Clause 6
Offender Management Bill
9:00 am
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister (Home Affairs), Home Affairs; Harborough, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 26, in clause 6, page 5, line 12, at end add—
‘(5) The Secretary of State shall, by regulation, make provision as to the necessary qualifications for an officer of a provider of probation services.’.
We and the Liberal Democrats seek to insert a new subsection (5) at the end of clause 6. The clause is headed “Officers of providers of probation services”. That brings us straight into the controversy, which has racked the Labour party and caused a difference between the Government and the Liberal Democrats, concerning the provision of probation services through non-state actors, that is to say, the private sector and the third sector—the charitable sector. I do not want to open up that issue again, at least not for the moment.
Under the clause an officer of a provider of probation services is
“an individual who is for the time being authorised under this section to carry out the functions of an officer of a particular provider of probation services”.
That individual can be authorised as an officer of the relevant provider by the Secretary of State or by a provider of probation services. One can often be forgiven for thinking that the Bill’s language becomes somewhat tautological. Subsection (4) states:
“The reference in subsection (1) to the functions of an officer of a particular provider of probation service means—
(a) any functions conferred by an enactment (whenever passed or made) which are exercisable by an officer of that provider; and
(b) anything which is required or authorised... to be done by an officer of that provider.”
Let us assume that under clause 5 the Secretary of State has thought it appropriate to consider the sortsof things that need to have money spent on them. I assume, given your ruling, Mr. Bayley, that having reached a conclusion about how he should do it, he will then, under clause 6, work out who he should get to do it for him, either one of his direct Crown employees or someone from the private or third sector.
As I said a moment ago, the standard of literacy and numeracy of the people in the care of the criminal justice system is lamentably low. I will not go into a long sociological or historical analysis of why that is. I will simply say that it is uncontroversial that the majority of those who come within the grips of the court system, who are arrested by the police, who go to prison or who are put into the care of the probation service or other, as they will shortly be called, providers of probation services, simply cannot read or write to a level above the age of 11. They are unemployable. They are incapable of going down to the jobcentre and reading the job cards in the windows and on the stands.
I want to see whether I can persuade the Government to give an undertaking that they will devote more of the money that the Secretary of State will have available under clause 5 in a number of discrete areas. I particularly want to concentrate on speech therapy and adult comprehension. If one visits prisons or young offender institutions one finds excellent officers doing very difficult work with very difficult people. One also finds teachers who, under very difficult circumstances, are trying to teach basic literacy and numeracy, computer skills and all sorts of other things to the people in their care. I dare say that such provision is also available under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, when one considers the requirements that a court may impose within the community punishment system.
What worries me is that far too little is being done in an effective way to improve the levels of literacy and numeracy of many of the people who come before the courts and who find their way either into prison or into the community punishment system. That matter was discussed in our informal, non-parliamentary evidence session last week. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who has taken a particular interest in this subject, asked Lord Ramsbotham about his view of the levels of speech therapy and related subjects in the system. Broadly, Lord Ramsbotham said that there was a woeful lack of them. Those of us attending that session came to agree that that needed to be improved.
Without quoting at length, I shall mention one or two of the points that Lord Ramsbotham drew to our attention, because I think that that will be of value to the Committee. I have here the first typescript of the compact disc that my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate handed to the Minister last week. We will go through it to see whether we can help him to fill in the names at places where the recording is indistinct.
I promise you, Mr. Bayley, that I shall not quote at length, but it is important that the Committee has some understanding of what Lord Ramsbotham said about speech therapy. He said that
“the moment I started going to prisons, I said that of all the interventions that could and should be made in prisons, education was by far the most important and could be the most effective in preventing reoffending.”
He went on to ask people in prisons what was being done about the provision of education, basic skills and so on, and what sums of money were involved. In due course, he asked parliamentary questions, too. Having discovered that young offenders in Brinsford young offenders institution were funded at £438 a year, those at nearby Werrington at £1,500 a year and those at Thorn Cross at £2,400 a year, he wanted to know why exactly the same type of people going to exactly the same type of custody institution were being funded for that form of education at completely different levels. It seemed to him that there was no clarity of direction in the delivery of the service.
He then asked those in the Prison Service andthose providing the service on behalf of the Home Office why they had got into that state, and he was given all sorts of explanations. He was told that some people were described as being dyslexic, and some as having other intellectual problems and learning difficulties, but he discovered that there was no uniform, thought-through approach. He also discovered that the more prisoners exercised their brains in communication, in understanding each other and in getting on with other people, the less likely they were to resort to violence or to return to criminal activity when they came back into the community.
My point, which I do not want to labour, is that under both clause 5 and clause 6 the Secretary of State needs to concentrate hugely, if we are to reduce the level of reoffending, particularly by young people. We need to do a lot more to ensure that those who provide probation services, either within the current national probation service or through the potential providers, are equipped by training and resources to deliver literacy and comprehension skills. It is an obvious point, but it is an obvious point that keeps being missed.
The hon. Member for Wrexham has made what might be called a party political jibe. I am not making a party political point; I am making a point on which I should have thought there is general agreement. We have a public interest in reducing the number of offenders, and a moral duty to improve the conditions of those who go into prisons or YOIs and come out again, rather than simply permitting the high levels of reoffending to continue. Nearly 80 per cent. of young offenders reoffend within two years of release, and the rate for adults is 65 to 67 per cent. It costs nearly £40,000 a year to house an adult offender, and it probably costs twice as much to house a young offender. That is simply a waste of our constituents’ money. Without increasing Home Office expenditure, we could invest some of that money more wisely and effectively, if the Secretary of State were to apply his spending powers under clause 5 in the manner that I am describing.
My purpose in moving the amendment is to draw attention, by means of a debating device, to the problem. Of course, we want the Secretary of State to make provision for the necessary qualifications for an officer of a provider of probation services, and there should be no dumbing down of the expertise and professionalism of graduate and long-term professional probation officers. We want the self-esteem and professional reputation of those who work in the service to be maintained, and we do not want amateurs coming in and trying to make a cheap fist of the job. Whether in the public or private sector, those who are providing the work on behalf of the public need to be of the highest calibre and have the highest level of training and qualification, rather than chaps who think, “Oh well, I will give this a go.”
In addition to ensuring that the providers are properly trained and professional, the Secretary of State must concentrate on the terrible state of our literary services in the criminal justice system. If we were to get that even half right, we would stand some chance of improving the lot of the public and of those who come within the grip of the criminal justice system.