Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Sarah Champion and John Pugh

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

Again, it would be nice to have the evidence; instead, we are debating in the dark. I find it shocking that we had to raise the issue in an Opposition day debate, rather than the Government presenting their findings to us.

For me, it is right and proper that this House should debate the privatisation of 70% of probation services; the fragmentation of the resulting services; the abolition of local probation trusts; the commissioning of services direct from Westminster; and the imposition of an untried, untested payment-by-results model. Instead, the Government are pushing ahead with their half-baked plans for probation privatisation by misusing existing legislation and avoiding parliamentary scrutiny. I can only assume that that decision is driven by political ideology, but this proposal will put the public at risk.

The chairs of the probation trusts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire have written to the Minister to warn him of the dire consequences of rushing this reform through. Those experts say that

“performance is bound to be damaged and that public protection failures will inevitably increase”.

They go on to say that the fragmentation proposed by this Government would lead to

“more systemic risks and more preventable serious attacks and deaths”

and that the current timetable was

“unrealistic and unreasonable...with serious implications for service delivery and therefore increases the risk to public”.

I urge the Minister to listen to the people who know and understand the service best, and to support our proposal in new clause 1.

[John Pugh]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 4. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) mentioned ideology. It might surprise her to learn that I am a great fan of ideology; I think that people should have clear political beliefs. There is at least one clear ideology on public services, which states that government services are best delivered not by a Government agency but by private bidders trying to satisfy the Government. There is a general view that Government agencies are necessarily incompetent, inflexible or naturally the prisoner of Government employees and unions, and that outsourcing is always the best and first option.