Clause 3
Offender Management Bill
10:30 am
James Brokenshire (Shadow Minister (Homeland Security), Home Affairs; Hornchurch, Conservative)
First, may I put on record the apologies of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough, who unfortunately cannot be with us today? As you have said, Mr. Bayley, the proceedings in Committee have involved some theatre so far. We now move on to something that is certainly not theatre, but is one of the key aspects of the Bill and the way in which it is intended to operate and function. It is the concept of contestability or, as others have variously put it, competition, privatisation or the greater involvement of non-state providers in the provision of probation services.
With your permission, Mr. Bayley, I should like to have a fairly wide-ranging debate on this amendment in the knowledge that it may impact on our ability to have a stand part debate later on. It is probably appropriate to put these issues on record now in the context of the amendments, as I hope that it will assist the Committee to highlight the relevant issues and matters that pertain to the clause.
This morning, I shall focus on three issues: the lack of robust justification for the model to be adopted pursuant to clause 3; the lack of clarity about the Government’s intended model; and how services would operate in practice as a consequence of that model and of the structure and provisions of the clause.
I turn first to the way in which the Government have sought to justify their approach. In the now infamous speech to a captive audience at Wormwood Scrubs on7 November, the Home Secretary exhorted the probation service to
“Never forget that your job is to protect the public and what the public wants is outcomes: less crime, safer streets, not an outdated ideological debate about inputs and who delivers them.”
There is some irony in that, because a debate about ideological input is precisely what the Government seem to want to provoke, particularly on their own side. If the Home Secretary was trying to say that we need to examine all appropriate models for achieving improved safety, reduced reoffending and greater rehabilitation by sharing responsibility with a range of partners and players, then, as we have said consistently, we welcome his conversion to our way of thinking. The problem is that the Home Secretary is hung up on who delivers the inputs. From our reading of clause 3, it is clear that he wants to be that person.
There is little doubt about the top-down, centralist model that cedes control to the Home Office rather than devolving authority to the local level, where more tailored solutions could be provided. Clause 3 provides a system under which contracts will be awarded centrally by the Home Secretary or, at best, through the regional offender managers. The Coalition on Social and Criminal Justice, which brings together organisations from the public and voluntary sectors involved in reducing crime and protecting the public, has said that
“The current commissioning and contestability model proposed for NOMS affords a major role to the regional level, with ten regional managers responsible for commissioning services for offenders in prison and the community. A wholly regional approach to commissioning would run counter to the aim shared by Government and the coalition of strengthening multi-agency partnership working via local area agreements and LSPs. There is a significant risk that a commissioning system involving only regional commissioning via the regional offender managers may not be sensitive enough to the specific needs of the localities...It would be a perverse outcome if NOMS replaced the current patchwork of voluntary local engagement and partnership with a top-down, albeit regional, system.”
The coalition certainly has concerns about the proposed structure against a backdrop of general acceptance that services are best provided locally, closer to offenders’ families, where they are most likely to be successful. One of the issues that came out in the evidence that we received at the informal session, which I hope we will be able to share formally with the Committee in due course, was that having offenders close to the community, monitored in the community, supported by the community and with their networks, families and other aspects of rehabilitation within the community setting improves the likelihood that outcomes will be positive.
So what are the Government trying to do? The best that I can come up with is the following, which the Home Secretary said on Second Reading:
“I agree that much of such work is better commissioned locally, but that is not the question. The question is whether it should be provided only by a local monopoly. We are creating the circumstances whereby it can be commissioned locally, but its commissioning will not automatically depend on an existing local monopoly, which will both commission and provide the service that the commissioners are commissioning. We are opening it up. In some cases, it will not be provided locally; it will be provided in a larger area. However, for the foreseeable future—for the next several years—the specific management of offenders, particularly serious ones, as opposed to intervention to provide educational programmes, will be done by the probation service.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 589.]
The Minister has chipped in and said, “Very, very clear,” but I wish that I could agree with that reading of the quote. My reading is that it is not about local commissioning; it is about local monopolies and local services, but some services will not be local. It is about change, but there will not be any change in a number of areas.
Last week, the Minister criticised me for asking for more details, but against the backdrop of the Home Secretary’s comments, it is entirely reasonable for the Committee to ask for further detail. Although I am sure that he was quite clear about what he was trying to say on Second Reading, I suspect that members of the Committee and many other people may be confused and unclear as to his precise intentions. I hope that we will be able to shed some light on them, if not achieve agreement, during the course of this debate.
We will analyse the detail of the clause shortly, but it is hard to detect any clarity of vision on how the outcomes will be improved by the clause. Many questions need to be answered, and I hope that the Minister will answer them in his response. How have the Government arrived at this model as against any other model that they may have considered? It is clear that they could have explored an arrangement within the existing construct to try to promote competition and involve the voluntary sector to a greater degree. They have decided that the current model does not work for some reason, even though they introduced it as recently as 2001. It would be helpful for the Minister to explain why he feels that the existing model is flawed.
When I analyse the apparent structure, at least as it been explained in isolation from the Bill, I see some striking similarities to the structure that is used in the health service, in which services at the local level are commissioned by primary care trusts, which are directed and controlled at the regional level by strategic health authorities, which in turn follow the targets, policies and diktats of the Department of Health. Given the parlous state of NHS finances and the pressure that that is causing, I hope that my understanding of how the model is intended to operate is incorrect. If I have correctly understood and explained the situation, it is a strange model to have chosen.
It is interesting that the Government decided on the model proposed in this Bill and did not seek to change the existing model, which was adopted only six years ago, even though there is a need to put a greater emphasis on partnership. Will the Minister explain why the greater partnership option has not been adopted? On Second Reading, various hon. Members mentioned the Scottish model. As the Minister knows, it involves the adoption of new community justice authorities, bringing together local authorities, probation organisations, the Prison Service and key partners in the voluntary sector to reduce reoffending, with the target of a 2 per cent. reduction by March 2008. The structure is in its infancy, with operations due to be launched in April, so it would be premature to reach any conclusions on its operation.
It is interesting to note that the Government have dismissed the Scottish model completely—that is how I have taken their comments—without explaining why they believe it to be flawed or why the model in the Bill will better advance the issues that they have said underpin the Bill. On Second Reading, the Home Secretary said:
“On the Scottish model, first, I have no vote in what the Scots decide. Secondly, from time immemorial, the Scots have had a completely different legal system, based on Roman law rather than case precedent. Thirdly, I do not always agree that the Scottish Executive choose the best way even for Scottish conditions.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454,c. 587.]
We are celebrating 300 years of the Union today, but my reading of what the Home Secretary said is that apart from a basic statement that “You are wrong, but I cannot tell you that you are wrong,” the only substantive point that he made was the distinction between Roman law and binding precedent. That does not seem to be closely linked to probation, the monitoring of offenders and making communities safer. While it might be an interesting and arcane legal point, I do not see what it has to do with the issue before us or the differences that make the Home Secretary and, I am sure, the Minister, believe that the Scottish model is inappropriate.
In our attempt to understand the Government’s approach, it would be helpful to have more detail on why the Scottish model, which relies on partnership arrangements, is not perceived as appropriate for England and Wales and why the model set out in the Bill is believed to be so much better. The Home Secretary might be right in his dismissive approach to the model, but it is appropriate and reasonable for the Committee to ask what models the Government have considered other than the one set out in the clause, and why that one was felt to be the best.