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Offender Management Bill

I hear what my hon. Friend says. Statutory underpinning of what organisations can be asked to do makes a difference. They will be held to account—that happens already through the contractual and compliance arrangements that we ask many voluntary sector organisations to undertake. My fear is that the voluntary sector, which is already involved, could try to do even more, and, if it fails, we are left in the unpalatable position of deciding who will fill the vacuum. In those circumstances, we could go back to the public sector but Governments of both parties do not have a great history of reverting to the public sector when other agencies fail. I wish it were otherwise. One example is the railways—perhaps we will learn our lessons and one day get back to proper public ownership. However, we are left with a genuine dilemma: if the voluntary sector took on some of the responsibilities and subsequently failed, it is obvious who would want to fill the vacuum. I want to warn the voluntary sector that it should not be seduced into believing that it can accept such responsibilities because, if it fails, we all suffer. The Government have to persuade the likes of me that there is no real danger of following that route. The two main points have already been considered at length so I shall not take up hon. Members’ time for more than a few minutes to labour them. However, it is important to stress them because some of us have considerable misgivings about where we are going with the Bill. The first anxiety is loss of local accountability. By chance, two weeks ago, I attended a meeting of the criminal justice team in Gloucestershire. It was an important meeting because all the different agencies and a good number of Members of Parliament were there. However, we were faced by the problem that the court system will no longer be on a county basis because it will link with Wiltshire and Avon. It will therefore have no special locus standi in Gloucestershire. The police were at the meeting and, in a sense, they won the battle to remain a county force, but they are subject to a probationary period to ascertain whether their level 2 policing requirement can be fulfilled at county level. One cannot, therefore, feel assured that the police will remain at the level of location that some of us want. The probation service will form some sort of at least regional organisation. Our criminal justice team in Gloucestershire has not been an unalloyed success until comparatively recently. However, our recent record on offending rates—and, dare I say it, reoffending rates—has been reasonably successful. As other colleagues who also have misgivings said, if it ain’t broke, why are we trying to fix it? We have fixed matters rather well and it is disillusioning when people who have made things work are told, ““Thanks a lot, but we’re bringing in the new team.”” The most galling aspect has been seeing the views of my friends who work for the probation service change. They began by being supportive of many things that the Government have done and the money that has been put in, and to watch that view change to downright hostility has been shocking. It is hard to share time with those people when they feel that they have been sold down the river. It will take much time, notwithstanding the Bill, to rebuild some of the bridges. They certainly need to be rebuilt. Those of us who have difficulties with the Bill feel most strongly about the second point, which is contestability. I wish that there were a charitable explanation and that the reason for it was trying to find other organisations that could work in partnership. I have said that the voluntary sector could already do the things that we want it to do. Why do we want it to do more? The idea of partnership is well ensconced. There must be partnership because the state sector has always acknowledged that it cannot deliver alone the sort of criminal justice system that we want. However, we come back to contestability. There are many ways in which we could describe it, for example, outsourcing.