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Offender Management Bill

Absolutely; my hon. Friend makes that point very well. The debate being skewed into a discussion about only the private sector gives me another cause for concern. As we have heard, a huge number of national and local organisations currently provide services, but they could do more. That is particularly the case in my area, Hull, which is geographically quite an isolated part of the country. We will be looking very much to local organisations to provide services. My passion is the voluntary and community sector. I am not speaking for big business at all. I want the people and groups who are providing good services at present through the third sector to be encouraged and supported. I feel that such groups could make a real difference to probation services and the criminal justice system. I also want to talk about the wider perspective that we all must have in respect of the criminal justice system. A few months ago, a probation officer came to my surgery to talk about problems to do with housing offenders when they come out of prison. I was disappointed by some of the attitudes to rehousing offenders expressed by some of the housing officers at my local authority. All the partners in the community need to work in a much more joined-up way—to use an old-fashioned phrase—to make sure that we are serious about providing people with a home and with employment, because they are the key issues that need to be addressed when someone comes out of prison. As a number of Members have said, mental health is an area that the criminal justice system has still not got right. We need to link up with the mental health trusts and to work with the mental health charities and the voluntary sector, which provide a way of reaching people who have mental health problems and who should not be in the criminal justice system at all. Since becoming the MP for Kingston upon Hull, North, I have had a couple of opportunities to visit Hull prison, and I was very impressed by the governor, Steve Tilley—who, unfortunately, has moved on. He did a lot of excellent work on developing education and basic skills and on making sure that inmates had an opportunity to try some basic plumbing, electrical work and painting and decorating. That gives them a taster of what they could do when they leave prison. The librarian there is also committed to trying to help people to deal with such basic skills issues. Such matters cannot be left to the probation service alone, as far more than probation issues are at stake. Local authorities, mental health trusts, primary care trusts and local authority education departments all have a role to play. The probation officer who came to see me last Friday said that she believed that probation was the glue that held the criminal justice system together, which clearly shows how she feels about her job. She is trying to hold it all together, doing an excellent job and playing a pivotal role, but I am sure that she would agree that there are new ways of working and different ways of getting to reoffenders. We have got to be innovative —it is no good just doing the same thing over and over again because it has been done for 20 years. We need to—[Interruption.] Unfortunately, the Liberal Democrats are always very good at wanting to maintain the status quo and not innovate, thereby not addressing the real concerns of our constituents. They are concerned—[Interruption.]