Probation Service

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard).

I speak as a trained probation officer and as someone who was perhaps least offended when the Secretary of State talked about ideologues, as I think that ideology often gets a bad press. However, being ideological does not remove from the Government the responsibility to provide protection for their citizens. These dramatic changes within our criminal justice system place the 120,000 men, women and children I represent in this place, as everybody else represents their constituents, under threat, and we must therefore speak out against them.

The stated aim of the Government’s plans—we have heard this articulated several times—is to address their concern about reoffending levels. Recidivism should be of concern to all of us, but up to this point neither the probation service nor anyone else has had any responsibility for the vast majority of reoffenders. Nobody in this House disagrees that petty criminals who leave prison after serving short sentences need extra help and support, and we have already heard how that should be done: extend the remit of the probation service to cover such people. Why abolish the probation service and privatise out of existence the successful group of people who have proved that they have the expertise to make a difference to the lives of those people, and why exclude them from the Government’s bidding process? It is absolutely barmy.

Anyone listening to this debate would not think that crime has been falling for the past 20 years under Governments of both stripes. West Yorkshire probation service deals with offenders in my area, where reoffending is down by 14% over the past five years. The situation is in many ways better, not worse, than it has ever been. The probation service is leaner, fitter, better and more focused than ever—certainly compared with when I worked as a probation officer—so we have the opportunity, should we wish, to extend support to people through a proven organisation.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

South Yorkshire, like west Yorkshire, has one of the best-performing probation trusts anywhere in the country and it already works with people who are convicted and serve a term of fewer than 12 months. Is it not the case that all of the probation trusts have said they will do this extra work at no extra cost? The question for Ministers, therefore, is: why on earth will they not back the probation trusts, which are already doing the job and doing it well in most cases?

[Mike Wood]

My right hon. Friend makes exactly the right point, but we know that the reason why that will not happen is ideological: this Government believe that private is good and public is bad. We also know that they are not really convinced that these changes will make any real difference to reoffending rates or save money.

[Richard Graham]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain what has happened to reoffending rates over the past 10 or 15 years? Have they got better or worse, or have they stayed the same? If they have stayed the same, does he not agree that something needs to be done differently? Secondly, does he not agree that the high rate of reoffending by those with sentences of fewer than 12 months needs to be tackled urgently?

[Mike Wood]

The hon. Gentleman’s question has two parts and I think we have already answered it. The reoffending rates are static, but the bulk of the problem lies in a group that is not yet the responsibility of any organisation—certainly not of the probation service. What I am suggesting is that if we want to provide support for that group of offenders, we should extend the remit of the organisation that has proved that it has the expertise, skills and ability to make a difference. Instead, the Government intend to move to an untested system of payment by results that is unique throughout the criminal justice world and that will be inhabited by companies that have proved themselves to be not only incompetent, but dishonest in the exercise of previous contracts let to them by this Government.

A problem has been identified, but the system that we are producing will make things worse, not better. The Government are in a fix of their own making. They talk of a revolution in the way that offenders are managed. The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), who is no longer in her seat, said that the Liberals identified with the idea of a revolution. However, we know that revolutions have a tendency to eat up and destroy those who are central to their genesis.

The Government want to place the supervision of thousands of potentially dangerous and unpredictable offenders in the hands of companies that have no track record in the field and that increase their profits consistently by employing poorly paid, untrained, temporary staff. If we add to that the privateer’s tendency to promote commercial confidentiality over partnership working, which has been central to the progress that has been made over the past 20 years, we have a volatile and frightening prospect.

Had the Secretary of State graced us with his presence until the end of the debate, I would have reminded him, as has happened once already, of the statement that he made in this House on 9 January:

“Sometimes we just have to believe something is right and do it”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 318.]

That might be okay for the Secretary of State in his personal life, but he is charged with a responsibility to the public of this country and he needs to exercise it better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I have heard empty rhetoric from Opposition Members before, but this afternoon it is particularly poor. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) tried to position the debate as a public versus private one. The entirety of my career before becoming an MP was in the public sector. The ethos of public service flows through my veins. We are talking about having effective vehicles to deliver our policy objectives. Whether delivery is public or private is not important; the important thing is that we achieve the outcomes we intend. That is why the instinctive opposition to the proposals from Labour Members is disappointing. As all hon. Members recognise, the rate of reoffending remains stubbornly high, notwithstanding the efforts of Governments of all colours. Unless we show some imagination in tackling that, we will not win the fight against crime and we will continue to fail people who are trapped in the cycle of reoffending. I welcome the initiative and imagination shown by the Government. As we have heard, the National Audit Office has estimated that the cost of crime committed by offenders released from short prison sentences is up to £10 billion. For the sake of those offenders, their potential victims and the economy, we must not allow that to continue.

Let us focus on the outcome we are trying to achieve, not on the inputs or on maintaining a provider-led system that is failing to deliver. I was most motivated to speak in this debate by hearing the comments of the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who desperately tried to pray in aid the Public Accounts Committee to back up his position. The role of the PAC is to assess proposals on the basis of value for money. It is getting increasingly tiresome to hear it being prayed in aid to attack Government policy, because that is not its role. We examine the effectiveness of the machine at delivering the policies.

The right hon. Gentleman was right to highlight the report by the PAC on contract management by the Ministry of Justice, and we never hold back on criticising poor contract management across the public sector. It is well known that Whitehall needs to learn a lot in that regard. One of the things that we did in our earlier report on the Work programme was praise the approach to that particular aspect of contract management, which was based on payment by results so that the private sector providers taking those contracts bore the risk. That is a principle that needs to be read across government, and it is an important principle for the proposals that we are talking about.

I bow to no one in my admiration for the Committee Chairman, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), and the way that she is extremely inventive at spinning our reports to give maximum comfort to the Labour party. It says a lot about the lack of talent on the Opposition Front Bench that she is their most effective weapon.

As I have said, the risks will be borne by the providers. If they succeed in transforming the lives of people who are caught up in the cycle of reoffending, what is not to like? If they succeed, people are freed from the cycle of reoffending. If they do not, they do not get paid. What is wrong with that?

[Mike Wood]

I was delighted to hear about the nature of the blood flowing through the hon. Lady’s veins, but could she address the question of the percentages in the contracts? The latest figures suggest that private companies will get 90% of their money whether they succeed or not.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

If that were the case, I would consider it exactly the kind of poor contract management that I have been talking about. The important point is that we pay for results. Equally, we should reward those companies that are helping the most difficult.