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Mr. Heath: I wanted to hear the Minister's explanation before commenting. I should have subscribed to the amendment, but for some reason I overlooked it and I apologise to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield for that, because I agree with it.
Having listened to the Minister I am still not entirely satisfied. Let us consider the question of the court satisfying itself that the medical report available to it, in whatever form, conforms to subsection (6); that excludes anything that could not be construed as a medical report, and it is the first requirement. I do not
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understand how a court could satisfy itself that it had met that requirement, yet not be satisfied that it had complied with subsection (1), which simply provides that the court ''must obtain and consider'' a report. The court obviously would have obtained the report, and considered it, in order to meet the requirements of subsection (6).
To say that subsection (2) is otiose would be wrong: it is perverse, on any normal reading. The Minister has clearly satisfied himself that that is not the case, on the basis of the advice that he has been given, but he must be fairly easily satisfied.
Hilary Benn: That may or may not be the case, but it is for others to judge. It may help the hon. Gentleman if I explain that one other item of information that satisfied me on this matter was the fact that this is a re-enactment of section 82 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.
Mr. Heath: In that case, if the original enactment was so deficient as to bring in this perversity, this is a splendid opportunity for us to act as a revising Chamber. I see no reason to maintain subsection (2) if it serves no useful purpose. I do not understand how, under any normal construction of the words, subsection (2) serves a useful purpose, but I shall be interested to know the opinion of hon. Member for Beaconsfield.
4.15 pm
Mr. Grieve: I am not surprised to hear that the provision is derived from some earlier piece of legislation. I seem to spend my time in Committee—not only in this Committee but when I was in Committee on the Proceeds of Crime Bill—discovering that all the matters to which I objected most originated in the 1980s and 1990s.
Bad drafting is obviously a perennial problem. Drafting tends to replicate itself because it is an incremental process. I shall not take great issue on this, but I do feel that to include subsection (2) is a bit barmy. The Minister might wish to ask whether it might not be straightened out a bit. Quite apart from anything else, if he is really trying to say that there are circumstances in which a medical report may not be necessary, that could all be done in one subsection. The two subsections do not need to be mutually contradictory, as that, on the face of it, is an absurdity. Will he ask his officials to rectify whatever failure may have taken place in the past, so that people who read the 2000 Act and this Bill do not think that the law is an ass? That is what it looks like when one reads subsections (1) and (2).
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 141 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 142
Meaning of ''pre-sentence report''
Hilary Benn: I beg to move amendment No. 543, in
clause 142, page 80, line 8, leave out 'in writing'.
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The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendment No. 544.
Hilary Benn: Amendment No. 543 will make a small amendment to the definition of a pre-sentence report in the clause. It will offer greater flexibility for future developments in the way in which pre-sentence reports may be presented. The senior judiciary suggested the change during the consultation process.
In certain circumstances, sentencers would be prepared to receive a report orally, and the probation service advises that the development of the offender assessment system may influence the way in which reports are presented in future.
Amendment No. 544 is consequential on that change and simply makes clear that the provisions of clause 143, which concern the disclosure of pre-sentence reports, would not apply to any pre-sentence report given orally in open court.
Amendment agreed to.
Mr. Allen: I beg to move amendment No. 494, in
clause 142, page 80, line 15, leave out 'an officer' and insert 'a Probation Officer'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:
No. 495, in
clause 142, page 80, line 17, leave out 'an officer' and insert 'a Probation Officer'.
No. 498, in
clause 177, page 99, line 19, leave out 'an officer' and insert 'a Probation Officer'.
No. 499, in
clause 177, page 99, line 23, leave out 'an officer' and insert 'a Probation Officer'.
Mr. Allen: The Minister should be able to deal with the amendments quickly by reassuring us that fully qualified probation officers will be compiling these essential and complex reports. It is an important issue, not least for probation service officers. They need reassurance that their professional skills are not being undermined and undervalued by the growing use of less qualified and less experienced junior staff. I am sure that a few words from the Minister will totally put them at their ease.
Hilary Benn: I hope that I can offer the Committee reassurance, but I am not entirely sure that that reassurance will be in the direction in which my hon. Friend was looking. There has been a significant change over the years in the way in which the probation service has been organised. There has been a growth in the use of probation service officers to support trained probation officers in their work. That means that probation officers no longer have sole responsibility for working with offenders. The role of probation service officers varies widely; it includes qualified psychologists and people running accredited offender behaviour programmes. Similarly, they are able to receive training in producing reports. The Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 acknowledges and recognises those changes and has moved away from prescribing certain functions to specific officers.
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Mr. Cameron: Will the Minister remind me whether all probation officers have to have a degree in social work, and let us know whether that applies also to probation service officers—a term that I am not wholly familiar with—and whether the only people who can write pre-sentence reports are those with such qualifications? Does he plan to broaden the probation service, and to bring in people who might have served in the police or the armed forces? They should not have to go through university and take a degree in social work in order to work with offenders.
Hilary Benn: In order to answer clearly, and in order to avoid all doubt, I shall write to the hon. Gentleman on the nature of qualifications, if he will allow me, because things have changed. However, I agree with the general thrust of his question, which was that the probation service should reflect a wide range of backgrounds. Indeed, I visited a probation hostel on Friday afternoon where the deputy in charge had been in the forces—the Royal Air Force, I think—and had decided that he wanted to go into that area of work.
The thrust of the changes that I have described in answering the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) has been to broaden the range of people able work in the probation service, and to provide greater support to fully trained probation officers in the work that they do. That process has taken place in several professions. In teaching, for instance, as well as teachers we now have teaching assistants; and in the national health service, nurses will be able to prescribe and to give injections. Those wholly sensible changes are all in the interests of the institutions involved.
John Mann (Bassetlaw): In the spirit of my hon. Friend's response, will he say whether, for drug treatment and testing orders given as community sentences, the medical profession ought to make the reports rather than probation officers working as psychologists deeming to make medical interpretation on people's conditions?
Hilary Benn: I would like to reflect on the point raised by my hon. Friend. My principal concern is that we should not have in place structures that add delay to the process of providing courts with the pre-sentence reports that they need in order to make appropriate decisions about how which offenders are to be treated.
It might assist the Committee and my hon. Friend to know that the number of trained probation officers increased from 7,139 in 1998 to 7,506 in 2001; and the number of probation service officers increased from 1,895 in 1996 to 3,566 in 2001. One has only to add those figures together to see how many more staff are available to the probation service as it undertakes the wider and more demanding work that we are now asking of it.
Mr. Allen: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
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John Mann: I want to raise one issue of concern, but I do not necessarily expect the Minister to give a detailed response now. I note that the drugs service, in its interrelationship with the criminal justice service, is increasingly using the term ''dual diagnosis''. Last week, I visited health and criminal justice professionals in the Netherlands and asked how many cases of dual diagnosis they had encountered. The answer was very few. It is suggested in my locality that the incidence of dual diagnosis is very high, because the term could be used to refer to somebody who is deemed to be a drug addict but who also has a mental health problem. A problem with that is that it allows a psychologist, rather than a medical professional, to make an assessment. The issue is more complex when we consider crack cocaine. No evidence has been published anywhere in the world of a specific medical treatment for a so-called addiction to crack cocaine. The only evidence that exists concerns psychotherapy, and there is dispute about whether that works.
My reason for homing in on that detail is that some in this country suggest that dual diagnosis is being used as an excuse for excluding the medical profession from making a diagnosis in relation to drug treatment for an offender—most drug addicts are offenders and are likely to fall within our remit at some stage. There is a danger that the probation service will make decisions on treatment within the drug service and might use its doing so for pre-sentence report as a justification for doing so throughout the system. That is one of the fundamental problems in the drugs service—I have described it previously as a probation-led service.
Will the Minister reflect on whether dual diagnosis could lead to the medical profession's being automatically excluded, when what might be required is a medical prognosis of what is needed in order for the Government's worthy objectives in terms of community service through drugs treatment to achieve any success?
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