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Derek Conway:
The Minister makes his point effectively and I am sure that many people will agree. Inevitably, we read about cases of the probation service getting things horribly wrong but, fortunately, such cases are few. They obviously attract much interest in the more popular press, which is what worries people. Our more elderly constituents often tell us that they are terrified at the level of violence, yet—in terms of the age of most people in the Chamber—our children are more exposed to violent crime on the streets than many pensioners. However, to read some of the cheaper
British newspapers one would think that that was a daily experience for every citizen in Britain.
Are people right to think that the situation is getting worse? I believe they are. We know from the figures that violent crimes are more prevalent. Is the situation likely to get worse in future? Perhaps my generation has a slightly tight and old-fashioned view about drug use. I notice that my children’s generation is a bit more relaxed—that is how society is now—yet few people doubt that the more widespread use of serious drugs has an impact on mental health. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy made a telling point about the number of people in custody who have mental illness problems, rather than just an evil personality or disposition that requires them to be locked up. The number of detained offenders with a drugs record who still have a drugs problem means that, sadly, we are dealing with a problem that will get worse.
Does the Bill mean the fragmentation of the service? It is difficult to argue that it will not. The question must be: is that a good or a bad thing? No doubt, that question will be considered as the Bill progresses through the House. The hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy), who made an effective and genuine contribution, mentioned the role of the voluntary sector—to which the hon. Member for Selby paid tribute, too. We would be hard pressed to find anyone in the Chamber who did not welcome the contribution of the voluntary sector. I used to be on the board of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations—more popularly known as ACEVO—which has welcomed the Bill. In a letter to Members, ACEVO has urged Members to support the Bill, because it speaks for the voluntary sector.
I was involved on the board in a different capacity. The organisation had a heavy public services representation and I represented a more commercially oriented charitable sector, but ACEVO actually speaks for people who are doing effective work on the streets of Britain. It is effective because the voluntary sector has a flexibility and level of commitment that, even with the best intentions, is sometimes hard to match in the public sector. I think that the advice of ACEVO will be well taken in the House.
When the Minister examines the Bill in detail in Committee, he will have to engage with clause 10, which deals with the information provisions for the different sectors involved. One issue that will concern hon. Members is whether the inevitable fragmentation of the service that the change in the law will bring will actually improve the level of liaison, communication and co-operation between the services of detention, the prison service, the police and all the others. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy made a valid point about the involvement of the magistracy, which is very much at the sharp end of experience that Members, unless they are practising lawyers, are unlikely to see. They understand the level of challenge much better than we do, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman’s warning about the magistracy’s involvement will be accepted, as it should.
We have said not that this is a bad Bill going nowhere, but that it is a Bill for which the jury is pretty much out, regardless of whether Members vote for it on Second Reading tonight. I think that it will undoubtedly get its Second Reading, perhaps with not
too many dissenting, but it is a Bill for which detailed scrutiny in Committee will be absolutely vital. It is not that the Bill causes great political unease in the different parts of the House, but that it poses solutions to problems that are not necessarily infallible.
I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth about clause 25 and the placing into open children’s homes of offenders under the age of 18. Not everyone in a children’s home is an offender and not everyone is there because they have an evil nature, yet many of them, if placed there, may become exposed to those who do have that disposition.
Many people believe that it is more common for Conservative Members to come from the public school sector, but I attended a secondary modern school. We frequently had boys sent to our school who had been to borstal. At one stage in my time there I was the head boy and we had a team of prefects who were there, on the whole, to try to keep the borstal boys under control, because the master sometimes found it a bit of a challenge. We all had minders and all sorts of complicated things that can happen at fairly rough schools. Whether the system was working then, I do not know. We frequently saw the headmaster attacked by boys who had come from borstal, so I do not think that the system failing is an invention of our modern society. Perhaps the Bill is the way forward, but there are many areas of doubt.
Above all, this is a Bill to be tested not only in Committee, but when it comes back to us on Report. I hope that the Bill will provide the answers, but for now, there is a lot of scepticism. Everyone will wish the Minister well because we must and it is right that he should have a fair wind, but he still has a lot of explaining to do. The House will be watching carefully to see what the Bill is like when it comes back to us.
7.33 pm
David Howarth (Cambridge) (LD): I certainly agree with some of what the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Derek Conway) said, particularly in respect of mental illness, but I do not agree with what he said about the level of serious concern about the Bill. Among Liberal Democrat Members, there are some very serious concerns about it. I did not agree with him about the crime figures, either. He is right that some categories of violent crime are rising, but others are falling and it is important to take a balanced view of the overall situation.
The point of criminal justice reform must surely be to reduce the harm suffered from crime. I listened to the Secretary of State’s opening remarks and to subsequent ministerial interventions, but I am still far from clear how the Bill will effectively reduce the harm suffered by people as a result of crime. Indeed, until the hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) spoke—unfortunately, she is not in her place at the moment—we did not hear a single reason for believing that the Bill would do anything to reduce the harm of crime.
What the hon. Lady said was interesting, although I did not agree fully with it. She said that, if the voluntary sector is brought into the rehabilitation of offenders and associated functions, it would help in two
ways: first, offenders would not see the people helping them as part of the establishment, which would help to encourage them to change their ways; and, secondly, it would allow a more flexible approach. I can see how that might occur on a limited scale with small-scale local projects, but not with a regional and national system of large contracts with big organisations. I feel that they themselves would become part of the establishment.
I would draw an analogy with housing associations, which started off as local voluntary organisations that were quite democratic and effective at involving people, and quite innovative. Following various reforms in housing finance, however, housing associations have become very large regional and national organisations, which I fear are now less flexible, less democratic and less innovative than local councils. Rather like the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), I fear that the Bill will change the nature of the voluntary sector for the worse.
Small-scale involvement is already happening, with about 3, 6 or 10 per cent. of total expenditure being devoted to voluntary projects. That is the right way to go. I am not against the involvement of the voluntary sector in the right way, but I fear that the Government’s method will undermine not only their own goals, but those of the voluntary sector itself.
Throughout the debate, Ministers have said that what they propose supplements the services provided by the probation service, but that approach has been exposed—again, by the hon. Member for Selby. Contestability works only if there is a threat or possibility that the core service will move to a different sector. Otherwise, there is no contestability. It was both important and interesting when the hon. Member for Selby pointed out that his party’s briefing said that £250 million of services would be put out to other sectors. That cannot be just supplementary; it has to bite into the core service.
It would not be a problem if the £250 million were new money—it would then be extra and supplementary as Ministers argue—but there is absolutely no sign of that in what Ministers have told the House tonight. In fact, the Home Secretary said that the problem could not be solved by throwing more money at it. That indicates that the money will certainly not be new. The problem with new money is precisely the old problem of where it goes. If it goes to 1,600 new bureaucrats, that is not the way to solve the problem with extra resource when, at the same time, there are still 1,000 vacancies for front-line probation officers.
The other problem with contestability—it has come out only once or twice in the debate and it is worth reinforcing the point now—is that it has costs. It costs to make bids and it costs to defend oneself against a bid. Periodically, in a contested system, the whole service has to adjust to the problem of making a bid. It is rather like applying for a grant: one could end up spending all the time applying for the grant and not much time doing the job. It is important to take into account the costs of bidding and the costs of enforcing the contract. What happens if the contract is not properly fulfilled? The costs can be substantial, as we
know from other areas of Government activity such as the health service, and I have heard no proper assessment of them.
Another problem is that in running an area of Government service by contract, it is often quite unclear, particularly where personal services and subtle changes of attitude and approach to individual people are important, what should be in the contract. It becomes a very difficult contract to specify, and attempting to specify it can lead to a very rigid contract that cannot be adapted to individual circumstances. We can thus end up with a service that is not so good.
Mr. Sutcliffe: I am not sure about the basis of the hon. Gentleman’s argument. Is he arguing for the status quo? Is he saying that there must be no change? When I heard from the Liberal Front-Bench spokesman, I thought that there was agreement that the status quo cannot remain and that there must be opportunities for change. I should like the hon. Gentleman to say a little more. If he does not like the argument on contestability, how would he achieve that change—by spending more?
David Howarth: I am saying that there is sufficient room for change within the legislative framework as it stands. My problem with the Bill, as with many Bills, is that I cannot quite understand what it is for, except to be some kind of Government press release. I wish that the Government would not use the House as a way to issue press releases. They should issue press releases through their press office, not on the Floor of the House.
The other basic principle that should be raised—this is why my hon. Friends are against the Bill in principle, not just against its practicalities—is the centralisation that it involves. It means the end of a system of local accountability. It involves the introduction of a system whereby the Home Secretary decides the whole system. Yes, that might be done through regional managers, but it involves a management system, not an accountability system. With all power given to the Home Secretary, not only has he the power to reorganise the service at will, but there is no need, as far as I can see, for him ever to return to the House to ask for any further authorisation to make any further change.
One reason to oppose the Bill is that this could be the last time that we discuss the probation service on the Floor of the House, because legislation will not be needed in future to change the way in which the service works. What might that mean? The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) made a number of points that I did not agree with, but one of them made me prick up my ears: he said that, under the Bill, the Home Secretary could bring in faith groups to take over large parts of the service. The powers that we are giving the Home Secretary are so great that he could do that using the Bill. I would want further legislative discussion in the House before any such dramatic change in policy were to happen.
There has been a lot of discussion about reoffending. The hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup said that the problem is that we do not know what works and that there is a fear that nothing works. In fact, the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), quoted the social exclusion unit study from a few years ago
that showed what worked and what factors tended to help people stop reoffending. They were things such as having stable accommodation, attending to their mental health and to their addictions and ensuring that they had stable relationships. We do know about such things, and we do know what works. However, we also know that the 50,000 people on very short sentences—those of six months or less—have absolutely nothing done for them at all.
The obvious coincidence in the Home Secretary’s speech should be acted upon: he said that we have the highest imprisonment rates in Europe—not quite if they are counted one way, but certainly if they are counted another way—and the highest recidivism rates. It seems to me that that is no coincidence at all, and we should ask ourselves whether we should be talking not about changing the probation service’s management system but about introducing an entirely different approach to criminal justice in the first place.
I suppose that all this comes down to three points. First, let us give the present system a fair trial. We have only just reformed it. Further change and disruption will do no good and will certainly not help to fill those 1,000 vacancies. Secondly, this is a dangerous precedent. We are giving far too much power to the Home Secretary in the Bill, and we should not do that. Thirdly, this is the thin end of the wedge. It is quite possible under the Bill for a core service to be privatised without any obvious benefit to the public in ways that no hon. Member would agree with. I urge the House to reject the Bill.
7.45 pm
Mr. Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op): I rise to speak in the debate because my interest stems from my constituency, which contains a fairly overcrowded prison in which a relatively high percentage of local people are incarcerated, a fair number of whom reoffend when they come out of prison—principally drug offences. About 80 per cent. of crime in my constituency relates to drugs in one way or another. For me, the issue with the Bill is how it might impact on that in future.
I want to explore a number of areas: first, why the Bill is necessary and, secondly, the role that the third sector—the voluntary sector—could play in the solution or in improving the situation at the very least. Thirdly, I will give an example of a project in my constituency that deals with the rehabilitation of drug offenders, that works very closely with the probation service and that has had some degree of success. I shall then try to draw some conclusions from our diverse debate.
As Ministers and other hon. Members have said, a 40 per cent. increase in funding has been made available over the past five years. More than £900 million is now spent—the equivalent of £3,800 for every offender under supervision. A significant amount of extra money has gone into the service. About 5,000 additional staff have also gone into the service since the Government came to power. What we need is a significant improvement in and focus on performance, so that reoffending can be dealt with because it is a major concern to many people.
The Bill is important for another reason. I have spoken to those in my local probation service, visited
them and looked at the work that they have done and at the specific qualifications that many of them have, for example, in dealing with drug offenders. A fantastic job of work is being done. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that more, but perhaps not necessarily more of the same, needs to be done. Additional resources should be committed to innovative ways to tackle the problems that people face.
The Bill, once it becomes legislation, will reduce reoffending and better protect the public. It will deliver improvements. It will certainly allow the third sector, or the voluntary sector, to play a part. It has played a part hitherto—its involvement has been estimated at about 2 per cent.—but it needs to be involved much more. The voluntary sector is extremely keen to get involved—but not, as the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) suggested, because there is a huge profit to be made as a result of the Bill: there is not. We are, by definition, talking about not-for-profit organisations. The aim is that they are socially minded organisations that have aims and objectives over and above producing a profit. It is clear that the motivation of those organisations is social in nature.
I shall refer to the letter, to which other hon. Members have alluded in the debate, from the chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations. In his letter to Members of Parliament, he notes the key advantages that the Bill will bring. First, on the question of innovation, it is clear that the organisations have a proven track record in providing effective work in prisons and preventing reoffending. Indeed, the probation service itself was pioneered by the third sector. Secondly, on the issue of focus, the organisations are not driven by profit. They are mission driven and therefore have little incentive to compromise on what they want to achieve. If the targets are set for a reduction in reoffending, reducing reoffending is what it is about, not the bottom line or shareholders’ interests.
Thirdly, as other Members have already said, there is flexibility in the context of a system that has developed over the decades of a probation service that provides well qualified people who do what they are charged to do well, but who nevertheless have not necessarily had the same freedom to innovate as those working in voluntary organisations. There will be that flexibility and vision that the probation service currently does not have. In addition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned, there will also be trust, born out of the fact that those organisations are not seen as the establishment. The establishment, whether it is the police, the Prison Service or the probation service, has always been seen as a system of them against us. The involvement of the third sector—some members of which will be extremely well qualified and, to some extent, well paid—and many skilled volunteers, will create an environment that will not be a replacement for the probation service, but which will complement it and improve its performance and the service it provides.
Finally, the chief executive points to the issue of social capital—that is, building and engaging with volunteers. Before I even became a political activist or joined the Labour party, I was a volunteer welfare rights worker. I provided a free service at weekends, on a stall in a market in my home town, at that time, of
Salford. Many people wish to help people, not because they wish to gain anything or because they want to be part of an organisation that makes money, but because they feel that they have something to offer and skills and care that they can give. The involvement of the voluntary sector in that respect is important and I welcome the provisions for that in the Bill.
There are two areas where a particular emphasis can be given. First, as I have said, there is unpaid work . [ Interruption. ] Well, for many people unpaid work is very gratifying. I speak as somebody who spent several years doing that type of work. I had a professional job on the side and did the unpaid work in my spare time. Many people are willing to give their time because they care about what they are doing. That is in contrast to people who do things only when there is a financial aspect involved. The two things work well together.
Secondly, there is resettlement. I am sure that it will come as no surprise to many Members who represent inner-city constituencies that often the people who are best organised when it comes to resettlement are those involved in organised crime. Organised criminals often wait outside the prison gate when Mr. X or Mrs. Y is released. They will take care of that person and groom them for further crime and, when the time is right, they will lead them to reoffend. If we are serious about resettlement and really want to undertake it on a scale that will reduce reoffending, perhaps we should take a leaf or two out of the book of those well established resettlers—people involved in organised crime. That means making sure that, once people leave prison, they have opportunities, training and places to stay so that they can get back into a mode of life that does not lead them into criminality again.
I will use an example from my constituency. I have visited Preston prison, which is overcrowded. It has innovative education and training schemes and it works closely with the cable company, Telewest, which takes people from Preston prison and trains them so that they can lead decent, normal lives in society. It works hand in hand with voluntary organisations that work with the prison, as well as the probation service and, of course, the prison officers who are involved in the training before those people go out into the wider world again. There is a solution.
The alternative, in handing former prisoners over to those involved in organised crime for resettlement, is that the universities of crime, which is what our prisons have been in the past, will continue to turn out graduates. Those graduates will go out into the wider world and cause more crime. That is to the detriment of constituents such as mine in Preston, and up and down the country, who want to see people rehabilitated, back in proper jobs, being paid and becoming valuable members of society.
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