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National Probation Service

My Lords, I will not need to attend because it is a question to Her Majesty’s Government. We might be the Government in the future. We were always good at consultation and we intend to continue being good when we return to government. Having offered that little tease to the noble Lord—no doubt he will have other things to do—perhaps I may move to my substantive remarks. We in this party, both here and, particularly, in another place, have frequently highlighted the failure of management in the NOMS scheme. This failure could have been undone with a separation of authority and accountability in the prison and probation sectors and by the appointment of a new, independent-of-NOMS director of the National Probation Service. There is no clear accountability for the rehabilitation of prisoners and these issues, in particular, have shown the problems caused by reshuffling power in the prison and probation sectors. We have seen three reorganisations of the Prison Service, greatly increased bureaucracy—an issue to which I shall return when I put some questions to the Minister—a lack of strategic leadership and a lack of prison capacity. I was able to put this issue to the noble Lord only yesterday; the prisons are bursting at the seams and the Government do not know what to do. However, we are grateful that they have at least abandoned the Titan prisons, even if they are to be replaced by something not much different, what I refer to as the mini-Titans. We have also seen severe overstretch in the probation service. In March this year, my honourable friend the shadow Minister for Justice in another place, Edward Garnier, made clear that, in his view: ""Not only has the Government re-organised the Probation Service three times in the last eight years to no obvious public benefit, they have created a cash-eating monster"" I shall come back to that when I ask my questions. He continued: ""The National Offender Management Service has done nothing but increase unnecessary bureaucracy in Whitehall at vast expense"." I hope the noble Lord is aware of, and familiar with, our policy paper, Prisons with a Purpose. If he is not, I shall make sure that he has a copy of it and he can study it in due course. There we have set out our plans for a rehabilitation revolution. We plan to make the people who run the prisons directly responsible for reducing their prisoners’ reoffending, bringing two stages—prisons and probation—together and opening up the market in offender management to the volunteer and private sectors. Prisons with a Purpose states that, instead of drawing together prisons and probation, the Government created in NOMS an inflated bureaucratic monster that sat above the Prison and Probation Services and did little to facilitate co-ordination. It sucked resources to the order of £1.5 billion a year—more than the entire budget of the National Probation Service—from those available for offender management. I come now to the three specific questions that I want to put to the noble Lord. I hope that he will take some care in replying and I hope that he will reply today, rather than in writing. First, would the noble Lord agree that the introduction of NOMS, at the cost of the independence of the National Probation Service, has been flawed; that the bureaucratic drawing together of the prison and probation services has sucked in resources and cost something over £1.5 billion a year; and that there has been no discernible lowering of crime as a result? I would be very grateful for some acknowledgement of that £1.5 billion a year from the Government. Secondly, would the Minister accept that depriving the National Probation Service of a director to act as a figurehead of accountability, implement changes and be responsible for advising the Secretary of State based on first-hand experience of the probation service, has severely reduced this country’s capability to deal with the rehabilitation of offenders? Thirdly, I would also be grateful for a direct reply, specifically, to this question. The headquarters of NOMS alone cost, we are advised, something like £1.5 billion. That could be enough to fund another 7,000 prison places. It is more than 50 times the amount spent, for example, on drug rehabilitation in prison each year. Not only is that cost £1 billion, but we have now seen that some £900 million is being cut from the Ministry of Justice budget. Does the noble Lord believe that that money could have been better spent, especially under a system of individual accountability for the National Probation Service and the prison system? I hope that the noble Lord will be able to provide answers to those questions and I very much hope that he can provide them today. If he cannot, no doubt he will tell me that he will write to me, but they are questions that deserve a public response, rather than a response by letter.