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Offender Management Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes an obvious point, but I hope that I can perhaps deal with it in more detail as I continue my speech. The Bill has so little support, because of its innate weaknesses, that the Government have recently chosen to malign the probation service and to misuse their own reoffending figures. The Government have not justified the proposals, other than to restate their belief that the introduction of the market will, by definition, improve matters—the idea that private is good and public is bad. That comes from a Government who told us that ideology was dead and that the only thing that matters is what works, and after they have seen the chaos and the abuses in some private prisons. Only last week, the prison ombudsman’s report on Harmondsworth showed that a vast number of its detainees had alleged assault, harassment and intimidation by the staff employed by the private company that runs it. Those are precisely the same companies that the Government seek to involve in the supervision of offenders by means of the Bill. We are told, ““Don’t worry about it. It’s not going to happen straight away””, but we know that that is where things are going. We know that NACRO, Crime Concern and the Prince’s Trust may play a fuller part around the margins, but when we talk about the amount of work and money involved, we know who is being encouraged to bid. I have many concerns about the Bill and its results if it is ever enacted in its present form. My concerns revolve largely around clauses 3 and 4 in part 1, but I find much of the Bill objectionable. I am thinking, for instance, of the removal in part 2 of the last impediments to staff in private prisons having complete control of prisoners—from personal searches to extra punishments and restrictions in the prison. There is even the ability to hold members of the public captive for up to two hours if they are suspected of introducing contraband into the prison. Most importantly, in view of the record in privately run establishments such as Harmondsworth, Doncaster and Park prisons, is it really the time to enable prisons not to employ a medical officer, as in clause 20? The medical officer is exactly the person we would expect to pick up first on abuse, assaults and the like. Clauses 3 and 4 enshrine the purpose of the Bill. They enshrine the requirement and the wish to centralise and privatise the probation function—to take control of the work that is undertaken with offenders and in servicing courts away from locally accountable people, and to vest it in the hands of the Secretary of State and his regionally based commissioners. Committed and professionally trained staff will often be replaced with untrained and unsupported workers who are not adequate to the task. Just look at the conditions of staff in private prisons—and the pay. It is less than 50 per cent. of that in state prisons. Is it any wonder that the turnover is 25 per cent.? We are told that those companies have been pressing the Government to bring forward the Bill. They will approach the probation task in exactly the same cost-cutting fashion that they have approached their work in prisons.