Probation Services

Debate between Robert Buckland and Damian Green

Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who I know has a long interest in these issues, but I remind him of what I said a few moments ago about the £155 million uplift in this current financial year that we secured as part of the highest increase in the Ministry of Justice revenue budget in more than a decade. We will continue to match that in the years ahead with more investment, and he can be confident that that will translate not only into reduced workloads, but increased sophistication and development when it comes to the harnessing of new technologies and better ways of working. We have learned a lot from the current crisis about how we can do things even better.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I regret to say that I am worried by the statement that my right hon. and learned Friend has made this morning, for the simple reason that I have seen probation services for my constituents improve over the past few years, with more people given the second chance that the shadow Secretary of State referred to. He has just praised the work of the Kent, Surrey and Sussex CRC, as he has done in the past from the Dispatch Box, so can he give me some reassurance that with this statement today he is not in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and I can give him that reassurance because, as he reminds us, we are talking not just about a service, but the people who deliver that service. Those dedicated public servants will be able to transfer across to the NPS, and I want to retain the ethos that they have and the specialisms that they bring, so that we can enhance the probation service and make it even better in the future.