---

The Earl of Mar and Kellie: I believe that the risk of appearing to trivialise community service for offenders is too great, and that loss of status would be detrimental to the perception by offenders, recipients of help from the scheme and the general public. Community service orders and probation orders, especially those involving an intensive programme, represent the heavy end of community sentences, and are rightly classified as alternatives to custody.

As has been said, the amendment proposes the introduction of a scheme similar to the Scottish supervised attendance order. As I see it, the principal difference between a CSO and a supervised attendance order is that in the former (the CSO) the offender is matched carefully to a specific task, often on a third party's property and under the supervision of that third party, whereas in a supervised attendance order

20 Feb 1997 : Column 839

purposeful activity is arranged within the supervised attendance centre and organised and supervised by that centre's staff.

A typical programme, as in the one proposed for Falkirk, would be 80 per cent. physical work and 20 per cent. education and social programmes. Those programmes would discuss subjects such as drugs, alcohol, assertiveness and personal skills, which I hope include budgeting. Those supervised attendance orders have been piloted in Scotland, and are now accepted as a core part of the Scottish criminal justice system. It suits short-time attendance, so I commend the proposed supervised attendance and work order scheme to the Committee.

Viscount Tenby: I give the amendment qualified support. I say "qualified" because I should prefer the simple title "work order", a view which is shared by the Magistrates' Association, of which I am a member. I must therefore declare an interest as a magistrate. On the principle contained in the amendment, however, I am as one with the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey. I said on Second Reading that I warmly support the initiative contained in the Bill of making CSOs available as an alternative to custody for repeat offenders and those who wilfully refuse to pay fines.

CSOs have been a success over the years. There is no reason why these new orders should not be equally useful, provided, of course, that there is sufficient will put behind them in terms of resources and so forth. However, the CSO is a serious disposal, as the noble Lord has just said, consequent on the ordering of a pre-sentence report on the grounds that the offence was serious enough to warrant such a disposal. I therefore believe that there should be a distinction between it and the new order. We must take care, surely, not to let CSOs become devalued by the new orders. Any confusion must be avoided at all costs. I realise that it is unrealistic and counterproductive to squabble over alternative titles, and since experience north of the Border, as so often, indicates that supervised attendance and work orders have bedded down well, let us run with that. I support the amendment.

Lord Hylton: I should like to give some examples of the many different kinds of work which are needed and which will be suitable for work orders. Both in town and country, there is enormous scope for the removal of litter, the scraping off and cleaning off of graffiti, the repainting of signposts of a certain old-fashioned type, and the painting even of school buildings, particularly at weekends and during holidays. In addition there are many different kinds of environmental work; dealing with oil spills, maintaining footpaths and so forth. Whether such things can be satisfactorily done by offenders will turn entirely on supervision. Here there is a case for a lower grade of supervision than that currently being used by CSOs. I believe that the amendments have merit.

Baroness Blatch: We believe that community service orders imposed for fine default and persistent petty offending should operate in the same way as other community service orders imposed as a penalty by the courts. In practice, those given community service orders,

20 Feb 1997 : Column 840

for whatever reason, must be dealt with in the same way. This will ensure an efficient and effective use of existing arrangements and the resources devoted to delivering community service. It was a particular pleasure for me to pick up from the Committee how much CSOs are valued.

It is not helpful to the courts, the probation service, offenders or victims to have a new name for an existing disposal. I agree with my noble friend Lord Carlisle who picked up that point. It is simply a recipe for confusion and error. There may be a case for renaming community service orders but, if so, then all community service orders should be renamed.

This amendment proposes that the "supervised attendance and work order" would not operate in the same way as existing community service, but instead would be a completely new scheme, governed by its own rules. Our proposal, which has been widely welcomed by respondents to our consultation paper, is much simpler. It is that fine defaulters and persistent petty offenders should be required to undertake community service. Everyone, and particularly the courts and the probation service, which is responsible for delivering community service, understand what is meant by community service. The probation service will be able to deal with fine defaulters and persistent petty offenders alongside other offenders upon whom community service has been imposed without any disruption to their existing arrangements.

It would be confusing and wasteful to set up what would in effect be very similar community service type schemes solely for this small group of offenders. And it is just not necessary. The existing community service arrangements are well established and we know that they work well. It is sensible to extend their application to fine defaulters and petty offenders, as we propose. It is not sensible to set up a whole new, but separate, scheme which operates in much the same way. It is not an efficient use of the disposals already in place, and the resources devoted to them.

The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, mentioned Scotland. Even if there were to be a new name--the name suggested is supervised attendance and work order--apart from being cumbersome it is likely to risk confusion with the supervised attendance order which is available to the courts in Scotland.

A supervised attendance order is not the same as community service. It is more like an attendance centre which helps offenders. It might be unhelpful duplication to try to replicate it in England and Wales when we already have many disposals for fine defaulters, including money payment supervision orders.

Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, that there is no danger that community service as a community penalty will be downgraded by its use for fine defaulters and persistent petty offenders. A change of name is not needed for that purpose. The difference in the minimum and maximum hours available in the different circumstances differentiate between the two groups. But for practical purposes, all community service orders should be managed in the same way and it is therefore proper that they should be called the same. The range proposed for fine defaulters would be a minimum of 20 and a

20 Feb 1997 : Column 841

maximum of 100 hours and for persistent offenders a minimum of 40 and a maximum of 240 hours, which gives greater flexibility.

The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred to fine defaulters as possibly swamping community service provision. I know why the noble Lord should make that point, but we are piloting the scheme in order to see what impact it has on the Probation Service. As regards downgrading, I have already referred to the differential maximum and minimum sentences which will reflect the two types of offenders; namely, fine defaulters and persistent offenders.

There is not much between us on these amendments, but I do not believe that a change of name would achieve anything, other than cause confusion.

7 p.m.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I call that response stubborn. I do not call the Minister stubborn, although on reflection that might do her credit with the Home Secretary. We have not moved far since the debate on a comparable issue in another place. The Minister is simply asserting that to have two tiers of community service, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, described it, would be confusing. The advice of the Magistrates' Association, the Association of Chief Officers of Probation and NACRO, which were particularly concerned with alternatives to prison, is to the contrary. When such advice has been given in response not only to the 1996 White Paper but to the earlier consultation document, I am surprised that Ministers are still making the same comments.

If the Minister prays in aid the pilot system, my response is, yes, the pilot system is good but what happens if it indicates that I am right and that the relevant associations and noble Lords such as the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, and the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, who know more about these issues than I do, are right? What changes can be made in the provision if the pilot system indicates a view different from the Minister's? What changes are possible as a result of different experience in the pilot scheme?

Baroness Blatch: It would be most unwise of me to predict the outcome of a pilot scheme, the whole point of which is to see precisely how it works and what it is indicating about the effectiveness of the alternative proposal. We believe that the proposal is interesting and that it will work. We believe that the Probation Service will cope very well with the scheme, but the reason we are piloting it is genuinely to judge its impact.

---