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Offender Management Bill

Just as the offer of Lemsip is not totally convincing, nor are the Minister’s reassurances to the probation service. We heard earlier that nobody disputes that the reoffending rate is high. It has been a problem ever since the probation service was instituted 100 years ago. However, the probation service is not the only responsible party. The Government should look at themselves and at some of their policies before they start casting around for somebody to blame for what they say, using phoney figures, is an unacceptably high rate of reoffending. On the evidence that I have adduced, what possible justification could there be to risk this success and to move to an untried and unwanted new system so soon after the introduction in 2003 of the national service and probation boards, which have not yet bedded in? Lord Ramsbotham pointed out how constant change endangers the morale of the service when he said on 3 November:"““The service started life 100 years ago. Its raison d’être was very much the aftercare of offenders in the community; now it is told that its first priority is punishment. It was told that it was ""going to be a national service; then it was told that it was going to be merged with the Prison Service; then it was told that it was going back to being a county service; then it was told that it was going to be a regional service; and then it was told that parts of it were going to be privatised. It really does not know whether it is coming or going.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 November 2006; Vol. 686, c. 555-56.]" In my view, despite all that, the probation service is coping well, and therefore the Government obviously have a problem. As so many targets are being met, they have to undermine the service—notwithstanding what the Minister has just said—and doctor their own reoffending figures. How is the service being undermined? My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), who is no longer in the Chamber, mentioned a climate of fear. We see that when the uninformed media attacks that are made on the service are not met by any positive or supportive response from the Government. In fact, the Home Secretary—I am sorry that he has had to leave—recently felt it appropriate to agree with the producers of ““Panorama”” that community supervision should amount to 24 hours a day surveillance. How on earth could it? We can see no more shameful an example of the undermining of the service than the fact that the Home Secretary chose the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs to hear his views on the failings of the probation service. That was a calculated, gratuitous provocation designed to destroy the morale of the service, which his own figures prove is performing brilliantly. Because the figures are also a problem, they too have to be undermined and rubbished. Here, the term ““dodgy dossier”” comes to mind. Even accepting that there are lies, damned lies and statistics, not least in the field of crime and crime prevention, how can the Government make their case on reoffending only by cooking the books and contending that reoffending rates are the same for those with and those without the support of a probation officer? We know how the Government have done it: by conflating several sets of statistics and comparing like with not-like. In fact, the adjusted figures for reoffending by those on orders with the benefit of a probation officer is 44 per cent., compared with 58 per cent. for those without—or, if we are to believe a recent article in The Times, 41 per cent. for those with the benefit of a probation officer and 66 for those without. Not only are the rates not the same, but there is a massive difference. A huge improvement is gained by those who have the benefit of a professionally trained probation officer. For months, the false figures have been given credence. Baroness Scotland, a junior Minister, even wrote to all Labour Members repeating them. I say that they are false figures not only because the Government figures are at variance with those provided by NAPO, of which, as the Minister mentioned, I am a former member, but because they have been ridiculed and challenged by the writers of The Times article, leading academics and a considerable number of experts working in the field ever since they were first trotted out. I have great misgivings about the proposed legislation and the way in which it has been introduced. If the Government were really interested in reducing reoffending, without too much recourse to the mantra, ““tough on the causes of crime””, would they not be working with the probation service on, for example, the actions proposed in 2002 by the social exclusion unit as major ways of lessening reoffending? Should we not be examining sentencing policy, especially as it affects the 50,000 prisoners a year who serve short sentences—six months or less—with whom no work is done, either in prison or outside, and whose reoffending rate is in excess of 70 per cent.? The Government, rather than work to overcome that, have recently cancelled their custody-plus plans, which were aimed specifically at that problem. Should not the Government be working with the probation service on employment on release, which reduces the risk of reoffending by up to a half, or stable accommodation, which reduces it by up to 20 per cent.? Should they not be working on offenders’ education, family contact and health care? Perhaps we might even get them to change tack and challenge the nonsense of ““prison works””, and instead follow the Scandinavian model of sending far fewer people to prison and spending far more on them—not because of some liberal over-identification with the offender, but to make a major contribution to reducing reoffending. A prison place costs taxpayers £37,500 a year. It costs between £2,000 and £8,000 for the same individual to be dealt with by a probation officer in the community. On those figures, probation is not only good sense, but good business sense. What makes no sense is to entrust probation clients, as varied and as difficult as they are, to those groups who have shown themselves to be incapable even of organising the catering and cleaning in probation offices. I end my speech with a few words from the Probation Boards Association, which says:"““Running like a fault line through the Bill is the failure to recognise that the probation service is much more than the sum of the parts of these ‘functions’””—" it had previously listed the functions of the service. The PBA goes on to say that the probation service"““is the glue which holds the criminal justice services together working as it does with every other agency involved in crime prevention, pre-court work, in court, during and post-sentence and life licence.””" The probation service has invaluable knowledge and expertise to share with local authorities, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, courts, prisons, those involved in the parole system and youth justice, health and education services and partners in the voluntary sector. Once the service is broken up, that will be irretrievably lost. That is what is at stake, and that is why we should resist the Bill in its totality.