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4.26 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Paul Boateng): I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Madam Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following Government amendments: Nos. 19, 22, 24, 25, 31, 101, 108 to 113 and 119.
Mr. Boateng: The amendments relate to the electronic monitoring of community sentences proposed in the Bill. The measures will provide the probation service and other agencies with vital new tools to increase the protection of the public and to improve the effectiveness of community sentences through increased compliance and tougher enforcement.
The amendments relate to a change that we trailed in Committee, but before I say anything more, I would point out that these changes have nothing to do with the home detention curfew or electronic monitoring of prisoners on release on licence. I know that there has been some confusion on that point in the past, and I want to establish the facts early and to make it clear to hon. Members who want to address curfews and prisoners on licence that they will have the chance to do so, but now is not the time, as the amendments deal with other matters.
In Committee, I advised that, later in the Bill's passage, we would be considering how best to use electronic monitoring to strengthen enforcement of a range of orders. The amendments are the result of that further consideration. They replace clause 47 on monitoring of requirements in community rehabilitation orders and several other references to electronic monitoring of freestanding exclusion and curfew orders with a new, better-ordered and more comprehensive clause that enables the court, when imposing a community order, to secure the electronic monitoring of the offender's compliance with any of the requirements imposed by the terms of the order.
Obviously, that will include the electronic monitoring of offenders subject to curfew and exclusion. It will also, in due course, allow us to use technology such as voice verification systems, which could enable us to identify whether an offender is speaking from a location on an agreed list and whether the right person is responding to pre-planned or random checks. All such schemes would of course be properly piloted, but that is an example of the scope that the clause would open up in enforcing community sentences.
The amendments draw together powers enabling the electronic monitoring of the terms of freestanding curfew and exclusion orders and any requirements of any community order.
As I stated in Committee, the purpose of the amendments, apart from the obvious benefits in clarity and scope, is to enable electronic monitoring to be used to enforce more of the requirements of community orders. In addition, they apply to a wider range of those orders. Of course such schemes will be subject to the same rigorous testing and piloting as other new initiatives before they are rolled out.
The amendments also broaden the definition of an "affected person" in relation to exclusion requirements and orders to include not only those who have to give their consent to allow electronic monitoring to occur, but individuals who are, to some degree, being protected by the order or exclusion in question. The former group is already covered by the Bill, and hon. Members who were present in Committee will remember our short debate about persons who might have an interest.
An offender's victims would have an opportunity to be advised, as affected persons, about exclusion requirements and orders. That is reasonable and sensible. For example, if an offender, who hangs about a woman's house during the night, is excluded from those premises between the hours of 8 pm and 8 am, the victim should know that that is the case. That would tell her exactly what she should expect under the order, when the exclusion is in effect and when it is not. They are the only changes of substance that will be achieved under these amendments. The rest of the detail will remain effectively the same.
4.30 pm
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): The Minister is right to say that the issues relating to whether it is appropriate for people to be released early on tags will arise in later debates. He knows from our extensive debates in Committee that there are many such issues, but I entirely agree that this is not the right debate in which deal with them. However, I shall put some specific questions to the Minister. He will be aware that our concern throughout--indeed, it has been expressed by Labour as well as Opposition Members--has been that proper account should be taken of working probation officers' views in particular.
The Minister is well aware that the National Association of Probation Officers has expressed grave concerns about several aspects of the Bill. As he says, he trailed in Committee the fact that further changes might be made, but has he fully consulted working probation officers and, in particular, has he taken account of the views of probation committees and the National Association of Probation Officers? The concerns expressed on both sides in Committee were real. Although
it is only a relatively short time since the Committee completed its proceedings, the Government want to replace a fairly large chunk of the Bill and we want to be sure that they will not change it for the worse. I hope that the Minister will tell us about that.I accept that many of the amendments in the group are consequential. We are discussing only one substantive change, although the grouping of amendments makes it seem as though there are many changes. We are discussing the major change in new clause 9, from which the other changes in detail flow. I hope that the Minister will also tell us whether he has taken account of the views of police officers, police organisations and the Council for Circuit Judges.
The Minister will recall that there was much discussion in Committee about whether circuit judges and lay magistrates, who are at the sharp end of using such provisions, had been consulted. There is a grave weakness in that the Government are making changes at a late stage, but they have not necessarily taken into account the views of those who will impose the sentences. There are still grave concerns. We want the Minister to tell us exactly who has been consulted on these further, detailed changes. Having said that, I do not propose to press him further, on the basis that he will deal with all those points.
Mr. Humfrey Malins (Woking): I wish to raise with the Minister four short, slightly nuts-and-bolts points. I did not serve on the Committee and come to the matter slightly afresh, but the Minister knows my background in terms of sentencing and so on. When the Select Committee on Home Affairs visited an experiment in tagging and electronic monitoring in Manchester some months ago, the stipendiary magistrate told us that one of problems was that too many people who were not the defendant turned up or volunteered to be tagged and monitored to give the defendant a free hand elsewhere. That was happening quite a lot in Manchester and we were told that it was the only way in which a breach could be made. When a person reported for tagging, no accurate check was made on whether he was the one who had been sentenced. Can the Minister reassure me that that problem has been overcome?
Secondly, I speak as a sentencer when I say that quite often nowadays, when consent needs to be given, the law seems to change from time to time. For example, one used to have to get the defendant's consent before sentencing him to community service, but that is no longer the case. The new clause provides for consent on one occasion, but not on another. Although I see the point of needing consent, that leads me neatly to the third point.
Judges, recorders and stipendiaries find that many forms of sentence are being introduced nowadays and I can tell the Minister--I was about to say in confidence, but nothing I say here is confidential--that a lot of new sentences are not imposed by the courts because the form of words for them has not been issued by the Judicial Studies Board. That is a most extraordinary point to make, but it is true. It is terribly important that either the Home Office or the Lord Chancellor's Department makes sure that all sentencers are completely familiar with new forms of sentence that are being introduced and, furthermore, with the form of words to be used. If one does not know the form of words exactly, it is all too easy to think of another sentence, which might not be quite as good.
Finally, is the Minister content that the new clause's requirements for electronic monitoring are not moving us into too heavy a cost area? Will the resources be available to ensure that those problems are dealt with?
Mr. Boateng: I am glad to assure the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), who speaks with great authority on these matters, that the resources will indeed be available before the amendments are brought into effect. We are anxious to ensure that we pilot and evaluate before rolling out. That also gives us the opportunity to make an assessment as to cost and, therefore, of cost-effectiveness and value in terms of that process. I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about individuals' rumoured swapping of identities in an attempt to fool those responsible for administering tagging, but I have yet to have brought to my attention a single substantiated case in which that happened. That point is developing the characteristics of an urban myth.
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