Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Labour has argued for this, legislated for it and U-turned on it. The shadow Secretary of State has stated endlessly over the past few months that the Opposition now support the principle, but they are going to vote against it tonight. That is a sign of how poor an Opposition they are, how unfit they would be to govern, and how out of touch they are with the criminal justice challenges in this country.

It might assist the House if I started by summarising the issues facing short-sentence offenders. Many need housing; 38% of them need help finding a place to live when they are released. Many are out of work; only 30% have found employment within two years of being released, while 83% will have claimed out-of-work benefits in the same period. Huge numbers of them need help with education, with work-related skills. A fifth had a mental health or an emotional problem, a third self-report as having a drugs problem and 65% have used illegal drugs in the four weeks before going into prison custody. Those are the people who Labour Members want to leave prison with no support at all.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the reforms in the Bill will avoid what happened to my constituent’s son, who after serving nine months in prison was released with £16 in his pocket, a travel card and nothing else, putting him in danger of committing another offence because he lacks accommodation and the long-term support that he needs?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I cannot understand why Labour wants to vote against providing 12 months of supervision support for everyone who leaves prison, which should ensure that they do not reoffend.

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

Despite what the Justice Secretary tried to argue at the beginning of his speech, the Bill is part of a wider programme that changes probation services as well as how the offenders with which they deal are handled. As such, it is important to understand the background of the Bill in order to understand its intent, the provisions and the wider programme.

To do that, it is necessary to look at the policy routes of the consultation reports that precede the Bill. The coalition’s first criminal justice consultation—“Breaking the Cycle”—was in December 2010. It promised to open up probation services to the market. The second report, of July 2011, proposed six new pilots of a payment-by-results method and at the same time pledged not a comprehensive rehabilitation strategy for offenders, nor a comprehensive reoffending rates reduction strategy, but a

“a comprehensive competition strategy for…probation services”.

There is an obsession with the market, competition and privatisation. This is not the means to an end; it is the end. It is the purpose of the Justice Secretary’s programme—that and perhaps burnishing his credentials with the wilder right-wing of the Conservative party for the future.

If the policy end was to reduce reoffending rates for short-term prisoners, the means are in place—probation trusts, which have been responsible for overseeing falling reoffending rates for those they have supervised for 13 years.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

I will finish my point and then give way.

If the end or purpose of the policy was better value for taxpayers without compromising professional standards or public safety, the means are in place with probation trusts, which have made savings of around 20% over the past five years and helped to reduce crime rates and maintain protection for the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey]

The Minister was in the Chamber for the Opposition day debate last week and will have heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who was the Minister responsible for the 2007 Act. In July 2007, he mentioned

“trusts remaining public-sector based and delivering services at a local level”.—[Official Report, 18 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 354.]

Essentially, the 2007 Act was not about abolishing local probation trusts, nor about trying to commission services from the centre from a desk in Whitehall; it was about using local partnerships and local professional expertise to secure the best mix of support that offenders needed and that the public required to keep them safe and protected from harm.

[Rehman Chishti]

I infer that the right hon. Gentleman would agree with rehabilitation being the end product. A key element of the Bill on rehabilitation and reoffending is clauses 12 and 13. Compulsory drug testing for class B drugs expands existing provisions, and clause 13 introduces compulsory attendance at appointments on licence for drug treatment and testing, which did not exist before. The key part is helping people who need help. The ones who are addicted to drugs are the ones who continue to go in and out of the criminal system. Clauses 12 and 13 deal with rehabilitation on that basis, and I think the right hon. Gentleman will at least agree with me that those clauses are the right way forward.

[John Healey]

There are some useful provisions in the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) has said that the Opposition do not object to some of the Bill. Additional requirements as part of supervision orders are sensible. Extending the supervision requirement to those who are released from custody after short-term sentences is sensible. My argument is that the legislation is part of a wider programme, the policy purpose of which lacks evidence and justification, but not the ideology that drives the Justice Secretary. That purpose—that end—is the privatisation of our probation services. It is not about the means to a better probation service or better protection for the public.

Let me develop my argument. I have mentioned the first and second coalition consultation reports. To be fair, the third report—“Punishment and Reform: Effective Probation Services”—which was published in March 2012, restated the intent to open up the market for the supervision of low-risk offenders. However, it also proposed a stronger role for probation trusts and a stronger emphasis on partnership working. The report states:

“We intend that there will be a stronger role for public sector Probation Trusts as commissioners of competed probation services…We will devolve to Probation Trusts the budget for community offender services”.

At that time, the Government said:

“Trusts are best placed to work with courts and with local partners to design and commission services jointly…We will support the joint commissioning of services for offenders between probation and key partners such as local authorities, health and the police.”