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Mr. Hawkins: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a difference between my comments and those of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey? I was concentrating on the fact that the Government had been forced to make a concession; the hon. Gentleman said that the process was taking us in the right direction. I was rather less generous to the Government; my view is closer to that of my right hon. Friend.
Mr. Forth: I am always delighted to accept a lack of generosity to the Government. That is extremely appropriate in most circumstances that I can envisage. It is for the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey to decide how generous he will be; he is probably rather better disposed to the Government than we are.
Mr. Simon Burns (West Chelmsford): They are partners.
Mr. Forth: Indeed, all too often, they are partners. However, I shall not be drawn into that, Mr. Deputy Speaker; I shall resist any temptation placed in my way by my hon. Friends to elaborate on that point.
The amendment will not add much to the process, apart from additional doubt and bureaucracy--although it will undoubtedly add more time and personnel. As soon as we start making provision for selection panels, they will have to be staffed and supported and will be subject to procedures that require time. That not only requires money--no object, of course, to this Labour Government--but could add a further time dimension to the process that might, in some circumstances, be extremely disadvantageous.
We are talking about local boards and sub-paragraph (2) of paragraph (5) of the schedule reasonably requires that:
- Regulations must provide . . . for the persons appointed to be representative of the local community in the board's area.
We must be extremely careful about such provisions. No doubt it is well meaning--as such provisions often are; it comes to us from another place, and one always has due regard for the views of its Members, who include a number of experts and legal minds. However, I wonder whether the provision will have anything like the beneficial or positive effect that was undoubtedly intended.
Will the Minister tell us more about the role of the panels? How does he envisage the working out of the relationship between the Secretary of State and the Lord Chancellor? If I read aright the inclination of his head earlier on, perhaps he will be able to reassure us that it would be unusual for the Secretary of State not to accept the recommendations of the panel. The hon. Gentleman's comments would help us to make progress on this matter.
Mr. Clappison: I am glad to be able to speak on the amendment, as the subject of the Bill is of great interest to me. I add my remarks to those made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins).
I agree with the general tenor of my hon. Friend's remarks. He especially adverted to the open question of who would be legally responsible if anything happened to someone serving a probation order or to someone resident in a probation hostel. He may want to ask the Minister a further question on legal liability: what is the legal liability to those who are affected by the behaviour of those who leave probation hostels?
My hon. Friend will be aware of at least one important case in our dusty memories of the law of negligence--the Home Office against the Dorset yacht club. That involved the legal liability of the occupants of the yacht club to people in the custody of the Home Office.
Mr. Hawkins: Like me, my hon. Friend is a member of the Bar and studied such cases--perhaps more years ago than either of us would care to remember. He is right to note that I had precisely that type of case in mind when I made my opening remarks. The liability of the chief officer appointed and of the person who appoints that officer is a vital issue. I am delighted that my hon. Friend, from his considerable experience both when he was an Opposition Home Office spokesman and as a member of the Bar, is putting pressure on the Government on that matter.
Mr. Clappison: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those remarks. I hate to point out that I have a certain amount of sympathy for some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), although I think that he was uncharacteristically--for a Liberal Democrat--generous to the Government. [Hon. Members: "Uncharacteristically?"] I was being ironic.
There was a scintilla of truth in the hon. Gentleman's point about the volume of Home Office legislation that is being crammed before the House--including these amendments--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey strayed almost to the limits of my patience on that point, but I let him do so because he was relatively brief.
Mr. Clappison: Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman was arguing that the matter should be properly examined so that it did not join the long list of previous failed Government measures, such as the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst correctly referred to the mechanics of the appointments. The relationship between the chief officer and the board will be important; it will affect the operation of the board in a particular area. It is similar to the relationship between the chief executive and the board of a company.
Clearly, the House of Lords originally had it in mind that the chief officer--the chief executive figure--should be appointed by the board itself; that would make an important difference to the relationship. The Government propose--as they so often do--that all appointments, including that of the chief officer, are to be made by them; the board would not be entrusted with the appointment of the chief officer. Does the amendment go far enough to ameliorate the centralisation created by the Government's top-down approach, which we see in this Bill and in so much legislation?
Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend is an expert in these matters. Does he know, from his reading of the amendment, who will appoint the selection panels? That is surely crucial and, furthermore, germane to the point he makes.
Mr. Clappison: My right hon. Friend touches on an important point: the independence of the selection panels and of those who serve on them. I hope I do not stray too far out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by pointing out that this is one more example of the Government's top-down approach. We saw it recently with the Learning and Skills Act 2000, under which similar provisions mean that local learning and skills councils are not entrusted with the appointment of their chief executive--it all has to come down from the Secretary of State.
Does the amendment ameliorate that? How independent will the selection panels be? In response to my right hon. Friend, the Minister confirmed that the selection panels would be appointed by the Secretary of State. That being the case, we need to know what sort of people will sit on the selection panels. Will the Secretary of State keep a list of those who serve on selection panels? Will one selection panel deal with all appointments, or will a panel be specially set up each time a local board or a chief officer has to be appointed? We need to know.
4.30 pm
Paragraph 2(5) to schedule 1 states that "the persons appointed to" the board must
- be representative of the local community.
Who will sit on those panels and how independent will they be? That is what concerns us, given that such a centralised procedure is to be put in place. How independent will the local boards be? How independent will those who appoint the chief officers of probation and make such recommendations be, given the importance of the relationship between the chief officer and the local board? We need to hear a little more from the Minister, but I am not holding my breath.
I agree with the Minister that a national service would be created. In some ways, the Government have gone too far in the direction of creating a national service. However, I parted company from him when he said that reducing reoffending and protecting the public were part of the Government's objectives and were embodied in the amendment and provision. I honestly doubt whether the provisions will help to reduce reoffending. At the end of day, the same probation officers, with the same background and training, using the same orders as those available to them under criminal justice legislation, will deal with the same offenders. I realise how difficult it is for the probation service to deal with offenders.
Perhaps the intention is to create a national structure to provide national standards, and the Government's assumption is that that will have an effect in reducing crime nationally, but I am doubtful about that. If the provision represents an attempt to change the culture of the probation service, the Minister is misguided, because its culture has changed considerably in recent years; the Government are a bit behind the times. In any event, probation officers have to work with the offenders--or their clients, as they are sometimes called. That is an extremely difficult task.
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