Probation Services

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He talked about turning the clock back, and in some of his remarks I felt as if the years had fallen away and we were back in the 1980s in some sort of ideological death struggle—public good, private bad. Let me reassure him that I take no ideological view as to what works. I will follow the evidence, and when the facts change I will change my mind. I make no apology for doing that today. He will of course acknowledge that the course was set last year, when the announcement was made by my predecessor and I, as the Minister of State, very much supported that decision. This is a necessary adjustment in the way in which we are going to deliver the new service.

I am not going to dwell for too long on the rhetoric; I will deal with the substance of what the right hon. Gentleman asked, and he asked a number of questions. [Interruption.] Well, rhetoric has its place, but we are talking here about the lives of people we are under a duty to protect and to support. I can tell the Opposition that I spent the best part of 30 years working with probation officers and with the probation service, reading hundreds of pre-sentence reports and respecting the professionalism of probation officers in court, both as counsel and as a part-time judge, so I do not need noises off to tell me what I know or do not know about the probation service, with the greatest of respect.

This is a service, as the right hon. Gentleman said, that is unsung. Its work is vitally important, but often goes unnoticed, unheard and unobserved. That is something that I am doing my very best to put right, and I can reassure him that those dedicated public servants who are working in the CRCs will have the opportunity to transfer, as I said in my statement, to the NPS, when the time comes in June next year. That is the timescale that we have kept to.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to talk about the need to focus on the reduction in reoffending. He will be glad to note that in last year’s spending review I secured an extra £155 million for probation services—one of the biggest rises and cash injections that the service has seen in many a year—and it is my aim to keep annual expenditure well over £100 million for each of the next several years. That is our ambition, and it is matched with investment and with a bold agenda on embracing technology. This is a service that will not only be able to keep pace with change, but be very much in the vanguard of it.

I am proud to be at the helm of a Department that has such a set of dedicated public servants. This is the right decision at the right time. I make no apology for it whatsoever, and I look forward to a non-ideological future in which the right hon. Gentleman and I can genuinely work together in support of the probation service that he says he values.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am going to try to get everybody in. However, I need to finish the statement at 12.50 pm. That will require short answers and short questions.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I will do my level best, but I was the probation Minister between 2010 and 2012. One of the proudest moments of my time was attending a dinner where the Princess Royal presented the British Quality Foundation’s gold award to the National Probation Service. The reforms that subsequently were done to probation service would not have been done by me. They were visited upon the Department to a degree by some whizz kids—bright people—some of whom are now very senior in the Government.

There were two faults. The first was that the companies were too large and did not equate with the geographical area of the police force. I would have given them, had I done it, to the police and crime commissioners, saying that they were responsible for the input and the output. A very good point was made by the shadow Lord Chancellor about engaging local authorities in all the services we have to bring to an offender for there to be a decent chance of getting them rehabilitated.

Secondly, I say to my right hon. and learned Friend that, attractive as going back to the position of 2012 might seem to me, we were trying to find the opportunities to make sure that we can get the charities, the private sector and everyone else engaged in the great work of rehabilitation of offenders. We are in many ways back to square one, but there is a huge opportunity to be grasped.

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[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

This has been a sorry episode, and it is a sobering reminder of what happens when we let ideology push ahead of the evidence in public policy making. That is something I hope those on the Government Benches will reflect on, but frankly it is something for all of us to reflect on. Secretary of State, you have a real opportunity as you build your unified model. There is so much talent in the NPS and those CRCs, so will you commit to getting staff around the table, finding the best of their experiences and building on them?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that he really should not be referring to the Secretary of State as “you”.

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who I know takes a keen interest in these issues. Perhaps I will emphasise the second part of his question. I thoroughly agree about the need to harness that experience and talent. That is what we are going to do. We will work with the unions and all the representative bodies to make sure that as we emerge from June of next year, we will be in an even better position to reduce reoffending.

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[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is correct for any Government to try different mechanisms for delivering the best outcomes for service users and for the taxpayer? Leaving the word “ideology” to one side, is it not right to follow in the footsteps of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who introduced independent sector providers to the NHS?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We need very short questions without long preambles, and a short answer.

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend, who speaks for the residents of Dudley so powerfully, is right to remind us about those ideological experiments indulged in by a Government of which the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) was a member not so many years ago. It pays us all to focus on the evidence, rather than the ideology.

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[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has consistently raised these issues in the past year to 18 months. She is right to hold me to account on that need to maintain a mixed economy approach, to harness the excellent work of the employees that she talks about in the new structure and to make sure that that initiative—that sense of personal ownership of the programmes—is not lost as we make that transition. I am grateful to her.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am suspending the House for three minutes.

Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).