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Humberside Probation Service

As I have said, my official, the director of offender management, Steve Wagstaffe, is in close discussion with the Humberside probation trust. I have tried to indicate to hon. Members that the planned cuts of 58.25 full-time equivalent posts have more or less been met through voluntary redundancy requests and staff turnover. I confirm that there are no firms plans at this time for compulsory redundancies, and I am confident that the director of offender management will discuss with the chief executive of the trust how to deal with those issues. In fact, any decisions to make staff redundant in the region, including by Humberside probation trust, will need to be referred through Steve Wagstaffe, the director of offender management for the region. With responsibility now for offender management services in prison and probation, he will be tasked with exploring every option before any front-line compulsory redundancies are made—there is a willingness now to try to avoid those. That will potentially include realigning budgets across and between probation areas, and indeed between prison establishments, where necessary. In order not to increase the staffing pressures on probation boards and trusts, the director of offender management has already determined that seconded probation staff levels in prisons will not be reduced this year. This process is being mirrored across the country. In every region, directors of offender management are challenging assumptions, tackling the difficult questions and examining these issues. We are trying to ensure that we undertake these services in a positive and productive way. As I have said, I want to try to protect the front line, while making efficiency savings, as we all want to do. In difficult and challenging times, none of us in this House wishes to see resources from taxpayers not being put to their most effective use. I know that even the trade unions involved believe that there are more efficient ways in which we can deliver services to protect the public as a whole. There is a better way of working and we do not have to perpetuate the mistakes that we have made. I think that we can make the savings that are achievable in Humberside this year and next year, and we can ensure that Humberside meets the tests, as it has done already, for trust status. We can also ensure that we continue to protect the public and deliver efficient and effective services, and that we do so in a way that I hope will take my right hon. and hon. Friends with us at a local level in Humberside and in other areas of the country. These are very difficult and challenging issues, but I strongly believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe has raised them in a productive and positive way. I am grateful to my Labour colleagues for their attendance this evening, and I hope that there will be an opportunity to discuss these issues with the chief executive and the director of offender management in the coming weeks, to ensure that the budgets for 2010-11 and for 2009-10 are met. The budgets beyond that date are subject to further discussion after the comprehensive spending review, and I hope that that will allow the chief executive and the director of offender management to examine these issues in a new light and in a more productive way, with the option of helping to improve and defend these services for the future. Question put and agreed to.