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4 Nov 2009 : Column 286WH—continued
One virtue of community punishment is that it is a step before custody. An offender in work who is given a short jail sentence, which is ineffective in any case, would lose their job and therefore be more likely to reoffend when released. By going through that scheme, such people can keep their jobs and still pay their debt to the community. It is done in a most constructive way, and many in the community really value the work that they do in and around north Derbyshire. It is useful as a
way of paying back society, it is useful for justice, and it works for the individual. We should not say that it is perfect; no scheme is. One of the staff told me that he had been working there for 20 years and had seen one man come back eight times, so it clearly does not work for some. What we should do with those constant petty reoffenders is another matter.
I have spent time with all sorts of other groups-the drug interventions programme, the prolific and other priority offender programme, the behaviour management programme, Victim Support, the domestic abuse programme and the offenders into employment programme. The latter was proud of the fact that it had got 378 offenders into employment during the last year. People who have employment on coming out of jail on completion of their sentence are far less likely to reoffend; all the statistics show that. Those programmes work. They all make vital interventions; they all improve quality of life for the community; they all cut reoffending rates; and they do it far more effectively and at a better cost than prison does.
The Derbyshire probation staff know that what they do is effective, a fact that is echoed in other national examples. However, they complain about the self-defeating cuts that they face in funding and staffing, as they will inevitably lead to more reoffending and more problems for the community. This is most certainly one area of public spending that it would be self-defeating and foolish to cut in the years to come.
3.35 pm
Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) (Con): I start by thanking the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) for launching this debate. We are all grateful to him for doing so. This is my first formal encounter with the Minister since I became shadow Prisons Minister. I look forward to many more.
Alan Duncan: Many, many more, perhaps from the other side of the House in due course.
For the last 102 years, the probation service has worked tirelessly to protect the public and rehabilitate offenders through its effective supervision of those offenders out in the community. It is and always has been a vital part of the criminal justice system. Great credit must go to all those who work so hard in what is often a difficult job, especially as so many of their efforts and achievements are left unsung.
There is no doubt that a service that supervises more than 175,000 new offenders every year, that supervises approximately 200,000 offenders on community sentences each year, that supervises a further 50,000 offenders on licence each year, that provides over 246,000 pre-sentence reports and 20,000 bail information reports, and that supervises more than 8 million hours of unpaid work in local communities is indispensable, worthy of respect, and requires careful management, motivation and intelligent, strategic leadership.
This is a seriously important service, but it is fair to say that it is seriously overstretched. I shall consider what it is achieving. Most crucially, we must look first at
reoffending rates. Above all else, the protection of the public and the reduction of reoffending must be the goal of the probation service. There is no doubt that it faces new and more difficult challenges than it did 10 years ago. For instance, violent crime has doubled and drug offences have increased dramatically; those are but two of the serious ones. The probation service cannot supervise offenders minute by minute, every day and night, or guarantee that offenders under their supervision will not reoffend.
With the current reoffending rate at 36 per cent. within one year for community sentences, and at 47 per cent. within one year of release from prison, we are clearly not doing well enough. The latest annual MAPPA figures published this month show an increase in the number of serious further offences committed by the most dangerous offenders-admittedly from a low percentage; but only one is still a serious problem. There has been an increase also in the number of level 2 offenders returned to prison for breach of their licence.
The Government continue to say nothing about level 1 offenders, who make up over two thirds of those covered by MAPPA. They may be the least dangerous, but we are told nothing about them and have reason to believe that they are responsible for more reoffences than other levels of offender.
In taking probation performance as a whole and considering where we might improve it, the hon. Gentleman focused to some extent on funding. Given the current economic climate, that is no small issue. At a time of economic recession, we need to ensure value for money. No public service will be immune from economies, and funding problems will inevitably raise difficult questions. However, value for money and savings in the long-term cannot be bought at the expense of public safety or by putting justice or the running of an effective probation service at risk.
Ministers have claimed that there has been a 70 per cent. increase in probation funding in the past seven or eight years, but the vast majority of that increase has not reached the front line. That seems to have been a common theme in a number of speeches this afternoon, and no doubt the Minister will want to reply to that point. Despite what might have been overall increases in spending, front-line probation services have been struggling for the past 10 years. We would like some clarification from the Minister about this matter. Last week, the Government announced that they would cut the probation budget in 2010-11 by £26 million less than was originally intended. Still, however, savings of £20 million had to be found in 2009-10, and, as has been mentioned, another £24 million will have to be found in 2010-11, equating to £54 million over those two years. To make matters worse, the National Association of Probation Officers estimates that by 2011-so, over the same period-there will be a 6 per cent. rise on the 2008-09 probation numbers of 150,000 people being under supervision. The Minister is looking at me rather incredulously, so we look forward to hearing her reply.
No one doubts that savings will be necessary in coming years, but it is essential that they are made in the right places and that we understand that the service cannot function without front-line services that are adequately supported. The total case load of offenders being supervised by the probation service rose by 53 per cent. between the end of December 1997 and the end of
December 2008, from 159,200 to 243,400, but the number of qualified probation officers increased by only 15 per cent. to 7,120. However, research published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in April 2008 showed that between 2002 and 2005 the number of managerial staff increased by 70 per cent.
The savings could begin with a slimming of what might be called Government waste. Can the Minister explain where the £54 million that was spent on consultants went and what they were employed for? Until their comments on funding last week in 2008-09, the Government spent £90,000 on training each new trainee probation officer, only to have to tell more than half the group that they will be redundant or will have no secure future beyond March 2010. Of course, we know the sad, sorry tale of the Government's IT project, C-NOMIS-the custody-national offender management information system.
In the past 10 years, the probation service has fallen victim to too many unintelligent reorganisations. The structure, organisation and management of probation services have changed substantially at least three times, but change is not necessarily the same as progress, and the wrong changes benefit no one. Following the latest reorganisation and the creation of the National Offender Management Service, we are left with a NOMS headquarters with only 113, or 3 per cent., of the 4,270 NOMS headquarters staff hailing from a probation, as opposed to a prison, background. I am advised that 98 of those 113 are on secondment rather than being in permanent positions. All that suggests that there is a virtual absence of probation personnel in senior positions in the NOMS hierarchy.
I am acutely aware of the Minister's sensitivity to suggestions that NOMS is an expensive leviathan, and I expect that the Government will argue that much of the budget is money that hitherto would have been included in the separate prisons and probation budgets. Even if one takes that into account, there is still a rather large hole-perhaps as much as £300 million-that one can only assume is accounted for by the massive failure in the IT systems that it has been designing. Also, it is estimated that the ratio of bureaucrats to front-line workers is about 1:3.
The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy mentioned a parliamentary question asked by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier). The hon. Gentleman considered the reply to be rather inadequate because a survey from within the Department did exist at that time. The Minister has said that that document was quite a cursory snapshot, but there is a lot of serious information and strong opinion within it. The document shows that in some probation areas of England and Wales, officers spend as little as 13 per cent. of their time in direct contact with offenders, and the fact that many officers spend less than a quarter of their time doing face-to-face work comes through in the report quite a lot. It also found that officers in some parts of the country see those who are judged as being at low or medium risk of harming the public for as little as 15 minutes a week.
In that survey, there was a tone of anxiety, if not complaint, particularly about the amount of time that officers have to spend on paperwork. One was quoted as saying:
"The impression I have is that for every 15 minutes I spend engaged in face-to-face contact with offenders, I spend another 15 to 30 minutes recording it."
Will the Minister commit to offer to the House not only the full publication of that survey-with all the qualifications and, perhaps, inadequacies that she has mentioned-but a written response containing her assessment and explanation of what is important within it? The whole point of the probation service is that it should be looking people in the eye and trying to help them.
Furthermore, the tragic case involving Dano Sonnex illustrated that some probation officers are supervising more than 100 offenders at any one time. A recent written parliamentary answer from the Minister admitted:
"There is no specified maximum number of offenders that an officer may supervise."-[Official Report, 12 October 2009; Vol. 497, c. 154W.]
I can accept that answer, but will the Minister give us a feeling of what she thinks is an ideal number that they could and should supervise? I think we would all like to reduce officer case loads by redistributing resources to the front line. The Conservatives would like a review that would minimise the time spent on form-filling, ensure that resources follow risk and ensure that the amount of time spent face to face with offenders is maximised as far as possible.
When the prison estate becomes overcrowded, there is a clear and obvious physical display of that, and some limitations, but the same is not true of probation services. When the probation service is overburdened and overworked, as the Prison Service is, in some respects, there is no early-release operation safeguard and there are not the same controls of discipline and prison walls. Overcrowding in the probation service can result in cases such as that of Dano Sonnex and could lead to an increase in reoffending on our streets. More offenders are being supervised by the probation service than there are offenders in prison, but there are far fewer staff. Also, resources are often focused in the wrong place and there is too much emphasis on bureaucracy and process instead of the better public protection that would come with more face-to-face contact.
The answer to that problem is not simple, short or straightforward, but we can at least try. It is vital to allocate resources intelligently, focus on front-line work, minimise reorganisation and run simple but effective IT systems, but what we need overall is intelligent, strategic leadership from a Government who value the probation service and the vital role that it has to play in reducing reoffending and keeping the public safe.
3.48 pm
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Maria Eagle): Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) on securing the debate, which I think everyone present has enjoyed. As ever, he put forward his points in a deeply irritating manner that forced me to keep leaping up and down, and I ended up annoying him because he thought that I was being tetchy.
Mr. Llwyd: The Minister's description of me as deeply irritating is probably the best compliment I have had in my political life, so I am grateful to her.
Maria Eagle: I am glad to have made the hon. Gentleman's day, but he has made mine as well, so our debate in this Chamber has been mutually beneficial. We have had a good debate about some extremely serious issues.
One thing has come across overwhelmingly in everyone's contribution: Members on both sides of the House appreciate the work that probation officers and others who work for our probation service do in all our constituencies and across the land. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made absolutely clear, sometimes it really is a thankless task that they undertake on all our behalves. They do not get thanked enough when they do brilliantly well, as they usually do, and when something goes wrong it is frequently on the front pages of the newspapers and lynch mobs want to blame someone. I realise, as do all Members who have spoken in the debate, that that makes for a difficult working environment and a difficult job generally. We thank them for the work that they do, because it is generally absolutely brilliant; we all agree on that, if on nothing else. The 42 areas that comprise the national probation service, whether trusts or area probation boards, are generally high-performing organisations, and their performance has been improving over the years.
I want to say something about the Sonnex case and London Probation, because that was a particularly appalling instance of failings adding up and resulting in an absolutely terrible situation. We know that Sonnex could and should have been in custody at the time he committed those terrible murders, and that the individual from London Probation who was wrongly charged with looking after him was far too inexperienced to do so. No blame is attached to that individual, as was made absolutely clear at all times in the reviews and reports that were published. Andrew Bridges' report, to which the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy referred, made it absolutely clear that there were serious management failings in London Probation at the time, so much so that the gentleman in charge of that organisation felt the need to resign.
London Probation now expects to recruit 120 new probation officers, 100 of whom were being recruited anyway, with money that London Probation already had. One of the biggest concerns highlighted in the Sonnex case related to the poor allocation of resources among the different parts of London Probation that needed them. The problem was caused not by a lack of resources, but by poor management and failure to deal with issues of concern, such as the high work loads of inexperienced officers. London Probation is beginning to make significant improvements, as we expect it to do, so I would hate the whole service to be judged by that set of horrendous failings, which have been acknowledged all round, and which will be put right in London for the future.
The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy referred to budgets, and to the consequence of the expectation, which existed until late last week, that the indicative budgets that probation areas had been working to would become next year's actual budgets. It is now known that that is not the case; an additional £26 million has been found, which means that the reduction in budgets for next year across the entire probation service will be 2.68 per cent. The precise
allocations from the director of offender management to each probation area or trust have not yet been determined and are being worked out, but we will want to ensure that the money goes from the centre to the front line.
There is enough money in the budget to employ 625 probation officers and offer permanent opportunities to all the trainees, about whom Members have expressed concern; they gave the figures from their areas. Some of the people who have been offered only temporary contracts ought now to see those translated into proper, full-time employment opportunities. As all Members who spoke in the debate have suggested, it is nonsense that someone should be trained at a cost of £94,000, and then find that their services are not needed because of budgetary constraints. I can make it clear that that kind of nonsense will not occur under the new training arrangements, because people will not be offered training contracts without a guaranteed job. I hope that the extra resources that we have found for probation areas this year will ensure that those people are able to employ the skills that they have acquired during training.
Several Members referred to the 70 per cent. increase in probation resources since 1997. That figure is correct; it is a 70 per cent. increase in real terms, taking account of inflation. There has also been a 53 per cent. increase in the work load, a point to which several Members referred. There has been an overall increase of 49.3 per cent. in the total number of probation staff in post over the same period, and an increase of 15.5 per cent. in the total number of probation officers in post. There have been some real increases, and that is without taking into account the number of probation service officers, which has been subject to a bigger increase. That budget increase has been translated into real and significant increases in front-line staff who are there to do the job. We want to ensure, however, that the money that we provide goes, as far as is possible, to the front line.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington asked me to come to one of the justice unions group's seminars, and I would be happy to do that-I do not think that I have ever refused to do so. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I meet the probation trade unions together monthly, and I meet them more frequently than that. I am always open to hearing from trade unions that are representing staff, and from staff directly, if Members wish me to do so.
I welcome my opposite number, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan), to his new post as shadow Prisons Minister-it will be a long stretch, with tough work to do. He and several other Members referred to the proportion of time that probation officers and front-line staff spend in front of computers. I am not willing to accept that all the time spent in front of computers is not front-line work that reduces reoffending, because some of that time is used to make proper records, which we would all expect them to do, of the work that they do face to face with the offenders whom they manage. That time is also spent completing the risk assessment process using the OASys tool, which is the basis of the system whereby the service as a whole assesses the risks posed by individuals who are being supervised; that is an essential part of the job.
In answer to a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington, I accept that OASys is deeply frustrating to fill in and far too slow. We are
looking with our staff at ways of improving and streamlining the process, and we hope to be able to make progress on that. However, it is important that we do not simply say that any time spent in front of a computer is wasted and somehow means that the system is bureaucratic. The work done on computer is a fundamental part of the work that probation staff and officers do, so we cannot promise to remove it completely.
The hon. Members for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy and for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) referred to the situation in Wales and Derbyshire respectively. I accept that the picture can be different in each local area, and that the number of fully qualified probation officers will have decreased slightly in some areas and increased in others. I do not think that it is for me, the Minister sitting in Whitehall, to determine precisely how resources that go to the front line are used. That is why those areas are run locally. It is important that we send the signal that we want the additional money being provided to go to front-line services. I am sending that signal strongly. We certainly want to ensure that over the next year, the extra money-the money that is over and above what was expected-is used on front-line services, to employ trainee probation officers and ease some of the work load pressures to which Members have referred. I am afraid that I do not have time to mention all the other points-
John Cummings (in the Chair): Order. We must move on to the next debate.
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