 House of Commons |
Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Offender Management |
Offender Management Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:John
Benger, Committee
Clerk
†
attended the Committee
Public Bill CommitteeThursday 18 January 2007(Morning)[Hugh Bayley in the Chair]Offender Management BillClause 5
Power
to make grants for probation purposes
etc
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
9
am
Mr.
Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): Good morning,
Mr. Bayley. In discussing the clause I wish to concentrate
on one aspect of the Secretary of State’s ability to spend
money. Subsection (1) gives him the power to make payments to a
probation trust
or
“towards expenditure
incurred by any other person for any purpose falling within the
probation purposes.”
One
of the probation purposes that should concern him and anyone else
providing probation services is, as stated in clause
1(1)(c),
“the supervision
and rehabilitation of persons charged with or convicted of
offences”.
As the
Minister will know, the problem of reoffending is caused partly by the
innate characters of the people who become defendants in the criminal
justice system and partly by the system’s inability to
re-educate, or indeed to educate at all, those in its care whether
inside or outside custody. As my party discovered during the informal
evidence session that we arranged last week, there is a huge absence of
speech therapy for people in the care of the criminal justice system.
[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Wrexham want to
intervene?
Ian
Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab): I merely point out that the reason
there are no speech therapists is that when the hon. and learned
Gentleman’s party was in power before 1997 there was an absence
of
training.
Mr.
Garnier:
That may or may not be true. I am not an expert
on what happened before 1997. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will
tell us in a moment. He may well agree with what I am about to
say.
During our
informal evidence session we heard the views of Lord Ramsbotham on the
need for speech therapy services to be given greater emphasis. If I
may, Mr. Bayley, I shall try to paraphrase those views as
best I can for the benefit of the Committee. I believe that that will
better inform the Committee about one way in which the clause should be
implemented if it stands part of the
Bill.
The
Chairman:
Order. If may help the hon. and learned
Gentleman, I say first that I hope that the quotation will be short.
Secondly, I remind him that the clause is on the mechanics of making
payments to providers of probation services, not the details of each
and every thing for which payments may be
made.
Mr.
Garnier:
I am sure that you are entirely right,
Mr. Bayley. Let me therefore try to analyse the clause so
that the discussion complies with your
advice.
The title of
the clause is “Power to make grantsfor probation
purposes”. As I explained, one of the probation purposes is to
rehabilitate, as set out in clause 1(1)(c), and one thing that is
preventing the rehabilitation of offenders is the absence of adequate
education. I am not making a criticism; that is simply a fact. During
people’s treatment by the criminal justice system either in or
outside prison or young offender institutions, there is a lack of
education. That may have something to do with the type of people who
come into the system, many of whom were absent from school for all
sorts of reasons. Many of them come from broken homes or have been
adversely affected by drug addiction or other social problems.
Nevertheless it seems uncontroversial to say that about 70 per cent. of
those who come into the custody system are illiterate and innumerate,
as, sadly, are the same percentage of those who
leave.
When we give
the Secretary of State the powerto make grants for probation
purposes, he ought to consider to what end the huge sums that he will
have at his disposal should be deployed. If he makes payments to a
probation trust or towards any other expenditure incurred for any of
the probation purposes, one of the things that the Secretary of State
ought to take into account when he is enjoying the powers under clause
5 is the poor state of language and comprehension services. That was
one of the many points made by Lord Ramsbotham in the informal evidence
session.
I see,
Mr. Bayley, that your mouth is half open. I do not know
whether that is because you are stifling a yawn or because you are
about to give me further advice. I will pause, because I do not want to
get on the wrong side of
you.
The
Chairman:
Order. I do not want to preventany
member of the Committee from raising matters relevant to the services
provided in prisons by contractors so engaged. However, the hon. and
learned Gentleman might find that discussion of the nature of services
provided is more appropriately raised under the next clause, on which
he has an amendment about the qualifications of people contracted to
provide services. That would allow for a discussion that is in order.
Now, under clause 5, I am happy to have a debate about the nature and
terms of the contracts for making grants—a debate about the
money processes, not about all the services that those contracts might
purchase. I hope that that is
helpful.
I want to
have the discussion. Whether we have it under clause 5 or clause 6 is
wholly immaterial to me. What struck me on reading clause 5 was that
the discussion was relevant. If your view is different, I accept that
as the view of the Committee. Therefore, I will resist making further
remarks about the discrete area of spending until clause 6, when I will
come back to it, either under the amendment or in a stand part debate.
However, I have marked up the issue for discussion and the Minister is
no doubt rapidly preparing remarks that will be wholly in agreement
with mine.
The
Chairman:
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman.
I am certain that we are going to have such a discussion shortly. I
remind the Minister, before calling him, that we shall discuss the
business of speech therapy and possibly similar matters that the hon.
and learned Gentleman wished to raise when we come to clause
6.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe):
Good morning,
Mr. Bayley, and to the Committee. To reinforce your ruling,
you are quite right that the mechanics of clause 5 concern the power
that the Secretary of State can have. Under clause 3 we discussed
contractual arrangements being put in place. That is how we see
spending taking place. However, other occurrences, such as wanting to
do a pilot project on research, for instance, mean that we want funding
flexibility for such purposes. Clause 5 is a simple mechanism to allow
us that flexibility, and I hope that the Committee will accept that it
can stand part ofthe
Bill.
Question put
and agreed
to.
Clause 5
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause 6Officers
of providers of probation
services
‘(5) The Secretary
of State shall, by regulation, make provision as to the necessary
qualifications for an officer of a provider of probation
services.’.
We
and the Liberal Democrats seek to insert a new subsection (5) at the
end of clause 6. The clause is headed “Officers of providers of
probation services”. That brings us straight into the
controversy, which has racked the Labour party and caused a difference
between the Government and the Liberal Democrats, concerning the
provision of probation services through non-state actors, that is to
say, the private sector and the third sector—the charitable
sector. I do not want to open up that issue again, at least not for the
moment.
Under the
clause an officer of a provider of probation services is
“an individual who is for the time
being authorised under this section to carry out the functions of an
officer of a particular provider of probation
services”.
That
individual can be authorised as an officer of the relevant provider by
the Secretary of State or by a provider of probation services. One can
often be forgiven for thinking that the Bill’s language becomes
somewhat tautological. Subsection (4)
states:
“The
reference in subsection (1) to the functions of an officer of a
particular provider of probation service
means—
(a) any
functions conferred by an enactment (whenever passed or made) which are
exercisable by an officer of that provider;
and
(b) anything which
is required or authorised... to be done by an officer of that
provider.”
Let
us assume that under clause 5 the Secretary of State has thought it
appropriate to consider the sortsof things that need to have
money spent on them. I assume, given your ruling, Mr.
Bayley, that having
reached a conclusion about how he should do it, he will then, under
clause 6, work out who he should get to do it for him, either one of
his direct Crown employees or someone from the private or third
sector.
As I said a
moment ago, the standard of literacy and numeracy of the people in the
care of the criminal justice system is lamentably low. I will not go
into a long sociological or historical analysis of why that is. I will
simply say that it is uncontroversial that the majority of those who
come within the grips of the court system, who are arrested by the
police, who go to prison or who are put into the care of the probation
service or other, as they will shortly be called, providers of
probation services, simply cannot read or write to a level above the
age of 11. They are unemployable. They are incapable of going down to
the jobcentre and reading the job cards in the windows and on the
stands.
I want to see
whether I can persuade the Government to give an undertaking that they
will devote more of the money that the Secretary of State will have
available under clause 5 in a number of discrete areas. I particularly
want to concentrate on speech therapy and adult comprehension. If one
visits prisons or young offender institutions one finds excellent
officers doing very difficult work with very difficult people. One also
finds teachers who, under very difficult circumstances, are trying to
teach basic literacy and numeracy, computer skills and all sorts of
other things to the people in their care. I dare say that such
provision is also available under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, when
one considers the requirements that a court may impose within the
community punishment system.
What worries me is that far too
little is being done in an effective way to improve the levels of
literacy and numeracy of many of the people who come before the courts
and who find their way either into prison or into the community
punishment system. That matter was discussed in our informal,
non-parliamentary evidence session last week. My hon. Friend the Member
for Buckingham (John Bercow), who has taken a particular interest in
this subject, asked Lord Ramsbotham about his view of the levels of
speech therapy and related subjects in the system. Broadly, Lord
Ramsbotham said that there was a woeful lack of them. Those of us
attending that session came to agree that that needed to be
improved.
9.15
am
Without quoting
at length, I shall mention one or two of the points that Lord
Ramsbotham drew to our attention, because I think that that will be of
value to the Committee. I have here the first typescript of the compact
disc that my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate handed to the Minister
last week. We will go through it to see whether we can help him to fill
in the names at places where the recording is indistinct.
I promise you, Mr.
Bayley, that I shall not quote at length, but it is important that the
Committee has some understanding of what Lord Ramsbotham said about
speech therapy. He said
that
“the moment I
started going to prisons, I said that of all the interventions that
could and should be made in prisons, education was by far the most
important and could be the most effective in preventing
reoffending.”
He went on to ask people in prisons what
was being done about the provision of education, basic skills and so
on, and what sums of money were involved. In due course, he asked
parliamentary questions, too. Having discovered that young offenders in
Brinsford young offenders institution were funded at £438 a
year, those at nearby Werrington at £1,500 a year and those at
Thorn Cross at £2,400 a year, he wanted to know why exactly the
same type of people going to exactly the same type of custody
institution were being funded for that form of education at completely
different levels. It seemed to him that there was no clarity of
direction in the delivery of the service.
He then asked those in the
Prison Service andthose providing the service on behalf of the
Home Office why they had got into that state, and he was given all
sorts of explanations. He was told that some people were described as
being dyslexic, and some as having other intellectual problems and
learning difficulties, but he discovered that there was no uniform,
thought-through approach. He also discovered that the more prisoners
exercised their brains in communication, in understanding each other
and in getting on with other people, the less likely they were to
resort to violence or to return to criminal activity when they came
back into the community.
My point, which I do not want
to labour, is that under both clause 5 and clause 6 the Secretary of
State needs to concentrate hugely, if we are to reduce the level of
reoffending, particularly by young people. We need to do a lot more to
ensure that those who provide probation services, either within the
current national probation service or through the potential providers,
are equipped by training and resources to deliver literacy and
comprehension skills. It is an obvious point, but it is an obvious
point that keeps being
missed.
The hon.
Member for Wrexham has made what might be called a party political
jibe. I am not making a party political point; I am making a point on
which I should have thought there is general agreement. We have a
public interest in reducing the number of offenders, and a moral duty
to improve the conditions of those who go into prisons or YOIs and come
out again, rather than simply permitting the high levels of reoffending
to continue. Nearly 80 per cent. of young offenders reoffend within two
years of release, and the rate for adults is 65 to 67 per cent. It
costs nearly £40,000 a year to house an adult offender, and it
probably costs twice as much to house a young offender. That is simply
a waste of our constituents’ money. Without increasing Home
Office expenditure, we could invest some of that money more wisely and
effectively, if the Secretary of State were to apply his spending
powers under clause 5 in the manner that I am
describing.
My purpose
in moving the amendment is to draw attention, by means of a debating
device, to the problem. Of course, we want the Secretary of State to
make provision for the necessary qualifications for an officer of a
provider of probation services, and there should be no dumbing down of
the expertise and professionalism of graduate and long-term
professional probation officers. We want the self-esteem and
professional reputation of those who work in the service to be
maintained, and we do not want
amateurs coming in and trying to make a cheap fist of the job. Whether
in the public or private sector, those who are providing the work on
behalf of the public need to be of the highest calibre and have the
highest level of training and qualification, rather than chaps who
think, “Oh well, I will give this a
go.”
In
addition to ensuring that the providers are properly trained and
professional, the Secretary of State must concentrate on the terrible
state of our literary services in the criminal justice system. If we
were to get that even half right, we would stand some chance of
improving the lot of the public and of those who come within the grip
of the criminal justice system.
Mark
Hunter (Cheadle) (LD): I want to make some specific
comments in support of the amendment, which is not surprising given
that my name is attached to it along with those of the hon. and learned
Gentleman, other Conservative Members and my hon. Friend the Member for
Ceredigion.
In advance
of the Minister’s response, I find it hard to understand what he
has against the amendment. I hope that he will accept that, like so
many of our amendments, it was tabled in the spirit of co-operation and
trying to improve the Bill, and not to put unnecessary obstacles in the
way. The amendment seeks only to ensure that those who might be
involved in providing probation services are appropriately qualified,
which is an eminently reasonable reassurance for hon. Members to seek.
It would create a requirement for the Secretary of State to ensure that
those who are working as probation officers for contracted-out
providers are as well qualified and well trained as current public
sector probation
officers.
Other hon.
Members have explained why the amendment, which is important, is
needed. We should not lose sight of the fact that we are fortunate in
this country to have high-calibre, committed probation officers in the
public sector. They are dedicated men and women who do a thoroughly
professional job, sometimes in difficult circumstances. I am sure that
the Minister agrees that it is self-evident that the quality of the
service, both rehabilitative and custodial, depends on the individuals
who provide it. The Committee needs to know how prisoners will be dealt
with and supervised effectively, with the care and safety of the public
foremost in mind, and how we are going to aid the rehabilitation
process. In all those instances, we require appropriately and suitably
qualified men and women to do the job.
Clause 3, which opens up the
system to contracted-out services, could allow those without
professional qualifications to work on tasks for which training is
absolutely vital in helping to protect the public and to reduce
reoffending. Without the high calibre of trained probation officers
that a national probation service delivers, there is a danger that the
effectiveness and quality of service delivery will fall. I look forward
to the Minister’s reassurance on that
matter.
It is
essential that professional training is regulated and that the
Secretary of State has a duty to determine that regulation. The
training should be thorough and of sufficient duration to give staff
the effective skills to do the job properly. At present, it is a
requirement in
law that a probation officer has a certificate of qualification in
social work, a CQSW, or a diploma in probation studies, which is a
two-year qualification that can be obtained through distance learning,
college tutorials and supervision as part of a probation team. Staff
have a protected case load during that period, and the mixture of
learning and training has allowed probation officers to do their job
effectively and efficiently. Without that requirement, we cannot
guarantee that the calibre of officers will be up to the standard that
the system
requires.
Agencies
require staff of a certain standard, and the multi-agency public
protection scheme needs staff with both qualifications and significant
experience. The Home Office model notes that those who pose the
greatest risk in categories 3 and 4 must be supervised by qualified and
experienced people. Hon. and right hon. Members, who, like me and the
Minister, have experience of metropolitan authorities know that in
London and most metropolitan councils that group of offenders far
exceeds the number of trained probation officers, hence our concerns
that only people who are suitably and appropriately qualified will be
in a position to carry out those tasks. It is a legitimate matter of
concern, and I look forward to the Minister’s
response.
Mr.
Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow) (Lab): I shall make one brief
point, as I share some of the anxieties that have been raised about the
effects of the clause as drafted. At present, national qualifications
are required for probation officers, so there is a national standard.
However, subsection (2)
states:
“An
individual may be authorised as an officer of the relevant provider
by—
(a) the
Secretary of State;
or
(b) a
provider of probation services (whether the relevant provider or any
other provider) who is authorised to do so by the Secretary of
State.”
Paragraph
(a) would allow a national standard to be maintained, but paragraph (b)
seems to contract out the decision whether someone can be appointed as
an officer. Subsection (2) seems to allow the title “probation
officer” to disappear to be replaced by something else, and it
is a move away from the national standards. That worries me and many
other people, too, especially because the Home Office currently has
specific requirements in respect of people who pose the greatest risks.
I hope that the Minister can reassure me about how training will be
regulated and that one of the effects of subsection (2) will not be
that somebody other than the Minister or the national probation service
will decide whether someone is or is not allowed to act in the sort of
functions that are currently always carried out by trained and
qualified probation
officers.
9.30
am
Ian
Lucas:
I share some of my hon. Friend’s concerns.
Proper training in order to carry out any professional role is
extremely important. I am sure that we will hear some reassurance from
my hon. Friend the Minister on that in a moment.
I rise in response to an
unanticipated debate on speech therapy services. This is an issue to
which I have given some attention and interest. I want to respond to
the accusation that I was indulging in a party political jibe. I am a
politician; we are discussing the reading capabilities of adults in our
prisons, and I see that most of those individuals are unable to read
due to the lack of resources when they were at school.
I particularly focus on the
issue of speech therapy as I am aware from special schools in my
constituency that there is a lack of capacity in the system. There are
too few trained and qualified speech therapists, and access to those
professionals is extremely important, not just for adults but for our
children. I have been working in my constituency with the local special
school and also with the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education
to develop its speech therapy courses in north-east Wales for the
benefit of young peoplein particular. It is, of course, always
necessary for resources to be invested to enable training to take place
and I am very pleased that the Government have increased the number of
speech therapists by almost 2,000 since 1997.
I responded to the point made
by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough because it is always easy
for Opposition parties to suggest that more and more money should be
spent on particular services. It is easy for the Liberal Democrats to
do so because they are perpetually in opposition. As for the
Conservatives, it is particularly ironic that there are individuals and
institutions in my constituency suffering because of past lack of
investment. I responded because I had myself been trying to ensure that
more people were trained, and that is now happening because of
increased investment by this
Government.
It is, of
course, essential that offenders in institutions receive help with and
professional advice about reading. As the hon. and learned Gentleman
correctly pointed out, that is the first step that they need to take to
secure employment. That requires sustained investment because speech
therapy is a professional course that needs professional training. I am
sure that there will be reassurance from my hon. Friend the Minister
that that training will be provided in the future. It is extremely
important that all parties recognise that this area needs to be focused
on if we are to prevent
reoffending.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
I thank hon. Members for speaking to the
amendment and for the contributions that they made to an interesting
debate.
I want to
make sure that the Committee are not confused about the provision of
contracts. We had long debates about contracts on Tuesday under clause
3. I made reference to the offender learning and skills service,
OFLASS, and we discussed some of the issues of education provision. I
was asked about that by the hon. and learned Member for
Harborough.
Clause
3—not clause 5, as the hon. and learned Gentleman pointed
out—gives us the opportunity to see how the contracts will be
drawn up, how they will be developed and how the money will be spent.
Clause 5 contains the mechanism for additional funding for flexible
arrangements as I outlined in my earlier contribution.
I shall first discuss the
amendment and then comment on the wider debate about education and
speech therapy. I agree with the hon. and learned
Gentleman that education is the key to what we want to achieve, and his
points and those of Lord Ramsbotham deserve to have time devoted to
them.
Nothing in the
Bill will affect the professional qualifications of the probation
service. We will ensure that all providers are capable of providing
appropriate, high-quality services monitored by an assurance and
accreditation process appropriate to the service and its contract
value. That process will include assurances about staff training and
qualifications to ensure that there is an appropriately skilled
staff.
The amendment
shows a misunderstanding of what we mean by an “officer of a
provider of probation services”. The term is not intended as a
description of a particular grade of staff any more than is the current
term, “officer of a local probation board”. It is
intended to encompass a range of probation staff and, in due course,
other providers’ staff who will carry out a range of tasks. In
developing a market we need to retain the current flexibility on the
qualifications required for a particular task. That is not defined in
legislation and should not be in the future. Contracts will specify the
skills, experience and qualifications required for particular tasks and
we remain absolutely committed to high
standards.
In our
discussions on Tuesday I mentioned the new framework of support,
training and qualifications for probation officers that the National
Offender Management Service is considering. I have said all the way
through the debates that the Bill is not about doing things on the
cheap or dumbing down but about maintaining high standards and ensuring
that probation officers are adequately trained in the widespread tasks
that they are required to do. Even now there is a distinction between
probation officers and probation support officers, and it is important
that the right qualifications exist for the right services. We do not
intend to upset those arrangements; indeed, we want to strengthen and
develop them.
I am
grateful for to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham for his points on
education and speech therapy. I know that he has a long-standing record
on the matter, so it was heartening to hear what he said. I am pleased
to acknowledge the expertise of Lord Ramsbotham, who was the chief
inspector of prisons between 1995 and 2001 and made a great
contribution. However, as I have said to him, more recently he has been
ultra-critical of what the Government are trying to do and has not
acknowledged the amount of investment that has been made. I was happy
to meet him to discuss his aspirations on speech therapy. He and the
hon. and learned Member for Harborough are right to say that we need to
concentrate on it to tackle reoffending and give people the tools to
express themselves and build up their skills.
I said on Tuesday that 10 per
cent. of all basic skills are learned in prison, which I am quite proud
of, and that employability rates have gone up. I am pleased to tell the
Committee that Lord Ramsbotham has been able to find the requisite
number of members to set up an all-party group. I know that he has
invited my noble Friend Baroness Scotland to address one of its first
meetings. The hon. and learned Gentleman can rest
assured that the issue will continue to be debated at great length and
with a great deal of involvement from hon. Members of all
parties.
Mr.
Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): It would help me, and
perhaps the rest of the Committee, if the Minister could clarify how
many establishments, including secure training centres, lack speech and
language
therapy.
The Committee
will remember that the Government introduced a Green Paper, the
cross-governmentpaper, “Reducing reoffending through
skills and employment”. It covered employability, the links
between skills training and the labour market, and the need to provide
offenders with a direct route into employment and employment support.
The aims stated in the paper built on the existing prison and probation
service initiatives, and the next steps action plan was launched at a
conference in
December.
If we look
at what the Government have done about the resources that enable
prisons to conduct work in education and training for offenders, we see
thatthere have been substantial increases in
investment:£57 million in 2001-02, £151 million
in 2005-06 and £156 million in 2006-07. A further £30
million has been secured from the European social fund by the Learning
and Skills Council for initial provision over two financial years, 2006
and 2007. I hope that the Committee will accept that the investment is
there and that there is a thrust to achieve our
objectives.
The hon.
and learned Gentleman made reference to the hon. Member for Buckingham,
who has raised the issue on a number of occasions, not only in
questions in the House, but in conversation. He feels deeply about the
matter, which is not a party political issue. We all believe in
securing improvements, in order to tackle our reoffending
rates.
As my hon.
Friend the Member for Wrexham said, between September 1997 and 2005 the
number of speech and language therapists employed in the NHS increased
by 1,888 or 38.8 per cent. The Department of Health expects there to be
further increases in the NHS speech and language therapy work force as
a result of delivering the NHS plan forecast of 30,000 more therapists
and scientists by 2008—2,000 higher than the base
line.
Mr.
Garnier:
Will the Minister tell us how many of the speech
therapists in that extra 38 per cent. now employed in the NHS have been
dedicated to work in the prisons and custody
system?
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
I shall endeavour to do that—hopefully
the information is here. If not, I shall write to the hon. and learned
Gentleman.
The vacancy
rate for speech and language therapists in the NHS has fallen from 2.5
per cent. in March 2005 to 1.1 per cent. in March 2006. The number of
training places for SLTs is increasing: it was 797 in 2005-06, up 74
per cent. since 1999-2000. Speech and language therapy services are
already available for young people housed in young offenders
institutions and secure
training centres. Even though the therapists are not employed directly
by or based in such institutions, they are available as specialist
referral in all primary care trusts. We are examining what more can be
done to improve mental health assessments and services for young
offenders in the Prison Service estate. We are looking to see what we
can do about the further scope and timing of
announcements.
Young
offenders institutions provide mentalhealth in-reach services
to meet the needs of thosewith severe and enduring mental
health problems. The level of service provision required is estimated
bythe local prison health assessments, which inform
commissioning of appropriate services. The services were previously
adult focused. Four dedicated units for girls aged 16 and 17 have
opened. The new units focus on being child centred. The needs of young
people are identified by multi-agency co-operation, including workers
from youth offending teams and staff specialising in discipline,
education and
health.
The facilities
are there, and there is a major and ongoing expansion programme to
secure equitable geographic access across the country. The number of
beds for those young people with mental health needs who are in contact
with the judicial system will increase from 28 in two units in 2003 to
a planned 88 beds in six units by 2008. I have outlined to the
Committee the massive growth in investment in education and how there
is now a focus on mental health issues, particularly speech and
language
therapy.
Mr.
Hurd:
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again.
That was a long list, but I am not sure that I heard the answer to my
question, which was how many institutions lack speech and language
therapy
today.
9.45
am
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
I think that I answered that by saying that the
provision is there, although not specifically in each centre. To give
clarity, I will write to the hon. Gentleman and also give the
information to the Committee, so that there is no misunderstanding
about provision.
I
hope that we have met the need of the hon. and learned Member for
Harborough to have the discussion, which he was right to raise. The
work of the all-party group will continue, and the Government will
continue to focus on the issue. I am sure that we will return to it in
future. I hope that I have explained why it is not necessary to move in
the direction suggested by the amendment. We do not want to affect the
professional qualifications in any way; they will be at the heart of
what we are trying to achieve.
The hon. Member for Cheadle
talked about what the safeguards would be if we were to dumb down. One
is the inspectorate, which is independent and will, I am sure, identify
any deterioration in provision of service. That will not happen,
however, because we are talking about developing people, not dumbing
down. I hope that, having heard my explanation, the hon. and learned
Member for Harborough will withdraw his
amendment.
Mr.
Garnier:
I am grateful to the hon. Members for Cheadle,
for Walthamstow and for Wrexham for their contributions, and to my hon.
Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood for his
interventions.
It was good
of the Minister to deal as comprehensively as he could with the points
that were made. However, this is not as easy a matter to deal with as
the Minister is trying to imply. I am sure that, on a national and
general level, the Government have invested more money in speech
therapy in the national health service. If the Minister tells me that
the numbers went up by 38 per cent. between 1997 and 2005, I am sure
that he is right. However, our problem is the divided nature of the
provision of speech therapy. The Home Office will say, “Speech
therapy is nothing to do with us.” Similarly, in the Prison
Service and more widely in the Home Office, there is a feeling that it
is a good idea to have speech therapy, but that it does not come within
their remits—it is really a matter for the Department for
Education and Skills or the Department of Health. The DFES will say,
“This is not strictly an education matter; it is
cross-curricular or cross-departmental, and therefore nothing to
dowith
us.”
Local
learning and skills councils do not input speech and language therapy
into the prison system; speech therapy is funded by the health service.
But how is the health service arranged throughout the country? Through
primary care trusts. It is for the PCTs to work out in their budgets
how they deploy whatever money they have on speech and language
therapy. If the PCT in an area where there happens to be a prison or a
YOI decides that that comes way down its list of things to do—it
reckons that its priority is to fund health services for people
outside, not inside, prison; prisoners come at the end of the
queue—and then runs out of money, as so many PCTs have done,
speech and language therapy in the criminal justice system is never
arranged.
There might
well have been a 38 per cent. increase in the number of speech and
language therapists in the NHS, but that has no bearing on this issue.
It is not the answer to the absence of speech and language therapy in
the criminal justice system. We have some 17 YOIs and many other secure
training units across England and Wales, and I believe that it costs
some £33,000 a year to employ a speech therapist. It costs
nearly £80,000 to house every young offender. If those young
offenders keep coming back because they leave the institutions
inadequately equipped to deal with life outside, we will not have to
spend very long doing the mathematics to realise that it would be worth
while not to spend more money—I am not, as the hon. Member for
Wrexham suggests, a typical Opposition spokesman demanding that the
Government should spend more money—but to work out how to
sensibly, intelligently and strategically manage the resources that we
have. Spending £33,000 a year on a speech therapist who produces
results that can be measured in a reduction in offending and
reoffending is probably a better use of public money than spending
£80,000 a year on a young offender who will reoffend and come
back within two years and will very likely end up in the adult custody
system.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
I do not disagree with the outcome that the
hon. and learned Gentleman is trying to achieve: to find a better way
of spending that £80,000.
If speech therapy is the way, then we should do that. I agree with him.
But I did not say that it was easy. I said that the framework is now in
place. He will know that the health provision in the prison estate has
been transferred to the PCTs. Great strides are being made in the
provision of health care for prisoners. That goes to the heart of what
we are trying to achieve. The solution to reoffending is community wide
and service wide, and it comes not just from the provision of the Home
Office, the Prison Service or the probation service. The hon. and
learned Gentleman will argue that the pace is not quick enough, but the
framework is in place to deliver what he wants to achieve. I was merely
pointing out the Government’s
record.
Mr.
Garnier:
The logic of the Minister’s saying that he
agrees with me is that he should have done something about
it.
Mr.
Garnier:
Of course I accept the Minister’s
integrity. I am sure that he believes exactly what he has told me. The
problem is that there does not seem to be any strategic thinking in his
Department to put this in place. I remember this happening in 1995-97
when Conservative Ministers told us that they were spending £X
million nationally on this, that and the other, but it had no bearing
on what was happening in real life. This Government have fallen into
that trap rather earlier than we did.
We now see perfectly decent
Ministers like this one standing up to say that the Government have
increased by 38 per cent. the provision in the NHS. But these are two
ships passing in the night. A 38 per cent. increase in NHS provision
would be fine if it had an effect on speech therapy services in the
prison system. It does not. That is what I must try to get the Minister
to understand. That is why I cannot accept his invitation to withdraw
the amendment.
Even
though I disagree fundamentally with the hon. Member for Cheadle on the
issue of contestability, I am concerned that the Government are not
being sufficiently rigorous in demanding high standards and
qualifications from those people in the non-Government system for the
provision of probation services. Competition is necessary and is
politically, intellectually and in every other sense healthy. But I
want to have fair competition and I want to have competition between
qualified probation officers who currently work in the system and
people of equal standing in the private and charitable sectors. What I
do not want is for the probation service to have one hand tied behind
its back and to have to compete with what I would loosely call
“amateurs”. This is far too important an area of public
safety for unqualified amateurs to be dabbling in. I see that the
Minister has become excited, so I shall give way to
him.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
It is amazing what excites me these days. I
cannot let the hon. and learned Gentleman get away with the tag
“amateurs”. He should be able to give us a description or
an example of who would be an
amateur providing a service that the current probation service provides.
I am intrigued to find out who these amateurs
are.
Mr.
Garnier:
I would be able to give the Minister an example
if he could provide me with rather more detail of what he has in his
head. The problem is the vagueness of the Bill. Under clause 3(3)(c)
the Secretary of State is to be given powers
“to make contractual or other
arrangements with third parties for purposes connected with the
probation provision”.
We
do not know who these people are. I have an idea, and I have an idea
who I would like to see doing this sort of work, but I have absolutely
no idea what will be in the contractual terms. The Minister told us
last week that he was getting into the dangerous territory of the
difference between statutory and contractual terms. It seems to me that
the policy should be that the contract should reflect the statute. I
have every confidence in the Minister’s ability to draw up a
contract, but the public need more reassurance. We need to know who the
people are and precisely what qualifications they are to have. We do
not get even the drafts of the regulations, let alone the detail of the
lists of probation service providers.
I have a number of worries,
although I share the Government’s view on contestability, unlike
many Labour Back Benchers not only in this Committee but outside it. I
regret to say that I am going to be disobliging and invite the
Committee to express its opinion about the
amendment.
Question
put, That the amendment be
made:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 7, Noes
10.
Division
No.
4
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly negatived.
Clause 6 ordered to stand
part of the
Bill.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2007 | Prepared 19 January 2007 |