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Offender Management Bill

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. In fact, we are being offered the ending of the probation service, after 100 years of professional service and commitment, and its replacement by a hotch-potch of competing companies and organisations. It is interesting to look at the recent experience of the probation service in passing to private companies services such as catering, cleaning and electronic tagging. We have heard that only 2 or 3 per cent. of the budget goes to such companies and organisations, but that is a false figure. We know that a lot of the money that was previously used for that purpose is top-sliced. The figure is probably 7, 8 or 9 per cent. Let us look at the experience of contracting out those services. That was an absolute disaster. As we speak, the contracts are being renegotiated. On top of all that evidence and the complete lack of support for the proposals anywhere in the country, the Government have another impediment to the introduction of the proposals: the probation service itself, which has greatly increased its productivity over the past few years. I am interested that there was a suggestion from the Dispatch Box that massive extra resources have gone in and that that all relates to probation officers. In fact, we are talking about 1,600 staff employed by the National Offender Management Service. Nobody knows what they do. NOMS was created to align and unify the probation service and the Prison Service. What happened to that? That was what it was supposed to be for. Some 1,600 staff are being taken from the sharp end and away from the work that needs doing. Extra resources have gone in, but certainly not in the form of probation officers; as we have heard, the number is reducing, not increasing. The service has considerably increased its productivity over the past few years, and it meets or more than meets more Government targets than ever before. Some 220,000 offenders in this country are being supervised in the community, including 14,000 who are deemed to be dangerous or highly dangerous, yet only 0.6 per cent. of them reoffend. The service meets or more than meets 27 of the 30 targets set by the Government. Let us consider my own area of west Yorkshire, whose probation service I visit on a yearly basis at its invitation. In the first six months of this year, it met its target on the assessment of high-risk cases in four days in 92 per cent. of cases. That was an increase from 85 per cent. Its assessment of prolific and priority offenders has increased from 89 per cent. to 93 per cent., and its unpaid work completions have increased from 104 per cent. to 106 per cent. I understand that in some areas progress is even better than that. As Diana Johnson, the assistant chief in west Yorkshire, told me when we met most recently, innovation, end-to-end management of offenders and partnerships are the order of the day. We do not need privatisation or a massive reorganisation to bring this about. This is the bread and butter of the service at the sharp end now.