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Offender Management Bill

I begin by expressing my apologies on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), the shadow Secretary of State, for his unavoidable absence this afternoon. Secondly, I declare an interest as a member of the Bar, although my practice is entirely at the civil Bar. However, I am a Crown court recorder and in that capacity make good use of the services of the probation service, which is very much the subject of the Bill. The Government have been thrashing about this area of public policy for some years. They have been doing so without achieving anything of value in terms of crime reduction or reduction in the amount of repeat crime committed by offenders released from custody or on community sentences. They have failed to produce from the criminal justice system people who complete their sentences better able to play a worthwhile part in the life of our country, fathers who look after their families—most crime is committed by men—citizens and taxpayers able to take responsibility for themselves, for their dependants, and for their actions and decisions, or people aware of their responsibility towards others for how they behave. It is worth noting that in the 100 years before the Government came to office in 1997, only 48 Bills to do with criminal justice were enacted. There were about 15 in the century before that. This is, if not the 60th Bill, very nearly the 60th to come before Parliament since 1997 purporting to be an answer to the actual and perceived wrongs in the criminal justice system. Do our constituents feel any safer as a result of this avalanche of legislation, and are they in fact any safer? Do they believe the Government have done anything for them in a practical and effective way? The answer to all those questions is no. It is surely no longer controversial to say that the criminal justice system in the widest sense of that phrase is in a parlous state. Those who work in the police, the courts, the probation service, the parole system and the prison service, and victims of crime as well all suffer from low morale and from inadequate political leadership and poor strategic management from Ministers in the Home Office and the Department for Constitutional Affairs. Over the past decade we have seen this Government repeat the classic error found in organisations in crisis led by people in a hurry with no sense of direction: they have fallen into the habit of reinforcing failure and of issuing orders followed by counter-orders and then disorder. ““Do anything rather than do what’s right, but make sure you get a headline”” is the Department’s motto. If they have any claim to fame or notoriety, it is for their insatiable appetite for passing Bill after Bill and for claiming that each one is the flagship that will lead to the ending of all that is wrong with whatever the various Home Secretaries have said is wrong. Enacting a new statute is not the same as implementing the provisions in it, and still less the same as implementing a considered policy. Far too often, we have seen other flagships launched. Take the Criminal Justice Act 2003—that particular year’s Ark Royal of the Home Office fleet—which before long was shown in large part to be no more than copy for headline writers. It is full of holes, many of which were put there by the Government as they failed to bring its provisions into force or repealed them before implementation or afterwards through yet more legislation. There has been a mad and thoughtless rush to legislate in order to give the impression of command, but there has been none of the necessary thinking, preparation, consultation or staff work to test ideas, many of which should have been tested to destruction, to see what is appropriate or will work in a genuinely practical way. The Government confuse noise with authority, movement with productivity and headlines with delivery. This Bill is no different.