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Mr. Clappison: If the Home Secretary overrules the selection panel and appoints someone as a chief officer of probation whom it has not recommended, that may affect people's confidence in the appointment. Under what circumstances might the Home Secretary exercise that power to overrule the recommendation?
Mr. O'Brien: I have said a fair amount about that and have followed the route laid out by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. The Secretary of State is likely to accept a recommendation unless he has good reason not to. That would be the normal process, as the right hon. Gentleman said. I cannot take the issue further than that.
Mr. Hawkins: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. O'Brien: Yes, but I have been on my feet for some time and I am anxious to make progress after I have given way.
Mr. Hawkins: The Minister is aware that we are not under any great time pressure, as this debate is one of the few in national guillotine week that is not guillotined.
On appointments and the choice of lay magistrates, which was one of the most important points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere, does the Minister accept that it is of huge concern to the Magistrates Association and its members and to the Association of Magisterial Offices? There is a strong belief, which we have articulated in debates on this Bill and on many other occasions, that the Government are constantly downgrading the role of lay magistrates. Magistrates, their clerks and our constituents are very concerned about that and we want to ensure that magistrates have a proper role. The selection of magistrates is vital.
Mr. O'Brien: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says and no doubt we will bear those concerns in mind.
The hon. Member for Hertsmere complained about a top-down process. We are creating a modern national probation service. The hon. Gentleman might have a different idea about how we should do that, but we are making our approach clear, whether or not he agrees with it. I do not accept the description of that process as top-down. We are trying to create a service that will better deliver the quality assurance that the public need on the ability of the service to reduce reoffending. That is the key test and the basis on which the public will judge the reforms. We want to ensure that the national service will provide consistent standards and adherence to offender programmes, which we hope will be proved to work. There is a wide disparity in the enforcement of sentences, as demonstrated by the audits undertaken by the Association of Chief Probation Officers. We need to deal with such issues.
The hon. Gentleman said that many of the same people will be in the service in future, and that may well be the case. However, as he also said, it is important that cultures change. He is right to say that the culture in the probation service has been changing for the better--and very much so. That process will continue and be enhanced by our reforms. It will give greater focus to the work that is under way and also deal with the disparities and differences between areas, some of which are very good and some of which are less so. The changes can raise the general standard of probation service delivery.
The hon. Gentleman asked who will serve on the selection panels. I have identified some members, but we must bear it in mind that the Nolan procedures are part of the general process of making Government appointments. The aim is not just to appoint the great and the good who arise out of nowhere, but to follow a more open and considered process, as set out by Nolan. As for being guided by the judge, I am sure that members of the selection panel will give appropriate weight to the judge's opinion, but it is not their role to decide legal issues. The judge will be able to reflect an awareness of the way in which the courts operate, but we are concerned about the selection of someone who can fulfil the role of an
executive running a local probation service. The opinions of people who have a more appropriate understanding of how to make appointments will also be given due and appropriate weight.The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst referred to paragraph 2(4) of schedule 1--I misunderstood him at first and thought that he was referring to paragraph 3(4). He is right about appointments, but we shall make regulations, although the Bill says only that we may do so. I am not going to give him an undertaking to that effect, but that is our intention.
I am being advised that the selection panels will not always include a judge. To make the position clear for the hon. Member for Hertsmere, sometimes magistrates will be on them.
Mr. Hawkins: I am grateful to the Minister for correcting his earlier answer, and I realise that he is receiving messages. I want to be clear whether, in order that all hon. Members may be aware of who sits on the panels, the Minister is prepared to undertake today regularly to put details of membership in the Library. There has been quite a lot of debate on that point. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst and my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere and I think that the matter, which was pursued in Committee, is important. I hope that our asking the Minister to reassure us that information on appointments will be placed in the Library on a continuing basis will not be too great a burden on the taxpayer.
Mr. O'Brien: The appointment of anyone to any panel or organisation will be subject to freedom of information legislation.
Mr. Hawkins: There must be a request.
Mr. O'Brien: That is not so under freedom of information legislation. Under the Act, the probation service, like any public authority, will be obliged to have a system for ensuring the publication of information; it will have to have mechanisms for that. The sort of information that will be provided will be considered under that legislation in the normal way.
Public authorities will probably make much of the information available on the internet. It would no doubt be possible to access the internet from the Library. The hon. Gentleman asked whether information on membership would always be available. I am saying that if such national probation service information is available under the freedom of information legislation, it will be accessible. I do not know whether a piece of paper needs always to be put in the Library. That would be operating in an era in which the hon. Gentleman and I grew up. That era has gone; information can now be accessed differently.
Mr. Hawkins: The Minister is talking about provisions in the Freedom of Information Bill--or Act, as it will become. Neither a Labour Freedom of Information Bill--or, as it was perhaps more accurately called in debate earlier
in the week, the Freedom from Information Bill--nor the internet is a substitute for the responsibilities of Her Majesty's Government to this House and its Members.
Mr. Forth: Certainly not for all of us.
Mr. Hawkins: I hear my right hon. Friend pointing out that it is not sufficient for all hon. Members that information is accessible on the internet. I ask the Minister specifically to ensure that details of membership of selection panels, which have been a matter of party political controversy, will be placed in the Library. That is the undertaking that I am looking for because a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends are not persuaded by new Labour's obsession with the internet as a substitute for everything. We think it is important that the Government abide by their responsibilities to Parliament, which Ministers of this Government have so often forgotten.
Mr. O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman is much too curmudgeonly. I was attempting to help him by saying that not only is it likely that information will be available, but that any member of the public should be able to access it. I shall go further and remind him that, as a Member of Parliament, he has right of access to information about anything that the Government do, subject to all the usual caveats about security and so forth. No doubt, he makes use of the parliamentary questions procedure from day to day. There is no reason why, in relation to the public interest, information on the selection panel for the probation service could not be placed in the House of Commons Library. However, some people might have a less than charitable interest in the probation service and those who appoint its members in particular localities. I am sure that that information could be made available to Members of Parliament and I suspect that it would be available to any member of the public. I need more time to consider the hon. Gentleman's concern, but I undertake to write to him and send a copy of the letter to the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. That should provide the hon. Gentleman with the reassurance that he wants.
5 pm
I shall now deal with the matter raised by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, who said that it looks as though the selection procedures will cost a lot of money and that, of course, money is no object to the Government. I am sure that he realises that the public finances were in a mess when we inherited them from the previous Government. We are now sorting them out and are dealing with what was a serious problem for the previous Government. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about that, but would not go so far as to say that money is no object. Certainly, however, the public finances are now in a better state, and I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the chance to make that point.
Lords amendment: No. 135, in schedule 1, in page 48, line 18, at end insert
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