Examination of Witnesses (Questions 560
- 579)
TUESDAY 16 DECEMBER 2008
RT HON
DAVID HANSON
MP AND MR
ALAN CAMPBELL
MP
Q560 Chairman: Mr Hanson and Mr Campbell,
welcome. We are all giving our apologies for the justice statement
later this afternoon, and I know that these things are not entirely
within the control of the Department either, the kind of role
in which Mr Campbell used to operate before recently becoming
a minister, but we are pleased to note that an important recommendation
the Committee made in its earlier guise about transparency and
the family courts has effectively been accepted by the Government
with appropriate conditions to safeguard privacy and the families
involved, and we very much welcome that. We are very glad to have
you both here, and in fact ideally we would have a couple more
departments as well because we are trying to look at the money
we spend on criminal justice and crime, whether we are spending
it in the most effective places and whether we have got the mechanism
available to decide to spend it in the best possible places. Now,
you did pretty well with the Treasury; you actually persuaded
them to give you a very large commitment to build three titan
prisons. How is it you can manage that, yet you cannot get quite
small sums out of them for things like Custody Plus which are
known to reduce re-offending?
Mr Hanson:
Well, we have had a commitment, Sir Alan, from the Treasury for
the first titan, the capital costs only, which is in the region
of about £350 million, and we have to bid in future spending
rounds for future commitments against that capital expenditure
for future titans, although we have an understanding that that
will be the case. We also have to look within our settlements
in the future as to how much that will cost in terms of the running
costs for those prisons and within the whole total settlement
we have got something like, in my Department, in NOMS, around
£4 billion which I currently have to examine the expenditure
on a range of issues, including probation and prisons and the
Reducing Re-offending agenda. On the Custody Plus issue, obviously
we did have the agreement in the 2003-04 Custody Plus and, as
yet, we have not looked at implementing that for financial reasons
because we have looked at how we can deal with spending in other
areas.
Q561 Chairman: But here is something
which you know works and you cannot get money for that out of
the Treasury, yet something which is very expensive on which there
is enough controversy for you to have deferred your response to
your own consultation, and I am not complaining about that, it
is a good thing, it needs some more thought, but how come you
did so well with the Treasury on what you cannot prove and not
very well on things you can prove?
Mr Hanson: Well, we have had to
look at the demand for prison places over the next five or six
years and we have looked at that demand in very great detail,
and I know you have had discussions with colleagues from the Ministry
about that issue. What we have tried to do is to examine how we
provide the extra places that we require and, whatever our arguments
about the greater use of community sentences, of which I am a
great advocate, and our arguments about reducing re-offending
and investing in people and preventing offending for those who
go through the system, our estimate is that we will need additional
prison places, around about 96,000, by 2013-14. That 96,000 is
obviously 12,000 to 13,000 more than our current 83,000-84,000
places which we have got currently and how we have decided to
both modernise the estate and build new places is through the
provision of larger-scale prisons for two reasons: first of all,
for a more efficient way of providing those prisons; and, secondly,
to look at how we modernise the estate and provide capacity closer
to home for people who are currently dispersed across the country
at large. This is why we have chosen the North West, the Midlands
and London as our potential sites.
Q562 Julie Morgan: Is the proposal
to build the titan prisons still economically viable in the present
situation?
Mr Hanson: Well, we think it is
because again I think there has been some misunderstanding around
the concept of titan prisons. We are looking at the availability
of the potential cluster-type prison where we will have within
one site a number of particular units which provide specialist
services for particular types of prisoner, and what we can do
is bring together a number of the educational interventions, a
number of the drug interventions and a number of cost-reduction
measures in a much more efficient way with that model than we
could do potentially by building for 7,500 places and, let us
say, something like 30,500-place units instead.
Q563 Julie Morgan: When will the
actual timetable for the building be available?
Mr Hanson: Well, as the Chairman
has indicated, we have had a consultation on design issues over
the past few months. I am expecting to report the results of that
consultation some time early in the new year because we did have
a considerable amount of interest in the titan proposals. On the
current proposals, we are hoping, subject to the consultation,
that we would make an announcement with regard to the first potential
titan site, and we have the capital for that at around £350
million, and that we would be announcing that after the consultation
response has been announced, but obviously we are still working
through that and that is one of the reasons, as the Chairman has
indicated, that we have put the consultation response back until
the early new year. Post that consultation response, we will be
evaluating the first titan site and, I hope, announcing a site
very early on because there is obviously a lead-in time between
announcement and delivery of a site which is a considerable lead-in
time of potentially three and a half to four years.
Q564 Julie Morgan: It has already
been mentioned, the big problem of re-offending, where I think
46% of offenders sentenced to custody will already have had three
or more custodial sentences. How will investing in these extra
prison places actually address the re-offending issue?
Mr Hanson: Well, obviously within
the titan prison, as with any new prison build that we are undertaking
shortly, there will be regimes in place to look at offending behaviour
and reducing re-offending. That is constant through our existing
prison estate and it will be a factor and feature of the new prison
build places that we put in place. I am anxious to look at how
we use prison, but also how we use other forms of sentences as
well, so I have now in place targets to reduce re-offending by
10% over the next three years, and that will be a mixture of work
done in prison, but also done in the community and marrying the
two up together. In relation to the particular issue of titan
prisons, they will be no different from other prisons in the regimes
that we put in place and when we try to look at how we deal with
those people who come to us to make sure that we reduce their
offending on leaving prison, whatever time that is.
Q565 Julie Morgan: Post-2014, do
you see the need for more prison places after that or is that
your limit?
Mr Hanson: Well, we monitor it
constantly not just on an annual basis, but even on a monthly
and weekly basis. Our estimate is that 96,000 places by 2013-14
is what we expect we will need because, for good or for evil,
more people are being caught, sentences are longer and we have
got more serious, dangerous and violent offenders serving longer
sentences. Last year alone, the number of people sentenced to
life imprisonment rose by 5%, the population in prison, so we
are finding that growth in the system and what we have to do is
to manage that growth while at the same time, I think and I hope,
sharing some of the objectives of the Committee and those who
have been before you which is to take out of the criminal justice
system and out of prison those people for whom prison is not an
appropriate place or a place where they are not helped to prevent
their re-offending, and that means for me personally some women,
some people with mental health issues and some people who are
serving currently under-12-month sentences.
Q566 Julie Morgan: With women, how
much do you think the prison population can be reduced?
Mr Hanson: Well, obviously myself
and my colleague, Maria Eagle, are constantly looking at that.
Maria Eagle, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, put a written
ministerial statement in last week about progress on the Corston
Review. We currently have around 4,000 women in prison. That figure
is slightly less than it was this time last year, and I believe
we can reduce it still further because there are two issues particularly
with women that I want to draw to the Committee's attention. There
are a lot of women on remand who, at the end of their remand,
are either not convicted or are sentenced to a period which covers
their remand and then leave prison, and there are a lot of women
for whom, in my view again, the community-based sentence could
be more appropriate. In the written ministerial statement last
week, Maria Eagle announced that we would be looking in the new
year at some further diversion schemes and putting new resources
into that, and I hope again before the end of this financial year
that further announcements will be made on that.
Q567 Julie Morgan: Is there a danger
that, by putting so much money into the physical prison places,
you are not going to be able to put so much into that sort of
thing?
Mr Hanson: Well, we have to balance
it all the time and again this year the budget for my area of
responsibility, the National Offender Management Service, is around
£4 billion. Just under £1 billion of it, £914-15
million, is for probation services and the rest is spent on what
we do in prison and, within that, there is a large chunk of money
spent on what we do in terms of tackling the causes of offending
related to drugs, education, literacy, numeracy, alcohol and employment
and training. What I need to do is to utilise that budget very
well and imaginatively and also, as we are trying to do, bring
in other sources of money from the Third Sector and from business
to help meet some of our objectives.
Q568 Chairman: As a supplementary
estimate, there is a 28% reduction over-estimate in the NOMS budget,
there is as 13% increase in the public sector prison expenditure
and a 66% increase in the private sector prison expenditure. Is
this a process of transfer of activity into prisons from elsewhere
or is it all to do with the same people sitting at the same desk,
but now being badged to a different bit of the service?
Mr Hanson: What we have tried
to do and what we are trying to do is to make significant savings
next year and to look at the budget for next year, and we are
still in the process, Sir Alan, of completing that consideration.
What we are trying to do with the formation of the National Offender
Management Service, in its current form, is we are targeting reducing
bureaucracy across the board at a regional and head office level,
ensuring that we try to protect the front line both in terms of
what we do in probation and in terms of prison and to reduce the
duplication that will exist in management structures between the
two. Next year, I have to try to find £150 million from our
budget, which is a significant sum, and doing that by looking
at the very savings I have mentioned in regional and national
offices rather than headquarters staff. I am very anxious to try
to continue to do work on community-based activities, on prevention,
on re-offending for people who go through probation and the community,
but at the same time I have also to look at funding the cost of
additional prison places in revenue costs, and we have got 4,000
extra places this year which all have a revenue cost, and we have
to look at what we do with people in prison in a much more effective
way than we have done in the past to change their behaviour, and
that has a cost as well.
Chairman: We will be putting in some
detailed queries aimed at some of the points I have just made
to you.
Q569 Alun Michael: You have made
it sound very difficult, David. Is it not the fact that how you
do that has to see more going in to building up the confidence
in community sentences because, otherwise, your aspiration to
reduce the number in prison and to increase the effectiveness
of the work with people in prison is not going to be attainable?
Mr Hanson: Absolutely. The key
thing for me, and what I have been trying to do over the past
18 months I have had this job, is to increase confidence in community-based
sentences because I know that for a certain section of the offending
community they work better in preventing re-offending than does
a short-term prison sentence. Now, to do that I have to really
tackle three or four key areas. One is public confidence. We are
all Members of Parliament, we all know that we have to face our
electorate and they have to have confidence that it is a real
punishment, but that it is also an effective punishment, so we
have been trying to raise awareness of the effectiveness of community
sentences with the public. I need to do that with the sentencers
because they need to know that there is effective community sentencing
and that it will be used in a proper and effective way, and that
is why earlier this year we allocated an additional £40 million
to develop work with sentencers in terms of confidence. I have
to ultimately make sure that, when someone is sentenced to a sentence,
they have it available, they have it available quickly and that,
when they go on it, they complete it, and there has been a lack
of confidence, if I am honest, in the past about all three of
those particular issues. I have been trying to increase the public
confidence, increase the capability to deliver and at the same
time increase sentencer awareness of the options open because,
as you will know, Mr Michael, from previous incarnations, the
12 2003 community-based sentences are not used, in my view, to
the extent that they should be.
Q570 Alun Michael: That is true and
one of the things that you might like to look at is the effectiveness
of getting sentencers, particularly judges, out to see community
sentences so that they have a greater understanding of where they
are sending. What I wanted to just probe with you is the question
of effectiveness because the Sentencing Commission Working Group
explicitly did not review sentencing policy or the cost-effectiveness
of sentencing. Would it not be sensible to be focusing on what
we are always told that the public want and what also victims
have said they want, which is the reduction of re-offending? I
think it was put rather well by the Victim Support Group who said
that, other than for the offence not having happened in the first
place, what people want is for it not to happen again, and, therefore,
the reduction of re-offending is key, is it not, in terms of determining
the cost-effectiveness of sentences, so should not more be done
to measure and compare the cost-effectiveness in those terms?
Mr Hanson: Absolutely, I agree,
and we have figures, which again I can share with the Committee
outside of this meeting if the Committee wishes, about what our
assessment is of the effectiveness of community sentences versus
custodial sentences, particularly, but not only, for the under-12-month
group. Self-evidently, Mr Michael, if I sentence an individual
to two months in prison, the chances are they may lose their home,
in the time they have in prison they may not have the interventions
required, they may lose any employment they have got and there
may be family problems. On a community-based sentence, those problems
will not necessarily exist and that will help prevent them from
re-offending again.
Q571 Alun Michael: I would accept
that, but one of the problems which has been identified to the
Committee is that data which would enable the effectiveness of
sentencing to be measured are not collected systematically. Would
you accept that there is a need to improve the collection of data
in order to be able to examine the cost-effectiveness of different
sentences, which you may clearly want to do, and that it is able
to happen much more effectively?
Mr Hanson: I think it is a very
valid point because again one of the factors that I have looked
at as Minister when I have asked the question, "How do we
know down the line that this works more effectively?", it
is very anecdotal, but the figures do show that it does work,
and I would certainly welcome potentially again the Committee
considering those recommendations along those lines for me to
consider because it would be very useful. On one further point,
if I may, Mr Michael, you did mention sentencer confidence, and
only last week I announced a further £40,000 grant to the
local community sentencers organisation, which is made up of sentencers
who are meeting with magistrates and judges to promote community
sentences in a very effective way, and Baroness Linklater and
others have been involved in that, and I gave £40,000 at
the beginning of the year and an additional £40,000 this
year for that very purpose.
Q572 Alun Michael: If I can say one
additional sentence on that, I think that is the work that was
funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
Mr Hanson: That is right, yes.
Q573 Alun Michael: I found it quite
telling. The only thing is that they have not gone to the extra
stage of evaluating whether sentencers changed their practices
really as a result of the experience of being taken out and made
to smell the coffee, and it does seem to be in all our interests
for that evaluation to take place, whether it is funded from the
sector that did the research or from the Department.
Mr Hanson: It is not scientific,
but, when we gave the £40 million this year and when we invested
the £40,000 in the LCCS, since we have done that, the amount
of custodial sentences have decreased and the amount of community
sentences have increased. Now, whether or not there is a cause
and effect is something that our statisticians are going to have
to look at in detail, but I have had less pressure on prison places
since we have invested that resource and more use of community-based
sentences, and I am trying still further to spread the message
about the need for community-based sentences, particularly for
the under-12-month group.
Q574 Dr Whitehead: We have taken
a lot of evidence in this inquiry and we have reflected in the
inquiry on, among other things, the desire for a national debate
around resources and publicly desirable levels of prisons set
out, among other things, by the Secretary of State and also by
Lord Carter in his review. In reality, it appears that the scope
for a debate is very limited and one of our witnesses said that
there is a feeling that too much of the system is being driven
by political fancy rather than grounded in the real concerns and
realities of what front-line staff in the prison or probation
environment deal with. He went on to say that the whole question
of cost-effectiveness, value and outcome are more crucial and
are missing often from the discussion about what should be done,
and he finished off by saying that too often the rhetoric is just
punishment. Do you agree with the statement of that witness, that
there is that narrow scope for a debate, or is what you have said
about the need to build confidence in the community sentences
something which adds to that debate or is it indeed debatable
currently?
Mr Hanson: The whole focus of
what the Justice Secretary and myself have been trying to do in
the last 18 months is to focus the debate around punishment, but
also around reform and rehabilitation. I actually think that we
need to have an element of punishment and a visible element of
punishment in order to be able to have the debate with the public
and the world at large about reform and rehabilitation. I think
you, Sir Alan, at the beginning mentioned that what most people
want out of the system is for people not to have further crimes
committed, and what we need to do for the people who go into prison
or who are on community sentences, the vast majority are going
to be reintegrated back into society at some point, so we need
to use both the community sentence and the experience of prison
to help support people not to commit further offences and to do
so in a way which deprives them of their liberty, deprives them
of very important family contacts and occasions in a way that
myself and other Members would find very difficult, and deprives
them of their liberty at large, but at the same time then hopefully,
in their period of incarceration particularly, looks at their
literacy, their numeracy, their employability, their problems
with drugs or alcohol, their problems with potentially mental
health issues and others and tries to focus the interventions
on them to make them better people when they come out of prison.
Now, again that is very difficult at times because we are dealing
very often with some very damaged individuals for whom the problems
may well have started in childhood or in early youth, so we need
to deal with those issues in an effective way. The re-offending
rates for prison are still too high and we need to keep evaluating
that, but I am consistently looking at how I can better raise
literacy, raise numeracy, get employment, tackle drugs, tackle
alcohol and deal with mental health issues, and the stream of
work we have got now on all those things is designed to try to
improve the experience and outcomes for people when in our system.
Q575 Dr Whitehead: That relates to
what happens when people come out of prison, and another issue
of course is whether they should be there, particularly in short
sentences, in the first place and whether that perhaps in fact
militates against some of those desirable outcomes that you have
suggested, but also the fact that the media are, I think it is
fair to say, fairly constantly enjoining the Government and whoever
else may listen to bang people up for often as long as possible,
and that indeed it has been suggested that political parties themselves
perhaps are engaged in an out-toughing drive in relation to criminal
justice policy. Do you think that maybe there are—
Mr Hanson: Well, actually there
is an element, and there always will be, of competitiveness between
all the parties about being tough on crime and tough on the causes
of crime and those issues, but I think underneath it all there
is still an element of agreement, having had 18-19 months in this
post, where I can say genuinely that on some issues on rehabilitation
I share some very similar views to some of the Members of the
Opposition Front Bench, but I will not name them in case it embarrasses
them, and I can say the same with colleagues when Mr Heath was
on the Front Bench of the Liberal Democrats and other colleagues
were there as well. There are common themes that we need to tackle,
literacy, numeracy, drugs, employment, and we need to do that
not just for people in prison, but we also need to identify issues
before people come into the system in an effective way. That is
why again with the Youth Crime Action Plan we have tried to look
at early intervention, help and support to parents, diversion
from the serious end of the criminal justice system as far as
possible, and those issues, I think, do have some common agenda.
Now, we do that common agenda against the background that there
are still serious issues between the parties about how we use
prisons and the extent to which we use prisons and there is always
a constant debate with the world at large, the public and the
media, about these issues. The Committee may or may not know,
but I am currently engaged on an around-Britain roadshow trying
to promote community sentences. I was in Newcastle last Thursday
meeting with the public, engaging with them about why we should
be using community sentences much more, and I did the same in
Manchester earlier this year and I have two more meetings planned
in Birmingham and in Cardiff very shortly. We are trying to engage
with the public because I need permission from the public and
from the world to make the case for those sentences by still being
very strong on punishment as well as on reform.
Q576 Chairman: Is it all the Home
Office's fault, that of successive Home Secretaries?
Mr Campbell: I am sure it is not!
Where I would strongly disagree with Dr Whitehead is where the
term "political fancy" was used in your earlier question
because I think that does not do service to the very real reform
which we are trying to bring in often at a community level in
order to address some of those issues before people end up in
the criminal justice system. For example, one of the strong driving
forces in what we are trying to do, particularly in our reform
of CDRPs—
Q577 Chairman: Perhaps you could
spell that out for those who do not know.
Mr Campbell: Crime and disorder
reduction partnerships. It is to acknowledge that many of these
issues are best addressed at a local level and, to some extent,
the Home Office is, therefore, stepping back from what has been
perceived as a centrally target-driven approach which might lend
itself to some of the criticism that we talked about. It also
ignores, I think, another important trend in what we are doing
which is the targeting of offenders. You might think that this
was always the case, but, alas, it was not so. I think through
identifying persistent offenders and putting in place not only
the resources, but the tactics to address their needs and also
their proclivities to re-offend, I think, there are some serious
pillars in what we are doing, but in the context of the wider
debate, I think, we have got to be very careful that this is not
just a professional debate and that we make sure that the public
are involved in that. If you look at the Ministry of Justice 2007
survey when they asked victims of non-violent crime what they
wanted to see in a sentence, it was interesting that number one
was punishment, number two was payback and number three was rehabilitation.
We have to, as Mr Hanson has said, take the public with us on
that and we have to address the issues which the Casey Review
found, that a small minority of people believe that the criminal
justice system is on the side of the victim, but a big majority
think it is on the side of the offender, so we cannot really have
this debate and discussion unless we take the public with us.
Q578 Dr Whitehead: But there are
perhaps different ways of doing that. You could, on the one hand,
say, "Well, we've got to start from the point of where the
public are", and we then have a debate about perhaps the
cost-benefit of prison sentences and an analysis of the total
costs of the criminal justice system, or one could take the step
of, say, deciding that penal policy should have the equivalent
of a Monetary Policy Committee attached to it, that it should
be taken out of the political arena for independent judgment.
If you were offered those two routes forward in terms of public
debate which, I think you agree, is necessary, which one might
you take?
Mr Hanson: Ultimately, I believe,
and this may be an old-fashioned view, that politicians are elected
to take decisions to be accountable, to lead public opinion and
to be judged by it and at some point, if I make a mistake and
I do something wrong and the press give me a good doing over and
the public do not like it, they can throw me out. I think there
is an argument on interest rates, I can see the argument to take
that out of the political discussion, but I actually think that
with the debate that we have got, in the areas where we agree,
we can agree, and the areas where we disagree, we will draw swords
and have an argument about it, and I think that is perfectly legitimate
and ultimately the public will judge us. I think I can, as I am
trying to do now, make a case that a community-based sentence
for some people is a better way to prevent their re-offending
than a short-term prison sentence, and I will happily take that
case to the public and argue it. I will have different opinions
in my own party and in the opposition party about the merits of
that, but ultimately we have to make those judgments, and that
is what, I think, politicians are elected to do.
Mr Campbell: I am confident that
we could have that debate. I think sometimes the knee-jerk reaction
of members of the public or, if you read some of the knee-jerk
reactions in the media, they are one thing, but I think we can
go beyond cost-benefit analysis, important though it is, because
I think the public will be willing to have that discussion and
debate only, however, if they believe that we are addressing their
priorities, that the changes are in place in their local communities
so that they can not only have a say, but they can perhaps have
a role to play in the direction of resources and the direction
of policy in that area and also if it is based on the reality
of what is happening in their local communities and not simply
the perception of what is happening in their local communities
where unfortunately, I think, the media sometimes plays a role
between those two things.
Mr Hanson: In my constituency,
Dr Whitehead, like many other constituencies, crime is down, crime
has fallen quite considerably, maybe by 30% in the last 10 or
11 years, yet the front page of one local paper with one incident,
one particular crime, can raise the fear of crime quite considerably,
so it is about not just what we do, but it is about the perception
and it is about how we build confidence in that and how we actually,
through the police and the criminal justice system, make people
know that the system is a public service, that it is on their
side, that it is there to support them and it is there to make
sure that justice is done, and that means that all the things
we do are visible, which is why we are looking at visibility more
in our side of the business and Mr Campbell and colleagues are
doing the same on the policing side.
Q579 Mr Tyrie: I agree with a very
great deal of what you have just said. I just wonder whether we
are so used to blaming the media, but are the media not largely
reflecting a public view which really exists?
Mr Hanson: I think the media have
two roles. One is that there is genuinely a fascination about
criminal justice matters in the public. People like to know about,
have an interest in and read articles about some of the big criminal
cases that occur, and the media have a job to do in that and sometimes
it varies in its sensationalism, but they have a job to report
on that. I think, secondly, the media themselves can lead opinion
and reflect opinion, but, interestingly, when we produced a DVD
in-house, called You are the judge, and we put it to schools
and to colleges, the public very often were in exactly the right
place when they had been through a sentencing process as were
either the judge or the magistrates and sometimes were even giving
a lower sentence than the judge or magistrates, so I think there
is a split personality. The media do report on things that the
public are interested in and they do reflect genuine concerns
sometimes at sentences and they also lead opinion, but I actually
think that the public themselves can be in a different place if
the issues are explained to them in a constructive and positive
way.
Mr Campbell: I agree with Mr Tyrie
actually and I do not believe that the media can simply create
issues. They may be able to exaggerate it or underestimate it,
but I do not think that they can actually create something which
is not in the public psyche and which the public do not recognise
in their particular area. I think one of the interesting things
about the Casey Review was a recognition that there is a thirst
for information in communities about what is happening, about
the level of crime, but also what is being done to tackle it and
also, very importantly, feedback on what happens to the people
who have been caught and, whilst they do get information from
newspapers, newspapers actually come fairly low down in their
level of trust. What they want is fairly simple and straightforward
information from sources that they do trust, not least the police,
to say, "Yes, this is the true picture of what's happening.
Yes, we caught someone and this is what happened to them",
and I think that is going to be a very important trend in the
future.
Alun Michael: I think it is very interesting,
the way this conversation is developing, because you referred
to the public, by and large, when given the opportunity, on the
one hand, saying that sentences are not high enough and then at
the same time, when given the opportunity to make a judgment,
coming to a judgment that is fairly similar to that which is reached
by the criminal justice system. Now, that is how you deal with
offenders once they are at that point, but I wonder if you can
go a step beyond that. You referred to crime coming down in your
own area, Mr Hanson, and the thing that concerns me slightly is
the question of whether we are not losing the methodology of driving
that. We had evidence, for instance, as it happens, from Cardiff,
from Professor John Shepherd talking about the violence reduction
approach which succeeded because it clinically examined what was
happening, why violence was taking place, and then it led to a
targeted approach. Mr Campbell referred to leaving it more to
local areas to determine what priorities there are in terms of
crime reduction partnerships and so on. The thing that concerns
me is that that works if it is driven by a methodology that makes
sure that the local partnership is focusing on the reality of
the local experience, the offences that are actually happening,
rather than getting sort of caught up in a mish-mash of trying
to give generalised public reassurance. Would you agree that,
just as there is a need for evidence on what works, which we spoke
about a few minutes ago, there is a need for a methodology to
effectively ensure that those local judgments, which have to be
local because that is where the problems are, are actually properly
driven by an adequate and scientific analysis of what the problem
is in order to address it properly?
Chairman: It would be hard not to say
yes to that, would it not!
Mr Turner: Just say, "Yes. Next
question?"
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