Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Meg Hillier and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman]

I will come to the 2007 Act later, but since the hon. Gentleman has mentioned it now, I shall comment on it briefly. The 2007 Act created probation trusts, and they have now been in existence for several years and actually become quite good—I am sure even the Minister would concede that they are performing very well—but they could perform an awful lot better if challenged and supported to do so. We strongly believe, however, that the 2007 Act should not be being used to abolish the very entities it was set up to create.

On piloting, we have tabled new clause 4 to address the Government’s complete lack of evidence for their proposals. When we ask for evidence for how well the model might work, why it was picked and how much it will cost the taxpayer, we are told that the Secretary of State just believes it is the right way to go about things. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I do not think he is a particular fan, reported its concern that the Government did not appear to consider any other policy options before alighting on this one. It seems that he has had his heart set on this from the very beginning.

Previous Ministers in this Government believed that the proposals should be piloted. In early 2012, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) announced two “ground-breaking” probation pilots to

“help develop…Payment by Results policy”

and to

“test how…public, private and voluntary…partnerships…could”—

“could”, he said—

“drive…reductions in reoffending”.

Had these pilots gone ahead, we would have had more than a year’s experience of this sort of model, but unfortunately the current Secretary of State cancelled them as soon as he took up his post. When we ask, as Opposition Members rightly do, how well these proposals work, there is no evidence with which to answer the question, because the Secretary of State has not tested them, and does not intend to do so, to see whether they work. If he were here, I hope the hon. Member for Reigate would be tempted to vote for new clause 4, because he seemed to support the principle when he was a Minister.

We are left, then, without any evidence and without a pilot, and we have lost the opportunity to test the details of these plans on a much smaller scale and with a manageable level of risk. Inevitably, there will be teething problems and inexperienced providers, there will be failures in communication and there will be glitches in the new IT system. We have just had an hour’s urgent question on the difficulties of introducing a new IT system, yet here we are implementing one at the same time as a wholesale upheaval and sell-off of the service. All this will have to be contended with all at once and on a national scale.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is no doubt aware of the fiasco of the IT service for interpreters in courts, which, dare I say it—ironically—is another Ministry of Justice success story. Does that not underline her point?

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend is completely right. Serving on the Public Accounts Committee, she will be familiar with the manifold problems that the MOJ has with commissioning and procurement. I will refer later particularly to the court interpreters contract and the inclusion of small mammals, which hon. Members might find surprising.

We have recent experience of the fallout from a botched implementation. At the end of last year, universal credit was slowed down, for its own good, after being poorly managed and heavily criticised and after wasting what was predicted to be millions of pounds of taxpayer money. The Work and Pensions Secretary assured Members that the programme would eventually work because under the timetable they were

“testing the system and learning first, and then finally implementing it.”

When I asked him, he said that I needed

“to understand the difference between an approach that rolls something out at every stage and learns from it”—[Official Report, 10 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 139-144.]

and an approach that rushes something in and sees it fail. Well, I think he is right, but I am well aware of the difference. It is just a pity that he has not had the same discussion with the Justice Secretary.

After the recent track record of the Ministry of Justice in mismanaging procurement processes, the PAC recommended that the Ministry

“should draft and implement future contracts so as to minimise transitional problems, for example through piloting and rolling-out new systems gradually.”

The NAO agreed and reported that steady regional roll-outs would allow the Ministry to limit the effect of poor performance. But rather than learning from past mistakes and introducing his reforms at a sensible pace, the Secretary of State is instead opting for a national roll-out at breakneck speed. The operating model for the reforms was published only in September, yet if it all goes to plan trusts are supposed to be abolished by April. Lord Ramsbotham described the timetable as a party political time frame

“that pays no attention to practical reality.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman]

We would probably go a little further, but I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says. The new clause merely requires companies to respond in a way that helps the MOJ to meet its own freedom of information requirements.

Opposition Members are becoming increasingly concerned about the blind spot that seems to be developing in relation to outsourced contracts. Given the rate at which the Secretary of State is issuing invitations to the likes of Eddie Stobart to take over justice contracts, more and more information is being put out of the taxpayer’s reach.

Responding to amendments tabled in Committee, the Government argued that the status quo, whereby a contractor is considered to hold information on behalf of a public body, was working well enough. We disagree, and the Minister knows that, in practice, there is information that private contracts choose to keep to themselves while public providers are rightly held to account. That is not a level playing field, and it does not give us, our constituents or, indeed, the press enough power to scrutinise those who are wielding large public budgets and providing front-line public services.

[Meg Hillier]

The heads of some of the big private sector providers recently appeared before the Public Accounts Committee. They expressed a wish for more openness, and some of them told us that they were being constrained in that regard by their contracts with the Government rather than by their own desires.

[Jenny Chapman]

I was not aware of that, but I am very pleased that some of the big providers are taking that attitude.

We have pledged to expand the scope of freedom of information requirements if we win the next election. We should have liked the Government to make a start with probation providers, but, unfortunately, it seems that so far they are unpersuaded. We hope that, as a compromise, they will agree to monitor the extent to which providers respond to their duty to release information to assist the Ministry of Justice with its FOI duties. That will allow us to establish whether the current provisions are indeed sufficient, or whether more needs to be done to make companies accountable to the public.

Finally, new clause 5 requires an update on what measures were included in contracts to ensure that poor performance can be dealt with properly. We are very concerned about that. The Government refused to assure us that break clauses, which allow the taxpayer to walk away if a provider consistently fails to perform to national standards, would be included in all contracts. Instead, the Minister has given his word that underperformance will not be tolerated, and that contracts will include a number of safeguards to protect the quality of the service and the cost to the taxpayer. The new clause would simply allow Members to hold the Minister to that welcome assurance.

The Government’s proposed reforms are ill thought through, risky and, in our view, reckless. We believe that the Government should slow down the process and take the time to get it right. In fact, they may well be right, and if they organised pilots and obtained some evidence, we would be the first to support them. However, if they press ahead with their gamble with public safety, the bare minimum that our constituents must be assured of is that providers will be expected to perform exceptionally well.

New clauses 1, 4 and 5 are intended to build safeguards into the process. They would allow plans to be properly scrutinised, tested, and made fit for purpose. The Secretary of State is taking a gamble with public safety. He is rolling out an untested model in the hands of unqualified providers, and he expects us to be reassured by his inner belief. It is a great pity that the Government are not willing to proceed slowly, to do things properly, and to work with the professionals, and even the Opposition, to arrive at a result on which we could possibly all agree.