Probation Service

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Gavin Shuker

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The last two interventions have shown that there is clearly more expertise among Opposition Members than Government Front Benchers. Our FOI questions uncovered that in London 29,813 offenders will be given over to the likes of G4S and Serco. In Surrey and Sussex, 7,313 offenders will now be supervised by the experts that are G4S and Serco.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan]

Let me make some progress, if that is okay, and then I will give way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) is right, because compounding this situation is the unnatural carving up of responsibility for offenders on the basis of risk. The public sector will keep the very highest-risk offenders—the Justice Secretary clearly does not trust G4S and Serco with them—and the private sector will have the rest. He does not get it. Again, my hon. Friend is right: risk is not static. In one in four cases, risk levels fluctuate. Each time someone’s risk level fluctuates, bureaucracy and paperwork is involved, but we cannot afford for this to be a slow or cumbersome process, because when risk levels escalate, they tend to do so rapidly. They might stop taking their medication or a relationship might break down, leading to them becoming, overnight, a danger to themselves and others, so the process needs to be swift if the appropriate measures and support are to be put in place.

Can we really see the police working as closely with private companies as they do with probation trusts? Probation trusts often have on-site access to police record computers, which are crucial in assessing, monitoring and supervising offenders. Can we really see the police giving private companies the same access?

Who decides the risk? The Government claim that the decision will be taken by the new national probation service, but the Justice Secretary does not get it. The national probation service will not have a day-to-day personal relationship with offenders, so how will it know? His plans will be clunky, cumbersome and prone to errors, with cases falling between two stools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Shuker]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He makes the point brilliantly that the issue of low, medium and high risk is one not just of fluctuation, but of staff retention and ability effectively to manage the case load. What will happen in the rumps of the probation services that will be left over—many of whose employees have performed excellently throughout—when they are dumped with the most difficult cases, day in, day out, for 10 or 12 hours a day?

[Sadiq Khan]

We know what will happen: when those offenders cherry-picked by the private sector do better—which they will tend to do, because they will be easier to rehabilitate—the Justice Secretary will say that the public sector is failing because the offenders who will be more difficult to rehabilitate will not be doing as well. We have seen that happen before.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Gavin Shuker

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I am not sure whether I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. He seems to be suggesting that we skip the details and rush the Bill through the House, and I am not sure that that is my idea of good government.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend feel as uncomfortable as I do when listening to the Liberal Democrats lecturing people on referendum commitments in manifestos when they cannot even keep to their own commitments to their coalition colleagues, or on tuition fees?

[Sadiq Khan]

I am always uncomfortable when listening to Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Gavin Shuker

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Shuker]

The hon. Gentleman rightly points out that they will not be the electorate then, but in this place we should be better than that.

When we consider foreign policy, for example, we often examine how we set a timetable. There are two ways of setting a timetable for change. The first is by way of a conditions-based response, where we say that there are certain milestones to be hit—certain points at which we consider that the integrity of the process has been governed and understood by all, and the progress that has been made has been secured. The other route is by way of a purely date-led timetable. In the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, the previous Government set out a position where two parallel processes would happen at the same time: the existing register would continue in the way that it had, while we looked at and tried to understand how individual electoral registration affected the details of those people on the register. That strikes me as a wholly appropriate approach, and many Government Members, as they are now, supported those moves. Why for the sake of a year’s change or difference are we now going to cause ourselves trouble and store it up for the future?

We have heard a lot from the Minister about the data-matching trials, which are obviously important in order for us to see whether this shift has a measurable and discernible effect on how the register is produced. He has placed details in the Library today, and I am looking forward to seeing them. However, he said that he anticipates that only two thirds of the people currently on the register will be moved across.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

At best.

[Gavin Shuker]

At best. The key issue is that we will not know, even from the pilots, whether that is an appropriate level until early 2013, by which point this legislation will have gone from this place. We will not be able to pull back from the brink if demonstrably lower levels of data matching are shown. The Minister was clear about the onus put on those trials in the first place; it was a key reason why this was an appropriate route to go down. In answer to my intervention, he said that he hoped the number on the electoral register will not decrease, and will instead increase, as a result of these changes. What safeguards are in place if the data-matching trials come back not with a figure of 66% or 55%, which is the sort of figure others have spoken about, but a significantly lower one? Answer comes there none.

Secondly, on the 2015 review of boundaries for the 2020 elections, to which this process is integral, we have very little in the way of answers about how the register will change constituency boundaries, which have already been changed to a great extent. I draw the House’s attention to the quotes from the Electoral Reform Society, which said:

“A substantial fall off in registered voters, weighted towards urban areas, would require the Boundary Commission to reduce the number of inner city seats. This will create thousands of “invisible” citizens who will not be accounted for or considered in many key decisions that affect their lives”.

I believe that that is the situation we are in now, and it might well extend further. That does a disservice to many of the groups that I mentioned.

Finally, I want to draw attention to the issue of young people. Students who are registered in their halls of residence are empowered to vote at a time of significant change and transition in their lives. I hope that they will not be disfranchised, because their voices must be heard if we are to maintain the credibility of the process and draw in new voters, too.