---

Offender Management Bill

If I can make a little progress, I shall come back to hon. Members again later. I also have to make some progress because I am under your careful eye, Mr. Speaker. I was talking about the fact that protection, punishment and deterrence are no use without rehabilitation and that rehabilitation ought to be a continuum—in other words, from inside to outside of prison. That is why the supervision of offenders in the community after they leave jail is so important. It must be aimed ultimately at reducing crime, which is one of the main benchmarks of our success, reducing reoffending and thereby protecting the public. It is right that we have invested heavily in this area. The probation service has received a 40 per cent. increase in the last five years and something like £900 million more has been spent on the probation service this year. As I said, we are talking about a real-terms increase of 40 per cent. What we are doing has not been done against the background of any starvation of resources from the probation service. No one should believe that that is the case. Having said that, it is also right to point out that there has been a great deal of improvement in the results, so we should not believe that no progress has been made in probation. More than 50,000 offenders completed unpaid work in the community this year, which is an increase of 30 per cent. on two years ago. I also mentioned a fourfold increase in teaching basic skills this year and five times more offenders being accredited with offending behaviour programmes. There is, however, a limit to the progress made and, as hon. Members have pointed out in today’s discussion, that limit that has remained with some obstinacy. The truth of the matter is that, regardless of the colour of the Government—and almost regardless of the amount of resources—the reoffending rate has stayed obstinately high in recent decades. About 60 per cent. of offenders go on to commit another crime within two years and Members will know of cases where dangerous offenders have been poorly supervised. Let me say this in simple terms. That is not a tolerable position to continue with. It does not help offenders and, more importantly, it is a poor deal for communities and for the vast majority of hard-working, law-abiding citizens whom we seek to protect. That is the main purpose behind the Bill. The failure to reduce the reoffending rate cannot be explained away simply by blaming a lack of resources. As I have said, the budget has increased by 40 per cent. in five years to more than £900 billion—a record. Although I concede that case loads have risen, the amount spent per offender has gone up. In addition, we have increased probation staff by 5,000 since 2001. Indeed, we have increased probation staff by 50 per cent. since 1997, while case loads have increased by 30 per cent. We have made a great deal of investment over the past 10 years.