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Rehabilitation of Prisoners

: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I am sorry to say that I am not satisfied with where we are with National Grid Transco, despite its proven track record, despite its ability to produce some remarkably low reoffending rates—among young offenders, who have a higher recidivism rate than adult offenders—and despite being financed entirely by the private sector, to the tune of about £10,000 per prisoner. The Committee was not convinced at the time, and I have not been since, that the Prison Service has taken on what is necessary to make the model spread. There is not, to be fair, an absence of warm words about National Grid Transco from Ministers—from the Home Secretary and everybody else—but at the moment everything is being done other than the provision of funding or listening to National Grid Transco to find out how the model could be replicated. The private sector initiative is an odyssey, developed among the business community of our country. The problems seem not just to be an absence of Government funding for the programme but a desire in the Prison Service to invent a different way of doing a similar thing, involving the learning and skills councils, Jobcentre Plus and the whole panoply of state institutions. They may work perfectly well outside prisons, with different objectives, but are less likely to be able to engage with the private sector and make sure that the Transco model works. The model probably only works for major corporate employers, and is not so easy for small and medium-sized enterprises to adopt. A quick and fundamental reassessment of the relationship between the Prison Service and the Transco approach to employment is needed if the benefits of the scheme are not to be lost. We found no hostility in our evidence sessions. Everybody we spoke to from the Prison Service was positive about the initiative, but nothing seems to be happening. We need some central drive to make sure the model is spread. I made a point earlier about the business environment becoming more unfavourable, largely because of EU expansion and the ability to attract people into jobs that could not be filled a couple of years ago. For an employer to employ an ex-offender is less obviously sound business than it was a couple of years ago. It is important that we move quickly to embed the Transco model in the rehabilitation programme in this country before the opportunity slips away. I will not give more details about the Transco scheme. It is familiar to some Members and it is described in the report, and I suspect that others wish to speak about it this afternoon. It is perhaps symptomatic of a slightly ““not-invented-here”” response, which came up on a number of occasions during our inquiry when we were putting radical and innovative proposals and ideas to officials. I hope that the Minister will lend her considerable authority to an urgent review of what is happening. I referred earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) and the various reports that have been produced over the years—the social exclusion unit report on reducing reoffending or, now, a national action plan on reducing reoffending. Those are not being driven through the system with great energy. Many have the right aspirations but no time scale, ill-defined resources and unclear delivery mechanisms. We will have to move faster if we are going to reduce reoffending rates. When we were doing our report, we were in the early stages of the establishment of the National Offender Management Service, which is still working its way through the pipeline. As a Committee, we took the view that the principle behind NOMS was right—a system that starts from the assessment of the needs of the individual prisoner or offender and goes right through to rehabilitation. I would make the point that NOMS cannot easily be effective unless we are able to change the regime within the prisons and the arrangements that are available to get prisoners into work. NOMS will only be able to work with what it is given; at the moment those tools look inadequate.