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Offender Management Bill

If I have made a mistake, I am happy to withdraw my comments. It is clear that we need to hear two or three speeches from the Liberals to understand what position they are going to take. We agree that the probation service does a wonderful job. I will take issue with anybody who suggests that the Home Secretary, I or any member of the Home Office team attacked the probation service individually. We recognise the hard work that needs to be done. Many points were made in this fascinating debate, and I am looking forward to the combative debate that we will have in Committee, provided the House gives the Bill a Second Reading. Many people have said that the Bill is about the privatisation of the probation service, but that is completely wrong. What we are doing is ending the public sector monopoly, so that we can ensure that communities are served by the best possible probation sector. That is not the same as privatisation. We need to allow all those who have the right skills and expertise to be able to make a contribution to the management of offenders. It should not matter whether such people come from the public sector, the private sector or the voluntary or charitable sector to allow us to achieve what we want to achieve: public value partnership. We remain fully committed to a strong public sector probation service. That remains one of our guiding principles in taking these proposals forward. However, it is clear that the public sector cannot do everything that needs to be done on its own. By removing the current statutory restrictions, we will give all sectors, whether public, private or voluntary, the freedom to innovate in partnership. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary spelled out clearly today that we will do this in a structured and timely way, without affecting the quality of the service that is provided. The same rigorous inspection regimes will be in place—the inspector of prisons and the inspector of probation. My hon. Friends the Members for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood), and for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) said that the business case for change had not been made. The case seems to be very clear-cut. I fully recognise the improvements in performance that the probation service has achieved in recent years. Its success in meeting many of the targets that were set for it is undeniable, but it is also undeniable that reoffending rates remain too high and that we are seeing too many lapses in the supervision of offenders who pose a danger to the public. I do not think that more of the same is good enough. I have seen a lot of excellent work and many examples of good practice during my visits throughout the country. For example, on community payback, in the north-west, the communities are identifying the projects that they want, the magistrates are sentencing in accordance with those projects and the work is being carried out. Such measures are not seen as soft sentences. They are also highly visible, and that restores public confidence in the criminal justice system. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy), who talked about the launch of Believe that took place in the House some weeks ago. She stressed, as it has done, the importance of the alliances that we need to put in place to tackle reoffending. We need the business community, the faith community and local government to recognise that they all have a role to play in offender management.