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Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Offender Management Bill |
Offender Management Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:John
Benger, Committee
Clerk
†
attended the Committee
Public Bill CommitteeThursday 11 January 2007(Morning)[Mr. Peter Atkinson in the Chair]Offender Management Bill9
am
The
Chairman:
On two housekeeping points, I remind hon.
Members that adequate notice should be given of amendments and that, as
a general rule, my fellow Chairman and I do not intend to call starred
amendments. I also remind hon. Members to switch off their mobile
phones and pagers in
Committee.
We come
first to the programme motion, debate on which may continue for up to
half an
hour.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe):
I beg to
move,
That—
(1)
the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.00
a.m. on Thursday 11th January)
meet—
(a) at 2.00 p.m.
on Thursday 11th January;
(b)
at 10.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 16th
January;
(c) at 9.00 a.m. and
2.00 p.m. on Thursday 18th
January;
(d) at 10.30 a.m. and
4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 23rd
January;
(e) at 9.00 a.m. and
2.00 p.m. on Thursday 25th
January;
(2) the proceedings
shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 4; Schedule 1;
Clauses 5 to 7; Schedule 2; Clauses 8 to 31; Schedules 3 to 5; Clauses
32 to 34; new Clauses, new Schedules, remaining proceedings on the
Bill;
(3) the proceedings shall
(so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 4.00
p.m. on Thursday 25th
January.
Good
morning to you, Mr. Atkinson, and to the members of the
Committee. I am delighted to be serving under your esteemed
chairmanship and I look forward to the good-natured and effective way
in which you will steer us through our deliberations, along
with your co-Chairman, Mr. Bayley. I am in no doubt that we
will have constructive debates on the key issues and I welcome the
detailed scrutiny that we shall give the
Bill.
I welcome the
hon. and learned Member for Harborough and look forward to his valuable
contributions. On Second Reading he said that he would chivvy the
Government along, so we look forward to that. I also welcome the hon.
Member for Cheadle, who will speak from the Liberal Democrat Benches,
and all members of the Committee. I hope that they will agree that the
programme motion gives us the proper time to enable scrutiny of this
small but significant Bill and an opportunity to ease in the newly
revised legislative procedures for Committee stages, which will affect
the Bills introduced in the new
year.
I
am sure that we agree that probation is a crucial service, vital for
public protection. I salute the hard work, dedication and
professionalism of probation staff around the country. Much progress
has been made in
the past few years, but we cannot afford to shy away from the fact that
we have still not managed to make a sufficient impact on the most
crucial outcome: reducing reoffending. We now need to harness all the
resources at our disposal to ensure that those who have the right
skills and expertise, whether they are in the public, private or
voluntary sector, can contribute to the management of
offenders.
We
remain committed to a strong public sector probation service, but it is
clear that the public sector cannot and should not do all that needs to
be done on its own. By removing current statutory restrictions, the
Bill will give all sectors the freedom to innovate in partnership. Part
1 will place on the Secretary of State statutory duties to make
arrangements with others for the provision of probation services and to
create probation trusts as the public sector providers, with which he
will make contracts. It will also require him to consult on how he
proposes to commission probation services. The consultation will be
conducted regionally and result in the delivery of services better
targeted to meet the specific needs of local communities and the
sentencing requirements of local
courts.
Part 2 will
improve offender management by strengthening the offence of bringing
contraband into prison and removing some of the inconsistencies between
the powers of staff in public and private prisons. Part 3 will make
various technical amendments to improve delivery in the youth justice
sector.
I know that
there are contentious matters in the Bill, and I look forward to the
opportunity to explain more fully its purpose and details. I will
listen carefully to hon. Members throughout our deliberations, and if
improvements can be made we will consider them. I know that the issues
are detailed but I welcome the opportunity for a constructive debate
that the programme motion gives
us.
Mr.
Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): I join the Minister in
welcoming you to our deliberations, Mr. Atkinson, and I
thank him for his welcome. I do not have much of substance to say on
the programme motion, save to say that if the Minister is required to
return to Marsham street for urgent discussions about his future or
that of any other Minister, we will give him such leeway as is
required. He need not come back if he does not need
to.
Mark
Hunter (Cheadle) (LD): It is pleasure to have the
opportunity to speak for the Liberal Democrats under your chairmanship,
Mr. Atkinson. I, too, look forward to what I hope will be a
genuinely good-natured debate.
We are dealing with some hugely
important issues here. We would all agree that there are genuine
concerns about reoffending rates. It is acknowledged by the public that
more needs to be done to improve the situation. I am looking forward to
seeing what more the Minister will add to this. Although we approach
this with an open mind, we must not throw the baby out with the bath
water in our attempt to improve the situation of both the probation
service and the Prison Service. An awful lot of committed professionals
are involved in both those services and we should not forget that
during our deliberations today.
Question put and agreed
to.
The
Chairman:
We now move to the second motion. I call the
Minister to move the motion to report written evidence. This is a
formality whereby any written evidence that the Committee accepts
enjoys the benefit of parliamentary
privilege.
Motion
made and Question proposed,
That, subject to the
discretion of the Chairman, any written evidence received by the
Committee shall be reported to the House for
publication.—[Mr.
Sutcliffe.]
Mr.
Garnier:
This may well be a formal motion in the
Government’s mind and although, on the face of it, it is fairly
uncontroversial, it may hide a plethora of issues that need to be
discussed, not least in light of the change in the parliamentary
procedural rules which was introduced by the Government just before
Parliament prorogued in late October. The Leader of the House
introduced into the rules of the House a procedure whereby Bill
Committees could receive evidence in a manner rather akin to the way in
which Select Committees have been receiving evidence until now. A
Committee such as this could therefore call witnesses and papers and,
in light of both that written and oral evidence, reach a better
judgment about the shape of the Offender Management Bill and the policy
and the intent behind it.
On Second Reading on 11
December, at column 584 of Hansard, I intervened on the Home
Secretary to ask whether he would ask his hon. Friends and the usual
channels to permit this Committee to take evidence. Of course he said
no, in his usual charming way. It is interesting that this is a highly
controversial Bill. Part 1, at least, is highly controversial. It has
attracted huge public concern and huge concern from those who work in
all sections of the criminal justice system such as the police, the
Prison Service, the probation service and the courts, and from both
informed and uninformed politicians.
It strikes me that the decision
by the Home Secretary on the Floor of the House to refuse this
Committee the chance to take evidence has been somewhat mitigated by
the Minister’s formal moving of this motion and the fact that he
has given notice
“of his
intention to move a motion in the terms of the Programming
Sub-Committee”
so that
this Committee can receive written evidence and so that it should be
reported to the House. I understand that that is to enable such written
evidence as he receives to be covered by parliamentary privilege and
therefore immune from defamation suit. As a defamation lawyer I find
that deeply disturbing: as one pocket fills, the other empties, but I
shall bear that with as much fortitude as I can
muster.
What does
concern me is that this appears to be, if not a volte-face, at least a
slight change in the Government’s attitude to the receiving of
evidence by this Committee. I have a helpful solution to the dilemma we
find ourselves in and it is one that should be attractive to the
Government. I know that the Government wish to expose their inner
thinking to the world. We know that from the numerous leaks that their
assistants give to the press and to us.
We also know that the
Government are hugely reinforced by their own
self-confidence—everything that they say is right and everything
that they intend to
do is in the national interest, so they have no fear whatsoever of being
exposed to public scrutiny. I want, therefore, to help the Government
to perform their role as an open Government, a collection of candid
individuals who want to see their policies explained fully. I want this
Committee to take part in that process of holding the Government to
account, and I want to ensure that the evidence that we receive is not
confined to that produced by the Government but includes evidence
produced by other interested bodies which is relevant to our
deliberations.
When,
on 11 December, the Home Secretary refused my suggestion, which I
naively thought was entirely reasonable, I had a little think with my
hon. Friends and we decided to hold our own evidence session.
Yesterday, we held a session in the Thatcher Room at Portcullis House
to which all members of this Committee were invited—even you,
Mr. Atkinson, although for obvious reasons you thought it
inappropriate to attend. Certainly all Committee members on both the
Government and the Opposition Benches were invited. Sadly, yesterday
the Minister and other members of the Home Office team were very busy
looking for things.
We called Lord Ramsbotham, the
retired general who was Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons
from the late 1990s until about 2003, and Martin Narey, the former
director-general of the Prison Service, then the chief executive of the
National Offender Management Service and now the chief executive of
Barnardo’s, the children’s charity. Thirdly, we called
Dr. David Green, the director of the policy think-tank Civitas. Those
three individuals gave some very useful evidence that touched directly
on the Bill.
Because
our committee was not set up by Parliament—it did not replicate
this Committee and it was not staffed by Officers of the
House—it was not a parliamentary committee. Because of that, by
the rules of the House, the Serjeant would not allow us to use
Hansard reporters or to make use of any form of recording system
belonging to the House or its authorities. Nothing ventured, nothing
gained, however, so we decided to record it ourselves, privately. It
was an open meeting, but we funded and provided the means of recording
the evidence.
The
session started at about half-past 9 and went on until about a quarter
to 12. The evidence is on a compact disc; it is not in writing. I hope
that the Committee will agree that that valuable evidence should not be
allowed to remain metaphorically within the Thatcher Room. Rather, the
Committee should invite the Chairman either to authorise himself or to
invite the Committee to ask the House as a whole to permit the evidence
that was taken yesterday—from Lord Ramsbotham and Martin Narey
in particular but also, if necessary, from Dr. Green—to be
transcribed from the compact disc so that it can be presented in
written form to the Committee as the Minister, at least in part, would
wish.
The evidence
that Lord Ramsbotham and Martin Narey gave yesterday would be extremely
useful to the development of the Bill. It would provide a useful
context in which we could frame our deliberations, although it might
mean that we had to delay the end date of the Committee proceedings to
enable ourselves to receive or understand the information. Although
that might not be wholly agreeable to all members of the
Committee—I see the Government Whip nodding in disagreement, in
true inscrutable form—it would increase public confidence in the
way that legislation is made in this House. Far too often, we rush
through legislation that is insufficiently scrutinised, for all sorts
of good, bad and indifferent reasons, and rely on the other place to do
the real work of revision, amendment and scrutiny. I suspect that the
public feels that it is disconnected from the proper making of
legislation.
9.15
am
I
suggest that the Committee should permit the transcription and receipt
of the evidence on the compact disc, in line with the Minister’s
motion. If the Minister is not prepared to agree that the Committee
should do so, it is reasonable that the evidence should be made
available as a public service at public expense. I therefore look to
the Minister, as the current representative of the Home Office in the
Room, to agree to the handing over to the Home Office—this is
actually quite a brave suggestion—of the compact disc, on his
undertaking that he will not lose it, put it in a drawer and leave it
there for 10 years, or do something else careless with it. If the Home
Office is distrustful of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat pact, it
should have the evidence transcribed at its own expense and made
public. I am relaxed about the means by which the evidence is brought
into the public domain, as I am sure that the Minister is, given that
he has plenty of other things on his mind to make his life less
relaxing.
I am making a
double-headed but none the less reasonable suggestion. The Minister
frequently tells us that he is a reasonable man, which I accept, and I
cannot believe that he will find it a disobliging suggestion. It will
bring Parliament more in line with the public’s desire to know
what is going on inside Parliament and will not only enhance the
reputation of the Bill Committee system, but will allow the
possibility, if not the certainty, of the deliberations of the
Committee proceeding with even greater speed. If we receive in written
form the evidence given yesterday, neither we nor the public will have
to sit in Committee to read it. The receipt of the information in
writing will allow us to sit less often, which would be to the
advantage of the Government, who have plenty on their plate, and of the
Minister, who I know is itching to get back to Marsham street to see
what the hell is going
on.
Mark
Hunter:
I shall be brief, I hope not for the last time in
these proceedings. I support the view of the hon. and learned
Gentleman, who has made an eminently reasonable point. I hope that the
Minister will take the opportunity to start the proceedings in a spirit
of co-operation and good nature, and that he will demonstrate his
commitment to openness by admitting the evidence. As one of the Members
who attended yesterday, I have to say that Members of this House and
the other place found it an extremely useful opportunity to question
three recognised expert witnesses. It would be a good start to the
debate for the Minister to give a positive reaction to the request that
has been made. It would it be rather churlish not to do so, and I
cannot see any earthly reason why he should not, although he may wish
to introduce one.
The
Chairman:
Order. For the sake of clarification of the
record, I want to make it clear that neither the Chair nor the
Committee has the power to authorise the transcription of this
material. It is simply up to the Minister or the Government to do so or
not.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
Thank you, Mr. Atkinson, for that
explanation of the Committee’s responsibilities. I am always a
little concerned when an Opposition spokesman says that he wants to
help me, because it is not always to my advantage to take that help.
However, I think that it might be on this occasion.
There are a number of matters
on which I want to respond to the hon. and learned Member for
Harborough. The hon. and learned Gentleman has commented on the Home
Secretary’s position in rejecting the oral evidence to the
Committee on 11 December, which was in line and in keeping
with the agreement that was reached in the House that new Bills would
follow that procedure in the new year. He knows that the Second Reading
of this Bill was in December. The Home Secretary rejected the oral
evidence to the Committee, because there was a starting point for the
process and the procedure.
I part company a little with
the hon. and learned Gentleman on the usual channels. We have three
very competent Whips in the Committee who will deal with the
Committee’s business in terms of its timescale very adequately,
so I do not want to stray into their area of responsibility. However, I
am interested in yesterday’s evidence session and might have had
a view about who was invited to give evidence. None the less, the three
people to whom the hon. and learned Gentleman has referred are
distinguished in relation to this
subject.
There is no
danger of members of the Committee not receiving written evidence from
a range of participants. The Carter report was published in December
2003; a Government response was published in January 2004; NOMS itself
was established by Mr. Narey in June 2004; and the
Management of Offenders and Sentencing Bill was introduced in January
2005.
Many people
have been heavily involved throughout the process. The stakeholders
have views about the Government’s direction of travel and their
own personal views about how things are taking place. I believe that it
is helpful to the Committee to get as much information as possible
about those issues in the way mentioned by the hon. Member for Cheadle
to allow us to discuss the outcomes in detail. These are serious
matters to our communities and to people who work in the various
services that we are
discussing.
I will go
this far and say that I will ask my officials and the Home Office to
speak to the House authorities. I do not want to do anything that will
prejudice any future position. However, I am happy to accede to the
hon. and learned Gentleman’s request to get the CD
transcribed.
Mr.
Garnier:
I am grateful to the Minister for his speedy and
favourable response to that suggestion. May I ask him to be a little
more forthcoming about what he had in mind when he moved the motion
this morning? Written evidence means nothing unless it relates to
particular pieces of evidence. For example, as
he has said, the Government received 748 responses to the consultation
process, but, as I understand it, only 10 of those favoured the
Government line. There are therefore 738 responses which did not find
favour with the Government. Are we likely to receive that sort of
evidence from the Government or from elsewhere, or do the Government
have other pieces of written evidence in
mind?
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
The hon. and learned Gentleman has strayed into
an area that I am sure that we will return to in terms of the various
consultations that have taken place and the different viewpoints that
exist. As far as I am concerned—I am sure that the Committee
will tell me if I am wrong—this motion is about evidence that
the Committee receives in writing, which it does on occasions, from,
for example, interest groups. It is about making sure that such
evidence is published so that, as the hon. and learned Gentleman said
in his opening remarks, it is placed in the public domain without
problems for the people who gave it. I am attracted to evidence
wherever it comes from and look forward to receiving
it.
James
Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con): On a point of
clarification, I note the Minister’s comments about evidence
that may be submitted to us. It is a matter of formalities: in order to
get the evidence formally submitted and therefore within the ambit of
the resolution, does the Minister intend that it should be sent
formally to the Chair? If material is distributed to the Committee,
will that be sufficient to enable such information and evidence to fall
within the ambit of the motion? Clarification would be
helpful.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
I started by being concerned about hon. Members
trying to help me, and I must be careful not to stray into matters that
may create problems for other Committees. I ask hon. Members to accept
that I will consider what they are saying and will report to them later
on how we will proceed. I will consider their request positively and
try to get the CD
transcribed.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Ordered,
That,
subject to the discretion of the Chairman, any written evidence
received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for
publication.—[Mr.
Sutcliffe.]
<++++>
Clause 1Meaning
of “the probation
purposes”
‘(6) This section
applies to—
(a) the
functions of the Secretary of State;
and
(b) the functions of
providers of probation services and their officers so far as they are
exercised for the purposes set out in this
section.
(7) In exercising
those functions the person concerned must have regard
to—
(a) the protection
of the public;
(b) the
reduction of reoffending;
(c)
the proper punishment of offenders;
(d) ensuring offenders’ awareness of the
effects of crime on the victims of crime and the
public;
(e) the rehabilitation
of
offenders.’.
The
amendment would insert two further subsections into the clause, which
is essentially about the ambit of probation and its purposes. To place
the amendment in context, probation purposes are defined, at least in
part, by clause 1 as drafted. Subsection (1) sets out what might be
expected from a provider of probation services. Much of what is
described in subsection (1) happens already, first, as a matter of good
practice, and, secondly, because that is what the Criminal Justice and
Court Services Act 2000 requires of the probation
service.
The third
reorganisation of the probation service since the Government came to
office in 1997 was effected by the 2000 Act, which set up the national
probation service and the national probation directorate.
I declared an interest on
Second Reading that as a Crown Court recorder—a part-time judge
in the Crown Court trying criminal cases with juries—I receive
pre-sentence reports in the event of a defendant being found guilty in
order to assist me in the disposal of the case.
Clause 1(1)(a) states that
“probation purposes” means, among other things providing
for
“courts to be given
assistance in determining the appropriate sentences to pass, and making
other decisions, in respect of persons charged with or convicted of
offences”.
That is what
the probation service now does. I have been in receipt of such advice
and assistance in writing and
orally.
Paragraph (b)
provides for
“authorised
persons to be given assistance in determining whether conditional
cautions should be given and which conditions to attach to conditional
cautions.”
That is also
something that the probation service does already. Its clients, as they
are called, are interviewed, and the service works out the best way to
deal with the defendant in respect of the facts of the case, bearing in
mind the consequences for the victim of the offence, before the
criminal justice system. The probation service then reaches a decision
that the court may, or may not, accept.
Paragraph (c) deals
with
“the supervision and
rehabilitation of persons charged with or convicted of
offences”.
That area of
the probation service’s work has perhaps caused the most
controversy recently, because of those defendants who are given
community punishment rather than a custodial sentence and placed under
the supervision of a probation officer. They are at large, depending on
the terms of the sentence and the requirements attached to it under the
Criminal Justice Act 2003. Such offenders are supervised by a probation
officer, who must not only literally supervise them—that is,
keep an eye on them and ensure that they do what is required—but
ensure, through meetings, conversations, discussions and an
understanding of the offenders’ problems or difficulties, that
they are rehabilitated and reformed and that they comply with various
conditions that the court has set for
them.
9.30
am
Paragraph (d)
deals with
“the giving of
assistance to persons remanded on
bail”.
Bail hostels are
hugely controversial. A “Panorama” programme just before
Christmas dealt with a bail hostel or hostels in the Bristol area,
where a number of people on bail—clearly not for offences so
serious that they should have been in custody, but for offences none
the less—were able to misbehave while on bail. There is a
difficulty in supervising people in bail hostels. A bail hostel is not
a prison. On the other hand, it is not run by the police; it is
nominally managed and run by the probation
service.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
On bail hostels, the hon. and learned Gentleman
is quite right. There is a great deal of concern about approved
premises and estates—he referred to “Panorama”. He
makes a fair point. I should like to put something on the record to
which I hope we will return in our deliberations on the probation
service. I acknowledge that one concern is that the media would have us
believe that supervision of offenders happens 24 hours a day, seven
days a week. That is impossible on approved premises. When we debate
the probation service, I am sure that we will discuss it in more
detail, but this is a good opportunity to put it on the record at the
start that we must also manage public expectations and defend probation
officers, who are sometimes expected to do a great deal more than is
physically
possible.
Mr.
Garnier:
I am sure that that will be welcomed widely by
those who work in the probation service, not least because I suspect
that they feel rather put upon by this Government. I shall take the
Home Secretary as an example, because he popped into my mind. It is
interesting that he spends a lot of his time denigrating the people who
are supposed to be performing public services for his Department,
whether they work in the probation service or the Prison Service. As I
said in front of him on Second Reading, it seems strange that in order
to re-instil or create public confidence in the Prison Service, the
Home Secretary should go to Wormwood Scrubs and give a speech to
prisoners telling them how dysfunctional the Prison Service is and that
it is failing them.
I
accept that sometimes there are overblown public expectations of what
the probation service can do to supervise ex-prisoners on licence and
parole, defendants in bail hostels and those serving community
sentences. We all know that, but it does not help if the Government,
wittingly or unwittingly, go around spreading stories about the
ineffectual nature of those who work in the probation service. If the
Government want to encourage good standards of behaviour, good service
morale and public confidence in the criminal justice system as a
whole—I suggest that at present it is at an all-time
low—one of the things that they should not do is go around
beating up people who are working their guts out trying to perform a
vital public service across the criminal justice system in very
difficult
circumstances.
One
must bear it in mind, for example, that the people who the probation
officers and staff look after on our behalf are criminals. They are
largely drug
addicts; they are largely dishonest, and they are largely disorganised.
They do not get up in the morning for nine-to-five jobs or keep
appointments. They think that it is more appropriate to hit someone on
the head and steal their purse to feed their drug habit than to go out
and earn an honest penny. Let us bear it in mind that the probation
service looks after some very difficult people. In a proper analysis of
what is needed to instil public confidence in the criminal justice
system and this aspect of it, it does not help for the Home Secretary
or his Ministers deliberately—perhaps not deliberately in this
Minister’s case—to denigrate it. In so far as the
Minister was able to praise it just now, that is
welcome.
To return to
the context of the amendment, the further probation purpose referred to
in paragraph (f) is
“the
giving of information to victims of persons charged with or convicted
of offences.”
There are
clearly occasions when those who provide probation services will need
to speak directly to the victims of a crime. Police family liaison
officers, lawyers and those who work in the court service itself also
do that; none the less, it is one of the many functions that probation
staff carry
out.
Subsection (2)
seeks to provide a little more detail by further defining some of the
purposes that we have just discussed. It
states:
“The
purpose set out in subsection
(1)(c)”,
which deals with
the supervision and rehabilitation of persons charged with or convicted
of offences,
“includes
(in particular)—
(a)
giving effect to community orders and suspended sentence
orders”
and
also
“(b) assisting in
the rehabilitation of offenders who are being held in
prison;
(c) supervising persons
released from prison on
licence;
(d) providing
accommodation in approved
premises.”
To some
extent, that is a repetition of what is already stated or implied in
subsection (1). In addition, it is what the probation services do
already to some extent. Indeed, it is precisely the sort of thing that
was envisaged under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000
when Parliament last had a substantive opportunity to consider the
issue.
Clause 1 goes
on to
state:
“That
purpose also applies in relation to persons who...are convicted of
an offence under the law of a country outside England and
Wales”.
That is
particularly relevant to yesterday’s shenanigans when we learned
that thousands of files were sitting in the Home Office awaiting an
opportunity to be loaded into the police national computer so that the
relevant authorities, be it the police, those who can lawfully gain
access to the police national computer, the Criminal Records Bureau,
social services departments, education authorities and so on, could
determine whether the person whom they wished to employ or had already
employed was suitable to be used in respect of vulnerable adults, young
persons in care or those who were being
educated.
We could be
forgiven for thinking that the impression that the Government wished to
give was
that it was the probation services that were letting down the country by
failing to supervise when, as we know in relation to those who had been
convicted of offences overseas, the Home Office itself was the cause of
the problem. Ministers themselves were informed in October by the
Association of Chief Police Officers that there was a problem and that
the Home Secretary ought to be informed, yet they did nothing. They
continue to spin out the message that the problem is everyone’s
fault but
theirs.
There is, and
has been for at least a decade, a requirement under the multi-agency
public protection arrangements for anyone who has been convicted of an
offence overseas, especially a serious sexual offence, to be logged
into the MAPPA system so that a programme of supervision or other
activity can be put in place for them, at least so that those who are
running the systems in this country know what it is that they have to
cope with. In light of that existing requirement, yesterday’s
announcements and leaks are all the more troubling and throw clause 1
into starker
relief.
The additional
purpose referred to under subsection (3) applies to persons
who
“receive a sentence
which is to any extent to be served or carried out in England and
Wales”,
as it applies in
relation to persons convicted of
offences.”
Therefore, if
someone were brought back from a foreign conviction in a foreign
prison, for example, under a prisoner swap or another arrangement, that
person would be entitled to or required to serve the remainder of his
sentence in a British prison. All that must be understood and managed
as a probation
purpose.
I shall not
go through subsection (4) in the same detail, but it sets out various
matters in connection with the sentences that might be appropriate
under clause 1. Subsection (5) deals with the requirement of the
Secretary of State to extend by regulation the purposes that we have
just been examining. They can include
“other purposes relating to
persons charged with or convicted of offences or persons to whom
conditional cautions are
given.”
As usual, we have
not seen the regulations. I do not imagine that they have even been
drafted. I deplore the creeping habit of the Government—although
the Conservative Government, while guilty of such action, were not
quite as guilty as this
Government—
Mr.
Garnier:
A slight one, yes. Let me make a serious
constitutional point. I deplore the growing habit of Departments of
creating Bills that give a Secretary of State powers to make further
regulations that sometimes bring with them criminal penalties, but
which are not in draft and available to members of the Committee at the
time the measures are being discussed. Such practice started
particularly badly with the Access to Justice Bill in 1998-99. It was
literally a Christmas tree on to which the Lord Chancellor was able to
hang any number of regulations. Some regulations may be entirely
benign, none the less it is important that the Committee scrutinising
the Bill should have the right to examine the regulations that are to
be invented under it.
The Minister may say that, in
due course, a Statutory Instrument Committee will consider such
matters, but that is not the same thing as issues will be taken right
out of context. Although the deliberations of Statutory Instrument
Committees are hugely enjoyable from time to time, as the
Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for
Gedling, and I know to our benefit, they do not provide the same
detailed scrutiny as a Public Bill
Committee.
After what
I hope was not an unnecessarily lengthy preamble, I come now to the
detail of amendment No. 24, which would add two new
subsections (6) and (7) . Clause 1 applies
to
“the functions of the
Secretary of
State”
and
“providers
of probation services and their officers so far as they are exercised
for the purposes set out in this
section”—
the
purposes that I have
described.
9.45
am
Proposed new
subsection (7) refers to “the person concerned”. That
could be the Secretary of State or what is nowadays called a third
sector provider. The latter could be a charity, a Church group, an
individual or a limited company. It could be one of the companies under
the Government’s rather revoltingly named “contestability
arrangements”. I would prefer to use a word such as
“competition”. It could be a public limited company, a
partnership or any other form of legal entity. The subsection provides
that
“the person
concerned must have regard
to—
(a) the
protection of the
public;
(b) the
reduction of
reoffending;
(c) the
proper punishment of
offenders;
(d)
ensuring offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on the
victims of crime and the
public;
(e) the
rehabilitation of
offenders.’.
I have no
doubt that the professional members of the probation service do
precisely that—I mean the qualified probation officers and those
who are not qualified but are none the less accredited members of
probation staff. They are concerned to regard the matters set out in
paragraphs (a) to (e) of our proposed new subsection (7). However, what
concerns my party is that the Government have not explained themselves.
We and the public at large are not convinced that the Government, in
setting forth on the Offender Management Bill, have really assessed the
evidence in front of them and taken on board all the concerns that have
been made public by interested and affected parties in such a way that
the instrument being created will deliver the purposes set out in
clause 1.
I will not
personalise this by referring to the Home Secretary, but I will
concentrate on “the Secretary of State”, the office
holder. My concern is that the Secretary of State will, as a matter of
necessary Government business expedience, have to delegate all of the
tasks referred to in clause 1 to a host of public and other officials.
He will use the chain of command of the National Offender Management
Service to ensure, for good or ill, that the purposes set out in clause
1 are properly exercised. However, we have no reassurance that there is
any proper accountability system to ensure that the public as a whole
are kept in the forefront of the minds of the officials who are
carrying out the functions on behalf of the Secretary of State. That
difficulty is going to be further exacerbated when one deals with
non-state providers of probation
services.
I have no
doubt that those who work for—picking a few companies
purely as examples—Securicor, Group 4, Transform or
some of the big charities, which will be bidding for this work, are, as
individuals, acutely concerned about the protection of the public, the
reduction of reoffending and the proper punishment of offenders and so
on. What worries me is that the Government have set up no mechanisms to
check whether the purposes that they intend are being achieved. If the
Government do not do so, their hopes for re-engaging with the public
are lost. In that case, we will see neither a reduction in reoffending
nor the proper punishment of offenders, and we will not be assured that
offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on victims and the
public is uppermost. Still less will we see the rehabilitation of
offenders.
At the
moment, the probation service is overwhelmed with bureaucracy and the
number of cases. Therefore, from the Conservatives’ point of
view—the Liberal Democrats disagree—it seems proper for
the Government to explore what they call contestability to bring in
other parties to see whether they can provide probation services. That
is fine as far as it goes, but unless the Government construct a system
that is guaranteed, as far as humanly possible, to ensure that the
purposes work accountably, the project will collapse. I think that this
is the 60th piece of legislation advanced by the Department since 1997,
which is more than in the whole of the 20th century. I am concerned
that, although we are considering a well-intentioned Bill, it has not
been properly thought through and will lead to tears before
bedtime.
I shall pause
so that other hon. Members may comment on our amendment. It would at
least place in the Bill demands on the Secretary of State and probation
service providers and their officers, which, unless they are expressly
stated, could be forgotten and ignored to the detriment of public
safety.
The
Chairman:
Before I call Mr. Kidney, I shall
just say that we have had, for sensible reasons, a wide-ranging debate
on the amendment—although perhaps wider than should strictly be
permitted by the Chair. I am happy with that, but if hon. Members want
a clause stand part debate, they will have difficulty persuading me to
allow
it.
Mr.
Kidney:
I know that you are a fair-minded man,
Mr. Atkinson, so I am delighted to be serving in a Committee
chaired by you.
In my
adult life, I have noticed not only scientific, social, economic and
environmental change, but its accelerating pace. In the face of such
change, legislators around the world have to consider laws that quickly
become outdated and require amendment or removal and new laws that are
needed in areas that were not previously legislated on. I do not agree
with the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, who deplores the
Government practice of setting laws in
frameworks that are likely to last a long time, which allows individual
rules to be changed from time to time to keep up with
developments.
I
applaud the attempt of the hon. and learned Gentleman and his party to
fix the Bill and to add something to its framework that will last. I am
a big fan of objectives clauses in modern legislation, but there are
none in this Bill. I appeal to my hon. Friend the Minister to consider
a reasoned argument for the Bill containing, by the time it is enacted,
statutory objectives for the benefit of us
all.
So far, in my
career in this place, my experience of statutory objectives is entirely
positive. For example, I served on the Joint Committee scrutinising the
draft Bill preceding the Financial Services and Markets Act
2000. We approved four statutory objectives that became the cornerstone
of that Act and of the regulation of the financial sector by the
Financial Services Authority. The Legal Services Bill is currently
passing through Parliament. Again, the draft Bill was scrutinised by a
Joint Committee on which I served and approval has been given to its
having statutory objectives. Both the Legal Services Bill and
the 2000 Act relate to regulators. The Bill that we are
discussing is not about a regulator, but about a probation service or
NOMS, although it is a little bit silent on that at the
moment.
Thinking that
there might be a difference between these pieces of legislation, I
looked at the Criminal Justice Act 2003—again, I served on the
Committee considering the Bill preceding it—and found that there
is no statutory objectives clause for our criminal justice system. Many
people would argue that it would be a better system if there were such
objectives. Interestingly, however, the 2003 Act contains provision for
codes of practice. That is an alternative way of establishing some
control in an Act as to what can be included in subsequent secondary
legislation and additional codes of practice. My experience has been
entirely positive, and I want the Minister to consider whether it would
benefit him and his Department to have statutory objectives in the
Bill.
The two reasons
given by the Government for why NOMS is required in place of the
probation service are that the probation service is not performing as
well and effectively as it could and that we are not tackling the
reoffending rate in this country as well as we could. Both of those
arguments are strongly challenged by the probation service, including
my own in Staffordshire, which has given me strong guidance on
this.
Under the Bill,
the probation service can be given targets each year based on regional
consultation, but that is not a very good recipe for a service that is
confident about what is required of it for the future, because the
service will not be able to allocate its resources in the best way to
meet its targets effectively. The measures will give a rootless service
that will not know from one year to the next where it might be required
to go. That is reflected in the argument with the probation service
today, when it challenges Ministers who say that it is not performing
well enough. The service can quote figures other than those that the
Minister can quote to show how well it is meeting the
Government’s current targets. It would be valuable to fix in the
Bill where we expect the probation service to go over time. That would
help different
probation services to perform the tasks required of them and to plan
strategically to perform those
tasks.
The second
argument is about reducing reoffending, but the probation service would
be entitled to say that that might simply be the flavour of the month.
It could ask what would happen if there were a different political
party in government tomorrow that had a different priority for it? The
service is entitled to ask where is the priority for reducing
reoffending rates in comparison with the other priorities, of which we
all might approve. The amendment suggests other priorities without any
ranking. If we get past this debate and agree that it is a good idea to
have statutory objectives, there is then a whole new debate to be had
about whether the objectives should be equal or whether some should be
ranked as higher priorities than others. That was a common debate
during the scrutiny of the Bills that I mentioned earlier.
Does the
Minister think that it would benefit him and the service that will
emerge from the reforms if there were some statutory objectives, so
that everybody knows whether the provider is from the public, private
or voluntary sector, and what the provider is signing up for when it
agrees to take on a contract to provide a
service?
The
reason why I shall not support the amendment, if it is pressed to a
vote, is that I do not think that it goes far enough. I shall suggest a
different set of priorities. When I was a legal student, which was a
very long time ago, I remember a famous criminal court judgment setting
out the purposes of the sentencing, which later became known in the
text books as the seven purposes of sentencing. There are five
priorities in proposed new subsection (7), and I have some suggestions
for variations or additions to them. The issue of public confidence is
about more than the “protection of the public” in
paragraph (a); it runs through all five of the priorities. It might
also concern public accountability for public spending on the service,
the effectiveness of the system of inspection, or even, in the
public’s mind, the right balance in such a sensitive public
service of provision by the public sector, the voluntary sector and,
crucially, the private sector, which has the additional motivation of
making a profit. Public confidence is not listed, but it should be
considered.
10
am
Another issue,
which has growing resonance today and which will be increasingly
important in the future, is reparation, which is not dealt with
directly in any of the five paragraphs in the amendment but is a
growing area. Whether an offender is sentenced to carry out unpaid
work, required to confront a victim to say sorry or ordered to pay
compensation to pay for repairs to public property, those are all
examples of reparation. It is a growing area of interest and concern in
this country, and maybe it should be a statutory objective in its own
right. I also think there is a growing interest in victim support,
which is mentioned in proposed new paragraph (d), but the issue is much
greater and wider than
that.
Another issue is
the contribution that the probation service and NOMS should be required
to make to the effectiveness of the whole criminal justice system,
which, again, is not before us for consideration at the
moment.
Lastly, although this is
ancillary to all the things that I have mentioned, there is the issue
of public education about the purposes of a criminal justice system and
the role of probation and offender management within it. I shall
therefore put forward for consideration some other items in the area of
statutory objectives, which could be included if the Minister is
interested.
The last
point I want to make concerns one of the many briefings that we have
received—the Minister rightly said at the outset that we will
not be short of briefings. The one I want to refer to is from Rainer,
the national charity for supporting young people and young
adults—the name Rainer apparently comes from one of its founding
members, Frederick Rainer, whose donation helped to appoint the first
police court missionary in 1876, a forerunner of today’s modern
probation service.
It
is important for the Minister to understand that this briefing is
largely supportive of the Government’s position and that Rainer
is not one of the many critics. The briefing states that the Bill
presents
“a danger that
the proposals weaken the core public protection functions of the
current probation service. In addition to providers falling within the
remit of HM Inspector of Probation, Rainer would welcome a
clarification from Ministers as to how accountability will be
maintained.”
I say to the
Minister that if even friends are worried about accountability, is that
not another argument for some kind of statutory objective or objectives
on the face of the Bill? This would be a helpful reassurance to the
Minister’s friends as well as to the Minister’s
opponents.
Mark
Hunter:
I want to address my remarks specifically to
amendment No. 24, which was tabled in the names of the hon. and learned
Member for Harborough and my hon. Friend the Member for
Ceredigion.
I think
the value of the amendment is that it clearly restates the five
specific aims of the probation service, namely to protect the public,
to reduce reoffending, to ensure the proper punishment of offenders, to
ensure offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on the
victims of crime and on the public and, of course, to rehabilitate
offenders. All five key aims, in my opinion, are important. The value
of having them in the Bill is that it would make it a legal imperative
for those said aims to be considered by the Secretary of State and the
providers of the service when they are carrying out any role connected
with the probation
service.
The question
seems to concern why amendment No. 24 is needed, and I want to
say a few words about that. Clause 1 defines in a general way the
purposes of the probation service, but it does not specify the aims of
the probation service. As I have said, the aims of the probation
service were specified in the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act
2000, and I think that they need to be restated in the context of this
Bill. The aims seem to command general support, and I am therefore at a
loss to understand the reason for the remission of the 2000 Act, but I
have no doubt that the Minister will address that in due
course.
None of us on
either side of the Committee wants to see the introduction of
competition causing in any way, shape or form a reduction in the
quality of service provided. On the contrary, private companies that
may
be involved or which are already involved need to be made aware that we
cannot allow standards to slip and that the protection of the public,
the reduction of reoffending, real rehabilitation, proper punishment of
offenders and ensuring offenders’ awareness of the effects of
crime on their victims and the public are targets for the probation
service. Those are the key targets, rather than the £1.7 billion
savings identified in the NOMS strategic business case in October 2005.
Those savings might be important, but they are not as important as the
service’s core aims.
It follows that the Government
must not use contestability as an excuse to cut the service’s
costs and save money. They should concentrate on increasing the
service’s quality and—this must be the top
priority—cutting reoffending rates. When choosing providers, the
Secretary of State must have regard to carrying out those aims and not
simply to the issue of which organisation is the highest bidder or
might offer the most cost-effective service. The introduction of
contestability will almost inevitably involve the fragmentation of the
probation system, and private companies that are not used to dealing
with probation might obtain a role in some cases. We would therefore do
them a service by providing clear guidelines about their priorities in
the Bill.
Through
multi-agency public protection arrangements, the service now works with
the police on the protection of the public, which is, after all, the
bottom line in the whole debate. More than 40,000 offenders who have
been convicted of sexual or violent offences and who have received a
prison sentence of more than one year are now monitored. Of them, about
1,300—the so-called critical few—are thought to pose the
greatest risk to the public, and another 12,000 or so are medium to
high risk. The probation service and the police have been working
effectively together, and that arrangement needs to continue and to be
further improved. Last year, 0.44 per cent. of offenders in
the highest two categories were convicted of a further
offence.
On reducing
reoffending, the statistics show that the reoffending rate after two
years in prison is 66 per cent., compared with 53 per cent. on
probation. Indeed, the figure for probation has been reduced by 3.5 per
cent. since 1997, at a time when all the predictions from the Home
Office were that it would rise. It is vital that the rate is monitored
and that it continues to
fall.
On the proper
punishment of offenders, the media have often accused the probation
service of being a soft touch or some sort of soft option, but I hope
that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee recognise that that is
far from the reality. As a condition of their orders, more than 30,000
offenders who are sentenced to probation now attend groups, including
groups on anger management, sex offender treatment programmes and
cognitive behaviour therapy. Reoffending rates are expected to be
further reduced when the effects of such programmes are properly
measured and taken into account. It is also important that community
service is seen as an appropriate and effective punishment, although it
is essential that the orders to which I have referred also help with
rehabilitation.
Ensuring that offenders are
aware of the effect of crime on their victims and the public is also
crucial. Work with victims is an integral part of the service’s
remit, and more than 15,000 victims were contacted about release
proposals last year. During the preparation of reports and during
supervision orders, offenders are made aware of the effects of their
crime on their victim, and reparation and mediation models are used in
many cases. Again, that work needs to continue and to continue to
improve.
On the
rehabilitation of offenders, the probation service’s core value
lies in the offender’s ability to change and refrain from
further criminal and antisocial behaviour. It is therefore vital that
the service’s aims are clearly restated and that their
effectiveness is more closely monitored. NAPO supports the amendment
and accepts its aims, and it is vital that those aims are not forgotten
in the environment of competition and cost-effectiveness that the
Government are keen to welcome. It is essential in that environment
that the aims of the probation service are not only clear, but a legal
imperative for both the Secretary of State and the relatively new
people who might become involved in the probation service in due
course.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
I start by thanking the hon. and learned Member
for Harborough for moving the amendment and taking the Committee
through the Bill in the depth that he did. I disagree with his
political remarks, but I do not want to get sidetracked on those
issues, as we could spend a long time on them. I want to concentrate on
the substance of what hon. Members have said about the aims and
objectives.
I was
struck by the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford,
who hit the nail on the head. I am drawn to the objectives, but I am
concerned that if we went down the route of the hon. and learned
Member’s amendment, we would restrict ourselves in a changing
world. I agree with my hon. Friend that we would have to reflect on
where we see things heading, and I shall return to where that might be
and what he has said a little
later.
I do not agree
that the Bill is ill thought out. It has been around for a long
time—the Carter report came out in December 2003, and a great
deal of work has flowed from it. The previous Bill was introduced in
January ’05, and here we are, two years later, with the current
Bill. The Government have thought about what has been said to us and
the issues that have been raised.
As you pointed out
earlier, Mr. Atkinson, if we go wide of the amendment, we
might stray into the clause stand part debate, but public protection is
at the heart of what we want to achieve. We recognise the vital role
that the probation service plays—everywhere that I have been, on
the public record and elsewhere, I have said that we value the work of
the probation service. The proposals are not an attack on individuals,
but about how we tackle reoffending in our communities. What is
important is that everybody has a role to play, and the issue is about
not only the probation service, but the wider community’s
understanding of that
point.
I have said on
public platforms on many occasions in my time as a politician, as both
an MP and a local councillor, that the criminal justice system has been
seen as a separate entity in relation to the provision of services and
support. Local authorities, for instance, have a key role to play in
reducing reoffending, particularly in resettlement and re-housing. We
must get wider society to assist the work of probation officers, the
prison service and the police in tackling reoffending, because that is
only way in which we shall
succeed.
The
objectives behind the Bill are to try to widen the opportunities for
the public, private and voluntary sectors to be involved through
partnership work. As I said at the outset, we want a strong public
sector, and we certainly want public protection to be at the heart of
that. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and the hon. Member for
Cheadle have talked about victims. We need to do much more work on
that, and we are doing so. We have introduced the victim care units
pilot, because victims get left behind in the criminal justice system.
In some areas—for example, Nottingham—victim support
through the probation service is good, but it is not consistent across
the other 42 probation areas. We are trying to achieve a holistic
approach to offender management, particularly through the partnerships
that are available in respect of the probation
service.
Confusion
might arise as we develop the new bodies, however. We have already
stated the responsibilities and purposes of the probation service, and
we set out the vision and priorities for NOMS in the strategy that we
published in February last year—the priorities are protecting
the public, punishment and rehabilitation, managing offenders better
and the organisational change to support that work. I want to be
careful that we do not create confusion in the minds of the new
providers about what we want to
achieve.
We must get
the balance right, and I do not believe that the hon. and learned
Gentleman’s amendment is the right way to do so. I would prefer
to go down the route proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for
Stafford.
10.15
am
Mr.
Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): I want to press the
Minister to explain why he thinks that there is a risk of confusion
attached to placing in the Bill five clear provisions about the basic
fundamental values and obligations of the probation
service.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
The confusion concerns the interface between
contractual and statutory responsibilities. I am nervous about
that.
Mr.
Garnier:
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister in the
course of his answer to my hon. Friend, but surely the contractual
obligations on the provider will utterly comply with the statutory
obligations that we are asking for. They will not be doing something
else, will
they?
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
I am going to argue against myself now. I have
sympathy with the argument, but we have to take the matter forward in a
way that meets the requirements, that does not miss anything out and
that does not restrict us to returning to primary legislation if we
want to do something else. Therefore, in looking
at the service level agreements for 2007-08, we want to be clear about
the direction that we give to
providers.
I ask the
Committee to let me reflect on the matter in the terms suggested by my
hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and come back to it. I have
sympathy with what has been said. The Committee has started off in good
spirit, so in that spirit I shall reflect on what the hon. and learned
Gentleman has put to us and will return with a Government amendment to
see whether that will help the Committee. On that basis, I ask the hon.
and learned Gentleman to withdraw his
amendment.
Mr.
Garnier:
I shall come back to what the Minister has said
in a minute. Let me begin by saying that his happiness to reflect,
while welcome in one sense, is worrying in another, because it suggests
that he is not entirely confident in his own
Bill.
I thank the hon.
Member for Stafford for his remarks, which I fully take on board. It is
often said of Opposition amendments that they are imperfectly drafted
and cannot include everything. I genuinely accept his criticisms, which
were constructive, not destructive. He is concerned about public
confidence, as are we; he is concerned about accountability, and I
think that I used that very word myself; and he is concerned about the
effectiveness of inspection.
We had a lengthy debate about
the inspectorate during the consideration of another piece of
legislation towards the end of the last Session. Although we were able
to maintain the independence of the prisons inspectorate, the
Government were not persuaded that the independence of the other
inspectorates should remain, and they have now created one great
Government inspector to carry out inspections of the Crown Prosecution
Service and, I think, of the police and the courts. Certainly, the
prison service inspectorate has remained independent and separate. I
stand to be corrected, but that is my
understanding.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
We did not do that. The probation inspectorate
is still independent. However, the inspectors can work jointly on such
things as administrative
support.
Mr.
Garnier:
I think that I am right in saying that Her
Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons remains wholly separate in
terms of powers and secretariat. That is a separate office, whereas
there is a joint secretariat for the other inspectorates, albeit that
the holders of the office may be separate individuals. That is a matter
of detail that I do not want to get involved in now. I accept the point
made by the hon. Member for Stafford that whoever does whatever as a
probation service provider, the public need to have confidence in the
inspectorate system to ensure that the statutory obligations are
adhered to. Contractual obligations must be kept up to the mark,
between either the Secretary of State or a probation trust and a
provider of probation services. It is important that that is
achieved.
Another
matter that concerned the hon. Member for Stafford was the balance of
provision between the public and private sectors. I accept that that is
not part of our amendment, but I hope that that will not prevent him
from giving it more forthright support.
Mr.
Kidney:
The three things that the hon. and learned
Gentleman has mentioned all came under the heading “public
confidence” in my speech. He has described my being concerned
with each of those three things, but I said that they are good examples
of areas that are not covered by his amendment and in which the public
would have an
interest.
Mr.
Garnier:
I am grateful for that clarification and I
apologise if I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. He is making points of
public interest, not of party political difference, and if we can
re-work the Bill so that those points are included or dealt with
through public undertakings given by the Secretary of State through one
of his Ministers, it will be all well and good. It is important for the
Government to understand that the concerns of the public and of members
of the Committee about the current state of the Bill are genuine. We
are not here simply for the sake of hearing our own
voices.
I take on
board everything that the hon. Member for Stafford has said. He has
talked about the requirement for greater emphasis on the victims of
crime and has referred to proposed paragraph (d), which refers
to
“ensuring
offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on the victims of
crime and the public”.
I
am not sure how much more emphasis we can put in the Bill. We are
deeply concerned, both as constituency Members of Parliament and as
legislators, that the consequences of crime for victims should be
brought home to the criminal. The courts are keen to emphasise that,
and from reading any number of probation officers’ pre-sentence
reports, I know that it is uppermost in their minds when they advise
the court
about the proper sentence. The hon. Gentleman will remember, from his
days as an advocate in his part of the world, that that is true.
Increasingly, the public at large wants to be assured that the criminal
justice system pays attention to the needs of victims.
The hon. Gentleman has
mentioned the issue of public education, which is a huge topic, but I
am not sure how one can ensure that the Bill will lead to better public
education about the work of the probation service. I accept the more
general point that the work of the probation service, whether in the
state sector—as is currently the case—or provided by
third sector or private companies, is hugely misunderstood. To see
that, one needs only pick up a newspaper following the making of a
sentence.
I shall
give the example of a case in which I was engaged. Last year, I had to
sentence a young man of about 15 or 16 who had destroyed about
£3 million of property belonging to a bus company in London by
committing arson on about 10 buses. He had been on remand for about
nine months and had an IQ of about 70—he was just above the
intellectual level below which he would have been designated
educationally subnormal. Bearing it in mind that he had been in custody
for nine months—effectively the equivalent of an 18-month
custodial sentence—and that he was severely intellectually
impaired, I gave him a community punishment. In the following
day’s newspapers, the case was reported as, “Judge Lets
Off Vicious
Arsonist”.
It
being twenty-five minutes past Ten o’clock,
The
Chairman
adjourned the Committee without Question put,
pursuant to the Standing
Order.
Adjourned
till this day at Two
o’clock.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2007 | Prepared 12 January 2007 |
