Probation Service

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

That is what the Justice Secretary’s own risk register says, but he is not willing to publish it so that we can all see for ourselves that he is refusing to follow his own Department’s advice.

The idea that the national probation service and the private companies will work anything like as closely together under the new system as offender management teams work is laughable. The chief inspector of probation has said:

“Any lack of contractual or operational clarity between the public and private sector…will, in our view, lead to systemic failure and an increased risk to the public.”

The chief executive of Hertfordshire probation trust, Tessa Webb, has said:

“We’re very concerned about separating offenders out between low and high risk. Things don’t work like that. We think there should be a coherent, single organisation.”

Do Members really think that G4S and Serco will hold up their hands if something goes wrong? They did not with electronic tagging or the transfer of prisoners. If anything goes wrong, who will get the blame? The national probation service. There is no risk for the big private companies and no taking of responsibility—just a nice little earner.

There is a risk, however, to the public. As has been said, according to the press, the MOJ’s own risk register raises serious questions about the plans. We would think that the Justice Secretary would want to reassure the public by publishing the risk register, but he is refusing to do so, which in itself raises a number of questions.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Can we just agree that 600,000 crimes a year are committed by people who have already broken the law and that that is of huge cost to all our constituents and costs taxpayers about £10 billion? Does the shadow Secretary of State not agree that something must be done and that, surely, statutory supervision and rehabilitation in the community—for the first time ever—of people who reoffend and have been sentenced for fewer than 12 months must be a huge step forward?

[Sadiq Khan]

If the hon. Gentleman wants me to go back to the beginning of my speech, I would be happy to do so—this is one of the problems when Members read a hand-out from the Whips—but I have already answered that question.

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[Chris Grayling]

The right hon. Gentleman says that he is not against that, but Labour Members have come up with no suggestions whatever on how to achieve it, and did not do so in 13 years in government. This Government will make that difference. The reason is that that group of people—the ones who walk the streets with £46 in their pocket—are being abandoned by the system. Many have deep-rooted problems, such as drug, mental health and educational problems. We currently expect them to change on their own. When we do nothing, they carry on reoffending, which means more victims and more ruined lives. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) has said, it also means a cost, as estimated by the National Audit Office, of between £9.5 billion and £13 billion a year.

[Richard Graham]

Is my right hon. Friend as surprised as I am that the shadow Justice Secretary gave little recognition to the gravity of the problem; that, in his motion, there is nothing—not a single word—on how to reduce reoffending; and that the motion is simply a negative approach to the Government’s proposals?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. All the Opposition are doing is opposing. I hear no suggestions, but we heard no suggestions from the Labour Government. We have heard from the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) on many occasions in the past few months. On 17 July, he said:

“But I also know that the status quo is not an option. Re-offending rates are too high.”

He has also said that we need to target specific groups, such as those who receive short sentences, many of whom are in the revolving door of reoffending. However, we heard nothing about that in his speech to his party conference this year, and there is nothing about it in the motion. The truth is that he has no plan.

Worse than having no plan, the Opposition did nothing in government. They had the chance to tackle the problem of support for short-sentence offenders when they were in office. In 2003, they legislated for custody plus, a highly complex and bureaucratic system, but at least it was trying to address the problem. However, in February 2006, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who was the Minister at the time, said:

“We intend to introduce Custody Plus in the autumn of 2006.”—[Official Report, 6 February 2006; Vol. 442, c. 934W.]

Only five months later, the then Government said that they would not implement the new sentence of custody plus. In November 2007, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said:

“No decision has yet been taken as to when custody plus will be introduced.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 946W.]

In February 2010, just before the general election, Lord Barker said in the other place:

“Resource constraints have meant that we have been unable thus far to implement custody plus and there is no prospect of doing so in the near future.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 February 2010; Vol. 505, c. 17WS.]

They opted out of their plan to tackle the problem that we are going to solve. They said that they could not do it, and it has been left to this Government to come up with a plan that will deliver real change.

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[Chris Grayling]

I will make some progress and then take some interventions.

There has been talk about the categories of low and medium risk, something the right hon. Member for Tooting refers to regularly. The categories come from the current system—it is how the current probation system works. We will build on that in the new system.

We will not do business with anyone who cannot demonstrate the right expertise in preventing reoffending. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made the valid point that there are many good community and voluntary sector organisations doing excellent work in this field. I want more of that work to be part of what we do in the probation sector.

[Richard Graham]

What my right hon. Friend says about the variety of organisations that have something important to contribute on rehabilitation is surely something we all recognise in our own constituencies. Will he confirm for the record that there is nothing to prevent—indeed, lots to encourage—the Gloucestershire and Wiltshire probation trusts from getting together and bidding with a business for rehabilitation contracts?

[Chris Grayling]

Not only that; we are encouraging our management teams from trusts. We cannot contract on a payment-by-results basis with ourselves, but the Cabinet Office is investing money to encourage and support teams of staff who want to take over the business, run it and be free to innovate.

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[Lorely Burt]

I am sure that the hon. Lady is right that such people live chaotic and fluctuating lives and things can change, but the Justice Secretary explained that the people making the assessments would always be on the job and would be in the same room as the other people who would be involved.

There are some legitimate questions for the Minister. I have seen payment by results work well in job searching and I know that there are good voluntary and private organisations with skill and experience that could be put to good use in rehabilitation. There are also private companies, however, that have failed spectacularly to handle work that has hitherto been carried out by the public sector. Whenever the profit motive comes into play, the desire will be to maximise profit and minimise risk and effort. How will the Government ensure that private companies, in particular, do not simply come along and pick the low-hanging fruit? How will we ensure that a very important Liberal Democrat principle is adhered to—[Laughter.] The right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Benches are having a laugh, as they say, but a decision on this very important principle was passed at the last Liberal Democrat conference—[Interruption.] If hon. Members care to listen, they will find out what we think is really important. The principle that we would adhere to is that all ex-offenders should receive appropriate help, even when the risk of reoffending is high. So how will that happen, and how will the costs be factored? After all, many ex-offenders will leave prison never to reoffend, all on their own. Will there be some form of incentive to encourage voluntary sector or private providers to take on the hard cases—people with addictions, low educational attainment and poor or even non-existent employment records?

[Richard Graham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lorely Burt]

I have taken two interventions. I am sorry.

How we will ensure that everyone gets the help that they need to become a real stakeholder in Britain today? I look forward to the Minister’s answer.

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[Mr Llwyd]

That is precisely what will happen. Once the profit motive comes in, common sense dictates that that will happen.

Private companies will be handling extremely sensitive cases, many of which pose huge risks to the public, with little or no experience of assessing risk. We know that that, too, is a movable feast. They will also be unable to cope with the demands of managing offenders who need encouragement, support and patience—work which the probation service itself is doing very well at present. The Ministry of Justice figures show that all 35 probation trusts are hitting all their targets with good or excellent performance levels. The reoffending rates for all adult offenders on probation supervision are the lowest they have been since 2007-08. In October 2011, as we know, the probation service was awarded the British Quality Foundation gold medal for excellence.

Reoffending by those who undergo supervision by probation has been falling every year since 2000, and two thirds of individuals managed by probation trusts in the community do not go on to reoffend within a year. The service’s high-level performance is continuing. The Government want to fragment that. The highest reoffending rates of 57% are of course found among those offenders who undergo short-term prison sentences—that is, the group who have no current contact with probation trusts. The Government have in the past ruled out the option of handing over responsibility for these individuals to probation trusts.

Probation trusts have made savings of 20% between 2008-09 and 2012-13, despite the fact that the probation budget has fallen by 19% in real terms over the same period. That all goes to show that it is trained and experienced probation workers who keep crime rates down and protect the public from further harm, but the Justice Secretary seems to have little regard for any of that.

These plans represent a victory of dogma over common sense and are yet another example of the Tory mantra that public is bad and private is always good, despite G4S torturing people in South African prisons and, along with others, skimming off millions of pounds of Government money.

[Richard Graham]

If I heard the right hon. Gentleman correctly, he accused Government Members of being anti-public sector. For those of us who have worked in the public service for large chunks of our life, that is deeply offensive.

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[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.

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[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.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is making some extremely good points, and I hope that the Opposition are listening carefully. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) keeps referring to private contracts, but the Lord Chancellor has confirmed twice today that probation trusts can bid for those contracts in conjunction with someone who can take the financial risk. Does she agree that the hon. Gentleman should stop slagging off the private sector?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend pre-empts my next point. We have been talking about private versus public, but it is not like that. We are not just talking about the Sercos and the G4Ss. We want public servants to come together and create mutuals. We are most effective when we all work in partnership. The “us and them” culture perpetuated by the Opposition does nothing to improve outcomes for anyone, whether in jobs, tackling reoffending or anything else. This stale thinking has had its day. We are in the 21st century, not the 20th.

Police and crime commissioners will have a massive role in bringing together successful partnerships to bid for contracts. I pay tribute to an imaginative approach in my constituency, spearheaded by the police and crime commissioner, working with the youth offending team. The team had to find a new home. One of our police stations had closed. The PCC brought together a partnership between the council and the youth offending team, which enabled the re-opening of the police station, with a front-facing desk, that also provided a secure working environment for the team and its clients. That is a great example of partnership working and of how police and crime commissioners can make a difference. I commend what the Government are doing on this agenda.