon. Lady says is utter garbage. It is utter rot. The idea that women are sent to prison for short sentences and non-violent offences is a myth—it is a big myth, but it is a myth. At any one time, there are about 3,700 women in prison. Perhaps she will tell the House which ones she believes should not be there. Perhaps it is the 211 who are in prison for murder; the 135 in for manslaughter or attempted homicide; the 352 in for wounding; the 142 in for serious assaults or other violence against the person; or the 58 in for cruelty to children. Perhaps she means the 58 who are in there for cruelty to children; or the 83 who are in for rape, gross indecency with children or other sexual offences. Perhaps she means the 272 women in prison for violent robbery. Perhaps she means the 151 who are in there for burglary. Perhaps she thinks the 398 drug dealers should not be in prison. Perhaps she means the 91 arsonists; the 24 convicted of violent disorder; the 45 in there for kidnapping and blackmail; or the 192 in there for serious fraud and forgeries. Perhaps she means the 320 in prison for importing drugs into the country, which end up being sold on our streets. She might mean the 111 others serving time for other serious drug offences. The hon. Lady might believe those people should not be in prison, but they are not non-violent, minor offences. It is a disgrace for her to suggest to the victims of those crimes that they are the victims of minor, non-violent offences. She should be absolutely, utterly ashamed of herself for suggesting that. That is the type of nonsense we have had to deal with in the debate for many years. I am delighted that I can shine a light on the utter rot that people like her have spouted year after year.

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[Mr Anderson]

I want to speak in support of new clauses 2 and 3 and in support of veterans.

About five years ago I was approached by an ex-colleague who asked me to meet a group he was working with. Tony Wright was that colleague and he is an ex-Marine. He had to leave the Marines as a young man because of an injury and he went into the social services, ending up in the probation service. Everywhere he went he bumped into people who had gone through experiences similar to his. They had left the forces, sometimes under a shadow and sometimes not, and they had lost their way. He had become increasingly concerned about their well-being and eventually decided to do something about it, and five years ago he set up a group called About Turn, which has now become the charity Forward Assist. Tony asked me to become a patron of the charity. After sitting down with some of the people he works with, I said I would be very pleased to help them.

Three years ago, Tony won a Winston Churchill scholarship to travel to America. One of the first places he went to was Buffalo. He went to some courts that had been spoken about, and he was blown away by his experience there. The whole thing was based on comradeship. People who had gone the wrong way in life were being pulled back by the people in those courts. Everybody from the judge downwards was ex-service personnel and their determination that nobody would fail was what made things succeed. As we have heard already today, so far, in five years, not one person has gone back to crime—not one person. We should compare that with any other form of justice system.

As a result of that visit, Tony asked me if I would go with him to Arkansas to try to develop a link between Tyneside and Arkansas. The intention was not only to develop a civic link, but to develop a veterans exchange project. I went with him last December. While we were there, we were invited to go and meet Judge Mary McGowan, who runs one of the courts in Little Rock in Arkansas. She originally ran the drugs court, but after a discussion about drugs courts she decided—along with a gentleman called Rob McDonald, who was a prosecutor at the time—to set up the veterans treatment court. We sat in and listened to the court in action and spoke to people who were going through the system and we realised that this was something that could really work.

One issue we have not got our heads around was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd): are we saying that these people are a special case? I think the answer to that has got to be yes. They are a special case because of what Members in this Chamber ask of them. We ask them to go around the world and to be prepared to die for us and to be prepared to kill for us, and if they refuse to kill for us, they will do time in jail. That is the complete opposite to the norm. We ask these people to do abnormal things. If somebody fires a gun at us, we run away. When somebody fires a gun at service personnel, they run towards them. When these people come out of the forces, what happens to them?

I will describe some experiences. A meeting was hosted by Mr Speaker in the House of Lords last year. There were about 10 to 12 men ranging from guys in their 20s to a gentleman who was 92 and who had been a tail-gunner in world war two. One of these guys told a story about when he came out of the services. He sat down with his wife and said, “Whatever you do, don’t ever leave me alone with the children, because I’m not sure I can cope with them.” Is that not really, really frightening? At least the man had the nous to accept his potential shortcomings. Another one told his story. Everything was normal in his life except that every time he went to bed, he got a panic attack. When he thought it through, he realised the cause was the simple act of turning the bedroom light off, because the switch reminded him of the time he was walking along with a friend who was killed by a booby-trap that was triggered by an electrical switch. That was put right by putting dimmer switches into his home. These are the sorts of situations that we, as ordinary people who send those guys out there, would never ever think about.

I talked with another guy who for 10 years had been given the wrong medication because nobody had realised that he had been in the forces. When that fact came out and people started trying to work out the causes of his problems, it was discovered that they stemmed from the fact that he was the only man who jumped out of a burning tank that still had his friends inside. After that discussion had taken place, the way in which he was looked after completely changed, and he is now on the right track and working towards a normal life.

When we came back from Arkansas, I was proud to invite people from the US to Newcastle to develop a link, and to discuss the Buffalo veterans treatment court. We held a seminar in Newcastle in May, which was addressed by Prosecutor Rob MacDonald who had come across from the United States. Lord Beecham was also there. He is a former leader of Newcastle city council, and a gentleman with whom I have had the privilege of working for more than a quarter of a century. He had never heard about the courts before, but he was instantly able to see how important they were. I asked him whether they could work in Britain and he said, “There’s no reason why they can’t work, Dave. We have the models; we already have family courts. We could adapt that model and we could make this work if we really wanted to.” He came back here, and he and Lord Ramsbotham tabled amendments in the House of Lords. Unfortunately, none has been accepted so far, but I am glad that progress is being made.

We are talking about giving people a purpose in life and a reason to get out of bed in the morning. We are not talking about people who have committed really serious crimes. This is about men and women who have committed crimes almost as a cry for help because they have no money or because they do not understand the chaotic world that we live in today. They have had a structured life and, all of a sudden, that life has been pulled away from them. This is about helping them to make a difference.

As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) mentioned, we went to Washington with the Northern Ireland Committee last year to meet prosecutors and others involved with the veterans treatment courts. Some members of the Committee were, to put it mildly, cynical about them. Some, unlike myself, have a legal background. No one pretended that the courts provided a magic wand, but when it was explained how they worked, those Committee members agreed that this was something we should pursue. The veterans treatment court in Buffalo was the first, and more than 100 are now up and running. I think that two have been given up on, but the rest are reporting really positive results. They also link into the work being done on drugs, because the link between drugs and the activities that the veterans get involved in is hugely relevant.

I am often loth to push the American experience, but the way in which the Veterans Administration was set up can teach us some lessons. For example, it can teach us about the horrible experiences that came out of Vietnam. Vietnam veterans were treated disgracefully in America, but somewhere along the line, the light went on and the Americans realised that that was wrong, and that they should not blame those men and women for the mistakes made by the politicians. The work that has been done since is a great example to us all. It covers a huge range of things, and it shows us how we can learn to treat people properly.

I am a great advocate of the national health service. People in this country tend to think that if someone has a problem, the NHS can put it right. Well, it can be put right if people happen to put all the pieces together. As I have said, one of the biggest pieces is the ability to realise that a man is where he is because of his experiences —not because he is inherently violent or because he has a mental or physical problem but because of what he has gone through, and what we have put him through.

There is a raft of information available from America on how big this problem can be. A recent seminar held there under the auspices of Justice for Vets estimated that, in 2010, about 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that almost 50% of the people who had been in those theatres of war were seen to be suffering from traumatic brain injury. The numbers are huge compared with those we have seen in previous wars. This is about the changing nature of war, and about being exposed to the real world of modern-day warfare 24 hours a day. That is very different from what people experienced before.

That does not mean that veterans from earlier wars do not have the same problems. The group I work with in Newcastle has a guy from world war two and people who went through the situation in Aden. Those events are still as live to them today as they were 50 years ago or more. They lost friends there, for example. Those who served in Northern Ireland also played their part in trying to put things right over there. There are huge issues involved in how we deal with those people, and we need to be aware of how we can help them.

A psychiatrist we met in Little Rock said, “You need to understand that a tsunami of mental health problems is going to hit this nation in the same way as it hit ours.” We know that the number who went from these shores was small compared with those who left America, but the number who are coming back with problems is big. I am not saying, and I would not like to be portrayed as saying, that everybody who goes to war and everybody in the services will have these problems, because they will not, as we know. Lots of people make a good new life for themselves and move forward, but the ones who are not able to do that deserve special care from us in this House.

One of the real issues was touched on by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd—the numbers. Some of us from a group in Tyneside met one of the Justice Ministers just before Christmas, and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport talked through this issue. What is clear is that nobody really knows how many people from the forces are in jail. A gentleman called Colin Back works on rehabilitating the forces to get them back into work, and he has done work in the south-east of England. He reckons that we could be talking about almost 12% of this population, which is hugely more than the official figures suggest. So as part of the review and the ongoing work, we need to get these figures to see how big the problem is. If we can get a fraction of those people out of that situation, that would be the right thing to do, not only for them and for us, but for the economy. If these people are in work, if their families do not need special support and if there is no family break-up, we will not have probation on the side and prisons that are too full—everybody will win, and that is the great beauty of it.

I am really pleased that the commission has been set up. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) is exactly the right man to lead on it, and I ask him to come over the Pennines as quickly as he can. He will be made to feel welcome in the north-east, because people there have lived through this, and although I am telling their story, I can never relate to it in the way they can. These people have been given a lifeline and they want us to help them, and we should do so. Part of that is about supporting these provisions. If the Government decide not to support them, I ask them to do the work regardless.

[Mrs Moon]

I will be as brief as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I am aware that the Minister needs to wind up. I give credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for tabling the new clause, to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) for the work he has done and to the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). On the work the hon. Gentleman is going to undertake, may I urge him to ensure that whatever we bring forward and whatever is recommended, appropriate research is done and data collected to sit alongside it? What will be important is to learn a huge amount from this, not just about the number of people who will need the support of the veterans courts, but about the effectiveness of having specialist courts that will advise on the most appropriate way to prevent reoffending.

One question that has been raised was how we are going to define “a veteran”. The importance of reservists has been mentioned, so I will not go back over that in the way that I had planned. We have to recognise that post-traumatic stress disorder and mental health conditions relating to service do not necessarily happen on return. I know that the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border is very aware of that, but we must ensure that we clearly identify who will be eligible for veterans courts. We must not just discount people because their service took place years ago. It was suggested that an 18-year-old who had joined the services but not completed basic training might not be suitable. May I ask the hon. Gentleman to look at the research on suicide carried out by Professor Nav Kapur at Manchester university, because it shows that the highest number of people who have served in the armed forces and are likely to go on to take their own life are found among exactly that group? Often that is because they have been failed by society because they have gone through the care system and, yet again, they feel that they have been failed.

In collecting that data, can we please look at how many of those people who go on to reoffend have gone through the care system? That is critical information, because we know for a fact that many people who end up in the criminal justice system have served time in our care system and have already been failed by society. Let us use this opportunity constructively and creatively to look at how we can tackle reoffending and to ensure that we offer the best way forward to reducing it. We have an opportunity to be not punitive or negative but constructive and creative. I look forward to the work that will come forward. If I can help in any way, I look forward to doing so.