Probation Service: Chief Inspector’s Reviews into Serious Further Offences

Debate between Sam Tarry and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I take seriously everything that the Chair of the Select Committee says, and we welcome the scrutiny of the Committee and the expertise that its members bring. I will look carefully at everything he has just said. Let me just make a couple of comments, if I may. First, the follow-up of recommendations obviously is important. Internally, HM Prison and Probation Service auditors will review the delivery of quality improvement plans, particularly in those areas. That goes beyond these two appalling cases to more generally where we know there have been problems that need to be addressed. I accept what he says about recommendations made in the past, but I reassure him that many of the things I have mentioned today are not things we are just committing to today, things that we say we will do in the future; these are things that are already happening and have been happening between these cases and today, or have been happening in the past few months.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

This morning I spoke with Zara Aleena’s family. It seems weeks ago that I was sat in the Old Bailey to hear the sentencing of her murderer. It goes without saying that she will always be in the hearts of everyone in Ilford, who are devastated and so angry about this. Today’s inspectorate report paints a sad but unfortunately unsurprising account of an institution that in my view is fundamentally broken.

In McSweeney’s pathway to murder, there were significant delays in assigning the community offender manager. As a result, the probation service had only nine days to conduct an assessment that may have led to him being classified as high risk. It is now clear that the probation service, on the back of this report, failed to prepare for that release. It had not had adequate time to do so, and it only recalled him to custody once he had breached his parole. I wonder whether if at any point the probation service had been capable of doing its job, Zara would be alive today. Never again should the criminal justice system be allowed to fail so badly that women are left vulnerable to extremely dangerous men such as McSweeney. The chief inspector noted today

“a backdrop of excessive workloads and challenges in respect of staffing vacancies in the London region.”

The problem is that this was not just an individual failure; it was endemic in a system that is clearly dysfunctional.

I thank the Minister for the conversation we had ahead of this statement today. I firmly welcome the decision to compel offenders to be in the dock to look into the eyes of the families whose lives they have devastated. What funding and strategy will the Government put forward to expand the probation workforce, tackle excessive workloads and ensure the probation service has the capacity to properly supervise criminals in the community? Having spoken today to the general secretaries of Napo and the Professional Trades Union for Prison, Correctional and Secure Psychiatric Workers, will the Government consider having a royal commission to look into the absolutely sorry state of our criminal justice system from prisons to probation?

[Damian Hinds]

Again, I acknowledge what the hon. Gentleman says and what is in this report from the chief inspector about failings that happened. To be clear, these were unacceptable failings in any scenario, but just to reiterate, we are investing further in staffing in the probation service. We have had large numbers of people coming into the service over the past couple of years. As I mentioned a moment ago to the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), there has been some prioritisation towards areas with particular staffing challenges, and the London area, as the hon. Gentleman will know, is one of those. We have extended some of the London weighting to the area within the M25, because the truth is that the employment market and the graduate employment market are tough in the extended London area. I take very seriously everything that he says. I again say that day in, day out, colleagues in the probation service, who are dealing sometimes with very difficult people, are overwhelmingly doing a remarkable job, and it is incumbent upon us to make sure we do everything we can to support them in that important work and give them the best chance to succeed.