Private Probation Services

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. After I have said a little bit about staff and morale, I will go on to talk a little bit about the financial bailout of CRCs, because it is really important that we recognise the additional money that has gone into propping up these failing companies. However, I will complete my points about staff morale and then move on to that issue.

I want to flag up some of the things that probation staff said in response to the Unison survey. One said:

“Chaotic, frustrating and exhausting. Caseloads are too high and I don’t feel as if I do anything to protect the public anymore, I simply process people. Service users…often comment as to how impersonal our service is now and that they feel telephone contact with offender managers is inadequate. Very sad knowing that I used to do good work.”

Another said:

“I have inherited a new caseload since early 2017—many cases have not been contacted for months—one case today I managed to contact had not heard from anyone at Probation for 16 months in a 24-month suspended sentence. It is not good enough.”

Perhaps the most damning response was this one:

“I feel stressed, de-professionalised and ready to give it up. This government have transformed rehabilitation alright. They have ruined it.”

Probation is ultimately a caring profession and it should be viewed as being a bit like teaching or social work. However, it is clear that those who work within the service are being hugely let down by privatised and profit-driven CRCs. That is summed up by the underlying tension between CRCs meeting contractual obligations and their responding to the needs of offenders, with the latter receiving much less attention than the former. Shockingly the Government are now in a position where, as has already been said, they are bailing out CRCs at a cost of millions of pounds. As things stand, CRCs are paid for the volume of rehabilitation activity.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does she agree that linking payment to demand has not only affected service in times of low requirement, but has made the position of the Work First employees, whom she has described in such detail, much worse, so that many of them are suffering from low morale and are in precarious employment?

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, and she is absolutely right. If a system is introduced whereby people are paid by results, that turns probation into the tick-box exercise that we have seen. It is not focused on rehabilitation and public protection but on making sure that all the right boxes are ticked, so that the CRC can generate profit. Profit-driven rather than people-driven is what has happened to the probation service.

CRCs are paid for the volume of rehabilitation activity that they carry out, rather than for the number of offenders that are supervised. The Ministry of Justice originally claimed that it would transfer the commercial risk of future volumes of rehabilitation activity going down, as well as up, to CRCs. They are paid in a complex way, with different payment bands for the provision of different types of rehabilitation service. However, the current volumes of activity that CRCs are paid for are far below the levels expected when the contracts were awarded.

According to National Audit Office figures, in 2015-16, the activities undertaken by CRCs ranged from 8% to 34% less than originally anticipated. In the first quarter of 2017-18, volumes of activity ranged from 16% to 48% less than anticipated. At the same time, the number of offenders supervised by CRCs increased by 20%. In effect, CRCs have to look after more offenders but do less work.

Moreover, as has become common across many private sector initiatives that have been put out to tender, CRCs underestimated their fixed costs when bidding for contracts. However, the MOJ agreed that the taxpayer, not the private companies, should shoulder that cost as well. So far, this is predicted to have cost the taxpayer an additional £342 million through a bailout of companies that was followed by adjustments made to the payment mechanism last year. It is not as if the MOJ is beyond rectifying the situation, as it has many tools at its disposal. It is entitled to fine the CRCs for poor performance, but it has either waived or allowed CRCs to reinvest 71% of the total fines due to the taxpayer.

One option that the MOJ considered in respect of poor performance by CRCs was to terminate some, or all, of their contracts. However, it decided instead to let the taxpayer take the strain of the failing contracts by amending the contract payment mechanisms to give the CRCs more money. It is clear that the privatisation of probation services has failed, and the overarching point, which repeats itself time and again, is that this is yet another example of Government-led privatisation that has gone wrong. The original arrangement and subsequent contracts were not fit for purpose in the first place, and what we are left with is a system driven by the ideological desire to privatise key elements of our justice system and defend the cause even when it evidently fails.

The idea of a Government bailing out a private sector service when the prison and rehabilitation services are in crisis should concern us all, particularly given that ageing, dilapidated prisons are falling apart—HMP Liverpool has been described as having the worst conditions inspectors have ever seen—services within prisons are grinding to a halt, with mental health assessments taking far too long, prisoners are denied access to education and rehabilitation facilities, and a quarter of prisoners are accommodated in overcrowded conditions. Notwithstanding the cost of CRCs on the public purse, how many more reasons do the Government need before they take the prisons crisis seriously, take control of the rehabilitation of offenders and make our justice system fit for purpose? Rehabilitation in the community, if executed correctly, can be a key factor in reducing reoffending, but how can services that continue to be rated as poor by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation continue to qualify for these massive payments from central Government while not even doing the job they are paid to do? It is time, once and for all, to bring the failed schemes back under public control, so that we can get to the root causes of reoffending and provide rehabilitation services that are fit for purpose.