Offender Management Bill

Public Bill Committee, 11 January 2007.

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

On two housekeeping points, I remind hon. Members that adequate notice should be given of amendments and that, as a general rule, my fellow Chairman and I do not intend to call starred amendments. I also remind hon. Members to switch off their mobile phones and pagers in Committee.

We come first to the programme motion, debate on which may continue for up to half an hour.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.00 a.m. on Thursday 11th January) meet—

(a) at 2.00 p.m. on Thursday 11th January;

(b) at 10.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 16th January;

(c) at 9.00 a.m. and 2.00 p.m. on Thursday 18th January;

(d) at 10.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 23rd January;

(e) at 9.00 a.m. and 2.00 p.m. on Thursday 25th January;

(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 4; Schedule 1; Clauses 5 to 7; Schedule 2; Clauses 8 to 31; Schedules 3 to 5; Clauses 32 to 34; new Clauses, new Schedules, remaining proceedings on the Bill;

(3) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 4.00 p.m. on Thursday 25th January.

Good morning to you, Mr. Atkinson, and to the members of the Committee. I am delighted to be serving under your esteemed chairmanship and I look forward to the good-natured and effective way in which you will steer us through our deliberations, along with your co-Chairman, Mr. Bayley. I am in no doubt that we will have constructive debates on the key issues and I welcome the detailed scrutiny that we shall give the Bill.

I welcome the hon. and learned Member for Harborough and look forward to his valuable contributions. On Second Reading he said that he would chivvy the Government along, so we look forward to that. I also welcome the hon. Member for Cheadle, who will speak from the Liberal Democrat Benches, and all members of the Committee. I hope that they will agree that the programme motion gives us the proper time to enable scrutiny of this small but significant Bill and an opportunity to ease in the newly revised legislative procedures for Committee stages, which will affect the Bills introduced in the new year.

I am sure that we agree that probation is a crucial service, vital for public protection. I salute the hard work, dedication and professionalism of probation staff around the country. Much progress has been made in the past few years, but we cannot afford to shy away from the fact that we have still not managed to make a sufficient impact on the most crucial outcome: reducing reoffending. We now need to harness all the resources at our disposal to ensure that those who have the right skills and expertise, whether they are in the public, private or voluntary sector, can contribute to the management of offenders.

We remain committed to a strong public sector probation service, but it is clear that the public sector cannot and should not do all that needs to be done on its own. By removing current statutory restrictions, the Bill will give all sectors the freedom to innovate in partnership. Part 1 will place on the Secretary of State statutory duties to make arrangements with others for the provision of probation services and to create probation trusts as the public sector providers, with which he will make contracts. It will also require him to consult on how he proposes to commission probation services. The consultation will be conducted regionally and result in the delivery of services better targeted to meet the specific needs of local communities and the sentencing requirements of local courts.

Part 2 will improve offender management by strengthening the offence of bringing contraband into prison and removing some of the inconsistencies between the powers of staff in public and private prisons. Part 3 will make various technical amendments to improve delivery in the youth justice sector.

I know that there are contentious matters in the Bill, and I look forward to the opportunity to explain more fully its purpose and details. I will listen carefully to hon. Members throughout our deliberations, and if improvements can be made we will consider them. I know that the issues are detailed but I welcome the opportunity for a constructive debate that the programme motion gives us.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I join the Minister in welcoming you to our deliberations, Mr. Atkinson, and I thank him for his welcome. I do not have much of substance to say on the programme motion, save to say that if the Minister is required to return to Marsham street for urgent discussions about his future or that of any other Minister, we will give him such leeway as is required. He need not come back if he does not need to.

Mark Hunter (Liberal Democrat, Cheadle)

It is pleasure to have the opportunity to speak for the Liberal Democrats under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. I, too, look forward to what I hope will be a genuinely good-natured debate.

We are dealing with some hugely important issues here. We would all agree that there are genuine concerns about reoffending rates. It is acknowledged by the public that more needs to be done to improve the situation. I am looking forward to seeing what more the Minister will add to this. Although we approach this with an open mind, we must not throw the baby out with the bath water in our attempt to improve the situation of both the probation service and the Prison Service. An awful lot of committed professionals are involved in both those services and we should not forget that during our deliberations today.

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

We now move to the second motion. I call the Minister to move the motion to report written evidence. This is a formality whereby any written evidence that the Committee accepts enjoys the benefit of parliamentary privilege.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

This may well be a formal motion in the Government’s mind and although, on the face of it, it is fairly uncontroversial, it may hide a plethora of issues that need to be discussed, not least in light of the change in the parliamentary procedural rules which was introduced by the Government just before Parliament prorogued in late October. The Leader of the House introduced into the rules of the House a procedure whereby Bill Committees could receive evidence in a manner rather akin to the way in which Select Committees have been receiving evidence until now. A Committee such as this could therefore call witnesses and papers and, in light of both that written and oral evidence, reach a better judgment about the shape of the Offender Management Bill and the policy and the intent behind it.

On Second Reading on 11 December, at column 584 of Hansard, I intervened on the Home Secretary to ask whether he would ask his hon. Friends and the usual channels to permit this Committee to take evidence. Of course he said no, in his usual charming way. It is interesting that this is a highly controversial Bill. Part 1, at least, is highly controversial. It has attracted huge public concern and huge concern from those who work in all sections of the criminal justice system such as the police, the Prison Service, the probation service and the courts, and from both informed and uninformed politicians.

It strikes me that the decision by the Home Secretary on the Floor of the House to refuse this Committee the chance to take evidence has been somewhat mitigated by the Minister’s formal moving of this motion and the fact that he has given notice

“of his intention to move a motion in the terms of the Programming Sub-Committee”

so that this Committee can receive written evidence and so that it should be reported to the House. I understand that that is to enable such written evidence as he receives to be covered by parliamentary privilege and therefore immune from defamation suit. As a defamation lawyer I find that deeply disturbing: as one pocket fills, the other empties, but I shall bear that with as much fortitude as I can muster.

What does concern me is that this appears to be, if not a volte-face, at least a slight change in the Government’s attitude to the receiving of evidence by this Committee. I have a helpful solution to the dilemma we find ourselves in and it is one that should be attractive to the Government. I know that the Government wish to expose their inner thinking to the world. We know that from the numerous leaks that their assistants give to the press and to us.

We also know that the Government are hugely reinforced by their own self-confidence—everything that they say is right and everything that they intend to do is in the national interest, so they have no fear whatsoever of being exposed to public scrutiny. I want, therefore, to help the Government to perform their role as an open Government, a collection of candid individuals who want to see their policies explained fully. I want this Committee to take part in that process of holding the Government to account, and I want to ensure that the evidence that we receive is not confined to that produced by the Government but includes evidence produced by other interested bodies which is relevant to our deliberations.

When, on 11 December, the Home Secretary refused my suggestion, which I naively thought was entirely reasonable, I had a little think with my hon. Friends and we decided to hold our own evidence session. Yesterday, we held a session in the Thatcher Room at Portcullis House to which all members of this Committee were invited—even you, Mr. Atkinson, although for obvious reasons you thought it inappropriate to attend. Certainly all Committee members on both the Government and the Opposition Benches were invited. Sadly, yesterday the Minister and other members of the Home Office team were very busy looking for things.

We called Lord Ramsbotham, the retired general who was Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons from the late 1990s until about 2003, and Martin Narey, the former director-general of the Prison Service, then the chief executive of the National Offender Management Service and now the chief executive of Barnardo’s, the children’s charity. Thirdly, we called Dr. David Green, the director of the policy think-tank Civitas. Those three individuals gave some very useful evidence that touched directly on the Bill.

Because our committee was not set up by Parliament—it did not replicate this Committee and it was not staffed by Officers of the House—it was not a parliamentary committee. Because of that, by the rules of the House, the Serjeant would not allow us to use Hansard reporters or to make use of any form of recording system belonging to the House or its authorities. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, however, so we decided to record it ourselves, privately. It was an open meeting, but we funded and provided the means of recording the evidence.

The session started at about half-past 9 and went on until about a quarter to 12. The evidence is on a compact disc; it is not in writing. I hope that the Committee will agree that that valuable evidence should not be allowed to remain metaphorically within the Thatcher Room. Rather, the Committee should invite the Chairman either to authorise himself or to invite the Committee to ask the House as a whole to permit the evidence that was taken yesterday—from Lord Ramsbotham and Martin Narey in particular but also, if necessary, from Dr. Green—to be transcribed from the compact disc so that it can be presented in written form to the Committee as the Minister, at least in part, would wish.

The evidence that Lord Ramsbotham and Martin Narey gave yesterday would be extremely useful to the development of the Bill. It would provide a useful context in which we could frame our deliberations, although it might mean that we had to delay the end date of the Committee proceedings to enable ourselves to receive or understand the information. Although that might not be wholly agreeable to all members of the Committee—I see the Government Whip nodding in disagreement, in true inscrutable form—it would increase public confidence in the way that legislation is made in this House. Far too often, we rush through legislation that is insufficiently scrutinised, for all sorts of good, bad and indifferent reasons, and rely on the other place to do the real work of revision, amendment and scrutiny. I suspect that the public feels that it is disconnected from the proper making of legislation.

I suggest that the Committee should permit the transcription and receipt of the evidence on the compact disc, in line with the Minister’s motion. If the Minister is not prepared to agree that the Committee should do so, it is reasonable that the evidence should be made available as a public service at public expense. I therefore look to the Minister, as the current representative of the Home Office in the Room, to agree to the handing over to the Home Office—this is actually quite a brave suggestion—of the compact disc, on his undertaking that he will not lose it, put it in a drawer and leave it there for 10 years, or do something else careless with it. If the Home Office is distrustful of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat pact, it should have the evidence transcribed at its own expense and made public. I am relaxed about the means by which the evidence is brought into the public domain, as I am sure that the Minister is, given that he has plenty of other things on his mind to make his life less relaxing.

I am making a double-headed but none the less reasonable suggestion. The Minister frequently tells us that he is a reasonable man, which I accept, and I cannot believe that he will find it a disobliging suggestion. It will bring Parliament more in line with the public’s desire to know what is going on inside Parliament and will not only enhance the reputation of the Bill Committee system, but will allow the possibility, if not the certainty, of the deliberations of the Committee proceeding with even greater speed. If we receive in written form the evidence given yesterday, neither we nor the public will have to sit in Committee to read it. The receipt of the information in writing will allow us to sit less often, which would be to the advantage of the Government, who have plenty on their plate, and of the Minister, who I know is itching to get back to Marsham street to see what the hell is going on.

Mark Hunter (Liberal Democrat, Cheadle)

I shall be brief, I hope not for the last time in these proceedings. I support the view of the hon. and learned Gentleman, who has made an eminently reasonable point. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to start the proceedings in a spirit of co-operation and good nature, and that he will demonstrate his commitment to openness by admitting the evidence. As one of the Members who attended yesterday, I have to say that Members of this House and the other place found it an extremely useful opportunity to question three recognised expert witnesses. It would be a good start to the debate for the Minister to give a positive reaction to the request that has been made. It would it be rather churlish not to do so, and I cannot see any earthly reason why he should not, although he may wish to introduce one.

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

Order. For the sake of clarification of the record, I want to make it clear that neither the Chair nor the Committee has the power to authorise the transcription of this material. It is simply up to the Minister or the Government to do so or not.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

Thank you, Mr. Atkinson, for that explanation of the Committee’s responsibilities. I am always a little concerned when an Opposition spokesman says that he wants to help me, because it is not always to my advantage to take that help. However, I think that it might be on this occasion.

There are a number of matters on which I want to respond to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough. The hon. and learned Gentleman has commented on the Home Secretary’s position in rejecting the oral evidence to the Committee on 11 December, which was in line and in keeping with the agreement that was reached in the House that new Bills would follow that procedure in the new year. He knows that the Second Reading of this Bill was in December. The Home Secretary rejected the oral evidence to the Committee, because there was a starting point for the process and the procedure.

I part company a little with the hon. and learned Gentleman on the usual channels. We have three very competent Whips in the Committee who will deal with the Committee’s business in terms of its timescale very adequately, so I do not want to stray into their area of responsibility. However, I am interested in yesterday’s evidence session and might have had a view about who was invited to give evidence. None the less, the three people to whom the hon. and learned Gentleman has referred are distinguished in relation to this subject.

There is no danger of members of the Committee not receiving written evidence from a range of participants. The Carter report was published in December 2003; a Government response was published in January 2004; NOMS itself was established by Mr. Narey in June 2004; and the Management of Offenders and Sentencing Bill was introduced in January 2005.

Many people have been heavily involved throughout the process. The stakeholders have views about the Government’s direction of travel and their own personal views about how things are taking place. I believe that it is helpful to the Committee to get as much information as possible about those issues in the way mentioned by the hon. Member for Cheadle to allow us to discuss the outcomes in detail. These are serious matters to our communities and to people who work in the various services that we are discussing.

I will go this far and say that I will ask my officials and the Home Office to speak to the House authorities. I do not want to do anything that will prejudice any future position. However, I am happy to accede to the hon. and learned Gentleman’s request to get the CD transcribed.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I am grateful to the Minister for his speedy and favourable response to that suggestion. May I ask him to be a little more forthcoming about what he had in mind when he moved the motion this morning? Written evidence means nothing unless it relates to particular pieces of evidence. For example, as he has said, the Government received 748 responses to the consultation process, but, as I understand it, only 10 of those favoured the Government line. There are therefore 738 responses which did not find favour with the Government. Are we likely to receive that sort of evidence from the Government or from elsewhere, or do the Government have other pieces of written evidence in mind?

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

The hon. and learned Gentleman has strayed into an area that I am sure that we will return to in terms of the various consultations that have taken place and the different viewpoints that exist. As far as I am concerned—I am sure that the Committee will tell me if I am wrong—this motion is about evidence that the Committee receives in writing, which it does on occasions, from, for example, interest groups. It is about making sure that such evidence is published so that, as the hon. and learned Gentleman said in his opening remarks, it is placed in the public domain without problems for the people who gave it. I am attracted to evidence wherever it comes from and look forward to receiving it.

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

On a point of clarification, I note the Minister’s comments about evidence that may be submitted to us. It is a matter of formalities: in order to get the evidence formally submitted and therefore within the ambit of the resolution, does the Minister intend that it should be sent formally to the Chair? If material is distributed to the Committee, will that be sufficient to enable such information and evidence to fall within the ambit of the motion? Clarification would be helpful.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I started by being concerned about hon. Members trying to help me, and I must be careful not to stray into matters that may create problems for other Committees. I ask hon. Members to accept that I will consider what they are saying and will report to them later on how we will proceed. I will consider their request positively and try to get the CD transcribed.

Clause 1

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I beg to move amendment No. 24, in clause 1, page 2, line 25, at end add—

‘(6) This section applies to—

(a) the functions of the Secretary of State; and

(b) the functions of providers of probation services and their officers so far as they are exercised for the purposes set out in this section.

(7) In exercising those functions the person concerned must have regard to—

(a) the protection of the public;

(b) the reduction of reoffending;

(c) the proper punishment of offenders;

(d) ensuring offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on the victims of crime and the public;

(e) the rehabilitation of offenders.’.

The amendment would insert two further subsections into the clause, which is essentially about the ambit of probation and its purposes. To place the amendment in context, probation purposes are defined, at least in part, by clause 1 as drafted. Subsection (1) sets out what might be expected from a provider of probation services. Much of what is described in subsection (1) happens already, first, as a matter of good practice, and, secondly, because that is what the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 requires of the probation service.

The third reorganisation of the probation service since the Government came to office in 1997 was effected by the 2000 Act, which set up the national probation service and the national probation directorate.

I declared an interest on Second Reading that as a Crown Court recorder—a part-time judge in the Crown Court trying criminal cases with juries—I receive pre-sentence reports in the event of a defendant being found guilty in order to assist me in the disposal of the case.

Clause 1(1)(a) states that “probation purposes” means, among other things providing for

“courts to be given assistance in determining the appropriate sentences to pass, and making other decisions, in respect of persons charged with or convicted of offences”.

That is what the probation service now does. I have been in receipt of such advice and assistance in writing and orally.

Paragraph (b) provides for

“authorised persons to be given assistance in determining whether conditional cautions should be given and which conditions to attach to conditional cautions.”

That is also something that the probation service does already. Its clients, as they are called, are interviewed, and the service works out the best way to deal with the defendant in respect of the facts of the case, bearing in mind the consequences for the victim of the offence, before the criminal justice system. The probation service then reaches a decision that the court may, or may not, accept.

Paragraph (c) deals with

“the supervision and rehabilitation of persons charged with or convicted of offences”.

That area of the probation service’s work has perhaps caused the most controversy recently, because of those defendants who are given community punishment rather than a custodial sentence and placed under the supervision of a probation officer. They are at large, depending on the terms of the sentence and the requirements attached to it under the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Such offenders are supervised by a probation officer, who must not only literally supervise them—that is, keep an eye on them and ensure that they do what is required—but ensure, through meetings, conversations, discussions and an understanding of the offenders’ problems or difficulties, that they are rehabilitated and reformed and that they comply with various conditions that the court has set for them.

Paragraph (d) deals with

“the giving of assistance to persons remanded on bail”.

Bail hostels are hugely controversial. A “Panorama” programme just before Christmas dealt with a bail hostel or hostels in the Bristol area, where a number of people on bail—clearly not for offences so serious that they should have been in custody, but for offences none the less—were able to misbehave while on bail. There is a difficulty in supervising people in bail hostels. A bail hostel is not a prison. On the other hand, it is not run by the police; it is nominally managed and run by the probation service.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

On bail hostels, the hon. and learned Gentleman is quite right. There is a great deal of concern about approved premises and estates—he referred to “Panorama”. He makes a fair point. I should like to put something on the record to which I hope we will return in our deliberations on the probation service. I acknowledge that one concern is that the media would have us believe that supervision of offenders happens 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is impossible on approved premises. When we debate the probation service, I am sure that we will discuss it in more detail, but this is a good opportunity to put it on the record at the start that we must also manage public expectations and defend probation officers, who are sometimes expected to do a great deal more than is physically possible.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I am sure that that will be welcomed widely by those who work in the probation service, not least because I suspect that they feel rather put upon by this Government. I shall take the Home Secretary as an example, because he popped into my mind. It is interesting that he spends a lot of his time denigrating the people who are supposed to be performing public services for his Department, whether they work in the probation service or the Prison Service. As I said in front of him on Second Reading, it seems strange that in order to re-instil or create public confidence in the Prison Service, the Home Secretary should go to Wormwood Scrubs and give a speech to prisoners telling them how dysfunctional the Prison Service is and that it is failing them.

I accept that sometimes there are overblown public expectations of what the probation service can do to supervise ex-prisoners on licence and parole, defendants in bail hostels and those serving community sentences. We all know that, but it does not help if the Government, wittingly or unwittingly, go around spreading stories about the ineffectual nature of those who work in the probation service. If the Government want to encourage good standards of behaviour, good service morale and public confidence in the criminal justice system as a whole—I suggest that at present it is at an all-time low—one of the things that they should not do is go around beating up people who are working their guts out trying to perform a vital public service across the criminal justice system in very difficult circumstances.

One must bear it in mind, for example, that the people who the probation officers and staff look after on our behalf are criminals. They are largely drug addicts; they are largely dishonest, and they are largely disorganised. They do not get up in the morning for nine-to-five jobs or keep appointments. They think that it is more appropriate to hit someone on the head and steal their purse to feed their drug habit than to go out and earn an honest penny. Let us bear it in mind that the probation service looks after some very difficult people. In a proper analysis of what is needed to instil public confidence in the criminal justice system and this aspect of it, it does not help for the Home Secretary or his Ministers deliberately—perhaps not deliberately in this Minister’s case—to denigrate it. In so far as the Minister was able to praise it just now, that is welcome.

To return to the context of the amendment, the further probation purpose referred to in paragraph (f) is

“the giving of information to victims of persons charged with or convicted of offences.”

There are clearly occasions when those who provide probation services will need to speak directly to the victims of a crime. Police family liaison officers, lawyers and those who work in the court service itself also do that; none the less, it is one of the many functions that probation staff carry out.

Subsection (2) seeks to provide a little more detail by further defining some of the purposes that we have just discussed. It states:

“The purpose set out in subsection (1)(c)”,

which deals with the supervision and rehabilitation of persons charged with or convicted of offences,

“includes (in particular)—

(a) giving effect to community orders and suspended sentence orders”

and also

“(b) assisting in the rehabilitation of offenders who are being held in prison;

(c) supervising persons released from prison on licence;

(d) providing accommodation in approved premises.”

To some extent, that is a repetition of what is already stated or implied in subsection (1). In addition, it is what the probation services do already to some extent. Indeed, it is precisely the sort of thing that was envisaged under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 when Parliament last had a substantive opportunity to consider the issue.

Clause 1 goes on to state:

“That purpose also applies in relation to persons who...are convicted of an offence under the law of a country outside England and Wales”.

That is particularly relevant to yesterday’s shenanigans when we learned that thousands of files were sitting in the Home Office awaiting an opportunity to be loaded into the police national computer so that the relevant authorities, be it the police, those who can lawfully gain access to the police national computer, the Criminal Records Bureau, social services departments, education authorities and so on, could determine whether the person whom they wished to employ or had already employed was suitable to be used in respect of vulnerable adults, young persons in care or those who were being educated.

We could be forgiven for thinking that the impression that the Government wished to give was that it was the probation services that were letting down the country by failing to supervise when, as we know in relation to those who had been convicted of offences overseas, the Home Office itself was the cause of the problem. Ministers themselves were informed in October by the Association of Chief Police Officers that there was a problem and that the Home Secretary ought to be informed, yet they did nothing. They continue to spin out the message that the problem is everyone’s fault but theirs.

There is, and has been for at least a decade, a requirement under the multi-agency public protection arrangements for anyone who has been convicted of an offence overseas, especially a serious sexual offence, to be logged into the MAPPA system so that a programme of supervision or other activity can be put in place for them, at least so that those who are running the systems in this country know what it is that they have to cope with. In light of that existing requirement, yesterday’s announcements and leaks are all the more troubling and throw clause 1 into starker relief.

The additional purpose referred to under subsection (3) applies to persons who

“receive a sentence which is to any extent to be served or carried out in England and Wales”,

as it applies in relation to persons convicted of offences.”

Therefore, if someone were brought back from a foreign conviction in a foreign prison, for example, under a prisoner swap or another arrangement, that person would be entitled to or required to serve the remainder of his sentence in a British prison. All that must be understood and managed as a probation purpose.

I shall not go through subsection (4) in the same detail, but it sets out various matters in connection with the sentences that might be appropriate under clause 1. Subsection (5) deals with the requirement of the Secretary of State to extend by regulation the purposes that we have just been examining. They can include

“other purposes relating to persons charged with or convicted of offences or persons to whom conditional cautions are given.”

As usual, we have not seen the regulations. I do not imagine that they have even been drafted. I deplore the creeping habit of the Government—although the Conservative Government, while guilty of such action, were not quite as guilty as this Government—

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

A slight apology.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

A slight one, yes. Let me make a serious constitutional point. I deplore the growing habit of Departments of creating Bills that give a Secretary of State powers to make further regulations that sometimes bring with them criminal penalties, but which are not in draft and available to members of the Committee at the time the measures are being discussed. Such practice started particularly badly with the Access to Justice Bill in 1998-99. It was literally a Christmas tree on to which the Lord Chancellor was able to hang any number of regulations. Some regulations may be entirely benign, none the less it is important that the Committee scrutinising the Bill should have the right to examine the regulations that are to be invented under it.

The Minister may say that, in due course, a Statutory Instrument Committee will consider such matters, but that is not the same thing as issues will be taken right out of context. Although the deliberations of Statutory Instrument Committees are hugely enjoyable from time to time, as the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Gedling, and I know to our benefit, they do not provide the same detailed scrutiny as a Public Bill Committee.

After what I hope was not an unnecessarily lengthy preamble, I come now to the detail of amendment No. 24, which would add two new subsections (6) and (7) . Clause 1 applies to

“the functions of the Secretary of State”

and

“providers of probation services and their officers so far as they are exercised for the purposes set out in this section”—

the purposes that I have described.

Proposed new subsection (7) refers to “the person concerned”. That could be the Secretary of State or what is nowadays called a third sector provider. The latter could be a charity, a Church group, an individual or a limited company. It could be one of the companies under the Government’s rather revoltingly named “contestability arrangements”. I would prefer to use a word such as “competition”. It could be a public limited company, a partnership or any other form of legal entity. The subsection provides that

“the person concerned must have regard to—

(a) the protection of the public;

(b) the reduction of reoffending;

(c) the proper punishment of offenders;

(d) ensuring offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on the victims of crime and the public;

(e) the rehabilitation of offenders.’.

I have no doubt that the professional members of the probation service do precisely that—I mean the qualified probation officers and those who are not qualified but are none the less accredited members of probation staff. They are concerned to regard the matters set out in paragraphs (a) to (e) of our proposed new subsection (7). However, what concerns my party is that the Government have not explained themselves. We and the public at large are not convinced that the Government, in setting forth on the Offender Management Bill, have really assessed the evidence in front of them and taken on board all the concerns that have been made public by interested and affected parties in such a way that the instrument being created will deliver the purposes set out in clause 1.

I will not personalise this by referring to the Home Secretary, but I will concentrate on “the Secretary of State”, the office holder. My concern is that the Secretary of State will, as a matter of necessary Government business expedience, have to delegate all of the tasks referred to in clause 1 to a host of public and other officials. He will use the chain of command of the National Offender Management Service to ensure, for good or ill, that the purposes set out in clause 1 are properly exercised. However, we have no reassurance that there is any proper accountability system to ensure that the public as a whole are kept in the forefront of the minds of the officials who are carrying out the functions on behalf of the Secretary of State. That difficulty is going to be further exacerbated when one deals with non-state providers of probation services.

I have no doubt that those who work for—picking a few companies purely as examples—Securicor, Group 4, Transform or some of the big charities, which will be bidding for this work, are, as individuals, acutely concerned about the protection of the public, the reduction of reoffending and the proper punishment of offenders and so on. What worries me is that the Government have set up no mechanisms to check whether the purposes that they intend are being achieved. If the Government do not do so, their hopes for re-engaging with the public are lost. In that case, we will see neither a reduction in reoffending nor the proper punishment of offenders, and we will not be assured that offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on victims and the public is uppermost. Still less will we see the rehabilitation of offenders.

At the moment, the probation service is overwhelmed with bureaucracy and the number of cases. Therefore, from the Conservatives’ point of view—the Liberal Democrats disagree—it seems proper for the Government to explore what they call contestability to bring in other parties to see whether they can provide probation services. That is fine as far as it goes, but unless the Government construct a system that is guaranteed, as far as humanly possible, to ensure that the purposes work accountably, the project will collapse. I think that this is the 60th piece of legislation advanced by the Department since 1997, which is more than in the whole of the 20th century. I am concerned that, although we are considering a well-intentioned Bill, it has not been properly thought through and will lead to tears before bedtime.

I shall pause so that other hon. Members may comment on our amendment. It would at least place in the Bill demands on the Secretary of State and probation service providers and their officers, which, unless they are expressly stated, could be forgotten and ignored to the detriment of public safety.

Mr. David Kidney (Stafford) (Lab) rose—

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

Before I call Mr. Kidney, I shall just say that we have had, for sensible reasons, a wide-ranging debate on the amendment—although perhaps wider than should strictly be permitted by the Chair. I am happy with that, but if hon. Members want a clause stand part debate, they will have difficulty persuading me to allow it.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

I know that you are a fair-minded man, Mr. Atkinson, so I am delighted to be serving in a Committee chaired by you.

In my adult life, I have noticed not only scientific, social, economic and environmental change, but its accelerating pace. In the face of such change, legislators around the world have to consider laws that quickly become outdated and require amendment or removal and new laws that are needed in areas that were not previously legislated on. I do not agree with the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, who deplores the Government practice of setting laws in frameworks that are likely to last a long time, which allows individual rules to be changed from time to time to keep up with developments.

I applaud the attempt of the hon. and learned Gentleman and his party to fix the Bill and to add something to its framework that will last. I am a big fan of objectives clauses in modern legislation, but there are none in this Bill. I appeal to my hon. Friend the Minister to consider a reasoned argument for the Bill containing, by the time it is enacted, statutory objectives for the benefit of us all.

So far, in my career in this place, my experience of statutory objectives is entirely positive. For example, I served on the Joint Committee scrutinising the draft Bill preceding the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. We approved four statutory objectives that became the cornerstone of that Act and of the regulation of the financial sector by the Financial Services Authority. The Legal Services Bill is currently passing through Parliament. Again, the draft Bill was scrutinised by a Joint Committee on which I served and approval has been given to its having statutory objectives. Both the Legal Services Bill and the 2000 Act relate to regulators. The Bill that we are discussing is not about a regulator, but about a probation service or NOMS, although it is a little bit silent on that at the moment.

Thinking that there might be a difference between these pieces of legislation, I looked at the Criminal Justice Act 2003—again, I served on the Committee considering the Bill preceding it—and found that there is no statutory objectives clause for our criminal justice system. Many people would argue that it would be a better system if there were such objectives. Interestingly, however, the 2003 Act contains provision for codes of practice. That is an alternative way of establishing some control in an Act as to what can be included in subsequent secondary legislation and additional codes of practice. My experience has been entirely positive, and I want the Minister to consider whether it would benefit him and his Department to have statutory objectives in the Bill.

The two reasons given by the Government for why NOMS is required in place of the probation service are that the probation service is not performing as well and effectively as it could and that we are not tackling the reoffending rate in this country as well as we could. Both of those arguments are strongly challenged by the probation service, including my own in Staffordshire, which has given me strong guidance on this.

Under the Bill, the probation service can be given targets each year based on regional consultation, but that is not a very good recipe for a service that is confident about what is required of it for the future, because the service will not be able to allocate its resources in the best way to meet its targets effectively. The measures will give a rootless service that will not know from one year to the next where it might be required to go. That is reflected in the argument with the probation service today, when it challenges Ministers who say that it is not performing well enough. The service can quote figures other than those that the Minister can quote to show how well it is meeting the Government’s current targets. It would be valuable to fix in the Bill where we expect the probation service to go over time. That would help different probation services to perform the tasks required of them and to plan strategically to perform those tasks.

The second argument is about reducing reoffending, but the probation service would be entitled to say that that might simply be the flavour of the month. It could ask what would happen if there were a different political party in government tomorrow that had a different priority for it? The service is entitled to ask where is the priority for reducing reoffending rates in comparison with the other priorities, of which we all might approve. The amendment suggests other priorities without any ranking. If we get past this debate and agree that it is a good idea to have statutory objectives, there is then a whole new debate to be had about whether the objectives should be equal or whether some should be ranked as higher priorities than others. That was a common debate during the scrutiny of the Bills that I mentioned earlier.

Does the Minister think that it would benefit him and the service that will emerge from the reforms if there were some statutory objectives, so that everybody knows whether the provider is from the public, private or voluntary sector, and what the provider is signing up for when it agrees to take on a contract to provide a service?

The reason why I shall not support the amendment, if it is pressed to a vote, is that I do not think that it goes far enough. I shall suggest a different set of priorities. When I was a legal student, which was a very long time ago, I remember a famous criminal court judgment setting out the purposes of the sentencing, which later became known in the text books as the seven purposes of sentencing. There are five priorities in proposed new subsection (7), and I have some suggestions for variations or additions to them. The issue of public confidence is about more than the “protection of the public” in paragraph (a); it runs through all five of the priorities. It might also concern public accountability for public spending on the service, the effectiveness of the system of inspection, or even, in the public’s mind, the right balance in such a sensitive public service of provision by the public sector, the voluntary sector and, crucially, the private sector, which has the additional motivation of making a profit. Public confidence is not listed, but it should be considered.

Another issue, which has growing resonance today and which will be increasingly important in the future, is reparation, which is not dealt with directly in any of the five paragraphs in the amendment but is a growing area. Whether an offender is sentenced to carry out unpaid work, required to confront a victim to say sorry or ordered to pay compensation to pay for repairs to public property, those are all examples of reparation. It is a growing area of interest and concern in this country, and maybe it should be a statutory objective in its own right. I also think there is a growing interest in victim support, which is mentioned in proposed new paragraph (d), but the issue is much greater and wider than that.

Another issue is the contribution that the probation service and NOMS should be required to make to the effectiveness of the whole criminal justice system, which, again, is not before us for consideration at the moment.

Lastly, although this is ancillary to all the things that I have mentioned, there is the issue of public education about the purposes of a criminal justice system and the role of probation and offender management within it. I shall therefore put forward for consideration some other items in the area of statutory objectives, which could be included if the Minister is interested.

The last point I want to make concerns one of the many briefings that we have received—the Minister rightly said at the outset that we will not be short of briefings. The one I want to refer to is from Rainer, the national charity for supporting young people and young adults—the name Rainer apparently comes from one of its founding members, Frederick Rainer, whose donation helped to appoint the first police court missionary in 1876, a forerunner of today’s modern probation service.

It is important for the Minister to understand that this briefing is largely supportive of the Government’s position and that Rainer is not one of the many critics. The briefing states that the Bill presents

“a danger that the proposals weaken the core public protection functions of the current probation service. In addition to providers falling within the remit of HM Inspector of Probation, Rainer would welcome a clarification from Ministers as to how accountability will be maintained.”

I say to the Minister that if even friends are worried about accountability, is that not another argument for some kind of statutory objective or objectives on the face of the Bill? This would be a helpful reassurance to the Minister’s friends as well as to the Minister’s opponents.

Mark Hunter (Liberal Democrat, Cheadle)

I want to address my remarks specifically to amendment No. 24, which was tabled in the names of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough and my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion.

I think the value of the amendment is that it clearly restates the five specific aims of the probation service, namely to protect the public, to reduce reoffending, to ensure the proper punishment of offenders, to ensure offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on the victims of crime and on the public and, of course, to rehabilitate offenders. All five key aims, in my opinion, are important. The value of having them in the Bill is that it would make it a legal imperative for those said aims to be considered by the Secretary of State and the providers of the service when they are carrying out any role connected with the probation service.

The question seems to concern why amendment No. 24 is needed, and I want to say a few words about that. Clause 1 defines in a general way the purposes of the probation service, but it does not specify the aims of the probation service. As I have said, the aims of the probation service were specified in the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000, and I think that they need to be restated in the context of this Bill. The aims seem to command general support, and I am therefore at a loss to understand the reason for the remission of the 2000 Act, but I have no doubt that the Minister will address that in due course.

None of us on either side of the Committee wants to see the introduction of competition causing in any way, shape or form a reduction in the quality of service provided. On the contrary, private companies that may be involved or which are already involved need to be made aware that we cannot allow standards to slip and that the protection of the public, the reduction of reoffending, real rehabilitation, proper punishment of offenders and ensuring offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on their victims and the public are targets for the probation service. Those are the key targets, rather than the £1.7 billion savings identified in the NOMS strategic business case in October 2005. Those savings might be important, but they are not as important as the service’s core aims.

It follows that the Government must not use contestability as an excuse to cut the service’s costs and save money. They should concentrate on increasing the service’s quality and—this must be the top priority—cutting reoffending rates. When choosing providers, the Secretary of State must have regard to carrying out those aims and not simply to the issue of which organisation is the highest bidder or might offer the most cost-effective service. The introduction of contestability will almost inevitably involve the fragmentation of the probation system, and private companies that are not used to dealing with probation might obtain a role in some cases. We would therefore do them a service by providing clear guidelines about their priorities in the Bill.

Through multi-agency public protection arrangements, the service now works with the police on the protection of the public, which is, after all, the bottom line in the whole debate. More than 40,000 offenders who have been convicted of sexual or violent offences and who have received a prison sentence of more than one year are now monitored. Of them, about 1,300—the so-called critical few—are thought to pose the greatest risk to the public, and another 12,000 or so are medium to high risk. The probation service and the police have been working effectively together, and that arrangement needs to continue and to be further improved. Last year, 0.44 per cent. of offenders in the highest two categories were convicted of a further offence.

On reducing reoffending, the statistics show that the reoffending rate after two years in prison is 66 per cent., compared with 53 per cent. on probation. Indeed, the figure for probation has been reduced by 3.5 per cent. since 1997, at a time when all the predictions from the Home Office were that it would rise. It is vital that the rate is monitored and that it continues to fall.

On the proper punishment of offenders, the media have often accused the probation service of being a soft touch or some sort of soft option, but I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee recognise that that is far from the reality. As a condition of their orders, more than 30,000 offenders who are sentenced to probation now attend groups, including groups on anger management, sex offender treatment programmes and cognitive behaviour therapy. Reoffending rates are expected to be further reduced when the effects of such programmes are properly measured and taken into account. It is also important that community service is seen as an appropriate and effective punishment, although it is essential that the orders to which I have referred also help with rehabilitation.

Ensuring that offenders are aware of the effect of crime on their victims and the public is also crucial. Work with victims is an integral part of the service’s remit, and more than 15,000 victims were contacted about release proposals last year. During the preparation of reports and during supervision orders, offenders are made aware of the effects of their crime on their victim, and reparation and mediation models are used in many cases. Again, that work needs to continue and to continue to improve.

On the rehabilitation of offenders, the probation service’s core value lies in the offender’s ability to change and refrain from further criminal and antisocial behaviour. It is therefore vital that the service’s aims are clearly restated and that their effectiveness is more closely monitored. NAPO supports the amendment and accepts its aims, and it is vital that those aims are not forgotten in the environment of competition and cost-effectiveness that the Government are keen to welcome. It is essential in that environment that the aims of the probation service are not only clear, but a legal imperative for both the Secretary of State and the relatively new people who might become involved in the probation service in due course.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I start by thanking the hon. and learned Member for Harborough for moving the amendment and taking the Committee through the Bill in the depth that he did. I disagree with his political remarks, but I do not want to get sidetracked on those issues, as we could spend a long time on them. I want to concentrate on the substance of what hon. Members have said about the aims and objectives.

I was struck by the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, who hit the nail on the head. I am drawn to the objectives, but I am concerned that if we went down the route of the hon. and learned Member’s amendment, we would restrict ourselves in a changing world. I agree with my hon. Friend that we would have to reflect on where we see things heading, and I shall return to where that might be and what he has said a little later.

I do not agree that the Bill is ill thought out. It has been around for a long time—the Carter report came out in December 2003, and a great deal of work has flowed from it. The previous Bill was introduced in January ’05, and here we are, two years later, with the current Bill. The Government have thought about what has been said to us and the issues that have been raised.

As you pointed out earlier, Mr. Atkinson, if we go wide of the amendment, we might stray into the clause stand part debate, but public protection is at the heart of what we want to achieve. We recognise the vital role that the probation service plays—everywhere that I have been, on the public record and elsewhere, I have said that we value the work of the probation service. The proposals are not an attack on individuals, but about how we tackle reoffending in our communities. What is important is that everybody has a role to play, and the issue is about not only the probation service, but the wider community’s understanding of that point.

I have said on public platforms on many occasions in my time as a politician, as both an MP and a local councillor, that the criminal justice system has been seen as a separate entity in relation to the provision of services and support. Local authorities, for instance, have a key role to play in reducing reoffending, particularly in resettlement and re-housing. We must get wider society to assist the work of probation officers, the prison service and the police in tackling reoffending, because that is only way in which we shall succeed.

The objectives behind the Bill are to try to widen the opportunities for the public, private and voluntary sectors to be involved through partnership work. As I said at the outset, we want a strong public sector, and we certainly want public protection to be at the heart of that. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and the hon. Member for Cheadle have talked about victims. We need to do much more work on that, and we are doing so. We have introduced the victim care units pilot, because victims get left behind in the criminal justice system. In some areas—for example, Nottingham—victim support through the probation service is good, but it is not consistent across the other 42 probation areas. We are trying to achieve a holistic approach to offender management, particularly through the partnerships that are available in respect of the probation service.

Confusion might arise as we develop the new bodies, however. We have already stated the responsibilities and purposes of the probation service, and we set out the vision and priorities for NOMS in the strategy that we published in February last year—the priorities are protecting the public, punishment and rehabilitation, managing offenders better and the organisational change to support that work. I want to be careful that we do not create confusion in the minds of the new providers about what we want to achieve.

We must get the balance right, and I do not believe that the hon. and learned Gentleman’s amendment is the right way to do so. I would prefer to go down the route proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

I want to press the Minister to explain why he thinks that there is a risk of confusion attached to placing in the Bill five clear provisions about the basic fundamental values and obligations of the probation service.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

The confusion concerns the interface between contractual and statutory responsibilities. I am nervous about that.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister in the course of his answer to my hon. Friend, but surely the contractual obligations on the provider will utterly comply with the statutory obligations that we are asking for. They will not be doing something else, will they?

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I am going to argue against myself now. I have sympathy with the argument, but we have to take the matter forward in a way that meets the requirements, that does not miss anything out and that does not restrict us to returning to primary legislation if we want to do something else. Therefore, in looking at the service level agreements for 2007-08, we want to be clear about the direction that we give to providers.

I ask the Committee to let me reflect on the matter in the terms suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and come back to it. I have sympathy with what has been said. The Committee has started off in good spirit, so in that spirit I shall reflect on what the hon. and learned Gentleman has put to us and will return with a Government amendment to see whether that will help the Committee. On that basis, I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I shall come back to what the Minister has said in a minute. Let me begin by saying that his happiness to reflect, while welcome in one sense, is worrying in another, because it suggests that he is not entirely confident in his own Bill.

I thank the hon. Member for Stafford for his remarks, which I fully take on board. It is often said of Opposition amendments that they are imperfectly drafted and cannot include everything. I genuinely accept his criticisms, which were constructive, not destructive. He is concerned about public confidence, as are we; he is concerned about accountability, and I think that I used that very word myself; and he is concerned about the effectiveness of inspection.

We had a lengthy debate about the inspectorate during the consideration of another piece of legislation towards the end of the last Session. Although we were able to maintain the independence of the prisons inspectorate, the Government were not persuaded that the independence of the other inspectorates should remain, and they have now created one great Government inspector to carry out inspections of the Crown Prosecution Service and, I think, of the police and the courts. Certainly, the prison service inspectorate has remained independent and separate. I stand to be corrected, but that is my understanding.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

We did not do that. The probation inspectorate is still independent. However, the inspectors can work jointly on such things as administrative support.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I think that I am right in saying that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons remains wholly separate in terms of powers and secretariat. That is a separate office, whereas there is a joint secretariat for the other inspectorates, albeit that the holders of the office may be separate individuals. That is a matter of detail that I do not want to get involved in now. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Stafford that whoever does whatever as a probation service provider, the public need to have confidence in the inspectorate system to ensure that the statutory obligations are adhered to. Contractual obligations must be kept up to the mark, between either the Secretary of State or a probation trust and a provider of probation services. It is important that that is achieved.

Another matter that concerned the hon. Member for Stafford was the balance of provision between the public and private sectors. I accept that that is not part of our amendment, but I hope that that will not prevent him from giving it more forthright support.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

The three things that the hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned all came under the heading “public confidence” in my speech. He has described my being concerned with each of those three things, but I said that they are good examples of areas that are not covered by his amendment and in which the public would have an interest.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I am grateful for that clarification and I apologise if I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. He is making points of public interest, not of party political difference, and if we can re-work the Bill so that those points are included or dealt with through public undertakings given by the Secretary of State through one of his Ministers, it will be all well and good. It is important for the Government to understand that the concerns of the public and of members of the Committee about the current state of the Bill are genuine. We are not here simply for the sake of hearing our own voices.

I take on board everything that the hon. Member for Stafford has said. He has talked about the requirement for greater emphasis on the victims of crime and has referred to proposed paragraph (d), which refers to

“ensuring offenders’ awareness of the effects of crime on the victims of crime and the public”.

I am not sure how much more emphasis we can put in the Bill. We are deeply concerned, both as constituency Members of Parliament and as legislators, that the consequences of crime for victims should be brought home to the criminal. The courts are keen to emphasise that, and from reading any number of probation officers’ pre-sentence reports, I know that it is uppermost in their minds when they advise the court about the proper sentence. The hon. Gentleman will remember, from his days as an advocate in his part of the world, that that is true. Increasingly, the public at large wants to be assured that the criminal justice system pays attention to the needs of victims.

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned the issue of public education, which is a huge topic, but I am not sure how one can ensure that the Bill will lead to better public education about the work of the probation service. I accept the more general point that the work of the probation service, whether in the state sector—as is currently the case—or provided by third sector or private companies, is hugely misunderstood. To see that, one needs only pick up a newspaper following the making of a sentence.

I shall give the example of a case in which I was engaged. Last year, I had to sentence a young man of about 15 or 16 who had destroyed about £3 million of property belonging to a bus company in London by committing arson on about 10 buses. He had been on remand for about nine months and had an IQ of about 70—he was just above the intellectual level below which he would have been designated educationally subnormal. Bearing it in mind that he had been in custody for nine months—effectively the equivalent of an 18-month custodial sentence—and that he was severely intellectually impaired, I gave him a community punishment. In the following day’s newspapers, the case was reported as, “Judge Lets Off Vicious Arsonist”.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

On a point of order, Mr Bayley, and I apologise to my hon. and learned Friend for interrupting him. In our discussions this morning on the motion to admit written evidence, the Minister was kind enough to say that the Home Office would transcribe the evidence taken yesterday by several members of the Committee and others from Lord Ramsbotham, Sir David Green and Martin Narey. I have the compact disc here and, with your permission, I pass it to the Minister.

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

That is not a point of order for the Chair. The hon. Gentleman can, of course, do what he likes with his CD and appears to have done so.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I am extremely grateful to the Government for their offer.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I always like to start an afternoon sitting with a degree of happiness. May I welcome you to our deliberations, Mr. Bayley? I was coming to the end of an anecdote about public confidence and how it related to a particular case I sat on as a Crown court recorder. The point that I was making does not need to be repeated. In essence, I was struck by what the hon. Member for Stafford said. In a moment I will try to relate what he said to what the Minister said.

Before the Minister spoke, the hon. Member for Cheadle was good enough to support broadly the case that I was mounting in favour of our amendment. He and his colleague share our concerns and our desire to ensure that the Bill, if it is to work at all, works in a practical way. I therefore will not damage his arguments by attempting to paraphrase or repeat them. Suffice it to say that what he said can be read in the Official Report tomorrow. I am grateful to him and his hon. Friend for their presence and their support for the amendment.

The Minister referred to the National Offender Management Service strategy, which was not published but was circulated within the Home Office—

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

It was published.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

It was published—in early 2006. I cannot remember whether Helen Edwards was the chief executive at that stage. I think that she was pretty close to the senior levels of NOMS at that stage. That is fair enough. If the strategy is a published document and accessible by the public, that is fine. But it is not legislation and it is capable of being ignored. It is not owned by other providers of probation services. It is important that if the non-strategy is to have any practical effect and to be carried out in an orderly fashion, it should more closely reflect what is in the Bill.

I became a little concerned when the Minister started talking about what he called the interface between statutory obligations and contractual obligations. One of the concerns of some Labour and Liberal Democrat Members is the provision by non-state operatives of a criminal justice function, namely the provision of probation services. If the non-state actors—the third sector, the charities and the private companies—are not to be tied closely into the obligations that the Bill places on the probation services, they, and certainly I, would need to be convinced that the contractual terms enforceable not simply at law through tedious and lengthy court proceedings, but by means of ministerial direction or other order. That is why I was concerned when the Minister seemed to think that there might be room for a difference between the statutory obligations and the contractual obligations. If I am wrong about that I am happy to be corrected.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I apologise if I confused the hon. and learned Gentleman; it was not my intention to do so. He makes a fair point. Returning to what my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford said, I was slightly concerned that we might be causing confusion about the interface between relationships with the private or the voluntary sectors. We do not want to increase the risk to the public. I hope that that explanation helps the right hon. and learned Gentleman, although it may not do so.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I hope that that has been of assistance to some people.

I want to draw on some of the Minister’s remarks when, having listened to the hon. Members for Stafford and for Cheadle and to me, he said that he was happy to reflect on what had been discussed this morning. Often, that is code for “Thank you for your remarks. You have taken up the whole morning’s sitting and I wish you wouldn’t take so long. Yes, there will be a Report stage, but frankly you shouldn’t think that anything you have said will find its way into the Bill, even though I’ve said I will reflect on it.”

However, I have a suspicion that we are dealing with a different sort of Minister, who wants to keep his word. When he says that he will reflect, what he means is that he will take the ideas presented by the hon. Gentlemen and me back to his Department and think about them. Given the tone in which the Minister responded to us, I suspect that he would very much like Government amendments to be tabled and debated in Government time which will have the support not just of what I think is called the payroll vote, but of members of his party such as the hon. Member for Walthamstow, who represents the purest form of support for non-contestability within this aspect of public policy. I complimented the hon. Gentleman on Second Reading and it was genuinely meant.

I think that the Minister wants to return on Report with a well thought-out and crafted Government amendment that reflects the concerns that the hon. Gentlemen and I have expressed. When the Minister says that he will reflect he does not simply mean that he will squirrel away what was said in the debate and ignore it; he means that he will do something positive about it.

I do not know what the hon. Member for Cheadle and his hon. Friends will want to do, but I am taking the Minister at his word, and I will advise my hon. Friends that I am prepared to ask the leave of the Committee to withdraw the amendment. However, before doing so I will give the Minister the opportunity to intervene so that he can clarify precisely what he intends to do and what he means by “I will reflect”.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

The hon. and learned Gentleman is quite right. I have worked with him and his hon. Friends on previous Bills and he knows that my way of working is to reflect on what can be done with a view to tabling amendments on Report, if that is appropriate, and, if it is not, to write to members of the Committee to let them know that that is not possible.

I genuinely believe that there are grounds for us to consider the matter, judging by what has been said by not only the hon. and learned Gentleman and the hon. Member for Cheadle but my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

It is extremely helpful to know that in this context “reflect” does not mean simply that the Minister will bounce back the light beams that have been shone at him from all around but that he will absorb them and then send out information. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 2

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

I beg to move amendment No. 4, in clause 2, page 2, line 43, leave out ‘or will be’.

May I pass on my welcome to you, Mr. Bayley? I look forward to working under your chairmanship.

Subsection (1) states:

“It is the function of the Secretary of State to ensure that sufficient provision is made throughout England and Wales”

for fulfilling the purposes of probation that we debated under clause 1. In so doing, he may make provision for probation services under clause 3. However, subsection (3) provides a carve-out in relation to that duty, and that is what the amendment addresses. The subsection states that the Secretary of State will not be required to take action or make provisions under subsections (1) and (2)

“if it appears to him that appropriate provision is being or will be made by any person acting otherwise than in pursuance of arrangements made under section 3.”

A number of issues arise from that. First, if there is a gap in provision, as seems to be envisaged in the subsection, is it right for the Secretary of State to be able to say merely that he is happy that provision will be made? That prompts the question how long he can be satisfied that that will happen. More fundamentally, is it acceptable that there should be a gap in provision?

We have heard clearly from the Government that their intention is to cut reoffending and protect the public. It would therefore seem odd if the Secretary of State could sit back and say that he was satisfied that something would be provided in due course. The amendment is intended to limit his assessment by specifying that he may rely on the exemption in subsection (3) only if appropriate provision “is being made” rather than if it “will be made”.

It is important for us to understand the Government’s thinking on how the clause will be applied, because it is fundamentally about a responsibility to ensure the provision of probation services. It takes us back to the list of purposes of probation, which we discussed this morning and which underpins the Bill by assisting the courts in passing appropriate sentences and ensuring that offenders are properly monitored and helped. It is important for us to be clear what we are talking about and what discretion the Secretary of State will be able to exercise in making an assessment under subsection (3). Appropriate provision must be engaged and the Secretary of State should not be able to rely on an exemption based on his looking into the future.

The other point upon which the amendment touches is the last part of subsection (3), which states that the carve-out will apply if it appears to the Secretary of State that

“appropriate provision is being or will be made by any person acting otherwise than in pursuance of arrangements under section 3.”

That raises various questions in my mind about what those other arrangements might be. As we understand it, probation is to be provided through the mechanism in clause 3—in other words, the Secretary of State contracting with various bodies, agencies or companies, or making provision directly. That is the backdrop, and we shall obviously debate in much greater detail—I am sure that the Minister is pleased to hear this—the acceptability of that whole structure and the issues that have rightly been raised outside and inside this House about its appropriateness and the Government’s intentions.

Coming specifically to the amendment and subsection (3), it would certainly be helpful to understand what the other provisions might be. It may be that I have misunderstood the intended structure, but subsection (3) refers to

“pursuance of arrangements under section 3.”

That prompts a question, given the breadth of clause 3, about what such arrangements might be. The approach is potentially vague.

One of the criticisms that we have levelled—I can see the Minister smiling—concerns the amount of vagueness and uncertainty. There is a thread of argument about the language and drafting that applies all the way through the Bill, which leads us, and many other members of the Committee, to be uncertain about the Government’s intentions. One specific aspect of that uncertainty concerns what other arrangements may be in contemplation. Maybe the Minister will say that the other arrangements will be introduced in a staged way, and that they will involve existing provision through probation boards and other agencies and organisations.

The amendment deals with that lack of certainty and addresses the ambits of what has been set out and the Secretary of State’s approach. We shall certainly come on to more aspects of that when we move on to the next group of amendments. We must understand as clearly as we can what room for manoeuvre the Secretary of State has in assessing the provision. In understanding what other arrangements may be in contemplation, we will at least more clearly understand the Government’s approach to this part of the Bill.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I add my welcome to you, Mr. Bayley. We look forward to your support in helping us to get through the Bill this afternoon and beyond.

I also welcome the hon. Member for Hornchurch to his Front-Bench responsibilities. I do not wish to be rude to him, but he has consistently accused the Government of vagueness, generality and misunderstandings. That may be part of his style of operation, but I do not accept those contentions. We have been very clear about what we are trying to achieve in this Bill.

This morning, I explained that these discussions have been taking place since the Carter report in 2003. There may have been differences of opinion about how we are going to get there, but I think that people understand the Government’s intentions. This amendment is probably more of a probing amendment than anything else, but we will have a crack at trying to help the hon. Gentleman and see how we go. He is right to say that, under the current legislation, the statutory function for ensuring that sufficient provision is made for a probation service rests with the local probation boards. The purpose of clause 2 is to transfer this function to the Secretary of State to enable a greater range of providers to deliver services in a more flexible way which better meets the needs of offenders and communities, which are the main driving force that we talked about this morning.

The key is that the provision is about providing a better service, so subsection (3) does not require the Secretary of State to make provision, if it appears to him that appropriate provision can be made through other means.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

The Minister has said that the Secretary of State will provide services better to meet the needs of communities. It may not be directly relevant to this particular amendment, but that was an interesting expression. Surely the communities themselves are better able to understand their needs than the Secretary of State. Rather than the top-down arrangement that the Government are asking us to accept—we are dealing with communities in England and Wales and have a Scottish Member of Parliament as Home Secretary—would it not be better to have a bottom-up arrangement, or have I wholly misunderstood the situation?

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

The hon. and learned Member for Harborough has wholly misunderstood our intentions. At the moment, the powers lie with the probation boards, and the Secretary of State will take those powers to give them to commissioners. I am sure we will discuss in great detail later in the Bill whether that is centralisation, whether that is privatisation and what the approach should be in local areas. I certainly want to see local communities involved and, as I said this morning, it is clear that we need to get ownership by local communities of how we deal with reoffending and its impact on them and the wider country. It is about changing the relationship from the current monopoly held by local probation boards into the Secretary of State having the means to get the provision.

The Secretary of State will not reach his conclusions in isolation. We will shortly discuss the commissioners’ roles, who the commissioners will be required to consult and who they have already been consulting. There is a great deal of evidence from the consultations with the regional offender managers, and we will get on to that matter later in the debate.

The point of subsection (3) is to ensure that the Secretary of State is not required to take action in circumstances where it is unnecessary for him to do so. Just as we do not want him to have to take action where appropriate alternative arrangements are already in place, so we do not want him to have to take action in circumstances where such arrangements will be made, because we believe that that would be a waste of resources, which could create a possible duplication of effort and deter alternative provision from being made. The amendment would restrict flexibility and local autonomy and force the Secretary of State to intervene. We do not believe that any of that is desirable, and it would not meet the hon. Gentleman’s requirements. Given that we are going to get on to a wider discussion about the roles of the commissioners, I hope that that explanation is acceptable and that he will withdraw his amendment.

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

I have heard what the Minister has said. He is right to say that we will get on to other, wider details, such as the arguments about the top-down approach, competition and so on. However, I still feel that we have not really gained any clarity on subsection (3). I have heard what the Minister has said about what the Government are trying to achieve in relation to the clause and his comments about not making provision where it is deemed unnecessary. Our purpose in tabling the amendment and raising the issue in Committee is to get more clarity on what is unnecessary or otherwise, which would be helpful. I can see that the Minister would like me to give way, and I shall do so in the interests of clarity.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I apologise for not having quoted the example that the hon. Gentleman asked for. The other reasons relate to the voluntary sector. If a charity were run from premises in an area, but not by way of a contractual arrangement, there would be no need to use the powers relating to approved premises under the Bill. We are arguing that there is no need for the Secretary of State to be heavily involved in intervention at all times, so the hon. Gentleman is arguing against what he wants to achieve by asking for that.

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

The Minister’s clarification on that particular aspect of what I have put forward is helpful in that it gives us a clearer understanding of what that other provision would be. We would certainly not seek the unnecessary or increased involvement of the Secretary of State in the provision of services that are, in many ways, best provided locally. It is helpful to understand that what we talking about is in many respects a direct provision on the ground in the community, which we welcome.

We have not had any real clarity about how the Secretary of State would consider sufficiency when looking forward, which relates to the “or will be” that the amendment would delete. However, I shall note and review carefully what the Minister has said—

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

And reflect on it.

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

And reflect on it, in a genuine and honest way, which I am sure that the Minister will do, too. On the basis of his comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 5, in clause 2, page 3, line 3, at end insert—

‘(4A) In carrying out his duty under subsection (4) the Secretary of State must consult representatives of—

(a) the judiciary;

(b) local authorities;

(c) providers of probation services;

(d) the voluntary sector.’.

No. 6, in clause 2, page 3, line 3, at end insert—

‘(4A) The Secretary of State shall report annually to Parliament on the consultation he has undertaken under subsection (4) in respect of—

(a) the results of the consultation, and

(b) priorities for the probation service for the forthcoming year.’.

Mark Hunter (Liberal Democrat, Cheadle)

May I add my welcome to you, Mr. Bayley, as our Chairman, and say how much I am looking forward to debating the Bill?

I will start by stating the amendment’s objective, which is to create a legal duty on the Secretary of State to consult the judiciary, local authorities, providers of probation services, the Youth Justice Board, the voluntary sector, the Parole Board, officers of a provider of probation services, trade unions and professional associations and others. That is a fairly comprehensive list of people whom we are looking to involve in consultations with the Secretary of State. Why do we think that that is needed? Whichever way we try to appraise the Government’s intent, the consequences of the Bill seem clear—if it is passed as it stands, it will take the probation service out of the hands of the local community and put it into the hands of the Secretary of State.

It is my contention that those working at a local level understand better than the Secretary of State what resources are available and what is needed in their areas, and they can give advice about how to fit probation services to the individual needs of their areas. I am not convinced that the Secretary of State can perform tasks such as the resettlement of ex-prisoners into the local community as well as they can. I give that example, because the difficulty that ex-prisoners experience in fitting into communities is, among other indicators, reflected in the suicide rate for that group compared with that for the general population—male ex-prisoners are eight times more likely to commit suicide and female ex-prisoners are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than a member of the general population, which is a staggering statistic.

Bad commissioning decisions by the Secretary of State could end the carefully forged links between the voluntary sector, local authorities and the probation services, and could stop the effective flow of information that allows good end-to-end offender management. I am sure that we would all agree that that is crucial. If the structure is to change, it is vital that commissioning and planning decisions made nationally and regionally are informed by those who know the local problems in detail. Consultation between those groups and the Secretary of State should be frequent and close.

As has been said, the judiciary needs to be aware of demand for different types of sentencing, and to inform the Secretary of State of it. It needs to be fully involved in the process, to have the confidence of the probation system and to ensure the success of community sentencing. Local authorities are closely involved with the probation services and have a good understanding of the needs of their local areas. The Youth Justice Board has specialists who can advise on what can be done to improve youth justice in individual communities. People in the voluntary sector know their areas best, and that is where their expertise can best be used. They can advise on how they can get more involved—

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I do not want to stop the hon. Gentleman’s flow, and I agree with many of his points. He mentions the role of the voluntary sector, and that is crucial; we will come on to it when we debate providers.

The voluntary sector could do a lot more. The hon. Gentleman proposes a list of those people who need to be consulted, and I agree with much of it. However, why does he want to include it in the Bill? There might be others who can provide support. Why does he want to limit it to that list?

Mark Hunter (Liberal Democrat, Cheadle)

I thank the Minister for his intervention. It is clear from the groups that I mentioned and the fact that the final one is

“any other such persons as he thinks fit”

that the prerogative that the Minister seeks to give to the Secretary of State is covered, so I do not understand his point. He indicated that he accepted some of the issues that I have mentioned—

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I agreed; I did not accept.

Mark Hunter (Liberal Democrat, Cheadle)

He agrees; that is even better. I hope that that means that he will give similar favourable consideration to this amendment, in the spirit of co-operation that we have heard so much about in this debate.

The voluntary sector knows the areas in which its expertise can best be used, and can advise on how it can get more involved in the probation service. It can also advise on how it would co-operate with the groups already involved at local level.

I should like to dwell for a moment on the role of the voluntary sector. The Minister has said how important it is. Among the many representations that all of us have had on the Bill, I have one from the YMCA, not normally noted for its militancy on such matters. It says:

“There is a significant role that voluntary sector organisations can play, particularly in the rehabilitation of persons charged with or convicted of offences, and also in the supervision thereof. YMCA England welcomes the proposed intention in the Bill to increase scope for further provision. We work to prevent young people from engaging in anti-social behaviour and crime and we work with young offenders in the criminal justice system, in prisons and in resettlement into the community.”

So far, so good. However, it goes on to say that it is

“concerned that the scope for such relationships is limited in the Bill by a narrow vision of the voluntary sector. The Bill simply places the sector alongside others for services to be merely transferred, neglecting the particular contribution that a voluntary relationship has on preventing re-offending.”

Let me make one more comment on the functions of the Secretary of State. There is scope in the Bill for the Secretary of State to ensure that sufficient provision is made throughout England and Wales. The explanatory notes state that these arrangements will normally involve the making of contracts with the provider of services, but there is also the possibility of non-contractual arrangements. The clause appears to convey substantial power to the Secretary of State, while encouraging the involvement of additional providers. The YMCA said:

“We need reassurance that the Secretary of State will exercise his powers to ensure provision without compelling the voluntary sector to make this provision.”

The parole board, like the judiciary, needs to be fully integrated within the system so that when it decides to release prisoners into the community it can be assured that the public will be safe. Officers of the providers of probation services, trade unions and professional associations such as the National Association of Probation Officers are best placed to know if there are problems in the service and to advise the Secretary of State on whether the system is working.

NAPO, the Prison Reform Trust and the Local Government Association support our proposal and are very enthusiastic in their wish to ensure that the service keeps its local links to provide for the needs of the local area. Without the amendment, there would be a “one size fits all” situation in which local needs would not necessarily be met and which would result in increased reoffending, and the poor rehabilitation and reintegration of ex-prisoners into the community, which is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

As the hon. Gentleman said, the amendments in this group deal with the issue of transparency. They would require the Secretary of State, to consult certain persons in exercising his function to ensure the sufficient provision of probation services. The amendment is essential in enabling us to know who the Secretary of State will consult, and who will therefore inform the decision on whether there is sufficient provision of probation services and on the manner in which they are to be provided. That is an important aspect of what we are trying to achieve in introducing transparency and clarity to the Bill.

I noted the Minister’s comments that a list might be limiting, but I take the contrary view: not having a list would narrow the field of people that the Secretary of State could consult. To take it to its most absurd limit, without the amendment there is nothing in the Bill that will require the Secretary of State to consult anybody, even his officials. That amendments are important because they make the consultation of certain people explicit.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. The reason for moving from probation boards to probation trusts is that at present the representation—who sits on those boards—is pretty specific. I want wider representation on the trusts. Sometimes, when there is a list, the people on it are consulted but, unintentionally, somebody may be missed. I know that the amendment contains the catch-all phrase,

“any other such persons as he thinks fit”,

but what will tend to happen is that only those on the list will be consulted. I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me.

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

I hear what the Minister says, but it is more likely that someone will be missed out if there is no list or parameter. I understand his argument for rejecting the amendment but it is an important proposal, especially in the context of what he said about his approach, which is to sweep away probation boards and the ingrained personalities who are wrapped up in them. There is nothing in the Bill about who should be involved in assessing the breadth, suitability and ambit of the probation services. The list provided in amendment No. 31, which supplements our amendment No. 5, includes the main players—the key personalities and parties that we want to be consulted in the assessment of provisions that the Secretary of State is to carry out each year.

I find it slightly strange that the Minister argues to the contrary. I hear his argument that a list is prescriptive and the choice should be left completely to the discretion of the Secretary of State but, while I trust the judgment and integrity of the Ministers in the Committee, we must consider legislation for the long term—not just the duration of this Government but that of the next one and the one after. We all know that we are making legislation that might last many years, and we must consider all the potential problems.

I see no harm in prescribing a list of potential consultees in the assessment of the probation service. Indeed, I hope that the Minister agrees that those identified in the amendment should be consulted by the Secretary of State in the proper carrying-out of his consultation as set out in subsection (4). There is a need for transparency and confidence in the exercise of the Secretary of State’s function. It is important that the agencies and parties listed be involved in the process, and the most effective way to ensure that is by specifically including them in the Bill, for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Cheadle.

Subsection (4) must not be regarded as some sort of sop to the general duties of the Secretary of State identified in subsection (1) or the manner in which he is to perform them set out in subsection (2). In many ways subsection (4) provides a check and balance to ensure that the Secretary of State fulfils his duties properly, but it is crucial that we examine it closely to ensure that the proper balance is provided. He is given discretion within his duty in subsection (1) to ensure that sufficient provision is made throughout England and Wales. We need to be satisfied that he makes his judgments on as informed a basis as possible. I hope that the Minister shares that aim.

I see no harm in providing some clarity for agencies and organisations by showing that there is there is a positive obligation on the Secretary of State to consult them or at least to consult bodies that they know. Even if an organisation was not a direct consultee it could then feed its thoughts, concerns and views to a particular body to ensure that they were properly reflected in the annual consultation and fed through into the exercising of functions by the Secretary of State under subsection (1).

On transparency, which I have mentioned and which is covered by amendments Nos. 31 and 5, it is important to include in the process of consultation and the annual examination of the extent, suitability and ambit of the probation service some sort of annual report of the conclusions, which would provide a framework for what is being debated and discussed with those parties. That would allow further external scrutiny of the Secretary of State’s decision-making process, which is why amendment No. 6 states that

“The Secretary of State shall report annually to Parliament on the consultation he has undertaken... in respect of (a) the results of the consultation, and (b) priorities for the probation service for the forthcoming year.”

We have talked about the lack of clarity, which I have highlighted through previous amendments, and I am sure that the Minister will be pleased to know that I may return to that point fairly regularly during these proceedings. I certainly see the role of the Opposition and the Committee as achieving as much clarity as we can on the meaning of the Bill so that people outside, when examining the Bill thereafter, can have as good an understanding as possible of the Government’s intentions.

Those involved in the provision of probation services need clearly to understand the objectives, rationale, strategy and approach of the Secretary of State on the assessment of probation services and probation functions. Having an annual report to show who has been consulted, what those parties have said and what conclusions the Secretary of State has drawn, and therefore what the priorities of the probation functions and probation services should be moving forward, would not be a particularly onerous or arduous undertaking and would assist everyone involved.

We heard criticism on Second Reading about the lack of a business plan in advance of the Bill and the lack of clarity about what the Government intend. While we may not have a business plan, at least through this model we would have a clear annual direction and strategy drawing formally on the consultees, the consultation and the representations. I should have thought that that would be a very helpful thing to have.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

I spoke this morning about shifting targets from year to year. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that while knowing what has happened in consultation and what the outcome has been is desirable, an annual report about that consultation is in no way an adequate replacement for a proper business plan over a number of years rather than just the next 12 months?

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman. The desire for clarity, certainty and the business plan has been highlighted by outside groups and by hon. Members on both sides of the House on Second Reading. I do not see the annual report as in any way a replacement for a proper business model and business plan. It would help in drawing up a business plan and understanding what is happening to the provision of probation services if an annual report were presented to Parliament. In that case, the House would have the opportunity to take up issues that may have been highlighted by consultees, but which the Government, perhaps reasonably, have decided not to follow through. We would have the opportunity to scrutinise the decisions that they have taken and better understand the approach and the manner in which the Secretary of State intends to exercise his duties in ensuring that there is sufficient provision of probation services across England and Wales.

The hon. Member for Cheadle has highlighted the concerns of the YMCA. I am sure that all members of the Committee have received the YMCA briefing, which highlights the issue of the transfer of powers to the Secretary of State. In its briefing notes, the YMCA seeks reassurance that the Secretary of State will exercise those powers to ensure provision without compelling the voluntary sector to provide it. The voluntary sector seems to be concerned that, rather than providing the opportunity to get different parties involved to provide a greater spread and depth of provision, it will be in some way put upon. The YMCA comments in the briefing notes that that would be an abdication of responsibility on the part of the Government.

It would be helpful if the Minister were to address that point directly. Certain parts of the voluntary sector that are currently involved in the provision of probation and other services for offenders would value some feedback and clarity about the Government’s approach. The Government should not be seeking merely to put the voluntary sector in the frame and to abdicate their responsibility. We should ensure that we properly address issues of reoffending and the protection of the public in the extent and ambit of the probation services and in how they are delivered.

An ancillary point arising from the amendments, which goes to the crux of clause 2, is that it is for the Secretary of State to ensure that sufficient provision is made. We heard in the run-up to the Bill—the Minister said this when he launched it—that the focus would be on reoffending. I take from that that the measurement or criteria that the Secretary of State may take into account, or the approach that he may use in assessing whether provision is sufficient—I use those words in the context of subsection (1)—will be based on those factors. That is my assumption, but there is no clarity in the Bill on which criteria would be applied in assessing whether sufficient provision has been made for probation. It would be helpful if the Minister were to clarify the Government’s intentions on the criteria that will be applied properly to assess whether that function has been fulfilled.

Clause 2 covers a lot of important ground on how it is intended that the Secretary of State will carry out his responsibilities. I hope that the Minister will respond favourably to the points that we have raised and that he will consider the amendments in his customary way. The issue is serious, and whatever he may say, some clarity, framework and structure would be appropriate. I hope that he will consider the amendments in the names of my hon. Friends and the hon. Members for Cheadle and for Ceredigion appropriately and in the spirit in which they were tabled.

Rob Flello (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent South)

May I add my voice, Mr. Bayley, to those who have said that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship? This morning, my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, who is a good friend, set out to help my hon. Friend the Minister to fine-tune the Bill. In that spirit, may I also make some brief comments?

It is often hard to set up a structure to consider consultation and ways of doing things in future years. It is extremely difficult in the space of a couple of brief subsections to achieve the objective of the amendments. The requirement on the Secretary of State to consult at least once a year suggests the possibility of a rolling programme or some sort of wider consultation. I leave the thought with my hon. Friend the Minister that he might make a statement in Committee on considering a mechanism for a rolling programme, whereby at any time throughout a year, interested parties could put forward their views if it becomes apparent that something is not working well and should be changed. That would remove the need for amendment No. 6, as a rolling programme would make an annual report difficult. The Bill seeks flexibility, and the more flexibility that can be achieved, the better.

I have looked carefully at amendments Nos. 31 and 5—amendment No. 5 is a subset of amendment No. 31. One would have to decide which categories various groups would fall into. For example, would councillors fall under the heading of “local authorities” in proposed new paragraph (b) in amendment No. 31? Councillors might argue that they are separate from local authorities in some respects, but their views, which come from the offices of a local authority, are important. Academics might feel that they fall within the voluntary sector in some respects but not in others. Paragraphs (a) to (h) are prescriptive, while paragraph (i) mirrors the draft Bill in specifying “such persons as” the Secretary of State “thinks fit”.

I suggest that my hon. Friend the Minister re-examines the provision and considers whether it should be worded to leave it open for all interested parties to have an input, but so that certain organisations have a statutory duty to take part when they have an influence. Such organisations could include the housing department of the local authority through to the Parole Board, in which case statutory bodies would have a duty but there would be wider scope in the Bill for people to have an input. I do not want to take up the Committee’s time by making a long speech to reiterate my points, but I hope that my hon. Friend will take on board the issues that I have raised.

I have sympathy with the lists mentioned by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough and the hon. Member for Cheadle. The question of who is required to be consulted must be much more open, but the format used in the clause is a better way of achieving that.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Bayley, because you are so reasonable, so knowledgeable and so pleasant with it.

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

Watch it!

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

As we are Members of Parliament, it is inevitable that we will press the Minister to provide a list, because the alternative is to present him with a blank cheque and to leave the Secretary of State and his successors to choose whom they consult and whom they do not. It would be foolish for Parliament to leave itself in the position of not knowing what the future holds having not tied down an institution of government, rather than an individual. As others have said, the Minister is a very nice man, whom I trust entirely, but he will not be in his job for ever, no matter how much he would like to be in it for a long time. We are right, therefore, to want legislation that gives us an idea of what we can expect from consultation in the future.

On amendment No. 31, the hon. Member for Cheadle has rightly said that some probation services are focused on a locality. Much of the service is local, so there must be links with local providers and local partners, which need to work together in strategic ways. However, the trade union for probation has exaggerated the point, because other aspects of the work of managing offenders are not local. For example, a person who is sent to prison is going to be taken away from where they used to live and, when coming out of prison, may or may not return to the same place. During the prison sentence, they are away from that area anyway, and they may have several moves in prison. All that is much more regional or even national rather than local, and we ought to bear that balance in mind.

Nevertheless, the point that much of this is locally driven is a good one, so why will there not be local consultation? The shopping list before us refers to the judiciary but it does not mention local criminal justice boards. It refers to the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales but does not mention local youth offending teams. It talks about the Parole Board for England and Wales but does not mention the police locally, who have a great deal of interest in people who are released from prison on parole.

There is something of a mixed message in what the hon. Gentleman says and what the list says. If the Secretary of State personally is conducting the consultation at a national level, we could say that the Secretary of State will consult with, say, the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales and we can trust it to collect information from all the local youth offending teams. As I understand the explanatory notes, however, the Secretary of State is going to consult through regional offender managers at a regional level. One would not expect a dozen or so ROMs all to consult with the national Youth Justice Board to find out what was going on in local areas in youth offender teams; one might think that they should consult with the youth offender teams.

Although I accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument, I think that there are flaws in the logic of his list. There are things missing from the list. The last entry is

“and anybody else that he thinks fit”.

The hon. and learned Member for Harborough, as a practising judge, can tell us that judges sometimes perversely, in our view as parliamentarians, interpret lists like this as saying that if it says at the end of a determined list “and anybody else”, that cannot have a very open-ended meaning; rather it means somebody related to or similar to the ones that are in the list. I hate using latin phrases, but ejusdem generis is the term that they use. So it does not follow that because the list says at the end “and anybody else”, it means that the Minister can consult many other people.

The Minister is right to ask, “Why do you present this list and stop me from consulting with others?”. There are some very important people missing from the list. Something like half the money spent on offenders’ training and their supporting accommodation now comes not from probation or offender management service funds but from the Learning and Skills Council and Supporting People, so is it not important to consult them? Many offending issues relate to drug abuse or mental health, so what about drug action teams and mental health trusts? Are they not important, too?

James Brokenshire (Conservative, Hornchurch)

The hon. Gentleman is making a good point in highlighting the concept of consultation taking place at the regional level. Does he share my concern that, if consultation does take place at the regional level, that is where it may stop, and we may not get the proper feedback from the ground, which he has properly identified a need for in his contribution?

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

I am nervous about regional consultation because my constituency, Stafford, is quite a long way from Birmingham, the centre of the universe for the west midlands, and we often feel that we are left out of debates about regional issues, so I understand that danger. I am sure the Minister will have something to say about how he will ensure that does not happen, but our job is to say who we think should be consulted.

There is one more glaring omission. People will remember from this morning that I did not exactly promote the private provision of services and mentioned some of the dangers of it. Given that the intention behind the policy is that there will be private providers as well as public and voluntary sector providers, it does seem odd to me to produce a list that does not allow for consultation with people who might become providers in the future, unless of course the list’s promoter hopes not to allow it. That is a fair enough point. The providers are the people who won the contract, and I am thinking more widely about including the private sector as a consultee as it wants to win the contract. That is an obvious point to make.

We need to ask ourselves how we square the circle. Do we leave the Minister to decide entirely for himself who he consults for ever into the future, or tie his hands with a list that is set in stone and cannot be diverted from or changed in the future? How can we do things differently? This is not an original idea, it is in the briefing from Rainer that I mentioned, but perhaps there should be a formal arrangement for an advisory group drawn from among those at national and local level, the trusts, if they are set up, and the probation service that exists today. We should provide for a pool of organisations and people from whom the members of the advisory group can be drawn, and then we should legislate to say that we expect consultation to be with that pool. I suggest that that is how we might move from where we are to where I think we ought to be.

On amendment No. 6, although I agree, as I said in an intervention, that it is entirely right that if there has to be consultation there should be an account of who was consulted and what they said, I would not like that consultation to be the engine driving the future direction of probation or offender management services. The idea that I mentioned this morning of taking a coherent, strategic approach to where the service is going is different from using the results of consultation. Clearly, the results of consultation should inform future decisions, but I would not want anybody to think that the service would lurch between plans from year to year, depending on the outcome of consultations in the 12 months beforehand.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

I join those who have welcomed you to the Chair, Mr. Bayley.

I wish to make two brief points to the Minister. First, against the background to the Bill, of which he is well aware—a real concern about the centralist tendency of the Bill and its consequences in terms of dilution of local accountability—can I press him further on what would be the downside of a list? He suggested that some people might be left off the list. I put it to him that that is a tiny and manageable risk compared with the upside of sending a signal from this place to the key stakeholders in the process that their voices will be heard in future.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch said, the duty to consult is not enough. I break the news gently to the Minister that, certainly in my constituency, the words “Government consultation” and “sham” have become inextricably linked. We have reached the point in our democratic process at which, in terms of public acceptance and expectation, the duty to consult is not enough. We now need a duty to report on the consultation and a duty to expose ourselves in power to external scrutiny of the responses to that consultation. My hon. and learned Friend on the Front Bench described that as helpful. I would go further and say to the Minister that it is absolutely necessary to the fundamental health of our democracy.

Neil Gerrard (Labour, Walthamstow)

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Bayley. As the Minister knows, I would argue, and will do so when we reach later clauses, that we should look at a different structure in any case. The decisions should not all be made by the Secretary of State. To a degree, the debate as to whether the Secretary of State had consulted with anybody would then become redundant. Some of the points that have been made relate more to the debate that we will probably have at some length on clause 3 about what work is done and what the role of the voluntary sector is. The concern of the YMCA about being compelled to do or not do certain things should be discussed in a separate debate about who does what, rather than during one on who is consulted.

I do not think that anybody would disagree that consultation has to happen. It would have to happen whatever the structure. Whether the Secretary of State or someone else is in the driving seat, it is clear that if the probation service’s functions are to work properly a wide range of people must be involved, as they are now. The probation service itself—which is clearly from the not-for-profit sector—is involved, along with the Prison Service and many other players in the field that have to be consulted.

I am not sure whether the amendments would achieve what it has been suggested in ensuring local consultation. There is a contradiction in what happens at different levels of the service. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will say that he agrees with the principle of consultation. It is included in the Bill and referred to in the explanatory notes, which include a list of sorts, although it is in broad, general terms.

Will the Minister expand on what is written in the explanatory notes about the consultation being undertaken at a regional level? If the structure of the probation service changes in the way that he intends, the regional offender managers will be some of the key people in the commissioning process. However, the other bodies that the explanatory notes suggest should be consulted—sentencers, other criminal justice agencies, local authorities and so on—are not necessarily organised regionally or by the same regions as the offender managers. I can see problems there: if consultation is regional, who will be talked to and at what level?

I understand the argument that we should know who is to be consulted, but I am a bit dubious about putting lists in Bills because there could be a problem in future if it is decided that a list needs to be changed. We would have to make primary legislation again to make any changes. I was attracted by the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford that it would be helpful to draw up a list but to establish a structure for doing so. The mechanism could be a requirement to make regulations spelling out the details rather than just a power of the Secretary of State. That would create a system that would be much easier to amend than if it were necessary to introduce primary legislation. If the Minister considers how changes can be made, he might see that as a way forward.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford pointed out, once a list has been drawn up it does not take long before people start to think of other bodies that should be included. For example, before coming to the Committee this afternoon I was with some colleagues who were meeting the Disability Rights Commission. We were talking about the new disability equality duties, placed on public authorities since December, to produce proposals to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people, eliminate discrimination and so on under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. I cannot remember which public authorities are exempt from the requirements of that Act—I recall that there are one or two—but some probation work may be covered by its scope. Another obvious group of bodies to be consulted is therefore the Disability Rights Commission and other such organisations. That is the real problem with lists in Bills—they become inflexible even if there is a catch-all at the end of them. My experience, and that of a lot of other people, suggests that such a catch-all does not always succeed in bringing in people who should be consulted.

Part of the difficulty in trying to discuss what happens about consultation at national level is that it tries to marry two incompatible things. We are discussing decision making at national level, when many of us believe that we should be considering local structures. We would prefer decisions to be taken through the probation boards, as they are now.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford about reporting. The key issue is that there is no long-term business plan, which is needed so that we know where the service is going over a period of years and so that targets can be measured and reported on. There is a clear and important role for the Home Affairs Committee in monitoring and examining what happens. However, I am not sure that I want a report on consultation. I want a report on what is actually happening in respect of achieving targets and in relation to the business plan, rather than getting bogged down in arguments about the consultation process. I understand perfectly the reason for tabling the amendments—the Committee and the House should know who will be consulted, which should be clear—but I have some doubts whether sticking that in the Bill is the way to do it.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman has said, but we must consider the amendment in the context of the Bill as drafted. Subsection (4) states:

“The Secretary of State shall at least once in every year consult such persons as he thinks fit”.

If we cast our minds back not too far, we saw the sort of people whom the Secretary of State thought it appropriate to consult in designing the Bill. Members of the Committee may remember that there was a consultation process and that 748 people responded to it. Only 10 of them agreed with the policy behind the Bill, but—surprise, surprise—we got the Bill. The Secretary of State thought that he should consult 10 people out of 748. I appreciate that consultation does not mean guaranteed agreement, but when there is such a disproportionate response—only 10 people out of 748 were in favour of the scheme—one is entitled to be a little sceptical about whom the Secretary of State might think it fit to consult.

On 7 November 2006, the Home Secretary thought it appropriate to enter into a consultation exercise. He went to Wormwood Scrubs prison and addressed himself to an involuntary audience, namely the prisoners. In paragraph 54 of his speech, he said:

“You’re the experts on this.”

What was “this”? It was the future of the probation service, and up to a point that was right. However, it is interesting that the Secretary of State, to whom the Bill gives the power to consult such persons as he thinks fit, thinks it is proper to ignore 738 consultees and to seek the advice of the residents of Wormwood Scrubs.

With that background, it is entirely appropriate for the Committee to want to include amendment No. 31 or amendment No. 5 in the Bill. Without that spur, I suspect that the Secretary of State will just wander round the prisons of England and Wales consulting. I am not entirely sure that that is the way to run the future of the probation service, either with a capital P and S or a small p and s. I trust that I will be able to catch your eye, Mr. Bayley, in a stand part debate, if that is appropriate—

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

indicated assent.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

In that case, I invite the Minister to consider what he thinks the expression “such persons as he”—the Secretary of State—“thinks fit” really means in the context of this Bill.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I thank the hon. Member for Cheadle and other hon. Members for discussing the amendment in the way in which they did. Indeed, I am grateful for all the contributions. In the spirit of generosity and consensus that we discussed earlier, I have many things to take away to think about in greater detail. I shall respond to the amendments now, and I hope that we can make some progress and get to where we all want to be.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford for pointing out some of the exemptions and gaps in the list in the amendment. Hon. Members have accepted that the police, the learning and skills councils and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow has pointed out, the disability bodies are not mentioned. I hope that hon. Members understand that we cannot accept the amendment in its present form, because the list does not meet the requirement to give different weights to different bodies. I also have to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford that Birmingham is not the centre of the universe—it is, of course, Bradford and in particular Bradford, South.

A great deal of concern has been expressed about the role of the regional offender managers, not just this afternoon but on Second Reading. I want people to understand what we have got. There are nine regional offender managers and one director of offender management in Wales. Because they are regional, and national in the context of Wales, it is not envisaged that we are talking only about regional consultation. As I said this morning, we want to be in a position to meet our objectives, which are to reduce reoffending, to raise the profile of offending behaviour in the widest sense in terms of our communities and to make sure that there is a wholehearted community response to what we are trying to achieve.

We have also said that there is no big bang here. As we move on to discuss the Bill, which will hopefully be enacted so we can create the first trust in 2008, we will build on the existing good practice. The regional commissioners have already been in place for some time, and the regional commissioning plans will be published next week. I asked for an indication of those whom the ROMS have consulted. Lo and behold, although I told the hon. Member for Cheadle that I could not accept the amendment but that I agreed with many of the people on his list, they are the very people whom we have consulted.

We have talked to local and regional partners including the public, private and voluntary sectors. They have been looking at sentences, regional reducing reoffending partnership boards, local criminal justice boards, local authorities, local area agreements and local strategic partners. Those are all the people who would want to be consulted in addition to the learning and skills councils and the disability organisations. We want to talk to them about tackling reoffending. The Government are not attempting to reduce consultation in any way or to compel the voluntary sector to provide services. There is no question, as the hon. Member for Hornchurch has suggested, of abdicating responsibility, which is not what this is about. The provision is about innovation—we need to do something different, because what exists now is not working in the way that we would all hope to see.

I respect the work that the YMCA does, but I do not accept that this Bill has a narrow vision—quite the reverse. It is a wide, visionary Bill, and it has an objective that we all want to achieve. The YMCA has a role to play, if it wants one, at the various levels at which it wants to be involved. In direct answer to the hon. Gentleman, there is no prospect of the Government wanting to compel voluntary sector organisations to be involved, and there has been no attempt to include only some parts of the voluntary sector.

One of the concerns of the smaller, voluntary sector organisations is that they cannot compete on a larger scale because of their size and direction of travel—perhaps they are small organisations that provide particular services. We want them to continue to be involved. This is not about excluding smaller voluntary sector organisations; it is about innovations that might offer us the opportunity to reap the benefits of the route that we all want to go down, namely to cut the reoffending rate.

This morning, my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford mentioned the charity Rainer. I have a lot of sympathy with it and commend it and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations on their publication, which many members of the Committee have seen, in which they talk about what their contribution could be if they were only allowed to play their part. That is what we are trying to do in considering maximum consultation.

I am not going to be taken down the route of the Home Secretary’s position and his Wormwood Scrubs speech. In subsequent speeches, including on Second Reading, he has acknowledged and accepted the role of the probation service and the dedication of the professionals who work in it. I understand why the trade unions have used the tactic of attacking the Home Secretary through the suggestion that he is somehow denigrating the probation service. However, he is not doing that and has not done so—he said on Second Reading that he recognises its dedication. We want to enhance the role of the probation office by maximising the opportunity for providers.

I believe that including the list in the Bill will cause the problems that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow has mentioned. However, I agree that there is a need to do something, whether it is to take up the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford of an advisory body or whether it is to consider secondary legislation. In the spirit in which I said that I would consider the previous issue, I shall consider this—

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Reflecting.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

Reflecting in a positive way. I am not, perhaps, persuaded as much as I was on the previous amendment to look at what needs to happen.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

Considering.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

That seems to be an appropriate route.

I understand the concerns. All of us have said in Committee, as well as in public debates and in the House, that these are matters about which there is a great deal of concern. I acknowledge the concern of the people who work in the probation service, because the Bill is about their future, where their service is going and what their contribution is to be. Our consultations and discussions—not only the consultations connected with the Bill but the other discussions that will have to take place on how we formulate the trusts and how we move forward on the services—will include the trade unions. I have always believed that we will not get change if we do not take people with us. We have to take the work force with us, because if we do not do so, we will not achieve that change. We have important things to do.

In the spirit of what we are trying to achieve, I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn. I will then go away and consider how to develop the measure in a more positive way, so that we do not miss anybody out. That is not our intention, and I know that it is not the intention of Opposition Members. We have to find our way through this, because ensuring that we maximise the consultation is a key area.

On the annual report, again it is important to publish the consultation. We will come to the responses to the previous consultation, which were not all in opposition to what the Government were trying to achieve, because people accepted some elements of it.

The Bill has changed from the initial Bill introduced in 2005. For example, we have listened to what people have said about the structure of NOMS, which has changed dramatically since its inception. I have explained the position as much as I can, but in the spirit of moving forward, I shall take the issue away and see what further amendments we can introduce in Committee. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.

Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat, Ceredigion)

The Minister started his remarks in the spirit of good will. I am not sure whether I should expect that in these proceedings, as I am a new member of the Committee, but on that basis, I, too, welcome you to your place, Mr. Bayley.

The background to this matter was succinctly put by the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood, who said that it was about confidence in a system. Manifestly, that confidence, not least because of the remarks made by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough about earlier consultations, is not there. When the legislation originated, there were serious concerns and doubts about the capacity of Ministers to listen, although I genuinely respect what this Minister is trying to do. There has been some scepticism about the extent of the list and its capacity to cover all sectors, but I do not think that we should minimise the significance in proposed new paragraph (i) of

“such persons as he thinks fit”.

The Minister should have no fear about that. It concerns his capacity to talk to the voluntary sector and build the positive relationship with it that he desires. None the less, he said that he will return to the matter.

The Minister talked more specifically, on the basis of what his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Stafford said, about the building of regional structures and advisory panels. Certainly, as a Welsh Member representing a rural area of some size, I can say that there are concerns in Wales about the structure in which we have one regional director covering a huge area.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

It is not a regional director in Wales; it is a director, because Wales is a national country.

Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat, Ceredigion)

I appreciate that. That will go a long way to reassure some people in Wales. The point is that there is a structure out there that needs to respond to the region or, in our case, the country in question. I really do not understand why the Minister fears the notion of a list. That is the crux of the matter. It is sufficiently open-ended to give confidence to the wider community and for him still to have flexibility. On that basis, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches would like to test the opinion of the Committee.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I will not be too long, I hope. I wish to highlight some of the problems that the clause will cause for the shared desire of end-to-end management of offenders.

First, there is an attitude problem from the Government. In his speech at Wormwood Scrubs on 7 November, to which I referred a moment ago, the Home Secretary said, and we must bear it in mind that this was in a prison:

“To the probation service my message is: ‘Never forget that your job is to protect the public—and what the public wants is outcomes—less crime, safer streets—not an outdated ideological debate about inputs and who delivers them.’”

That is an interesting remark for that particular individual to have made, bearing in mind his political history, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Walthamstow will have had close discussions with him about that. I am concerned that the Home Secretary thought it appropriate to lecture the probation service from inside a prison.

One of the problems that the service faces is that it is overwhelmed with cases and under-staffed—it is well below establishment. I believe that the London probation service is about 150 officers below establishment, and that figure is replicated proportionately across the country. Why is the service so overwhelmed with cases? Because the prisons are overcrowded, with more than 80,000 people in them at the moment. When the Government came into office in 1997 the prison population was about 58,000. The prison estate is now officially overcrowded, testimony that comes from Operation Safeguard, which one of the Home Office Ministers signed into operation—I do not know whether it was the Minister present or one of his colleagues. The prison ship fiasco continues, and we know about the fiasco of the number of prisoners being moved from the secure estate to the open estate who voluntarily remove themselves to our streets, towns and villages. It is a pretty shambolic state of affairs and derives from Marsham street.

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

Order. May I remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that we are debating the control and management of the probation service, not of Prison Service?

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

You are precisely right, Mr. Bayley. We are considering the responsibility for ensuring the provision of probation services, and one reason why the probation service is under such strain, and why I suggest the clause is not apt to deal with the current problems including the one that I am describing, is that the prison system is so overcrowded and the probation service cannot cope. Why can it not cope? Because, as I have said, a huge number of prisoners who ought to be looked after and rehabilitated by probation officers in prison are churned.

I expect that you know what churning is, Mr. Bayley. It is the constant movement of prisoners from prison to prison unaccompanied by their prison records, probation officers’ reports, sentence planning or rehabilitation, training and education planning. They move from prison to prison and cannot be reformed or supervised by the probation service. They cannot be treated and looked after by the wider Prison Service or the educational system. That is an extremely dangerous and damaging state of affairs.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

The hon. and learned Gentleman discusses educational services. What evidence has he, or what organisation has told him, that the educational service’s interventions in prisons have not been completed?

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I suspect that I have been to more prisons than the Minister in the past 12 months. I was appointed shadow spokesman on prisons in December 2005, since when I have visited a number of prisons. I have no doubt that the local learning and skills councils, which are providing teachers, trainers and others to assist in the training of prisoners, are doing the best that they can. The problem is that because of the overcrowded prisons, people queue up to get on a training course, to see the parole board, or to see the probation officer who is planning their sentence and their release plan, but they cannot get to the top of the queue. Before they get to the top, they have to move to another prison, because the governor has to release them to another prison or to the open estate to provide places for the people coming in.

About 500 prisoners are legitimately released every working day. I am concerned that in the absence of proper consultation and planning, and in the current state of affairs—that is to say a woefully and dangerously overcrowded secure prison estate—those people cannot be received by probation service care, still less released from it in a planned, sensible way. I want that to happen because it is good for the prisoners; there is a good moral case for improving the state of prisoners, who need to come out in a better state. I also have a self-interested case to make, as both a taxpayer and a citizen. We spend £37,500 each year on every adult prisoner. A prisoner who is inside for three years costs approximately £100,000. We are failing the taxpayer if the dividend is a high reoffending rate and the individual is back in prison within two years, which happens to approximately 67 per cent. of those who are released. We are also failing our constituents, who are the victims of the crimes.

There are three points that I ask the Minister to bear in mind when he considers the clause. Is he setting up the probation service to fail? Is he placing upon it an unbearable burden? Is he setting those who will provide probationary services a task which cannot be achieved, by virtue of the fact that this Government have arranged sentencing and prison-building policies that do not match? We have overcrowding. Prisoners cannot get access to probation officers, whose job it is to provide sentence planning and supervision of prisoners, in addition to pre-sentence reports and aftercare. If we cannot achieve those things, the Bill is a waste of time and is creating a false expectation among the public that something is being done.

This is the third reform of the probation service since 1997. Each time that it has been reformed, the Government have claimed that it is the answer to every maiden’s prayer, so why are they back here at the church porch yet again? They are back because they have not thought it through; they have failed properly to consult those who know about the subject; and they are overly exercised by the need to create headlines. A headline gives the impression of activity, but it is not the implementation of policy or of a plan that has been thought through.

I desperately want to be persuaded, but I make these remarks as a taxpayer, a citizen and a Member of Parliament who represents people who want to see the security of their homes and streets improved. I want to see from the Minister some understanding of the gap in understanding between the Department, which is under his political leadership and that of the Home Secretary, and the needs and concerns of the public. If I may say so, those are not crude trade union job-protection concerns but the concerns of professional individuals in the probation service and those who wish to offer themselves as volunteers or contractors in the probation world. The Minister knows that my party has no argument with the Government about putting this proposal out to competition, but he must bear it in mind that there are individuals who are desperately worried that the Government are building a regime that will cause damage. It will not provide the protection for the public that the Home Secretary, in his speech to the prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs, said he was so desperately keen to achieve.

We need to be more thoughtful and to ensure that the Government do a little more talking and thinking before they rush to legislate. We are on the 60th criminal justice Bill since 1997, and I am not sure whether any of them has increased the security of the public in reality or in terms of their perception. I urge the Minister, when he reflects, to think carefully about what I have said this afternoon.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

Let me say at the outset that I do not doubt the sincerity and sensitivity of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, or his expertise in the legal profession as a judge. However, I strongly disagree with his analysis, which is not surprising considering the political differences between us. What is important to me as a taxpayer, as a member of the public and as a Minister is that we should deal in facts, not fiction. We should deal with the reality of what is happening and not with the perception of it that some people are trying to engender.

On becoming Home Secretary in May, my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid) said that he needed time to reflect on what was going on in the Home Office. He said that he needed 100 days to introduce plans for reform, which he did—they were published in July, and we are proceeding with them.

The hon. and learned Gentleman has talked about the prison population. Yes; there are too many people in prison in the UK. I think that we all agree that it is wrong that we put more people in prison per head of population than any other country in western Europe, but that is where we are, and our role should be to protect the public by ensuring that there is sufficient capacity. The hon. and learned Gentleman is right about Operation Safeguard, which the Home Secretary has said was not satisfactory but which needed to be implemented to protect the public. To suggest that that situation has evolved only over the period in which this Government have been in office is nonsensical.

The hon. and learned Gentleman, who was elected to the House in 1992, will remember, as I do, the issues raised in respect of previous Home Secretaries in his party—for example, those concerning the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the Prison Service and Mr. Lewis. Prison capacity has been a problem for successive Governments.

We must consider the relationship between the sentencing policies under successive Governments and where we are now. We have put in place the capacity to protect the public. We announced additional places in July and have subsequently announced further work on that issue. We have met the requirements in terms of capacity.

I was in the hon. and learned Gentleman’s position in opposition, and one wanted to heap on to the Government as many problems as one could when the Government appeared to be having difficulties. However, that approach is not appropriate if one is not dealing in facts. The hon. and learned Gentleman has given me the opportunity in this debate to challenge some of what he has said. He has talked about education programmes in prisons, and he is right about people being moved around, but I asked, and I continue to do so, about the impact on educational provision. That is why I asked him for evidence, and I shall continue to ask for evidence, not only from Opposition parties but from trade unions that say that things are happening in our prisons.

I want such comments to be evidence-based. If they are, we will act on the evidence that is put to us. However, I want to see the evidence, whether it is from NAPO or the Prison Officers Association. I do not want the public to be put in a position of fear and panic about things that are not the case. I hope that we can have a debate on the views of the hon. and learned Gentleman that is based on the facts. Listening to him, one might think that nothing had improved in areas such as probation. However, there has been tremendous improvement in, for example, unpaid work, which more offenders are doing and which is gaining greater acceptability. More offenders are being taught basic skills.

The hon. Member for Cheadle has talked about the impact of community sentencing. There has been an improvement in what is happening in our prisons, which is due to the dedication of prison staff and probation officers. I do not accept that we are not thinking things through. Everybody who has spoken to me about end-to-end offender management says that it is right and that it is the appropriate thing to do.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

That is not controversial.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

What is controversial is the means of achieving that improvement. At the moment, although progress has been made, we are not achieving what we want to achieve, which is why the Bill is necessary.

This morning, I mentioned the timescale of the evolution of this Bill from the Carter report in 2003 to where we are now. We think that we have the balance right and that we are offering the probation service an opportunity to develop further through the flexibility of trusts and to look at wider providers. That is the context in which the Bill is before us today and in which clause 2 is set out.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I have two prisons in my constituency, one of which is High Down, which is being expanded by 360 places. I wish to focus on whether the probation service has the opportunity to succeed in the terms laid out in clause 2. At that prison, two new wings are being built with a capacity of 360, and the governor is already planning to put more than one prisoner per cell into those wings in order to relieve overcrowding elsewhere. I suspect that, as the population pressures on the prison service show no signs of abating, those wings are going to be as overcrowded as the existing prison is now, with three men to a cell designed for one. Can the Minister give the Committee any comfort that the relentless pressures on the prison service, which then make themselves felt on the probation service—the subject of the clause—show any signs of abating, so that things can get back into balance?

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

Order. Before the Minister replies, I must remind all hon. Members that we are here to debate the probation service. Although the hon. and learned Member for Harborough eloquently explained why overcrowded prisons make the work of the probation service more difficult, it is the impact on the probation service that we must debate in relation to this clause.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour, Bradford South)

I thank you for that advice, Mr. Bayley. In answer to the hon. Member for Reigate, risk assessments as to appropriateness are undertaken in relation to all extensions to prisons and all the capacity issues that we have considered. It is important to us that the programme that we have introduced meets the requirements of those risk assessments. The hon. Gentleman will know about the announcements that have been made in the House in a number of statements by the Home Secretary. If he wants to develop that discussion further, I shall be happy to meet him outside the Committee to talk about his area and High Down.

Let me return to the probation service. On the clauses that we have discussed today, we have seen a genuine willingness to try to come to some conclusions. Politics will always play its part, as it must in our democratic society, but I would be alarmed if there were scaremongering or if claims were made without evidence. As the Home Office Minister responsible for such matters, I shall pursue that, because I do not want to be involved in making the public ever more fearful of situations that they might face.

On that note, I hear what the hon. Members are saying and look forward to our further discussions. I hope that the Committee will support clause 2.