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7 pm
Mr. Straw: This raft of amendments raises an important issue about the management of the service. It has been a matter of disagreement in the other place, although I think that it was less so here when it was first discussed. It is important to put on record what has been agreed by all parties, which is that we should move from the current position of having 54 local probation services, with the consequent difficulties in national co-ordination and management, to a national service--the National Probation Service is a clear and unambiguous title--organised nationally but delivered locally through 42 different probation areas that are coterminous with the police force areas. In the past three and a half years, we have moved to ensure that each of the criminal justice agencies works within the police force area or, in the case of the Prison Service, within the Government region containing a whole number of those police force areas.
Mr. Simon Hughes: A Welsh colleague has asked me to ask whether the current arrangements will move from having separate services in Dyfed and Powys to having one service for the area of the Dyfed Powys police force. As the Prison Service has both geographical regions and special groupings of prisons, will the Home Secretary say something about how it will not fit tightly into the new structure with an entirely regional probation service?
Mr. Straw: The number of probation services is moving from 54 to one, organised under the separate police force areas. In Wales, there are currently four police force areas: North Wales, Dyfed Powys, South Wales and Gwent. The probation services would be coterminous with those.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the organisation of the Prison Service into regions. There was an interesting exhibition about that at the Prison Service conference two years ago. I was sceptical about whether it could organise itself into regions in line with the Government regions, but it has done so. Thanks to the work of my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor and his departmental colleagues, there has been considerable progress--against what had previously thought to be wholly immutable boundaries--
towards reorganising the Crown court circuits from historic boundaries that had more to do with Edward I and the Welsh marches than with anything of contemporary significance to ones that accord with the standard English regions.Some may think this a prosaic issue, but it is of great importance to those at local level, because in any one area there is only one chief officer of police, one probation officer, one chief Crown prosecutor and so on.
Mr. Hawkins: The Home Secretary seemed very dismissive of the historical origins of some of the circuits regarded as traditional by members of the Bar. Before treating the matter with such levity, he should recognise that what he is proposing to do has been referred to me as a cause of great anger among those at the sharp end of the profession. I hope that he has received similar representations, especially from the Midland and Oxford circuit, because I understand it to be a matter that has caused great anger, and not one to be dismissed with levity, saying that the boundaries date back to Edward I and are unworkable.
Mr. Straw: With respect, there is a difference between treating an issue with levity and having a sense of humour. I hope that the House understood that I was using some humour, but in a spirit of affection towards those circuits and without levity. Just because something is of great antiquity, it does not follow that we should not change it. The whole process of Parliament is about change.
The matter is one for my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, and not for me. However, as the hon. Gentleman asked whether I had received any representations on it, the answer is no, and that is quite interesting, as I make myself available to members of my old profession as much as I can and still try to be active as a member of my own Inn.
Mr. Bercow: I am sure that the Home Secretary spoke only loosely when he said that the business of Parliament is about change. Will he confirm that we are not engaged in a process of continuous, Maoist revolution? Will he further confirm his awareness of and support for Lord Falkland's valuable dictum? It states:
- When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
Madam Deputy Speaker, may I take my first opportunity to welcome you to the Chair? I am glad to be tempted down that philosophical excursion, but I shall return to the point for fear of your calling me to order.
One of the Bill's primary purposes is to create a National Probation Service for England and Wales. All parties agree with that aim. The National Probation Service will enable us to ensure much greater consistency and to improve performance in protecting the public and reducing reoffending.
It is important that any such organisation should be able to appoint its senior executives centrally. Chief probation officers hold the key to the service's performance, and it is crucial that the right people be appointed in the right areas. It is accepted implicitly--there is no argument about it--that the current system of local appointment has failed. There are many excellent chief officers, but some are less good.
It has also been very unsatisfactory that the performance of the less good officers has been mirrored by that of the less good area boards, with considerable adverse consequences for the probation service as a whole. The previous Administration sought to wrestle with that problem by the establishment of national standards over a period of years. The Government have continued to take the matter forward over the past three and half years.
However, the performance of probation services with regard to breach varies over a most extraordinary range. The 1999 survey by the Association of Chief Officers of Probation shows that good services achieve in the high 80 per cent. range when it comes to enforcement of breaches, but I regret to say that, in Essex, only 8 per cent. of cases in which orders are breached three times are subject to any enforcement. No one can look at such evidence without being very concerned about the performance of the individual services and about the overall system that allowed such extraordinary variations in performance to happen.
As the House would expect, I have read the debate held in the other place on 31 October. I respect those who hold a view different from mine, but we have already made the step change involved in moving from a series of local services to a National Probation Service. The NPS is different, in kind and function, from those services that are, wholly or mainly, administered and run at a local level such as local authorities or the police service.
We are dealing with the enforcement of orders of the court. In Britain, our court provision is national. Of course, it is administered locally to a degree, but judges and justices of the peace are appointed centrally. One of the important elements in any fair system of criminal justice is that, within the same jurisdiction, there should be consistency between one court and another.
We have two agencies to enforce the orders of the court--the Prison Service, and the probation service. The Prison Service is a national body, run by a director general answerable to me. In turn, I am responsible and answerable for that service to the House. Governors of local prisons are appointed by the director general, and they have arrangements and relationships with local people, not least with those who give up so much of their time and effort to serve on the boards of visitors. However, the Prison Service could not deliver what we hope is a more consistent and effective service if it were not run nationally.
The other agency that must deliver consistency of enforcement under a national court system is the probation service. As I have indicated, one of its major problems has been a lack of consistency. When we weigh up the needs for consistency and for a high degree of local responsiveness, the balance of factors across the spectrum for the probation service is the same as that for the Prison
Service. That balance may not necessarily be that required for other services, but I contend that the need for consistency calls for the establishment and enforcement of national standards. I am very clear about that.I hope that the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) does not think me patronising, but I thought that her experience as Minister with responsibility for prisons and probation, and her subsequent experience, allowed her to speak with great wisdom in previous debates about the way in which the prison and probation services can sometimes pull against each other. She has said that the services ought to operate as a seamless whole.
That is true, and very important. In my judgment, however, it would be more difficult to achieve that objective if we set up a management structure for the probation service that had those tensions built into it. The Prison Service operates as a clear national service, with appointees answerable to the director general. Of course it takes account of local circumstances and relations with boards of visitors, but that is the general framework. The amendment would mean that the attempt to establish a National Probation Service with a national chief officer would have the problem that the executives attempting to deliver the service would not be appointed by that chief officer--and, ultimately, by the Secretary of State.
Under the amendment, those executives would be appointed by the area boards. That is not a workable arrangement, and it would undermine the goal of establishing a National Probation Service, which is shared by hon. Members of all parties.
In the debate in the other place, Baroness Blatch talked about divided loyalties. I believe that some loyalties will be divided wherever one draws the line, but that more loyalties would be divided if one drew the line according to the amendment rather than according to the Bill.
There are plenty of examples of more centralist approaches being adopted. For instance, the previous Administration did so when they replaced regional health authorities with civil servants appointed as regional general managers as part of the national health service executive. The changes proposed in the Bill are being made for reasons that are similar, although not identical.
We want there to be local responsiveness, which can be dealt with by the local probation boards that the Bill also establishes.
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