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Miss Widdecombe: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for interrupting his flow--I tried to wait until what I thought was a natural break. However, I am anxious to raise this point of order while the Home Secretary is still in his place. There have been reports today about the absconding of six individuals from Oakington last night. Have you or Madam Speaker received any request for the Home Secretary to take advantage of his presence in the House to make a statement?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order for the Chair. The fact is that no such request has been received. I have no doubt that the Home Secretary has heard what the right hon. Lady has said, but I must say to her that there have to be other ways in which to pursue those matters.
Mr. Corbett: I hope that the powers in clause 55 will be used more as a way of offering advice and support than punishment. The power should be seen to divert rather than to punish.
Reference was made earlier to the third report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which I now have the privilege to Chair, on alternatives to prison, published in July 1998. The Committee called for a national probation service, and for it to be more rigorous in enforcing the community sentences. May I say in passing that we accused the sentencers and the media of not understanding enough about community sentences? When people receive a well-targeted community sentence, to say that they "walked free from court today" does nothing to help that understanding.
One Select Committee recommendation stated:
The Association of Chief Officers of Probation is also concerned at the provisions on electronic monitoring. Our report rightly called for this to be extended. The House has already heard that the results of the first years of operation in the pilot areas has shown compliance with the tagging conditions to be an astonishing 95 per cent.
I want to tell the House about a visit that we made to a centre in Manchester, or Salford, that monitored people wearing tags. It had experience of offenders ringing up and saying, "We are so glad that we are tagged because it imposes a discipline on us that is not normally there." It had others applying to be tagged when they had not committed any offences. It is a generalisation, I know, but young people with offending behaviour often have a chaotic life style, and one of the benefits of tagging is to impose some order on that.
The centre feared--I think it was a misreading--that there would be a swipe-card approach to the monitoring of tagging--what I believe is called in the trade "drive by and wave." That would reduce the personal contact which is part of the order that surrounds the tagging device. I am sure that that is not the intention because the point of community orders is to establish regular contact with the probation service and others if need be, the better to ensure success and public protection, and to reduce the likelihood of reoffending.
I am not clear about the attitude of the Opposition to tagging. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made that point to the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald. She and the whole House know that people are due to come out of prison at various stages and if someone is released slightly earlier than under the normal tariff with the assistance of a tag, it is because an
assessment has been made of the safety of the public and the likelihood of the prisoner obeying the terms of early release. We know that offenders can be recalled to prison if they reoffend.
Our report shows that there is little or no difference between reoffending rates of people sentenced to custodial sentences and people sentenced to non-custodial community sentences. That point is worth underlining. One of the advantages of community sentences is that they are cheaper than sending people to prison. I do not advocate non-custodial sentences only for that reason, but there is a benefit to the public in that less of our tax goes to keeping people locked up.
The exceptions are worth noting again. The Select Committee recently made an interesting visit to Her Majesty's Prison Blantyre in Kent. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State will know about it because I wrote him a letter. The prison takes about 20 life sentence prisoners about a year before the end of their sentence. They are simply told that they are going there, and that is what happens. The other prisoners are on shorter sentences. The prison is a model in what it achieves. Every prisoner is either in full-time education or working: most of those who work do so well outside the prison, including those who commute to and from London regularly. The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald will like this--the regime is simple. The rules are "One breach and back to Maidstone you go. No ifs, no buts; that's it."
The thing that most impressed us during that visit was that four former prisoners, all with heavy sentences, who had completed their sentences and been released and were all working--one of them with the help of a very good voluntary body--gave up their time to come back and tell us what the regime at Blantyre House had meant for them and literally how it had changed their lives. The other thing that came out of our exchanges--I think that the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald and I are at one on this--was the appalling picture that they painted of what goes on in the rest of the Prison Service. There is almost total absence of a coherent, positive approach to preparing prisoners in any true sense for release or rehabilitation. All of them to a man said, "Is it any wonder, with what goes on in our mainstream prisons, that too many prisoners come out with a warrant in their hand and are back inside in comparatively few months?" We will never break that cycle unless we have more regimes like that at Blantyre. Those who have proposed to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State that we should re-role--hateful phrase--Blantyre house should have their words stuffed down their throats, and should be told to think again. We must not risk destroying a regime that has demonstrated its success and that deserves to continue to do so. If anything, we want more places like it.
Miss Widdecombe:
The hon. Gentleman made my point in his final words. There are too few resettlement prisons--Kirklevington and Blantyre, and pretty well no more. Instead of reducing the precious few facilities available, we should seek to expand them.
Mr. Corbett:
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. I am told that some in the Prison Service see what happens at Blantyre house as risky. I cannot believe that any governor in the Prison Service is not exposed to some risk. There are no guarantees for those who do that job.
During the inquiry, we found that some tailor-made educational schemes for community orders were immensely successful in addressing the causes of offences. For example, we met a young man in Manchester who had burned down a school, causing around £750,000 damage. The fire service, to which I pay tribute, was working with him one to one to address his need for arson. Similar schemes were run on drugs and other offences, and such schemes were immensely successful in diverting people from reoffending, which cut reoffending rates dramatically. That is the direction in which we should go.
Sir Nicholas Lyell (North-East Bedfordshire):
I shall be brief. Fundamentally, we support the Bill, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) said, we have some reservations and some detailed criticisms.
Any criminal justice Bill must be seen against the overall crime background, which immediately leads to arguments categorised as party political. I shall not dodge that point, but my remarks will be made in the context of Bedfordshire, which I represent. Use of that context will show the realities, and hon. Members may argue over whether my points are party political once they have heard what I have to say.
After nearly three years of the Labour Government, Bedfordshire is short of police. Our police number has dropped by 4.1 per cent., which represents about 61 officers--a serious change for a small force of around 1,100. That has practical effects, particularly on the rural community. Riseley police station was set up by the chief constable and was much appreciated by the parishes north of Bedford, but it is now manned for only a few hours because of pressure on police resources.
To the probation service, I pay a genuine compliment: I note with pleasure the sea change in the service during my 20 years as a Member of Parliament. Today, it is a service of which the country can be proud. That applies to the majority of probation officers. They do an extremely difficult job in a firm, effective and practical way, and deserve our thanks.
It is not always realised how tough the job of probation officer can be, nor what an important part probation officers play in the maintenance of law and order--especially in the monitoring and control in the community of often dangerous offenders. The job can range from dealing with tricky paedophiles, who can be a real danger if not properly monitored, to those on licence from a life sentence who need careful support and control. There is the problem of repeat burglars, multiple housebreakers and car crime offenders, all of whom need to be monitored back in the community. There is witness protection and even the monitoring of those with terrorist records or those who pose a potential terrorist danger. All that is part of the life of the modern probation officer.
We support the fact that the service is to become a National Probation Service. It makes good sense that probation services, which operate countywide--as in my constituency--should be tied in with the police force and the Crown Prosecution Service. We welcome and encourage that move. It already happens to a significant degree in Bedfordshire; as it is a small county, many of the services were largely coterminous. We can see the wisdom of that for the rest of the country.
On the basis that the Government are the sinner who repenteth, they are right to have backed down on their inappropriate name for the probation service. To call it the National Probation Service is sensible. That was, at least, the result of consultation with the service, whose deep concerns were heard. The name is an improvement. However, unfortunately, according to the feedback I have received, the consultation on the naming of the penalties--probation orders, rehabilitation orders, community punishment and so on--has been less complete. Indeed, highly respected people in the service feel that the service was not consulted as much as it should have been.
Strict enforcement of community sentences is vital if they are to represent a credible alternative to prison and retain the confidence of sentencers and the public.
So I welcome the provision for a national service. I am pleased that the Association of Chief Officers of Probation welcomes it as well. However, the association fears--I think mistakenly--that the Government's power to intervene under clause 45, which provides for the functions of the local boards that will be appointed to oversee the delivery of the service in the 42 areas, may be used prematurely or inconsistently in the event of perceived failure. I think that the association has got this wrong. The local boards have the authority and the influence--the Home Secretary is there only as a longstop. If the public investment in a modern probation service is not getting the desired results, the Home Secretary will act on behalf of the taxpayer and the offender to see that the matter is put right. I see nothing wrong with that principle. My right hon. Friend has made extra resources available to the service.
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