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Lord Dholakia: My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, for introducing this debate. It is timely because the probation service has had a rollercoaster ride for the past few years and there is an urgent need to ensure stability, in terms of both the objectives and resources of NOMS.
The success of NOMS will be judged on one key and overriding measure: whether it can reduce reoffending. In particular, NOMS will be judged on whether it achieves its stated targets of reducing reoffending by 5 per cent by 2008 and 10 per cent by 2010.
I welcome the contribution of many noble Lords. I do not disagree with much of the criticism about NOMS and I could certainly add to it but I shall avoid the temptation. If we are where we are, then we need to ask ourselves what should happen. In principle, combining the prison and probation services into the single National Offender Management Service should increase the prospect for achieving what I commonly call "reduction in reoffending"—a subject that I have addressed repeatedly in your Lordships' House.
Bringing the two services together in this way has the potential—I repeat: the potential—to improve joint working between those involved in working with offenders in custody and those doing so in the community. It has the potential to improve the resettlement of offenders by developing co-ordinated resettlement plans as prisoners move through the prison gate from custody into the community. It has the potential to increase the effectiveness of the way in which individual sentences are planned and managed from the pre-sentence report stage right through to the end of the sentence. It also has the potential to improve accountability for reducing reoffending. Whereas previously this responsibility was divided between the two services, accountability now lies squarely with NOMS. I welcome this because no longer can we pass the buck from one service to the other—the buck stops at NOMS.
If NOMS's aim of reducing reoffending is to be achieved, it will require prison regimes to provide a more comprehensive range of educational courses and opportunities to ensure that prisoners of all levels of educational ability can receive opportunities appropriate to their needs. It will also require far greater attention to be paid to the practical resettlement of offenders in areas such as employment, accommodation and family support. We must never underestimate the importance of those factors for offenders in and out of our penal institutions.
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Research showing the importance of resettlement in the reduction of reoffending is well known. Ex-prisoners who get and keep a job have their likelihood of reoffending cut by one-third and one-half, depending on which study is considered. Getting ex-offenders into stable accommodation reduces their reoffending rate by at least one-fifth. Ex-offenders who have family support are reconvicted at a rate between one-half and one-sixth, compared with similar offenders without family support.
Moreover, those effects are related. For example, it is harder to get a job without basic skills and harder to keep one if you are homeless. Practical help with resettlement also increases an offender's ability to make a success of drug rehabilitation programmes, which was raised by the noble Baroness earlier, and programmes to change offending behaviour.
The development by NOMS of targets to get more offenders into employment and sustainable accommodation is therefore welcome. If the targets are to be achieved, the involvement of voluntary and community organisations is crucial. The voluntary sector has particular strengths in areas such as housing, employment, mentoring, addiction, mental health, family services and community engagement. Yet disappointingly, the past few years have seen a fall in the proportion of probation service budgets devoted to partnership programmes with the voluntary sector. The proportion has declined noticeably since the removal of the requirement of the probation service to devote 7 per cent of its budget to partnership work with the voluntary sector in 2001. Since then the proportion of probation budgets devoted to working with the voluntary and private sector combined has plummeted to 2.4 per cent. NOMS should reinstate the previous target, and it should develop a specified target for partnership working by prisons.
I am pleased to see that the probation service is working on plans to increase the volume of its work with the voluntary sector by 20 per cent over the next year. That is a welcome step in the right direction. I understand that the probation service also proposes to ensure that future contracts with the voluntary sector are for at least three years, and that they provide full cost recovery for voluntary organisations, including overhead costs. That is important because too often voluntary organisations are expected to subsidise funding that does not take into account core services.
Will the Minister assure us that those will be permanent future requirements for all voluntary sector contracts with NOMS, the Prison Service and the probation service? The increased commissioning of voluntary sector organisations to provide resettlement services for offenders should be carried out in a carefully planned and co-ordinated way. Many people working in the Prison Service, the probation service and the voluntary sector have expressed concern about the possible impact of contestability on the delivery of services.
The Minister will be well aware of the fears that have been expressed about that issue. Prison and probation staff are concerned that their livelihood could be
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threatened by competition from the private sector. Voluntary organisations are concerned that they could be eclipsed by glossy and well resourced private sector bids to carry out work in areas where they believe they have expertise. Smaller voluntary organisations are concerned that they may lose out to larger national organisations in a competitive bidding process.
I am pleased that the NOMS voluntary sector unit has been working closely with voluntary sector organisations, and consulting them on their views on these issues. However, it would be to everyone's benefit if the provision of services and the future increased involvement of the voluntary sector were commissioned on a carefully planned basis rather than on the basis of a competitive free-for-all.
On a related point, services should be planned in a way which has input from, and is sensitive to the needs of, local communities. The Minister will know that many concerns have been expressed about the proposed abolition of local probation boards, and their replacement by more business-oriented probation trusts. Probation boards include many people who have strong roots in local communities and community organisations. If they are disbanded, I hope that the Government will ensure that other mechanisms are set up at local level to ensure community consultation on, and input to, the development of services.
The disproportionate representation of black and minority ethnic offenders in the prison populations and probation caseloads is well known. It is crucial that NOMS should integrate targets for the achievement of race equality into all its service delivery targets. Although the NOMS business plan for 2005–06 included targets for minority ethnic staff, I was disappointed to see that it contained no race equality targets for service delivery. This is quite the opposite of what the Commission for Racial Equality recommends. Can the Minister assure us that this will be remedied in future business plans?
Whereas the Prison Service has a substantial race and diversity unit, the equivalent unit which previously existed in the National Probation Directorate has been reduced in size and fragmented over the past two years. If NOMS is to achieve racial equality targets as an integrated service across its whole operation, it should consider four specific steps—first, establishing a joint central equality and diversity unit; secondly, establishing an advisory group on race, of the kind which until recently existed in the Prison Service; thirdly, developing joint positive action for training initiatives; and finally, if NOMS is to have a reasonable chance of achieving its rehabilitation objectives, it is important that prisons are not swamped.
The Government can set the direction, but the professionals and volunteers will provide the results. Many of them feel bruised. It is time to bring them into a partnership that will provide the rehabilitation of our inmates which is at the heart of our criminal justice system.
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Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, following, as I so often do, the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, I do not wish to be too negative in my comments. In thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson of Market Rasen, for setting the scene when she asked why the system should be changed yet again, one must recall that it was only two years after the creation of the National Probation Service that we had the Carter report. The late Lord Fitt was very frank in acknowledging the shortcomings of NOMS, which have been referred to by other speakers. In the words of the Howard League for Penal Reform, it was marked by,
The Howard League said that no proper case for the establishment of NOMS had been made, and that it was therefore no surprise that the latest proposals were a reversal of the position previously adopted at the time of its institution.
Several speakers have mentioned the new probation trusts. The proposed transfer of the statutory bodies placed on local boards to the regional offender manager—a civil servant—would not further this aim, and would sever the existing statutory requirement for a member of the probation board to have links with the local area. It certainly flies in the face of the Government's declared policy of devolving power back to local communities. It was interesting to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, talk about the plans for the Scottish arrangements for offender management—local bodies, locally accountable.
The Howard League for Penal Reform has drawn my attention to the omission in the consultation paper of the word "magistrates". This is an extraordinary omission, given their central role in imposing short prison sentences and the bulk of community penalties. The experience of the National Probation Service is that the more remote a court feels from its local probation service, the less likely the court is to trust its views. If this means an increase in short prison sentences at the expense of community penalties, not only does it fly in the face of the whole ethos of the probation service, but it undermines further the purpose of NOMS—to reduce reoffending.
In all this, we must not ignore the effect on staff morale in the existing service. Small things so often tell us so much. A briefing from Napo reminds me that in the consultative paper all references to the Prison Service are in upper case while references to the probation service are in lower case. It is not difficult to share the feeling of the staff concerned that that service is being phased out. Having said that, I find the remarks on this made by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, reassuring as he was part of the creation of NOMS.
If these remarks are all negative, I should say that there have been many criticisms of NOMS in the course of this debate, not least from me. But the debate has been marked by many constructive contributions which, with the expertise available among your Lordships, are so valuable a feature of this House. I was particularly impressed by the
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window of opportunity in the present staffing arrangements of NOMS outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and by the visionary speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Filkin. I know he will be welcomed by my noble friend Lady Thatcher as a late convert.
The Management of Offenders and Sentencing Bill, which passed through your Lordships' House in February 2005, never saw the light of day in another place. Since then there has been much discussion, and this debate will be an important feature of that. We also await the findings of the inquiry into the apparent failure of the service in the light of the murder of John Monckton. My party awaits those findings with considerable interest before formulating its final approach to the present proposals. In the light of all this, I look forward to the Minister's reply.
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