Select Committee on Justice
Debate between Richard Burgon and Robert NeillWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Robert Neill
That is absolutely right. My recollection is that that was not the way through the gate was sold at the time it was brought in. I think there is a little bit of rewriting of history there, to be blunt. The truth is that for a long time we have been appallingly bad at follow-up supervision of people who are released. Through the gate actually extended it to those serving sentences of one year or less, which indicates that the Government thought that it was a good thing, but that has not been delivered in practice. We do need a wholesale review of it.
For example, if the CRC becomes involved with an offender only about 12 weeks before their release, that is wholly inadequate, in terms of setting that person up with the support that they need when they come out. We suggest that during that time, there be work to ensure that bank accounts are set up, and that people can register for universal credit, so that they get it on the day they leave custody, rather than coming out with their £46 and not necessarily having a roof over their head. The temptation for them then is to go straight to meet their mates at the pub or the café; they spend their £46; and then they are back into exactly the same sort of offending—often to drive drug, alcohol or other habits—that got them into prison in the first place. The leaflet in their pocket, which is supposed to do the signposting, is not much use to them in those circumstances.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I of course congratulate the Chair of the Justice Committee and all its members on the great job that they have done, as always, with their report. Current contracts with the private CRCs were due to expire in 2022. It was very interesting that the Prisons Minister recently said that terminating the contracts because of underperformance was “100% absolutely an option”. Can the Chair of the Committee shed any further light on whether the Government would have to pay any compensation to the CRCs if contracts were terminated early because of underperformance?
Robert Neill
One problem that we have, to which we refer in the report, is the lack of transparency around the contractual terms. One would expect, if there were a complete failure of performance, that there ought not to be significant payments, as with any contract, but we do refer to the tendency—it is not unique to the Ministry of Justice; it is across Government—for the excuse of commercial confidentiality to be used almost as a blanket bar to examining terms. That is why we recommend in the report that there be much more transparency around the letting or re-letting of contracts. We should certainly have more transparency about the matrix on which they are based, the financial model, the performance criteria that are built into them and the means of performance measuring of the CRCs themselves. We do not have adequate information on any of that, and I think the public are entitled to it.