Taxpayers hearing this debate will think the current situation extraordinary. They will say, “Is it the case that in law we do not have to rehabilitate or supervise

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released prisoners who were serving less than 12 months? When we look at the cohort of the most prolific, who are causing the most damage in our community, is it not extraordinary that it has taken this long, and this amount of debate on and scrutiny of different criminal justice Bills, for us to have, at last, a principle that we must mandate supervision of this category? Why was this never in place before?” They may then even ask the Opposition, who want to divide the House on Second Reading, why they are trying to stand in the way of progress and of the principle of rehabilitating this cohort.

Clause 1, which took up some time while being scrutinised in the other place, is relevant in the sense of dealing with implementation, but it is impractical to suggest that we must come back before the House when any change is made to the probation service. To my mind, although I respect the experienced people who moved clause 1, it is more in line with an early-day motion to which people can sign up to make a political point, to make a noise and to show concern. It does not have practical value. We must get serious about how we can implement our approach practically.

I agree with the principles of the Bill. It is properly focused on the taxpayer, who has not had much of a mention, on the victim and, indeed, on the offender, to ensure that we consider the results and outcomes so that we do what we all want to do—that is, reduce offending—whether the work takes place in the private, public or voluntary sector.

We must be careful in how we approach the private sector. G4S and Serco are bandied about as though we were going to throw out the private sector from any relationship or involvement with rehabilitation, but it is also important not to trash the 70,000 G4S employees or those employed by Serco. I do not understate the serious investigation into some of the contracts, but we are also dealing with contracts on rehabilitation, getting people through the gate and mentoring. I mentioned the transitional support service in Wales, which deals with women and men. It has been evaluated independently as a most effective model, which is producing great success. The problem is that the system is voluntary, whereas the Bill is about making it mandatory, as well as the schemes operating around the country.

We have work in prisons; for example, Altcourse prison has an employment programme that provides 40 hours’ work in prison. Years ago, many a Minister would have dreamed about that and it happens through G4S and the private sector. We must recognise that those contracts must happen in partnership with those in the public and voluntary sector so that we can deliver and upscale the good schemes, as we are now mandated to.

I want to refer to some of the requirements on drugs and alcohol rehabilitation. I particularly welcome the mandated requirement for drug rehabilitation appointments. That is needed and should happen for appointments not just in the statutory service but in the voluntary service. The great hidden army delivering rehabilitation—the “Anonymous” groups—would also welcome such a move. That happens in other countries: they specify directionally that requirements should include an appointment at an “Anonymous” group. I would welcome that.

I welcome the flexibility in the Bill on rehabilitation activity requirements but, as I said in my intervention on the Justice Secretary, it is important that we also

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recognise the value of the specific requirements under previous legislation, not least those on mental health and alcohol and drug rehabilitation. Indeed, the alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement is still in force and is being piloted, and I would not want us to lose that valuable measure. I want an assurance that we will be able to do that properly.

The court also has a crucial role. Drug rehabilitation requirements have been ordered in some cases and, for one reason or another, have not been delivered on the ground. The court has had to come back and say that they are a requirement of the court that must be delivered. There must be reviews by the court, which has a crucial role. Yes, we need flexibility for those delivering rehabilitation, but the courts have an important part to play.

Finally, we must consider implementation carefully. I recognise the concerns that people have raised about payment by results, but we have already been there. The Work programme has been mentioned, but I want to mention the drugs recovery pilots. I have had a particular role in helping to model those pilots and in seeing how they have worked out, particularly in my patch, Enfield. It is important to recognise that this area is complicated, that such schemes take careful local design and that the matter must be handled with care. I recognise that, but it is also important that we are not fixated on the price mechanism, the amount that is paid and whom it is paid to. One lesson learned from the pilots has been that the service has been transformed. They have linked together not just the drug treatment providers but those who want to support people into housing and employment. The service change brings those organisations together under a payment mechanism.

Jenny Chapman: I am very interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying about payment by results and drugs initiatives. He is right that lessons are being learned through piloting. Is he not concerned that the 70% sell-off of probation to be delivered by payment by results is being done with no piloting whatsoever?

Mr Burrowes: My point is that there have been many different pilots in the past few years that have considered different ways of ensuring that we are more driven by outcomes than by process. One of the great failures of the previous Government, not least on drug treatment, was that it was all based on process and on ticking a box. Indeed, the so-called payment by results was payment by activity, driven not by rehabilitation and outcomes but by the numbers of people getting into treatment. That is why it is important to recognise that payment by results has a crucial role to play across all public services, but will vary from service to service. We must therefore handle with care how we deliver payment by results on criminal justice.

I want to offer some advice on the LASARS, or the local area single assessment and referral systems—we are all into acronyms when we have service changes. They have had a particularly good effect, not least because they are locally based. They are also based on single assessments and many of us involved in the criminal justice system will be all too aware of the repetitive assessments throughout the system that lack continuity and delivery of change. LASARS allow a single assessment in the criminal justice and non-criminal

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justice worlds. Payment by results offers us the opportunity to get away from the criminal justice mindset in that regard. Public health interest concerns, mental health concerns and educational concerns must be dealt with under a wider remit than that simply required by a criminal justice model. That is why we need to make the most of the opportunity offered by the LASARS, which would help refer people to the right places through a single assessment.

Co-design is also important and we must recognise its value. One such example can be found in London, where the Mayor, Boris Johnson, has helped pilot Project Daedalus, which focuses on the rehabilitation of young offenders through the resettlement wing at Feltham. That cohort had appalling reoffending rates at 70%, yet through the scheme he did so much better. The project was radical in that there was a resettlement broker who could negotiate with employers, accommodation providers, drug rehabilitation providers and others to try to ensure that rehabilitation was delivered.

Mike Wood: Is the vast improvement at Feltham the reason that the Government plan to close it?

Mr Burrowes: The hon. Gentleman will note the welcome fall in the number of young people in custody, for which the Government can take credit. Feltham is a good example of new models and new ways of doing things. The old Feltham, based almost on a borstal-type approach, is past its sell-by date in many ways—

Mike Wood: Why close it?

Mr Burrowes: The hon. Gentleman comments from a sedentary position, but I ask him to allow me to finish. If the number of people going into an institution is in decline, one must reconsider the question of value for money. I encourage him to consider the consultations on secure colleges, with the opportunities for us to upscale what has been lost in Feltham. We talk about training and education, and we should try to ensure that we have more intensive rehabilitation that, although it takes place in custody, does not take place in custody on the same model as at Feltham. I agree that Feltham is another example of an institution that is past its sell-by date and needs change and radical overhaul, but that is why we recognise that we cannot go on with the status quo of the Felthams of this world or with the status quo for those people who come out of Feltham and other institutions and do not get the rehabilitation they and the public need.

Project Daedalus was very much focused on such a goal and was able to reduce reoffending, as I understand it, to 53%. That was an encouraging rate. The lessons learned from that project, which I saw from an early stage, are important. The brokerage system is important, but so are the connections back to the London boroughs. That relationship is important. I recognise that some partnerships are working now, such as the offender management programme in London, which brings together the offending management teams. Those relationships need to be continued under payment by results. We learned from the drug recovery pilots that the way to do that is to ensure that the co-design process brings local authorities along with it. It is important that there is accountability, too.

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The importance of LASARs lies in their independence from providers and, in some cases, commissioners. They provide some accountability in the system, independent of the provider, and ensure that there is an advocate. We know that offenders will not all go in one direction; when they go in different directions, the advocate will make sure that there is a proper referral system that works all the way through a reoffender’s rehabilitation.

Paul Goggins: I have been listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s speech. I will give him the benefit of the doubt—perhaps he can clarify this—but I hope that he is not suggesting that he and his colleagues are in favour of change and innovation, while Opposition Members simply want the status quo. If he is, I urge him to reflect on that. He has just spoken in great detail, and with great knowledge, about the complexity of local relationships. Given that complexity, the introduction of the new model of payment by results needs to be done carefully. It might help to have a proper, thorough pilot, and to evaluate it properly and thoroughly, before rolling the model out across the country.

Mr Burrowes: I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I am not suggesting that he is completely on the side of not having innovation and progress, but the reality is that we have to make a decision in this place. The Bill sets down the principle of mandatory supervision of those sentenced to under 12 months, and that is an important marker. There are issues relating to implementation and the timetable—much concern has been expressed about that—but they can be worked through; they are not good enough reason for voting against the Bill on Second Reading.

Clause 1 tries to create an artificial dividing line when all of us are very much on the same side in wanting rehabilitation. It has been so many years since we last had the opportunity to put centre stage the rehabilitation of offenders, particularly those with short sentences; we should not let down the public.

We have heard a number of interesting speeches. Concerns were raised about justice reinvestment. Justice reinvestment does not go completely against the principles of the Bill—far from it. There are different models of payment by results that can ensure that, as I suggested, we continue local links and partnerships, and make sure that savings are reinvested in the local area. The more we involve local groups—small and, yes, large—in this enterprise, as I believe we will have to, the more the local area will benefit. I look forward to the contracts that are awarded involving a partnership of private sector bodies—large or small—the voluntary sector and the public, and ensuring that reoffending rates are driven down.

Today, having raised concerns, our task is not to argue unnecessarily about implementation points. We have a simple choice tonight. We can do nothing. We can follow the path already set as regards short-term sentences —they were legislated for once under custody plus—and do nothing as regards implementation. We can allow that 58% rate of reoffending to continue, without any idea of change. We can decline to give the Bill a Second Reading. Or we can grasp this opportunity to get to grips with what has perhaps been on the too-hard-to-do

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pile, and give the Government credit for being willing to tackle the issue. We do not have everyone in our constituencies saying to us, “Please, please, do this,” but we know that the issue affects our constituencies through crime rates. We should give offenders a second chance of getting through the gate, having a mentor, getting into employment or rehab, and getting back in contact with their family. We should be on the side of victims and taxpayers. For those reasons, I urge hon. Members to give the Bill a Second Reading.

7.24 pm

Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab): Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time. It is also a great pleasure to participate in such a well-informed debate.

I listened with great interest to a number of the contributions, particularly that of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), with whom I found myself in considerable agreement at many points. The difficulty is that he believes that we should take on trust the need to proceed with the terms of the Bill, and give the Bill a Second Reading, when so many questions have been raised and left unanswered in this debate and the debate that took place in the Chamber a week or so ago. That might not matter if we felt that there was time, during the passage and implementation of the legislation, to undertake careful scrutiny of those concerns, and time to research and implement the measures necessary to address them, but the proposals are being rushed through by the Government.

Already, shadow structures are being set up, the bidding process is under way, and local probation staff are being asked to begin to think about their future under the changed structures. There will be an incredibly rapid approach to trying to implement what a number of my colleagues have rightly described as rather half-baked legislation. If I believed that, if we gave the Bill a Second Reading tonight, the time would be taken to address all the concerns properly, I might be prepared to vote for it, but the problem is that we know that Second Reading will be followed rapidly by the final stages of the Bill and implementation, and a series of major concerns will be left unanswered. That is a real worry.

Jeremy Corbyn: Has my hon. Friend observed that under the programme motion, we will complete the Committee stage by the beginning of December? It is highly unlikely that any further reports can be prepared by then, and that we can have an informed discussion on the issues, before the whole Bill is disposed of.

Kate Green: The timing is of serious concern, and is driven more by electoral imperatives than a desire to make sure that we devise a system that is effective and right.

There is much to welcome in the intentions behind the Bill. Like many others who have spoken, I warmly welcome the wish to introduce post-release supervision for those serving short-term custodial sentences. As many have said, there has been a gap in our system up till now, and it is good to begin to explore ways in which it could be filled. I am also pleased to see a provision in the Bill on considering the needs and circumstances of

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women offenders. We have been pressing for that since Baroness Corston’s excellent report; it is approaching five years since it was published. It is welcome to see that making an appearance in the Bill.

However, those welcome objectives in no way justify a pell-mell destruction—a wholesale dismantling—of the public probation service that is not founded on logic, and does not appear to be founded on good or consistent evidence. That is why clause 1, with all its flaws—I accept some of the flaws that have been suggested—is important. We should not pursue these far-reaching changes without proper parliamentary scrutiny of the detail of what will be put in place. If the Minister would like to come forward with ways to improve the clause, and suggest to what degree that parliamentary scrutiny is appropriate, I would be happy to hear what he has to say, but it seems quite wrong to continue down the track of implementing the proposals when such serious concerns are being expressed.

Jeremy Wright: This is probably an unfair intervention, as I see that the hon. Lady does not have a copy of the Offender Management Act 2007 with her, but does she know where in that Act anything comparable to clause 1 appears?

Kate Green: No, that is not my point. My point is that we are going into a wholesale rearrangement of the public probation service—a service that has existed to manage the totality of risk, and take overall responsibility for it. That is what is being broken up. It is extremely important that we do not go down that track without proper parliamentary scrutiny of the implications and consequences, and that scrutiny is what clause 1 seeks to achieve.

Jenny Chapman: The Minister was being rather cheeky, because we had a whole Act to reorganise the probation service and establish trusts. The Government are attempting to dismantle the probation service without any parliamentary scrutiny whatever.

Kate Green: I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

There are concerns about the contracting structure that will be introduced as a result of the Bill. I want to repeat some of the concerns that have been expressed about the way in which the contracts will be priced. It has been presented by the Lord Chancellor this afternoon and more generally as predominantly a payment-by-results model which will seek to introduce new private funding into a marketplace where, within the public sector, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) pointed out, it would be difficult to find those levels of additional funding, particularly in these times of public spending constraint.

The point is that a very small proportion of these contracts, it seems, will genuinely be payment-by-results contracts. Substantial elements of these contracts will be subject to meeting court requirements, which means that there will have to be enough money in those contracts to ensure that those court requirements can be adequately met by the contractors. That, for a start, will leave relatively little room for manoeuvre in pricing a more discretionary element and an element that is about payment by results.

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It is also the case, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, that within the existing spending envelope not only are these providers to manage about 150,000 existing offenders subject to supervision, but to take on board a further perhaps 50,000 within the context of the same funding envelope. That is not credible. It means either that we will have a very poor quality of intervention and/or cherry-picking, with a substantial number of those offenders receiving no support of any value at all.

I am also concerned about the way in which the pricing structures will respond to what a number of hon. Members have talked about—the changing risk profiles that we see when offenders are subject to supervision. As others have said, offender risk profiles are not static. Risk profiles can vary. Offenders can be beset by a range of external pressures and circumstances—bereavement, loss of a job, ending of a relationship, becoming homeless and so on—all of which can take a relatively stable low to medium-risk offender and suddenly catapult them into being high risk. At that point, we understand that the low or medium-risk offender would switch from being supervised by a non-statutory provider into the public probation supervision system. They would be supervised within the statutory sector.

But I do not think we have been told—perhaps the Minister will intervene on me if he has information to share about this—how that would be reflected in the pricing and the reward for the private contractor, and what additional resources would be made available to the public probation service if the risk profiles that had been assumed in the initial pricing of the contract turn out not to be what is experienced in practice.

Jeremy Wright rose—

Kate Green: I sense that the Minister is going to offer me some information.

Jeremy Wright: I accept the invitation. On the first of the two points that the hon. Lady raised, in relation to what happens to the income for the provider if someone moves out of the medium and low-risk category and into the high-risk category, the answer is that that individual will stay within the cohort for payment-by-results purposes, so there is no financial incentive—that is the purpose of this—for the provider to move someone on to the public sector. On the second issue that she raised—how the public sector attracts the money to do the extra work with the extra people—the money should follow the individual.

Kate Green: I am not sure that I have totally understood this. It seemed that the private provider would retain any income attached to the result—the outcome—although we do not know what proportion of that overall payment to the private provider will be for the result and what will be a fixed payment for having to carry out the basics of supervision. It is welcome that the Minister says that resources will follow the offender, and therefore that if there is extra activity to be carried out in the public sector, the public sector will receive the necessary resources to carry out that work, but I am not quite clear where that funding will come from if the private provider is also to be remunerated in full for the work that it has carried out and for any ultimate outcome that may be achieved. Perhaps the Minister will be able to provide more detail as the Bill proceeds on its parliamentary passage. It would be useful to understand the cash flow and funding models in more detail.

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Concerns have been expressed about the way in which prisoner risk categorisation will be undertaken. We have quite a long established system—OASys, or the offender assesment system—for determining levels of risk. It is being suggested that one of the things that the Ministry of Justice may wish to do is to revisit that risk assessment system to try to change the profile of the offender base so that more offenders can be deemed to be low or medium risk and supervised in the private or non-profit sector rather than, as would be suggested on current risk assessment tools, within the public probation service.

Jenny Chapman: My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to this issue. As I understand it, a new risk assessment tool will be introduced at the same time as these reforms take place. Is she concerned, as I am, that this would be the worst possible time to introduce that change?

Kate Green: We have clearly heard the same rumours. It is important that we understand what the new risk assessment tool will look like, what the implications will be for the overall risk profile of this cohort of offenders, and whether we can expect to see some significant shifts in the way that the level of risk is identified and assessed.

John McDonnell: This is getting barmier by the minute. The transaction costs need to be assessed. The transaction costs of the reassessment of offenders with the new risk assessment tool will be massive. In addition, there will be the transaction costs of monitoring the flow of money as offenders move between the risk categories.

Kate Green: Perhaps I am overcomplicating what is being proposed by the Government, but it seems to me that the whole financial structure and the way in which that relates to risk assessment is very unclear to Members—certainly to Opposition Members. It would be helpful, during the passage of the Bill, for the Government to make that clear to us so that we can understand the true financial as well as the risk consequences of what is proposed.

Jenny Chapman: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Kate Green: I will give way one more time, then I want to move on to another issue.

Jenny Chapman: My hon. Friend is very generous in giving way and I am grateful. The problem is that we will not have the opportunity to go into these issues in more detail as the Bill progresses because none of the concerns being raised is in the Bill. That is the point of our amendment.

Kate Green: It is clear that we need much more time to scrutinise these proposals properly and, sadly, that is not what we are being offered by the Government tonight.

I turn to an issue that has been raised by a number of hon. Members, mostly Government Members, about the opportunities that exist for probation trusts in some form to bid for the new contracts. It is pretty clearly understood in my area that they will not have that opportunity to bid. It is baffling to me that, when they are doing such good work already, we would not want

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to give them the opportunity at least to compete for those contracts. They might not be successful, but surely where we have good models of provision in the public sector, we would want to enable them to put themselves forward in competition with other potential providers.

It has been said, rightly, by a number of hon. Members that there will be the opportunity for probation trusts to set up different kinds of legal structures—co-operatives, mutuals, shadow structures and so on. I am not sure why we think there is any particular advantage to the public in forcing them to go down that route. Again, I cannot help but believe that it will create extra cost and extra complexity. Nor is it clear to me that we know what these mutuals and co-operatives will and will not be allowed to bid for.

It would be helpful if the Minister commented on that in his response and told the House how he envisages these entities coming into a system when the contracting is beginning to take place already, before many of them have had any chance to get off the ground.

Paul Maynard rose—

Kate Green: I know that the hon. Gentleman is interested in this issue so I am pleased to take his intervention.

Paul Maynard: I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. She is being most generous. Does she agree that Greater Manchester is one of the more innovative probation trusts and has had a number of very successful schemes and should perhaps be seen as a litmus test of whether the condition for mutuals is going to occur in practice.

Kate Green: I agree that Greater Manchester has been innovative. As I say, in my discussions with Greater Manchester, the trust was preparing for exactly this approach, at least a year ago, and had the brakes put on. It was told that it would not be able to bid in the process in the way that it had planned, so I would be interested to understand, as I think the hon. Gentleman would, what Greater Manchester and other such trusts will and will not be able to bid for, what sort of entities they will have to establish to enable them to bid and potentially to take a leading role in that bidding process, and whether there will be time for them to create those entities and put in bids, given that, as I understand it, the preliminaries of the process are already under way this month. He and I look forward to some reassurances from the Minister.

A number of my colleagues have pointed out that the Lord Chancellor’s proposals mirror the structure and approach of the Work programme, which he introduced as Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions. Leaving aside the pretty poor performance of the Work programme to date—I am prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt; it may achieve improved outcomes over time, although it is getting off to a depressingly slow start—in the light of everything that has been said in the Chamber this evening about what we have seen from the Work programme and what seems to be being replicated in these contracts, I am concerned that we will have a national top-down driven system, when what we have heard from both sides of the House, about innovative experiments in different parts of the country,

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is that a localised, bottom-up, partnership approach across a range of local agencies has been what has worked best.

I am concerned that the track record of some of the large multinational providers, who are likely to bid for these contracts—indeed may be the only people qualified and able to take the risk inherent in bidding for these contracts—is that they are not good at developing supply chains down the local agencies. As hon. Members may know, many voluntary and charitable organisations have complained bitterly about their experiences with the Work programme. They complain that they have been used as so-called bid candy, but have not been given any opportunity to deliver activity. They complain that they have had very few referrals, having been included on bids by the large prime contractors. There are real concerns that we are seeing a model that looks very like the Work programme in terms of top-down, Department-led contracting. There are also concerns about whether we can be confident that those problems and pitfalls will not occur in these contracts in the way that they did in the Work programme.

Mr Burrowes: Are not the hon. Lady’s fears somewhat allayed when she looks beyond some of the headlines and at some of the private companies? The ones that are delivering results and are effective in reducing offending, which would be paid in the system, are only those that are properly engaged at a local level with small organisations and the voluntary and public sectors. It is only when all that comes together at a local level that they will deliver results and be paid, so their every incentive is to do what the hon. Lady fears will not happen.

Kate Green: The same claims were made for the Work programme, but the experience has been entirely different. At the very least we must expect the Minister to give us some reassurances as to why this will be different when the model looks so very similar.

Hon. Members have talked about some of the innovative programmes in their own probation trusts. As has been said, Greater Manchester has had a number of particularly innovative programmes. One in particular speaks directly to the Government’s proposals for post-release supervision for those serving short custodial sentences. I am sure the Minister will be familiar with the Choose Change programme that was developed in Greater Manchester. It has been running for a number of years and we await its final evaluation. I hope that the Government are drawing some interesting and important lessons from that experience, on which I would like to hear the Minister’s comments tonight.

It is clear when we look at Choose Change—a through-the-gate programme, working with offenders in prison, as they left prison and on release—that it depended heavily on being a multi-agency programme in which private, public and voluntary providers were all comprehensively engaged. That included the prison and probation services, corporate partners, the voluntary and community sector, and, crucially, local authorities. I am very unclear how local authorities will fit into the model of provision in this Bill.

It was instructive from Choose Change that the range of interventions needed was extensive. They included interventions in relation to employment, education and training. Many offenders, as the Minister will be well

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aware, have exceptionally poor levels of literacy and numeracy, so investing in routing them to the right educational opportunities and continuing their education commenced inside prison consistently on release is an important element that will need to be designed into any provision. Income and access to financial services have been a key element of what the Choose Change programme has identified as being important for offenders on release. Housing needs are an exceptionally urgent priority for many on release, as are health needs, particularly mental health needs. It often transpires that offenders have no registered GP to whom they can turn for health care, and their engagement with the health service has been sporadic.

The need for a package of interventions, bringing together a number of agencies and players, and beginning that work inside the prison and continuing it as part of a continuing process—not a broken process whereby the prison services does this inside prison and someone else does it post-release—will be an incredibly important feature of what the Government seek to achieve. I am pleased to see the Minister nodding as I say that. I hope that he will be able to reassure us this evening that there will be a continuum of support, not a form of support that begins only as someone leaves the prison gate. There has been a lot of encouraging discussion this evening about through-the-gate models, but we need to understand how those will work within the prison as well as after release.

We also need to understand that the interventions will be made in the right sequence. Some things can only happen easily post-release. It is quite difficult to do much, for example, about housing until someone is near the point of release. But other things, such as education and preparing for employment, can be started much earlier. The sequencing of interventions inside prison and post-release will be very important, and I would be grateful if the Minister said something about how he sees that working in these new contracts.

It will also be important to know how the programme that will be put in place through the contracted provision will work with other programmes already running in the community in relation to criminal justice. That includes how it will work with prolific offender programmes, integrated offender management programmes and programmes such as Spotlight in Greater Manchester, which enables the police and other criminal justice agencies and social services to keep close tabs on those in the community, perhaps not serving sentences but known to the system. How does the Minister envisage those different community-based initiatives will be linked into what is being proposed?

The Minister will also want to look carefully at the learning from Choose Change, which shows that intervening with offenders who have long histories of offending behaviour is particularly challenging. Some offenders who are serving their eighth, 10th, 15th or even their 20th short custodial sentence will be particularly difficult to work with on release. Therefore, it would be useful to understand how the Minister envisages these contracts being able to cope with, on the one hand, those who may have had one experience of custody, where it is to be hoped that with good post-release supervision they could be quickly taken off the track of offending behaviour and we could see some effective rehabilitation, and on the other hand, those who may have 10, 15 or 20 years of offending history. The lessons from Choose Change

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are that that is a very challenging group of offenders to work with, and simply wrapping some fairly basic post-release supervision around them is unlikely to be sufficient to change the course of their offending behaviour.

How does the Minister envisage the contracts being structured to incentivise inter-agency working and in particular how working with women offenders will be made financially attractive to providers, which has been mentioned by a number of hon. Members?

I agree with the Chair of the Select Committee—I will return his compliment by saying that I rarely disagree with him—that there are many good examples of women’s organisations and centres producing extremely strong support programmes for women offenders. In Greater Manchester we have the extremely successful Women MATTA—Manchester and Trafford Taking Action—initiative, which has worked with the Pankhurst Centre, the local authority, the probation service and so on. However, many of those women’s projects are now under severe funding pressure. They are not cheap to run. I hope that the Chair of the Select Committee agrees that women’s special needs and circumstances mean that cut pricing will not necessarily be very effective for women offenders. I am therefore keen to hear whether the Minister is confident that the structure of the contracts will reward providers for working with the especially challenging circumstances faced by women offenders and how they will be incentivised to make use of the very good practice and experience of the women’s centres across the country that have been delivering such programmes in recent years.

In conclusion, I must say on behalf of the Greater Manchester probation trust and a number of Opposition colleagues that our opposition to giving the Bill a Second Reading is not the result of wholesale opposition to introducing a mix of private and voluntary providers, which has been a feature of the effective working we have seen in Greater Manchester and across the country in recent years. We are concerned that there is little evidence that that particular approach to wholesale contracting out with an arbitrary cut-off point at the level of medium to high-risk offenders is the right way to structure the participation of private and non-statutory providers. There seems to be little opportunity for the very good programmes that have been run by the public probation service to compete effectively in a rapid time scale and continue to be major players in the provision of the services that the Government are now seeking to introduce. There are real concerns that strong local relationships and structures will be disrupted by the bidding process. Finally, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Justice Secretary said, there are real concerns about the risk consequences for the public. I hope that the Minister can offer more reassurances in that regard than we have had so far this evening.

7.52 pm

Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD): The Bill will enact the provision set out in the coalition agreement to

“introduce a ‘rehabilitation revolution’ that will pay independent providers to reduce reoffending”.

It is supported by both partners in the coalition. I think that it is an ambitious Bill, and one that is sorely needed.

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The offenders who are most likely to reoffend on release from prison are precisely the ones targeted in the Bill—those serving 12 months or less—but until now those people have received no help at all: they are just let out of the prison gates with the princely sum of £46 in their pocket. They need support. They need somewhere to stay, gainful employment and a dedicated professional concerned with their welfare.

The power to make contractual arrangements with any person or body to provide probation services was set out in the Offender Management Act 2007, but the previous Government never saw fit to bring it in. What a pity. How many lives could already have been turned around since 2007 if more offenders could have had the kind of support we are bringing in only now?

The basics of the Bill have already been outlined by the Secretary of State, and I certainly do not intend to go over them again. I will use the time available to address some of the concerns that have been put to me, and which I in turn have put to the Secretary of State and his team.

The Secretary of State has already explained that the provisions set out in clause 1 had already been debated and agreed under the previous Government in relation to the 2007 Act. If this Government are happy to accept those provisions, I am unable to see why, when we have consensus on both sides of the House, we need to legislate again. We are using the powers already given to us by the previous Labour Government to unlock resources from the private, charitable and voluntary sectors while opening up support to offenders who have served prison sentences of less than 12 months. Even if we were to accept the clause, I do not believe it would be particularly helpful. It is drafted very widely, and my understanding is that even if we were to accept as it as drafted, many subsequent small changes would need the approval of both Houses of Parliament.

On drug testing, I have been approached by DrugScope, which is concerned that by imposing drug testing under supervision for a 12-month period for short-term offenders we are

“setting them up to fail”,

because they will have more opportunities to fall foul of the system, be re-incarcerated and start the whole cycle all over again. That could be the case, except for two factors. First, magistrates will have a wide range of options open to them, including taking no action at all. However, drug testing will alert supervisors to the problem so that remedial help can be given. Secondly, they would normally have to fail a test several times before action would be taken against them. It is understood that drug addicts have lapses, and the aim is to help, not hinder, their progress under rehabilitation. That is already a condition of the existing licence, so it is not a material change.

Concern has been expressed about the inclusion of class B drugs in the testing regime. After all, many people who take drugs such as marijuana do not offend just to feed their habit. The fact is that there is still a strong correlation between ex-offenders who go on to reoffend and the consumption of class B drugs. For example, people might go back to their old haunts to obtain them and take up associating with other offenders. Some 48% of offenders who go on to reoffend use class B and C drugs in the month before custody, compared with 30% who never used drugs before imprisonment. Why tempt fate?

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Another area of concern relates to the assessment of risk, which a number of hon. Members have mentioned. The fact is that risk can fluctuate wildly at times of chaos in someone’s life. There seems to be a belief in some quarters that community rehabilitation companies will be assessing the risk category of murderers, rapists and paedophiles. My understanding is that that is not the case. All those categories will remain the responsibility of the new national probation service. Furthermore, the oversight of all risk assessments in the low and medium-risk categories will remain the overall responsibility of the national probation service. A condition of tender acceptance is that the organisation has properly qualified people in place to assess changing risk.

Many concerns have been expressed about who will run the system, who the bidders will be and what real value they will be able to add to what is already an exceptional probation service for longer-term offenders. Let me say that now I would be dismayed if my Government contemplated considering a bid from any organisation that was under investigation for defrauding the taxpayer on other outsourced services. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] It is a fair question: if the existing probation service does such a good job, why introduce other players into the field? Why not just extend the existing service?

Jenny Chapman: The hon. Lady is making a very carefully considered speech, and the Minister has also heard her concern about G4S and Serco and their ability to compete for contracts. Will the Minister take this opportunity to confirm that they will not be able to bid for those contracts?

Lorely Burt: It is above my pay grade to comment on the Minister’s thoughts about the complex circumstances with regard to a specific contractor. He has, however, heard what I said and the “Hear, hears” of my honourable colleagues.

To return to the widening of the service, the Government’s answer is that introducing the private sector and competition to the market will drive down costs, which will release the money to widen the service to those shorter-term offenders who get little or no supervision at present. I hope that that equation will work. We are not privy to the analysis the Government have used. I am prepared to go with it, because I want this new system. I want short-term prisoners to be looked after on release and to have the opportunity to turn their lives around, and I want society as a whole to benefit from reduced reoffending.

What sort of organisations will they be? What does the private sector know about finding homes and jobs and helping ex-prisoners build new lives? My understanding is that the new organisations will probably be consortiums of private businesses, charities and not-for-profit organisations. A lot of tonight’s debate has been about whether the probation trusts will be able to tender for private sector contracts, but I understand that it is not appropriate for them to do so, because they are Government funded and such contracts involve risk. However, could my hon. Friend the Minister explain under what circumstances existing probation trusts or, indeed, existing probation officers could join consortiums, because their expertise will be in great demand and highly valued?

There are other concerns about whether the private sector will manipulate the system for gain. It is, after all, in it to make a profit. I hope that my Government

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have learned from the past failures of other privatised schemes under, perhaps, both Labour and Conservative Governments. I hope that grass-roots organisations will not be pushed, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) has said, into less-than-good deals for the delivery of their part of the programme.

The programme must deliver real results. We know that the best schemes of this nature have achieved up to a 12% decrease in offending rates, and I hope that consortium bids will approach that best-in-class target. The percentage of the payment at risk is also very important. It must be a substantial proportion of the fee in order to drive the consortiums into putting everything into working together so as to enable offenders who want to turn their lives around to be able to do so.

Finally, I want to dwell on the repercussions of the changes for those who work in the probation service, because they are anxious that they will find themselves either under the constant stress of having to deal with high-risk offenders or, potentially, out of a job altogether. I am assured that the need for our excellent probation officers will be greater than ever and that there will be more work for them to do, not less. Those who do not want to work with high-risk offenders will find that their skills and expertise will be welcomed in the community rehabilitation centres to which they can be transferred. Will my hon. Friend the Minister outline the scheme under which those transfers will take place? I understand that it is a Cabinet Office scheme that is at least as good as the TUPE transfer, but I would be grateful for any clarification.

John McDonnell: The unions involved have consistently asked that that be inserted directly into the Bill itself. Does the hon. Lady support that?

Lorely Burt: I understand that the Government have already done a fair amount of consultation. I am not aware of the exact way in which the unions are feeding into Government, but I know that the Government value the unions very much and will take into account their points and their wisdom.

The probation officers who elect to stay will find that not all their work will involve high-risk prisoners. Forty per cent. of their work is based in the courts and in inspecting approved premises. In some models, the work of probation officers is divided, so some of them already do the vast majority of their work in supervising high-risk offenders. As long as they are not forced into such work, that seems fair enough.

In conclusion, I hope that I have been helpful. I am listening carefully to the concerns being raised and I look forward to working with organisations associated with the probation service and with the unions in order to ensure that once the Bill has been through Committee, it will be as robust and effective as possible.

8.6 pm

Mike Wood (Batley and Spen) (Lab): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), but I want to go back to the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), who is no longer in his place. He regretted the fact—he said it was a great shame—that we could not all come together in agreement on this Bill. I would have thought, however, that by the time he spoke it was totally apparent—it certainly is now—that, on the issue of reducing recidivism,

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which would be beneficial to all parties and to the whole of society, there is enormous agreement on both sides of the House that supervision of and support for petty offenders should have been introduced a considerable while ago, certainly under the previous Government. I, like many others, regret that they did not find the money to do that.

I also think that there is almost a consensus that, in some cases, it would be beneficial to have extra licence requirements for those who have served sentences of up to two years. I think, therefore, that there is a great deal of consensus about what we are told is the whole corpus of the Bill. Where the consensus falls down is on the means by which to achieve those high ideals and aspirations.

None of what the Government say they want necessitates the privatisation of the probation process and the destruction of our first-class professional probation service. Indeed, as we have heard repeatedly throughout the debate, if the Government were serious about their objectives, they would be turning to the probation service, not undermining it. They would be looking to the people who have proved that they can deliver those kinds of objectives, not doing the very reverse.

The Government should be looking to services such as my own in west Yorkshire, which consistently rates among the best. I place on record my thanks to Karen Ledger and Andrew Sinclair from that service for their briefings to me, which have been extremely useful, and to Gail Wilson, a constituent of mine who wrote to remind me that in 2013 alone the West Yorkshire service has received the Investors in People gold award, is the only trust in the Stonewall top 100 employers index and has won three Butler Trust awards, and that, at the same time, between 2005 and 2013, it reduced reoffending by 14%. As we have heard, every probation trust throughout the country has met and continues to meet every target that the Government have set. The Government rate them good or better than good. That is why the consensus falls down.

Jenny Chapman: My hon. Friend rightly points out that trusts are consistently awarded good or excellent ratings on inspection. Does he agree that now is the time to raise the bar and ask more of our trusts, such as asking them to deal with short-term prisoners, and not to be abolishing the very trusts that are performing so highly?

Mike Wood: That is exactly the way forward. Were those extra requirements to be introduced, the probation service would meet them. Despite the attempt to obscure the reality of the Government’s plans, we learn that the probation service will not even be given the opportunity to do so, for some completely fallacious reason to do with not risking public money. That comes against the background of a Bill that will risk £20 billion of public money by giving it to untried and untested private companies. It is true that were the extra responsibilities and work to be offered to the probation service, it would meet the challenge.

Jeremy Corbyn: In my hon. Friend’s discussions with West Yorkshire probation trust, were any concerns raised about the work load of probation officers? My intuition is that it has gone up a great deal and that trusts have

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delivered incredible results. Obviously, the whole service is put at risk if officers are put under too much pressure to achieve the results that are required of them. The stress levels for probation officers are certainly very high.

Mike Wood: The large case loads of probation officers is a continuing concern. There is concern across the board about the proposals, but the work load for probation officers and probation trusts is a matter of record, as is the fact that they have in the recent past cut their costs. They have become more efficient, not less.

There are other problems with the proposals. They are untried and untested. The Secretary of State is now at his banquet and we all hope that he enjoys it enormously. In the first week that he was in post—before he even knew where his desk was—he cancelled out of hand the two planned pilots, which would have given us the evidence base by which to judge the proposals.

Payment by results, which has been lauded this afternoon, is unique in criminal justice systems throughout the world. By definition, therefore, we have very little evidence on the efficacy or potential of such a system. We do know that when it has been researched, it has not come out too well. For example, the Social Market Foundation, a cross-party think-tank, has said that even if the private companies reduce reoffending rates by more than 3% and achieve the payment-by-results reward, that would be limited to a reduction of 5% as anything more than that would require huge investment in rehabilitation programmes. It states that most companies would make their profit by cutting costs on staff and interventions, allow reoffending rates to rise by 3%, if necessary, and rely on the fee for service to produce their profits.

The myth has been perpetuated today that payment by results will have an enormous enervating and driving effect on the private companies who take part. We know that that is nonsense. The Government started with the intention that 30% of the fee should be related to results. We know that in the so-called negotiations, that was reduced to less than 10%. As the think-tank points out, the companies will earn a vast amount of their money by winning the contract. That is how they will make their profit. To extend the payment beyond that would be a bonus. Any suggestion that payment by results can have that effect therefore flies in the face of what will actually happen.

Lorely Burt: I admire the hon. Gentleman’s visionary understanding, because I have no knowledge of the reduction to less than 10%. I put the example of the 3% straw man to the Justice Secretary and his colleagues. That percentage was described to me as “noise in the system”. In other words, 3% either way would not be indicative of strong work. Should the targets not only not be met, but go backwards, my understanding is that there would be—

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): Order. Interventions must be very short. The hon. Lady has made a speech already, and I am bothered about the time.

Mike Wood: The hon. Lady referred to “noise in the system” and I was beginning to understand what she meant. She has already made her speech.

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I was suggesting that rather than being motivated by the wonderful new system of being paid only by results, the companies, will find a way to operate in which so-called results are unimportant in determining how much profit they make. That might be difficult for the hon. Lady to accept, but we ought to consider the kind of companies that the Government are talking to and that will be central to the new way of organising the probation service.

Many attempts have been made to downplay that point. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate, among others, said that we cannot make judgments about G4S on the basis of minor indiscretions because it has 74,000 employees. Companies that engage in Government contracts and then defraud the Government, that make claims for transporting prisoners who are dead or for providing services to people who have long since left the system, and that are under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office are not the kind of companies that the Government should consider offering further contracts to. Although the Minister was offered the opportunity earlier to tell the House that the two companies that are under serious investigation will be debarred until cleared, he has failed, yet again, to give that assurance. Apparently, companies that behave in that disreputable and dishonest fashion will be considered perfectly acceptable to play a part in the new system. I find that completely unacceptable.

As recently as today, we have heard more evidence of the performance of G4S. Three of its members falsified documents and were guilty, as far as I can see, of perjury. Judge Mostyn said:

“The three officials behaved disgracefully”.

He added:

“When agents of the state falsify documents it undermines, if not fatally then certainly very seriously, the trust of the people in the operation of the rule of law. It makes no difference if, as here, the agents are private contractors to whom the secretary of state has outsourced her powers. Corruption by state officials is insidious and corrosive.”

That was this week’s horror story; last week’s was about the torturing of prisoners.

John McDonnell: It is important that we are aware of what happened today. The judge found that G4S had redacted papers that took out information and evidence that the person had been tortured and that therefore that person was eventually deported back to a place that had put his life at risk.

Mike Wood: Absolutely. We are talking about people who collude in torture, and allegations that people are torturing prisoners in their care. Apparently, however, those people are perfectly acceptable and might play a part in privatising our probation service out of existence. We could, of course, also look at Serco, which is one of the other main contenders.

In spite of what the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson)—who is no longer in his place—said earlier, the experience of Serco in managing the London unpaid work scheme is instructive. Reports from that scheme and other parties working, or hoping to work, in partnership with Serco—partnership is crucial in this area of our service—state that they have huge difficulties getting through to Serco’s helpline when they need to speak to it about any issue relating to an individual offender. They also said that Serco has failed to provide adequate information to offenders and probation staff,

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leading to unnecessary costs to the taxpayer through breach orders and subsequent court costs, and that previous good relations in partnerships have been destroyed by the actions of that private company. In spite of attempts to downplay such issues, those are the kinds of company that will win these contracts should they be let in the way that we are told they will be. We will have G4S responsible for probation, and Eddie Stobart responsible for legal aid.

The hon. Member for Solihull again used the R-word when she assured the House that both parts of the coalition are up for this revolutionary change. We need not revolutionary change, however, but testing, piloting and evaluation, and we need a far more cautious approach for two reasons, the first of which is the danger to the public, which has been mentioned extensively during the debate. I am in the Chamber representing 120,000 people —men, women and children—in my constituency, just as every other Member is doing. I have a responsibility to look to their safety, and these proposals will lessen that safety. My constituents will be more likely to become victims of crime as a result of dangerous, volatile, difficult-to-predict, sometimes professional criminals and offenders being supervised by untrained, unqualified, poorly paid, temporary, unmotivated, so-called probation staff. There is an enormous danger to the public inherent in and right at the heart of these proposals.

Secondly, I think that so far in the debate—I have been here since the beginning—no one has mentioned the danger to the criminal justice system. There is the idea that we can take on work with at least another 60,000 offenders a year and that the whole system will not become swamped, even though we are cutting resources at the same time—well, we are told that it will be within the same cost envelope, but that is 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 or 70,000 extra offenders a year to be dealt with within that same cost envelope. I am trying not to say that this does not add up, but it does not add up, does it?

We need a much more cautious approach because the Bill is being introduced with the lie that it is about high-minded aspirations to provide a service for petty offenders, those on short-term sentences and the like. We know, however, that the proposals are a blatant attempt to take public money and transpose it into the coffers of private companies. We also know what happens if we introduce legislation on that basis. Think of the Child Support Agency. How many years has it taken to get the CSA—which was introduced by the previous Tory Government, on a lie—back to something fit for purpose? How many lives have been ruined? How many injustices caused? Yet that is exactly what is being proposed in the Bill.

I have considerable concerns about the Bill, and to conclude I would like to place on record a few of the issues that cause me particular concern. First, the Government’s own impact assessment is one of the most vacuous documents that I have read for a long time. There is no costing anywhere in it: “We don’t have to cost it; we know what the cost will be, but we are not going to tell you. If we told you, the private companies involved might know.” There are estimates and guesstimates about the implications for the number of offenders, including those in breach of an order or going back to prison—the spectrum is so wide that it is rather like the weather report: “Tomorrow, there’s going to be weather.”

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We are told that 600 extra prison places will be needed —we are talking about a new prison. We were told as recently as last month that in a prison estate of 85,000 places, there were 800 vacancies on the day in question. In fact, earlier in the debate, we were told that the figure is now down to 600. Is every one of those places to be filled by someone in breach of an order under the proposals? Surely not, yet that is the logic of 13,000 to 17,000 extra breaches leading to 600 extra prison places being needed. Any suggestion that that will be achieved by the expenditure of £15 million of extra public funds is, as again we all know, nonsense.

The proposals on drugs and drug testing deserve a debate of their own. We have heard an enormous amount of nonsense about what will be achieved by drug testing, and by the requirement to appear and private organisations that can drug test if they choose to. They will, of course, have to bear the cost, so we can be fairly sure that they will not choose to test very often. A Government Member has said that extending testing to class B drugs was to catch people who are on cannabis. That might be a laudable aim in all kinds of ways, but to what effect in terms of reoffending? The Blenheim project in London—a drug and alcohol project—has said that the measure seems

“to be based on a misplaced belief that comparatively widespread use of cannabis amongst prisoners indicates a strong link to offending behaviour”,

yet the UK Drug Policy Commission—no less—reports that

“users of other drugs have much lower rates of offending than those who use heroin and crack and are less likely to have committed a crime to get drugs or when under the influence of drugs”.

If we are not careful, petty offenders who have been released from prison on licence and who have amended, or who are coming to grips with, their offending behaviour, will be caught out by testing for cannabis. It will be found in their system and they will go back to prison. How does that save money? How does that improve the situation for that offender or for society?

If the Minister had read any one of the three volumes of prison diaries of his erstwhile colleague, Lord Archer, he would know that what happened in the prison system when it introduced mandatory drugs testing will happen outside the prison system. If a prisoner has a drug in his or her system that can be discovered for four weeks, they will move to a drug that cannot be discovered in that time. That is what has happened in our prison system where, as was reported recently, it is easier to get crack cocaine than a bar of soap. Prisoners have opted to move from cannabis to heroin. That is what will happen outside. What on earth is that about?

DrugScope, which has been referred to and which is probably the leading independent centre for drug expertise, has expressed enormous misgivings, as has just about every other organisation involved with drug addicts. They work daily to achieve results. The Government will not listen to probation trusts or probation officers, but those organisations are another group of experts doing the job that the Government believe they know better than.

We are told that a national probation service will be formed. We should remember that it will be responsible for the most serious 30% of offenders—the murders and rapists and the like to which the hon. Member for

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Solihull has referred. It will be responsible for multi-agency public protection arrangements and for breaching, yet it will be based regionally. We are going to tear the heart out of the relationship between officers and the serious offenders. The larger geographic area will make a difference.

I have been a probation officer and can tell hon. Members that getting a probationer to appear in my office was the first part of the job. What if I move the office 50 miles or 100 miles further away? Does anyone believe that that would improve the chances of the probationer appearing? Does anyone consider that it will lead to less offending? It will not. Let us not forget that such offenders are not petty offenders, but dangerous people. I therefore have grave doubts. Are we setting up the so-called national probation service—the public part that picks up the bits that the private sector does not want, cannot handle, has failed with and so on—to fail?

The Ministry of Justice has said that the Bill encapsulates

“a complex, large-scale change programme to be”

introduced and

“completed within an aggressive timetable.”

The situation is that what works will be replaced by what will not work, on the basis of an ideological hunch from the Secretary of State. Here in the House on 9 January—do hon. Members remember?—he said:

“Sometimes we just have to believe something is right and do it”—[Official Report, 9 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 318.]

The Secretary of State himself told us that that was the basis and justification for doing away with the two pilots that would have given him an evidence base. Even though he was new to his job, he knew in the first week that they would not have given him an evidential basis for anything of the kind.

In last week’s debate, several Members recited the number of incidents of reoffending in any one year, and one of them said, “Something has to be done.” That is the cry of the impotent and the powerless the world over. It has now apparently become the watchword of the Government with regard to the criminal justice system. That just will not do. We deserve much better, and the public need and deserve much better. The Government have to rethink this proposed legislation radically.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): Order. There are six speakers left and an hour and a bit to go, so I will have to introduce a limit of 11 minutes.

8.35 pm

John Glen (Salisbury) (Con): It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate. We are enjoying an interesting discussion on the principles behind the Bill, and we have benefited from hon. Members on both sides of the House sharing their considerable experience. I pay tribute in particular to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who raised sensible issues regarding clarification on how probation trusts might participate in what is envisaged by the proposed legislation.

I welcome the Bill and the Government’s commitment to tackling high reoffending rates while being attentive to public protection and the need for justice for victims of crime. Some of the statistics we have heard this afternoon have been striking, with 58% of offenders with sentences of less than 12 months reoffending. That

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reoffending is costing the economy between £7 billion and £10 billion a year. There is an urgent need to tackle reoffending, and robust reform of the system is required if we are to achieve that. It is a tragedy for too many people and too many communities that for too long this issue has not been addressed effectively.

The Government’s approach to the two major aims of the Bill is absolutely right. First, it is right to open up the system to voluntary and private providers who can compete to provide better value for the taxpayer while maintaining and streamlining a public national probation service for high-risk offenders. I have listened carefully to the concerns regarding the demarcation of high-risk offenders and movement between categories and it would be helpful if the Minister underscored those points. Secondly, it is right to make the unprecedented move to put in statute a minimum of 12 months, combined supervision and licence for offenders who have served sentences of less than 12 months.

In the time available, I would like to focus on two areas of the Bill: the assumptions made in rehabilitation, and the calibration of the payment by results system. The Government, in the White Paper “Transforming Rehabilitation” and in the Bill, have shown a wise awareness of the pattern of drug use and chaotic lifestyles among many offenders, including those who serve short sentences. They are right to want to tackle that within the rehabilitation process. I am pleased to see, therefore, that provision has been made in the Bill for drugs testing and to tackle drug dependency, within the limits set out in clause 15, and that this has been expanded from class A drugs to classes A and B.

Last March, I visited the Amber Foundation, which does considerable work not only in Wiltshire, my county, but in Devon and Surrey, working with unemployed and homeless young people, many of whom have a history of crime or drug addiction and have come out of the criminal justice system. The foundation is unique in that, rather than running generic programmes, it works with each individual directly in a residential environment. When I stayed there, it was clear that it provided customised support to individuals, including support for independent living, literacy and numeracy courses and practical training. It became clear that the road to long-term independent living, free from reoffending, was often an extremely long and difficult one, as was the road to freedom from drug dependency.

Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con): I apologise, but I was in Committee earlier and could not take part in the debate. Does my hon. Friend agree that to help people in the rehabilitation process, prisons need to be drug-free, and therefore does he share my concern that methadone prescriptions in UK prisons have trebled since 2007?

John Glen: My hon. Friend raises an important point about the challenge of freeing people from drugs. As a magistrate for six years, I was deeply frustrated at the recurrent sentencing of the same individuals, knowing that typically someone would have to go through a programme six or seven times. I do not want it thought that Conservative Members think the solution is to send everything out to the private sector. I do not believe that. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) indicates that he thinks that that is what the Government believe, but I

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do not believe it. We are arguing for a recognition that all types of provision can lead to better outcomes; we do not have an ideological fixation that says that the way we have always done it must be the way of the future, but with enhanced targets.

I want the Government to learn the lessons from my experience at the Amber Foundation. It has a realistic view of what can be done with offenders, particularly young offenders with a history of drug or alcohol dependency, in a limited time frame. Short-term interventions will frequently be insufficient, as what is needed is a long-term investment of focused effort and patience.

Turning to the calibration of the payment-by-results system, I am aware that any move to a system opened—sensibly, I believe—to the possibility of private provision is looked upon with grave reservations by many working in the sector, but I hope that many of those who have spoken, mostly Opposition Members, will be assured by the Government’s inclusion of a measure of total reoffending in a cohort within the proposed payment-by-results formula. We do not want a system that incentivises providers only to take the low-hanging fruit of easy cases, and I am confident that the Government will deal with that this evening, but in the light of my earlier comments, I think that that needs to be spelled out clearly and that the payment-by-results system will need careful calibration.

The Amber Foundation explained that the support it could offer young offenders was sometimes constrained by the narrow time conditions attached to funding. A 12-month window for results will not always be sufficient for someone on the long and difficult road to mature, responsible, drug-free, crime-free independent living, particularly those who have had an appalling start in life and spent several years living on the wrong side of the law. Will the Minister therefore consider including an additional mechanism to reward long-term reduction in reoffending in a cohort? Will the Government also look at an option for the sentencing institutions to recommend a longer supervision period within a residential or closer-working environment?

I hope that the Minister will be able to address those minor points in his closing remarks. I am nevertheless enthusiastic about the Bill’s aims and the framework that the Government have proposed to achieve them. It is vital that we tackle reoffending rates, and the Bill shows that the Government are serious about and committed to doing so.

In these very tricky areas of public policy, it is inevitable that change will be uncomfortable. It has been suggested in a number of contributions today that pilots could be set up across the country, and that we could extrapolate from those pilots the information necessary to design the perfect system. Of course, that would have some appeal if we wanted to avoid taking any risks whatever, but it is unreasonable to suggest that Ministers are oblivious to the history of combined understanding and experience across the probation service and the range of front-line practitioners on the ground.

Jenny Chapman: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, because he is making a thoughtful and considered speech, but the fact is that the combined experience, as he puts it, is deeply opposed to the reforms, which is why many people were on strike last week.

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John Glen: As I said earlier, change is always difficult and controversial, but this is an area that successive Administrations have not really grasped. We have heard about constraints on funding in the last few years of the previous Government, and there might be some truth in that, but the reality is either that we carry on putting things off and using warm words about aspirations for change or that we recognise the statistics and the reality that many communities are experiencing a cycle of reoffending that is not being properly addressed. I will support the Government this evening, despite having made what I hope were constructive suggestions about how this could be moved forward.

8.48 pm

Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC): Last month, the National Association of Probation Officers held one of the biggest ever rallies in Parliament and called on the Government to rethink their proposals to privatise probation. Two large Committee Rooms overflowed with members of the association, but what struck me was that their main concern was public safety. Even their own jobs came third or fourth in the list, which illustrated the fact that their concerns were genuine and heartfelt.

When the Bill reached its Report stage in the other place, the Government were defeated by a cross-party amendment that now stands as clause 1. The clause states that no reform of the structure of the probation service may be made by the Government

“unless the proposals have been laid before, and approved by resolution of, both Houses of Parliament.”

Before he left the Chamber today, the Secretary of State said that he would reverse that provision in Committee. He wants to do that because it challenges the Government’s intention, which is to bring about wholesale change to probation without proper parliamentary scrutiny. The Government are planning to do that in spite of a tremendous public outcry and fierce opposition from the probation sector itself and the criminal justice system more widely.

On Thursday last, I attended a conference in London with representatives of the police forces, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, the fire service, local authorities, housing associations and police and crime commissioners all coming together. These were practitioners who know how these plans will affect community safety and crime levels on our streets. During a discussion on plans to reform probation, not a single person spoke up in favour of the Government’s proposals.

I understand that the Government intend to use the Offender Management Act 2007 as the vehicle through which to abolish probation trusts and to create new community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service. The 2007 Act, of course, enabled probation trusts to work with third sector voluntary organisations and possibly the private sector to ensure that services could be carried out locally.

Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP): On that subject, I understand that voluntary organisations have expressed some concern that providers should not be able to park these offenders who have complex and expensive cases. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that this legislation does not address that properly?

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Mr Llwyd: When something is driven by the profit motive, I am afraid that cherry-picking is going to occur. Common sense dictates that that is likely to happen; the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

The thinking behind the 2007 Act was that the probation trusts would be at the very core of the work, and would effectively be able to commission as and when necessary. It seems to me that that was an entirely different animal from what we are discussing today. Despite the Bill currently stating that parliamentary approval will be needed before any change takes place, the wheels are already turning. At the end of September, probation trusts were given notice of the Government’s intention to terminate their contracts by 1 April 2014. It will soon be too late to step back from these proposals. If we do not, however, in March 2014, 35 trusts will be closed and replaced by a centrally run public sector service that will work with only high and very high-risk offenders. That will account for just 30% of probation work.

Probation trust leaders were told in September to undertake a 28-day consultation with their staff on the process of splitting trust staff and resources to create the new community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service. No recommendation on the processes involved or the terms of the resource split has yet been agreed by probation trust employers, unions or the Government. Staff have not been told the terms of any voluntary redundancy scheme or what access will be granted to the local government pension scheme either for existing staff or new recruits. They have been given no information on how their roles will change after the reforms have been introduced. There is a real risk that many of the best staff will leave the profession. Unsurprisingly, then, in October, 84% of NAPO members voted for direct action. This is only the third time that the union has voted for direct action in its 101-year history. It has not taken this step lightly.

Contractors who offer services for the lowest price regardless of quality will no doubt be responsible for supervising 70% of probation, which is the low to medium- risk offenders who are most at risk of reoffending. Everybody agrees, by the way, that something should be done about them, so it is not an issue of either the status quo or this change. We all agree that something needs to be done, but it is how it is done and who is accountable for the work that matter.

Nearly 70,000 of the 140,000 cases that will be outsourced to private contractors will be offenders convicted of violent or sexual offences—specialist and sensitive cases that demand expertise and dedication from trained professionals. What they will get instead will be companies that may have a perverse incentive to allow reoffending to increase so that they can increase their profit margin. The gravity of the outcome of these proposals cannot be exaggerated, and all this is happening in spite of the fact that probation trusts are performing as well as they are. The Ministry of Justice’s own figures show that all 35 probation trusts have “good” or “excellent” performance levels and are hitting all their targets.

Reoffending rates for adult offenders under supervision by probation are the lowest they have been since 2007-08. In October 2011, the probation service was awarded the British Quality Foundation gold medal for excellence. Reoffending by those under probation supervision has been falling every single year since 2000. Despite the uncertainty felt by probation staff at present, the

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latest Ministry of Justice reoffending data have shown that the service’s high level of performance is in fact continuing.

Today, the Ministry released figures showing that 234 serious crimes, including violent and sexual offences, had been committed in Wales by short-sentenced offenders who had been released from prison in 2011. Its rather misleading press release failed to point out that the Government had ruled out the option of handing responsibility for them to the probation trusts in the past. However, both the Ministry’s press release and the one from which the Sunday Express quoted yesterday underline the fact that that is a highly dangerous course of action.

Instead of entrusting those offenders to the care of the professional probation service, the Government will deliver them to privateers who will be untrained and, no doubt, preoccupied by the profit motive. That hammers home the point that the Government’s reforms represent a victory of dogma over common sense—and there will be problems. As the Magistrates Association has made clear, the management of risk for offenders whose categorisation changes from medium to high and high to medium will be made far more difficult. The association has warned that offenders’ categorisation can change from medium to high rapidly if their circumstances change.

There is also a real risk that communication gaps will occur between community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service, probably leading to delay and possibly endangering the public. The Magistrates Association has pointed out that the staff of community rehabilitation companies may not be trusted by the police to handle confidential intelligence once they are managed privately. As we have heard, there is even a fear that sentencers will be less inclined to use community orders in the light of previous experiences with privately managed contracts—such as those involving Capita/ALS for interpreters and Serco for prison escorts, not to mention the G4S contract—and that that will result in an increase in the prison population and all the associated costs. We should not forget that probation trusts will be replaced by a model that is largely untested, as the “Transforming Rehabilitation” programme has not been piloted in the UK or in other jurisdictions.

Even the Justice Secretary’s Department is aware of the risks. The internal risk register, which was leaked to the press but which the Ministry of Justice still refuses to publish, warns that there is a more than 80% risk that the plans will lead to

“an unacceptable drop in operational performance”

and to delivery failures.

I have a copy of another risk register, compiled by Policy Exchange. It states that there is a “very high” risk of a failure to deliver the programme either in scope or within the time scale set by Ministers, as well as a very high risk of a reduction in the performance levels of trusts and community rehabilitation companies during the change process. The register emphasises that that would be due to insufficient capacity and the extent and speed of the structural changes being proposed, changes on which the Ministry of Justice has already embarked. There is also a very high risk of a reduction in performance levels following the departure of the trusts, partly owing to the MOJ’s failure to establish a robust operational design that has been fully tested. Moreover, the register states that there is a danger of the

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“superficial appearance of the programme’s success masking fundamental failures in service design and practice.”

Those are damning words.

The reasoned amendment that I have co-signed declines to give the Bill a Second Reading for the reasons that I have cited. No part of the amendment supports the status quo. We need to do something about the 12-months cohort, but the Bill is certainly not the answer. The Government have already been told that there is a common-sense answer, namely to extend the remit of the probation service so that probation trusts can supervise offenders sentenced to less than 12 months in prison. However, the Government have chosen not to do that.

Jeremy Wright: I understand that that is what the right hon. Gentleman wants, but can he explain how it would be paid for?

Mr Llwyd: I am sure that it could be paid for by the delivery of some savings here and there in other parts of the budget.

Jenny Chapman: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Minister might like to consider this: about a third of the budget of probation trusts is top-sliced, which they are unable to control, and which pays for things like estates, and it might be better employed in delivering rehabilitation services?

Mr Llwyd: I accept what the shadow Minister says, but I want to say something to the Minister. I respect him as a Minister who does engage with people when they debate with him; I have great regard for him for that. However, I have to say to him that given that he does not know the cost of this farrago he is going into, he should not ask me about costs. [Interruption.] Well, it is first of all incumbent on him, being in government, to come up with figures, not to test figures put forward from the Opposition Benches.

Jeremy Wright: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; I know he is short of time. The point is that I know how I will pay for it, but he does not. [Hon. Members: “How?] I will pay for it by the competition process. It is very interesting: the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), speaking for the Opposition, thinks we can do this through “estates”. Would the right hon. Gentleman be comfortable with the closure of probation premises, because that is what “estates” means?

Mr Llwyd: There could be some realignment, and there could be some savings here and there, of course, but there would have to be some increase in probation staff; that is an obvious point. As the Minister knows well, every change costs money and the better change would be to extend the remit, put in more properly trained probation officers and start from that point, not risk public safety in the awful way he and his colleagues are now doing.

I urge everyone who respects the probation service and who wants to ensure public safety to vote for this reasoned amendment today.

Several hon. Members rose—

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): Order. I now drop the time-limit to 10 minutes, and I hope we do not lose too much more time.

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9.3 pm

Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con): I shall try not to lose us any more time. I always seem fated to be called to speak in a debate when a time-limit has been applied. Also, I usually seem to speak to an empty Chamber, but I have a few Members to speak to today.

It is a pleasure to speak on the Second Reading of this Bill, and there have been some useful contributions so far. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), I regard myself as a critical friend of these proposals. No one can dispute the figures, and I make no apology for arguing that something must be done. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) appeared to suggest that that was a bad approach. I think that when we have a cohort of prisoners who are getting no rehabilitation support because their custodial sentence is less than 12 months, something should be done. I think there is general agreement on that on both sides of the House. We cannot go on giving people £46 cash-in-hand and just hope for the best. That is why these proposals are an important first step.

None the less, I recognise the level of concern that exists on both sides of the House and in the wider community, which is interested in these issues, not least the Prison Reform Trust, of which I am a trustee. There is a deep underlying concern that these proposals may inadvertently lead to an increase in the prison population as sentencers play safe and send people to custody in order to access rehabilitation services that they fear may not be available if they go for a community sentence. That is a genuine fear that we have heard expressed today, and I would like the Minister to try to nail it. What guidance can he issue to the judiciary and magistrates to remind them that existing sentencing guidelines will remain in force, so custody remains an option only when the offence justifies it? Furthermore, can he ensure that that guidance makes it clear that the level of support available to an offender does not vary depending on whether it is in a custodial or a community setting?

Those assurances would help many who are concerned that these proposals may lead to an increase in the prison population, and it will emphasise that these reforms should not be portrayed as being to the detriment of community sentences. Indeed, given these concerns, I would welcome hearing from the Minister how he sees community sentencing playing a greater role in the future.

We have also heard a lot about the probation service’s fears about the changes, and I want to raise a couple of points that may alter the balance of the debate somewhat. For a very long time now the probation service has argued for parity of esteem, within the Ministry of Justice, with the prison sector. The 35 local probation trusts have never felt that they have argued with one voice in the way that the prisons sector can in the Ministry of Justice. Creating a national probation service, and creating a probation institute to enhance that profession’s qualifications and opportunities, is a good thing. It provides an opportunity for the thousands of well-respected, highly professional probation officers who are out there.

We can all refer to excellent voluntary organisations that engage in rehabilitation work. As Christmas is coming, I can recommend Fine Cell Work. It produces excellent embroidery, cushions and needlework, which

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can be fantastic for relatives or friends. I suggest that hon. Members visit its website today. Fine Cell Work has a purpose, because it trains people for a career after they leave custody. The Clink is another good example of an excellent voluntary organisation. It is about to open its third restaurant inside a prison, at HMP Brixton—perhaps we can all go for a Christmas dinner at some point, if it opens early enough. Its reoffending rate is 12.5%, which is one that many would dream of in terms of this debate.

I recognise the concern expressed by hon. Members on both sides that the smaller community groups may struggle to cling on in this new competitive environment. A fortnight ago I made this point, but I will make it again: Ministers and Opposition spokespeople must look carefully at what is being proposed by Clinks, which is the trade body for the hundreds of voluntary providers in our prison system. It has some specific proposals about where risk can be located in the supply chain to enable more of these many smaller groups to play a crucial role. That particularly relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) about the smaller groups that help women offenders and other minority groups of offenders. That is an important thing and I hope that the Minister can respond to it.

The speed of reform is certainly daunting and ambitious, and I would be naive not to suggest that. In a way, it makes me think of the work capability assessment, although I would rather not necessarily have to do that. The previous Government sensibly asked Professor Harrington to undertake regular reviews of specific aspects of the WCA that were causing concern—one year it was mental health, another year it was fluctuating conditions. That tweaked the WCA to improve it, perhaps not to the extent that Labour Members might like but it was a useful self-correcting mechanism to improve a process. I would very much like to see something similar in this area. I recognise that we have Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation, but how will the Minister task it to provide regular reviews of the progress of these reforms, identifying thematic areas that might need attention? Such an approach would greatly enhance the House’s confidence that these reforms will be properly scrutinised and improved as they go along. The iterative element to these proposals will be crucial, just as it was on the WCA.

I am also highly concerned about the potential for large numbers of breaches, with the impact assessment talking about a need for 600 extra places and a cost of £16 million. Nobody who is concerned about the size of public spending should treat that lightly. I want to hear a bit more from the Minister about how we can ensure that breach is not an automatic conveyor belt. Provision was made in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 to allow offenders to go before a court to explain why they did what they did and then the court would have the option to do nothing if it thought that what it had heard so convinced it. Disappointingly, I understand that that was not commenced—indeed, it was removed in the Crime and Courts Act 2013. Will the Minister say whether that can be looked at again to ensure that we do not have this automatic escalator of breaches, whereby we end up with more people in prison than should be there? I am particularly concerned about the much younger age group, who often have learning disabilities or

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communication delay of some sort. They often seem to be in a Catch-22 situation, where they have a complex set of requirements placed on them which they cannot possibly hope to understand. I know the Government, in the other place, made a commitment in response to Lord Bradley to have “easy read” statements of what the requirements are going to be. Can the Government update us on the progress of that, because I fear that without them we will see far more breaches that cannot be explained in front of a court to the satisfaction of the court?

Also, I remain slightly concerned by the role youth offending teams will play in the new landscape. Someone turning 18 while in custody, having been sentenced as a minor, will be transferred to the national probation service. For many of the vulnerable young people in my constituency, that will be quite a culture shock.

Jeremy Wright: I am conscious of the time and that I might not have the chance to get to this later, so I can give my hon. Friend the instant reassurance that in the case of the individuals he is describing, a decision will be made on each about whether it is more appropriate for the national probation service or, indeed, the CRC to manage it or for the youth offending team to continue to do so.

Paul Maynard: I thank the Minister for that response and hope that the youth offending team will still have a voice in that process rather than just being passive.

Most importantly, in terms of the numbers involved, we all frequently discuss the role that mental ill health plays in causing offender behaviour. The numbers in prison with a mental health diagnosis, an addiction problem or a dual diagnosis is significant. It is striking that, despite the fact that we have a specific mental health rehabilitation order, for the last year for which I have figures only 1% of disposals consisted of such an order—that is only 783. That cannot be because we are not aware of the problem; clearly, we are, and many detailed reports have considered the structural issues that mean that the capacity for meeting that need simply is not there.

Bearing in mind what we have heard from Members on both sides about cost, as well as the fact that providing treatments for these vulnerable groups costs more, will the Minister consider whether the mental health rehabilitation orders, which might be far more costly, need to be provided in a slightly different way? Otherwise, we might see a repeat of the current situation, where we have the need and the knowledge but do not seem to be able to supply the rehabilitation treatment to the people who most need it.

Clearly, I have just listed a long line of concerns, as is my way in such debates. None the less, I am highly supportive of the Government’s direction of travel on this Bill. I am very supportive of the Minister individually and I join Members on both sides in saying that we know that his heart is in the right place and we trust him to deliver the Bill properly.

9.12 pm

John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab): My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) referred to my long expertise in this field. Well, my expertise goes back to 1997, and I have dealt with successive Ministers. I am also the

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secretary of the justice unions group, of which the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) is the chair.

Having dealt with probation officers for all that time, I can say that I have never known morale to be so low. There is real fear and anxiety among them and their families about the future. Hon. Members need to recognise that. The strike has been mentioned. People do not go on strike lightly—certainly not in this service. These are dedicated professionals. The National Association of Probation Officers have been pressing for years to be able to supervise those on short-term sentences, and the irony is that that will be used to privatise their jobs. The tragedy is that probation officers have delivered on everything that has been asked of them, and not just on a wing and a prayer—piloted studies have demonstrated their effectiveness.

I refer Government Members to the briefing from London Councils and the Mayor of London, which demonstrated the local partnerships that had been working in London, as well as the other work that had taken place. I refer also to the briefing on the integrated offender management service, which has been independently evaluated by Sheffield Hallam university. This is where the police and probation and local authorities come together and work with offenders with a high risk of reoffending. Sheffield Hallam’s independent study showed that in 2012-13 the service reduced reoffending by 52%, one of the highest success rates for any scheme. It found that the scheme was economically viable: over five years, for every £1 invested, there was a saving to the taxpayer of £1.59, and over 10 years that would go up to £1.79.

The Sheffield Hallam university study is not like the Peterborough study. I have a lot of respect for what is going on in Peterborough, but that is a voluntary scheme. People are referred to the Sheffield Hallam university scheme, almost on a mandatory basis. To be frank, we were waiting expectantly for the full results and evaluation of the Peterborough scheme next year. That is what we were promised: an objective assessment of what worked, and evidence-based policy making, which seems to have gone out of the window. It is not that the probation service is not willing to change, reform or expand; it is just that the Government refuse to allow the one organisation that has a proven track record of success to become involved in the supervision of the offenders we are talking about.

On privatisation, I do not want to go over what has been said about Serco, G4S and the rest of it; I like the example of the privatisation of the court interpretation service. People turned up who could not speak the relevant foreign language. One would have to invent something really creative to enable that to happen. The London community payback scheme has been mentioned; in my area, we have lost invaluable staff and volunteers as a result of the scheme’s mismanagement. Hostel accommodation was privatised but had to be brought back into the public sector because it was so bad. If the question is what happens to staff in future, we should look to the prison privatisations: wage rates in privatised prisons are 23% lower than in state prisons, and the conditions—there are issues with the level of training and high staff turnover—are undermining the service.

The Chair of the Justice Select Committee mentioned our fear that the market does not exist at the moment. The Opposition are being criticised on the issue of

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energy because there are six major players in that field, and that is not an acceptable market. In the probation market, we may be down to two players. If the Serious Fraud Office’s investigation keeps going, two will almost certainly be taken out of the game, and we will be left with two or three big players. That is not a market; that is not competition. And the argument that competition will find us all the savings is like a belief in Santa Clause or the tooth fairy.

I heard the argument about mutuals. Probation officers come into the profession not to manage a company but to manage offenders. I like the example of the Government mutual that was set up to administer the civil service pension scheme. The day the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General came to the House to announce that change, the staff who were supposed to be participating in it were outside on strike, because the move was imposed on them, rather than being allowed to evolve.

I am concerned about costs, because it is quite clear that there is no real prospect of finding the savings through competition; that has been demonstrated in the case of other services. Where will the money be found to pay for the supervision of at least 50,000 to 70,000 additional offenders? There will potentially be 600 in a new prison. I think that there will be significantly more breaches than has been suggested, because we are dealing with people with chaotic lives. More and more people will be banged up. I remember the projections that the professionals gave us for prison growth: we were told that the number would never go above 60,000, but then it reached 80,000.

Where is the money to be found to pay for all that? I do not think it will come from savings through competition. It will come from where it always does: job cuts, pay cuts, the deskilling of the job, and the undermining of conditions of employment, including the pension. Reference was made to TUPE principles having an effect. We have had this debate time and again. To give assurances to staff, the last Government put a commitment to TUPE in some of their legislation, and that is what we would expect to find in this Bill to reassure professional staff.

We are requiring probation officers, and possibly private sector staff, to operate in a completely different environment. I welcome some elements of the legislation relating to supervision of those dependent on drugs, and other provisions, but to be frank, we met drug organisations in the drug and alcohol forum last week, and it reports exactly what we have heard in discussions with the Department for Work and Pensions. With the devolution of budgets to a local level, drugs services are being cut. Probation officers or private sector staff supervising offenders and seeking to get them off drugs will refer them to services that no longer exist.

One of my hon. Friends talked about how women will be affected. Reports are coming back from area after area that women’s centres and women’s services are being cut dramatically. We are setting up a system to fail. What does that mean in reality? My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood), who is a former probation officer, hit the nail on the head. We are setting up a system to fail, and in this case failure does not mean that something will not run on time or something may not be delivered on time. This failure

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puts our constituents at risk and it puts individual offenders at risk as well. I shall give one example from my constituency.

Feltham detention centre has been mentioned. When people come out of Feltham, there is a search by social services departments, probation and so on for accommodation for them. That accommodation is now managed by individual private sector organisations. In my area they have leased individual properties and put young people in those properties, largely unsupervised. One of them that I have been dealing with over the past fortnight is supervised for only three nights of the week. Only last Friday the police were called out twice. A month ago a neighbour had to take one of the young people living in the accommodation into her property because that person had been stabbed by another ex-offender—there is no supervision whatsoever.

When a system is set up which relies on the private sector and it does not deliver, in this area we are not talking about minor failures. We are talking about significant risk to life and limb of individual ex-offenders and of the general public. I repeat what I said last time and I am deadly serious about this: if any of my constituents are injured or harmed in any way as a result of this legislation, I will come for individual Ministers. I will seek to ensure that they never hold public office again.

Every warning has been given in this House, time and again by us and by professionals. I remind Members what was said by Liz Calderbank from the inspectorate. She said:

“Any lack of contractual or operational clarity between the public and private sector providers will, in our view, lead to systemic failure and an increased risk to the public.”

As chief inspector of probation, she said that

“the scale and pace of the change is considerable and we are concerned as an inspectorate that it is taken forward and implemented without any drop in performance”.

When such professionals warn a Government, their warnings need to be taken seriously. I worry, I fear for the safety of my constituents as a result of this legislation.

9.22 pm

Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con): Before I start, may I pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell)? May I humbly say that this is a debating Chamber, not a Chamber to make threats to those on the Front Bench on either side of the House? Perhaps we should stick to talking, rather than threatening people.

John McDonnell: What happens when one of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents is injured, maimed or murdered as a result of lack of supervision by a private company as a consequence of this Bill? Who does he blame?

Richard Drax: I should be as upset as the hon. Gentleman or any other Member would be if such circumstances were to arise, but I do not believe that threats should be made to individual Ministers. I have made my point and I shall continue.

I praise the Dorset probation service, which is outstanding. I agree with many of the points that have been raised. I spoke in the Opposition day debate and I agree with many points made by the Opposition

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and by one or two Members on the Government Benches. The probation service has made comments to me about privatisation and the 70% that has been suggested in the House tonight, and there are concerns about this. Will people fall through the gaps? What about careers, as has been asked? There are serious concerns about whether this proposal from the coalition Government will work. All I would say is that something is better than nothing, as we have heard from several good speakers on the Government Benches. We must do something because the reoffending rate is unacceptable.

Perhaps the situation has become so serious that we should be even more radical than the Government now are. At the young offenders institution on Portland, Sir James Spicer, who was the MP for West Dorset—I am sure some in the House will remember him—has introduced an initiative called the Airborne Initiative. The young men from that young offenders institution are taken out to Dartmoor and for five or six days they are taken day and night across the moors to navigate and learn about team spirit, camaraderie, friendship, discipline—all the things that these reoffenders and many young men and, dare I say, young ladies need.

Will the private sector and all these good intentions solve the problem? Has it got to such a point that the state needs to be even more radical? Perhaps I could lodge an idea in the minds of those on the Front Bench. How about a third force? I am not talking about making people join the armed forces, because as an ex-soldier myself I know that that clearly would not work, but I have trained young soldiers for two years, and some of them—not all—have arrived at the barracks in a similar state of mind to many young men who are in jail today. But six months later, after the training and the discipline they have received, and the friendship and camaraderie that have been engendered, these are young men one would be proud to die with. The system works.

So why do we not have a third force in this country? Why do we not put the Border Force and Customs and Excise all under one cap badge, run it on a militaristic basis and into that organisation put young men and women who, on a third warning in the magistrates court—call it what you will—rather than being sent to the young offenders institution in Portland, are given a chance? They can spend two years in the third force or go to jail. If they go to the third force and make a mistake, they end up in jail. Those who are coming to the end of a sentence of, say, six or seven years, are told in year five that they have a choice: two more years in jail or two more years with the third force.

The third force would be manned by volunteers who made a career on the sea, in the air and on the land—manned to a large extent by ex-service personnel. Rather than give second or third-hand ships to countries like India, those ships can be kept in this country and used for that purpose. Aircraft that may have outlived their usefulness on the front line can be used in the air. Those who have served in the Army can join the third force and represent the third force on the land. I know, because I have seen it work, that when young men and women are given a structure, discipline and hope, they can be turned around. Will all the good intentions of the private sector and the probation service, which, as I said, in Dorset is exceptional, work? The problem we have heard today from my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) costs £7 billion to £10 billion a

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year. If we can grab just 30% or 40% of these young people and turn them around, which I believe we could do, when they leave the third force they can go on to contribute to society. They learn what it is like to be selfless, to give, to work together with other people, and to contribute to their country.

I very much hope that all these good intentions work, and I welcome something being done to cut the reoffending rate, but we could go much further and be far more radical with the future of our young people, many of whom have no structure at all in their lives. As a Conservative, I do not like the state to get involved, but perhaps the problem is so big that the state must get involved to cut the bill further. The state has the power and the money to provide something that these young people can be put into and given a chance. If the light is turned on, it is so simple. I have seen it happen. People with no hope are given a simple task to do, the structure and discipline within which to do it, and their lives are changed.

The police, ambulance and fire services ran an experiment with 12 young people aged 14 to 16 years old, out on one of the moors. They had four baddies, let us call them, four who were pretty okay, and four goodies, and they put them all together to spend the night out on the moor. The first task was run by a huge barrel-chested ex-Royal Marine. He said to them, “Right, your first task is to put up your tent.” None of these people had ever seen a tent. It was one of those old ones, with lots of bits and bobs, made of canvas. They stood there looking at it with hands in pockets and phones ringing. Their whole attitude was, “What the hell am I doing here?” Then one of them said, “Staff, could you come and help me?” The sergeant-major said, “Gentlemen, and ladies, gather around. What is the first lesson in life?” They looked at him perplexed. He said, “You’ve just done it: if you don’t understand, you ask.” Within an hour the tent was up.

The next day I watched all three groups go round quite a challenging assault course. They put the two bad boys with the two ladies and sent them around. The two young men who were the worst offenders—they clearly came across as the worst—were the best at it, and when they finished they went back, without being asked, to help the ladies, who were struggling. They finished the assault course and stood with their shoulders back, inspired. They had been gripped, disciplined and they had achieved something. I am utterly convinced that if that small glimmer of light was pursued they would have a chance in life.

It is nothing new. It is not reinventing the wheel. I believe that the Government’s intentions are honourable and good, as are the Opposition’s, but will it work, because the problem is so serious? I am afraid that my answer, from my experience of life and from looking around—I have been around a few years—is that it will not, and certainly not to the degree that it should and could.

Someone said from a sedentary position, “Put them in the Army.” I am not saying that we should put them in the Army; I am saying that many of those young people need what the Army and those sorts of careers engender. The hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench, is a distinguished former officer of the Parachute Regiment. He knows exactly where I am coming from, and I suspect

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that in his heart he knows I am right. We can reach lots of young people if we are more radical and daring and go back to the old-fashioned way of helping people who are in trouble and need our help. I leave that thought with Members on the Front Bench.

I will support the Bill tonight and hope that it works but, on behalf of the probation service in Dorset, I have some doubts about whether it will be sufficient. As many Members across the House have said tonight, there are genuine concerns that people will fall through the net. That is what worries me. That is the risk element. We have to accept that there is an element of risk, but there is risk in whatever we do. Have we balanced the whole argument to ensure that the risk is as minimal as possible? In this case—I do not like using this expression—only time will tell. I hope for all our sakes that it works.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): The winding-up speeches will start at 20 minutes to 10.

9.32 pm

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab): I will bear in mind, Mr Deputy Speaker, the fact that I need to end in time for the Minister’s reply, which I am looking forward to hearing.

The hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has just given us an interesting vista of a militarised future for young people about which I have some serious doubts. If he wants to consider the consequences of the kind of solution that he proposes, he need look no further than the USA, which imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world per head of population, has a higher recidivism rate, has more brutality in its prisons and has a very large number of privatised prisons in which unbelievable brutality is carried out against individual prisoners. That does not work; it is not a solution.

Countries with a very low rate of reoffending are those that invest more in education in the first place, to give young people a better experience of life and better opportunities, and invest more in a prison service for young people that offers psychiatric and educational support and in which measurement is based on the educational improvements and achievements of those young people.

Members of the Justice Committee, including its Chair, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), visited Denmark and Norway to look at their experiences of dealing with young offenders. They spend far more money on it than we do and have reoffending rates of 20% and less in some cases, because they invest in those people. In this country, we are heading off in another, fairly ludicrous direction by saying that because there is a problem with the service we will hand it over to G4S, Serco and a few other companies that have a proven track record of incompetence and dishonesty, which will be sorted out by the courts.

Richard Drax: I did not suggest at any stage that youngsters should be brutalised in a militaristic fashion in a prison. I am suggesting that they should be taken out of prison and given hope and a structure that gives them a chance in life that otherwise they would not get.

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Jeremy Corbyn: We are all in favour of young people having a decent chance in life. If the hon. Gentleman had listened to what I said, he would have heard me suggest that we need to invest much more in young people in school and college and beforehand, so that they gain a wider range of life experiences, greater self-reliance and a greater sense of community involvement. I am concerned that he seemed to base his whole argument on the operations of the military, rather than on a much better form of community service and development.

I support the reasoned amendment and am pleased that it has been selected. I draw attention in particular to the last part, which points out that

“the Ministry of Justice’s own internal risk register warns that the Government’s proposals could result in a high risk of an unacceptable drop in operational performance”.

We on the Justice Committee will start taking evidence on this tomorrow. Despite the Secretary of State’s refusal—and, indeed, that of previous Governments—I think it is high time that Governments start, as a matter of routine, to publish the risk registers of any service for which they propose major change. It is a simple act of transparency on the way in which the Government operate.

The speed with which this Bill is being pursued is extraordinary. The Justice Committee will take evidence and I hope that we will come up with some conclusions, but that is for the Committee to decide, not me. I hope that any conclusions will be taken on board, but the Bill is going through the House today and has to be out of Committee in three weeks’ time, so there is hardly any time for any considered public discussion or debate or for Members of the Commons to take a proper look at it.

The fundamental issue is that this is about the Secretary of State’s obsession with the privatisation of services. I cannot forget the day when the Justice Committee visited the Ministry of Justice. When we met the Secretary of State, he had hardly sat down at his desk before he said that he was a complete convert to the idea of franchising out and privatising various MOJ services. There clearly is an obsessive attitude that only the private sector can produce results.

I am sure that when the hon. Member for South Dorset meets members of the probation service in Dorset, he tells them what a fine job they are doing and what wonderful people they are. That is because they are wonderful people who are doing a fine job, but how are we rewarding them? We are giving them more work to do with fewer resources and putting them in competition, in a race to the bottom, with the private sector, knowing full well that the financial argument will win out at the end of the day and that the private sector will win, with its profits, low wages and inadequately trained or qualified staff, and the public probation service, which all of us are proud of, will be the loser. This Bill is going down a very dangerous road.

The statistics helpfully provided today by the Library show that the total case load of the probation service in 2003 was 199,000, of which 120,000 cases came from court orders and 80,000 came from pre and post-release supervision. By 2012, the number from court orders had declined to 114,000, while the number from pre and post-release supervision had gone up to 111,000. There is already a significant change in what is going on.

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The reoffending statistics quoted are from Doncaster and Peterborough. I welcome anything that brings about a better prison service, better education and less reoffending. That has to be a good thing. The Justice Committee visited Doncaster, and it was an extremely interesting experience, but the statistics show that its reoffending rate of over 40% is still way above the national average of about 30%. It is a privately run prison and many of the regime’s liberal aspects are interesting, but it is perfectly reasonable to ask questions of the company that runs it about the treatment of its inmates.

I will make one last point because I want to leave enough time for the Front Benchers. Both unions that are involved in the probation service—Unison, which has fewer members from the probation service, and the National Association of Probation Officers, which has more—made a number of strong points in the evidence that most Members have no doubt received from them. The Unison paper makes the point that

“probation operates as a seamless whole. Splitting the service in two will allow dangerous offenders to fall down the gap between the two parts.”

Other colleagues have supported that position. NAPO has the same view. I attended its meeting and will conclude with a quotation from it:

“Napo believes that the proposed…agenda will undermine pubic protection procedures and place communities at risk of harm from poorly managed offenders. It will have a detrimental impact on staff who will have limited senior management support and who will be based many miles away and will have little local knowledge of the area they are responsible for. This will place unnecessary pressures on middle managers and front line staff.”

This privatising will not save money, but will cost more through higher rates of reoffending, greater danger to the public and, ultimately, more people in prison, not fewer. We should support the reasoned amendment tonight and give—

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo): Order. I tried not to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but that was a very long quotation. We need to get on to the closing speeches.

9.41 pm

Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab): This has been one of the better-informed debates in the House that I have had the privilege to take part in, largely thanks to the amendment that was tabled by the Opposition, because it has provided colleagues with the opportunity to debate the sell-off of the probation service. The Bill, which seemed for some time to have gone missing and which it is good to welcome back, does not deal with the sell-off at all.

We can add this reform to a long list of rushed and regretted legislation, which includes that on the Child Support Agency, the private pensions that were mis-sold, dangerous dogs and the poll tax. All those disasters were foreseen and some had laudable aims, but they were all the personal obsession of a single Secretary of State—spot the coincidence.

The Bill provides for the post-release supervision of offenders who serve less than 12 months in custody. It makes some changes to community and suspended sentence orders and drug testing. That is all fine. Contrary to the Government’s wishes, the Bill also includes a clause to require the scrutiny of their planned sell-off of the probation service. I will come back to that later.

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As has been said, the Opposition support the introduction of supervision for offenders who serve less than 12 months in custody. We know that supervision and support after release are effective in challenging reoffending and managing risk when done properly. That is why the last Labour Government sought to bring in custody plus. Offenders serving short sentences who are not currently supervised by the probation service have the most prolific reoffending rate of any group. By extending services to that cohort, the Secretary of State is agreeing that supervision works. We wholeheartedly welcome that view.

To continue to focus on areas of agreement, other provisions in the Bill will introduce increased flexibility in the structure of community and suspended sentence orders, widen the scope of drug testing after release and introduce a drug treatment order for those on licence. We are happy to debate the merits of those proposals and look forward to examining them in Committee. We also welcome the inclusion of a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the needs of female offenders in commissioning services. That group has been conspicuous by its absence in other legislation and it is welcome to see that trend broken.

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), whom I congratulate on supporting the amendment, raised questions over the future supervision of offenders, the risk that they pose and the inevitable dangers that are inherent in the Government’s plans. I am sure that a Committee of the House would be willing to engage with those and many other issues, but I am afraid that there will be no such opportunity if the amendment falls.

Particularly disappointing is the Government’s determination to prevent Members from having the opportunity to debate the wider, risky upheaval of probation that precedes the Bill’s implementation. The Opposition cannot accept the roll-out of plans that are rushed, untested, uncosted and pose serious risks to public safety. From his speech it is clear that the Chair of the Justice Committee has serious reservations about the risks of this proposal.

The Government plan to hand over dangerous offenders, including violent and sexual offenders, to companies with no track record of providing probation services, and to a time scale that those responsible for implementing the changes have described as “unworkable”, “unrealistic” and “unacceptably risky”. The plans will for the first time fragment responsibility for offenders, adding a totally avoidable layer of bureaucracy to decisions on public safety. The proposals have not been tested to see whether they work and have not been subject to parliamentary scrutiny—a situation that clause 1 puts right. Clause 1 provides that the Government may not alter the structure of the probation service unless their plans have been first laid before, and approved by, a resolution of both Houses. It was inserted by Cross-Bench and Labour peers in another place, and when introducing the clause, former chief inspector of prisons Lord Ramsbotham summarised his concerns thus:

“We all want reoffending to be reduced, but we do not want to see any programme with that end fall flat on its face because understandable concerns about the viability of untried theories have been ridden over roughshod, in the desire to satisfy a party politically directed timetable that pays no attention to practical reality.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 June 2013; Vol. 746, c. 659.]

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Those debating this issue in the other place agreed with Lord Ramsbotham’s assessment that the Government have so far failed to prove the viability and affordability of the Secretary of State’s plans and voted in favour of putting a brake on proceedings. Many Members agreed with that suggestion of caution, including my right hon. Friends the Members for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), and my hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), yet it has not been heeded. It has since been reported that the Secretary of State does not believe that we should pilot what he describes as “a revolution”. After the severe problems that the Government have recently experienced in the costly roll-out of universal credit, colleagues can join probation chiefs, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee in disagreeing with that rather stupid assessment.

I hate to break it to the hon. Members for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), but nothing in the Bill requires responsible officers in future to be qualified, experienced or even trained. In summary, Ministers are not at all interested in the competence or quality of provision. Colleagues in the House are not assured that the Secretary of State and his Department can answer questions about the safety of their constituents—questions that the Government do not want to answer.

Opposition Members are deeply concerned by the lack of detail from the Government on the cost of the Bill. What resources will the Department need to pay for the supervision of 50,000 extra offenders each year, how much will the contracts cost and what percentage will be paid by results? Even more concerning is the lack of knowledge, owing to a lack of interest in testing the model on the operational side. For example, how long will it take to swap responsibility for a high-risk, volatile offender between G4S and the national probation service?

The Secretary of State should be able to come to the House and answer those basic questions, and he should certainly answer them before he asks the House to nod through the sell-off of the probation service. The core of the Bill is welcome, but by cancelling the probation pilots, the Secretary of State has pulled the foundations from beneath it. The Government are abolishing local trusts, preparing to accept bids from providers under investigation for fraud and contracting an untested model in a Department that has repeatedly had rings run round it by G4S and Serco.

In the light of that, the Opposition are right not to trust the Secretary of State’s gut feeling. There has been no piloting, no parliamentary scrutiny, no commitment that those under criminal investigation cannot bid, no costings and no interest from the Government in the competence of providers. Ministers cannot say that they have not been warned. For those reasons, I hope hon. Members vote in favour the amendment.

9.50 pm