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If I were the Minister responsible for the National Probation Service, I should be seriously alarmed about the various measures that I and my Government had been involved with since 1997 which have seriously undermined the morale of that service.
The service started life 100 years ago. Its raison d’être was very much the aftercare of offenders in the community; now it is told that its first priority is punishment. It was told that it was going to be a
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Other Members have spoken of various changes that have happened in the service, such as the disastrous reduction in training, of which the service was justly proud. Giving a university basis to the education of probation officers meant that they understood probation in the broad, not just in the narrow. Therefore, announcing in 2001 boards which are structured to link with and contain members from the community with which the service is working was welcomed within the service. That has been dashed, and now Ministers wish to see a change in competencies, human resources, finance, diversity and competition. That has nothing to do with the management of offenders; it is all to do with the management of the management of offenders, which is totally different.
The guts of the proposal are contained in the intention of the Secretary of State to deliver probation services himself. That does not seem sensible, which is where “perverse” comes in. The drift of where the Government say they want the management of offenders to go is into the community. Youth offending teams, which the Government formed and which are a success, are run by local government. They include representatives of all the agencies which can deal with offenders. Why, then, suggest that you should take away from the governance of probation the very people who are looking after young offenders? At the same time, Green and White Papers are delegating responsibility to local government for looking after child and youth matters. Why not the probation service as well?
If I were a member of the Home Office, I should be alarmed that a thin piece of paper such as this was going out in my name. Having been accused of being dysfunctional by my Secretary of State, I ought to do everything possible to dispel that image, and get myself thought of as someone who could think things through. Yet a statutory instrument is coming out before a Bill in which the whole subject of which it is a part is to be discussed. I can think of nothing more inappropriate to be brought before this House. It is extraordinary that it should be rushed through at this time, without consultation or due consideration. Therefore, I agree entirely with the noble Baroness that the regulations should be withdrawn as quickly as possible.
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Baroness Stern: My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, wholeheartedly and am very grateful for the interventions of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, and all the other speakers. This measure seems to be based on a profound misunderstanding of what makes probation successful. The Government’s policies on probation have slowly but inexorably
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Rightly, those services are all provided by various local agencies, most by the local authorities and some by the health service. Some are obtainable only through good local knowledge and local connections. Without that local knowledge, those local connections and some local legitimacy at a time when resources are under pressure, probation officers can do nothing for those whom they supervise except listen to them, advise them, assess their risk and redirect them elsewhere for what they really need.
Similarly, there is the relationship with the magistrates’ courts, which is even more extraordinary. The relationship between the probation service and the courts is crucial; it has to be one of considerable trust, built up over time. Never has it been more important—and I am sure that the Home Office understands this—that probation officers should be able to make recommendations for community sentences that the courts have confidence in. How else are the Government going to deal with the massive overuse of prisons?
Over the years, the magistrates on probation boards have been vital supporters of probation and made its case with their colleagues on the Bench. They have been supporters of the probation service in the wider community. Magistrates are respected figures in local communities, with considerable legitimacy. How will a probation board with no magistrates or local authority representatives establish the relationships that it needs?
There are other issues of legitimacy and propriety. Probation officers exercise considerable powers over the liberty of the subject. They can recall someone to prison on their own initiative. The person can stay there for weeks or even months before the Parole Board gets round to looking at the case, because, as I understand it, the Parole Board is swamped with such cases. Should these powers be exercised by a body whose governance contains no judicial persons—unless the Minister tells me that judges are to continue to sit on boards, even when they have begun to be described as businesses?
Finally, I echo other speakers in asking: is it appropriate that this order is being debated on a Friday afternoon by this process? It is a vital matter of the governance of an organisation that last year spent £0.9 billion on its work and it is of considerable importance to whether or not people can live safely in their communities. Should such changes not be debated properly by Parliament? Is this not rather an
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I hope the Government take note of the strength of feeling expressed here and the opposition of the Magistrates’ Association, the Local Government Association and all organisations that know anything of how the probation service works to make our society safer. I hope that the Government will reflect on the damage that they are doing here today, or that they did on 1 November. I support the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay.
The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I rise briefly because I am concerned by this clear breach of the expected procedures on consultation and so on that we are clearly seeing here. That breeds a lack of trust in the bona fides of a few, but very powerful, people in the Executive. The trouble is that we then have to reflect on other legislation that is being passed. How can we believe the assurances that we are given, that what we are told is what will actually happen, when we hand over to the Executive huge amounts of power to make the rules that will control citizens’ lives?
In legislation that has recently gone through in statutory instruments, I have had discussions with other branches of the Home Office. They have given lots of assurances that they will not abuse some quite loosely worded powers that they are taking. Can I now trust those assurances?
I have always said I was worried about passing legislation that could be abused five or 10 years down the road. I think we have done that recently in some statutory instruments. Looking at the behaviour today, we were probably wrong to trust the Executive last week and the week before. That concerns me hugely.
The other minor point is the use of the word “risk”. There is a huge risk that these people will reoffend. Or are they talking about the risk of danger to the life and limb of the public? In this case, they should be talking about categories of “dangerousness”, not of risk.
I would have thought it was almost time to send a signal to the Executive, to tell them they cannot get away with this sort of behaviour. If they wish to divide the House, I think we should throw the statutory instrument out for rethinking. Perhaps that is going a little far, as the usual channels will hate it, but maybe they should be shown a signal too.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, as a former member of a probation board committee and subsequently of a probation board, I suppose I ought to declare an interest, although my service is quite a long way behind me now. I had not really intended to speak, but I want to emphasise my absolute support for the speeches that have come before.
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It is extraordinary to suggest, at this point of the legislative procedure—or at any time—that the membership of, for example, magistrates on probation boards is not essential. The magistrates are able to explain to the many members of the boards how the magistracy works, how it is trained, how it sentences and what the interaction is between the probation service that we are running and the magistrates who are receiving our services. One of the recipients of the services of the probation service is of course the magistrates’ court.
There has already been an enormous amount of change in the service, and several people have spoken of that already. The only thing that really matters in the probation service is the probation officers. They are the key to the success of the service. You cannot keep on reorganising, refocusing, re-reorganising and re-refocusing those small bodies of people upon whom the delivery of an essential service depends.
I draw the attention of the House to item 8 in the paper, which says,
“A Regulatory Impact Assessment has not been prepared for this instrument as it has no impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies ... The impact of this Order is purely internal to the Probation Service so there is no further impact on the public sector”.
We have been hearing a great deal about the collaborative nature of the work of the probation service in the whole context of the delivery of local government, and I know quite a lot about it myself. Those two sentences show how very little the Home Office seems to understand its own service.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I am grateful for the attention and interest that the issue has aroused in your Lordships’ House. I thank all those who have contributed to the debate. I felt as if we were debating a Bill that has yet to be announced and is probably yet to be drafted; it has certainly not yet seen the light of day. However, it is anxiously anticipated. We shall probably debate at length many of the issues that were raised when and if—many of your Lordships expect that this will happen—a Bill on the National Offender Management Service is introduced.
I shall try to restrict my comments to the matter before us and to the Motion that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, has properly brought forward for our consideration. Everybody who contributed to the debate was aware that the regulations were subject to comments in the 46th report of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, which was published last week. Before I explain the background to the regulations, I express my sincere apologies that the standard of the Explanatory Memorandum fell below that expected by the committee, and that it did not contain sufficient background detail. I apologise unreservedly for that. The Home Office has taken steps to remedy that and has put more information in an expanded memorandum. I hope that those who have had the opportunity to study it consider that the extra information is valuable. It was certainly intended to be. It was not in any way the Home Office’s intention to show disrespect to the Merits of
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That said, it is important to put the regulations in context. The purpose of the amendments is to ensure that from 1 April 2007 the regulations governing the membership of probation boards match the competencies and skills that will be required for boards to deliver in an environment of public value partnerships, mixed economy and competition. They amend the period for which a board chair or member can be appointed from three years to a period not exceeding three years and reduce the number of board members required for a local probation board meeting to be quorate.
While this statutory instrument does not seek to pre-empt any future legislation in respect of the National Offender Management Service, it seeks to ensure that boards have the skills they require to operate in the current increasingly complex and competitive environment. Although these amendments have the advantage of preparing probation boards for the transition to the envisaged probation trusts, we obviously wish to address immediate improvements in performance through the regulations.
The recently published Public Value Partnerships document requires probation boards to focus on public protection and the management of high-risk offenders. As part of this strategy, boards will be required to increase their level of subcontracting to 10 per cent in 2007-08. That means that boards will require extra expertise on purchasing and commissioning standards. It is essential that boards are able to fulfil that function successfully. Skills in business acumen will ensure that boards have the necessary expertise to move forward confidently to meet future expectations and challenges.
I do not think that should simply be read as meaning that we want those boards to be just like a business; that is not the intention. What we are after is adding something to the current range of skills that are quite properly contained in those boards. We certainly acknowledge that the boards have performed well; but in this era of expanded commissioning and the development of a more mixed economy in terms of service provision, added acumen must be an important feature of those boards.
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Each House of Parliament will, of course, have the opportunity fully to consider primary legislation in the proposed Bill relating to the National Offender Management Service and the future of probation boards. The proposed legislation will create probation trusts, which will be public sector providers subject to competition and contestability. Should legislation be successfully passed, the Government do not envisage a “big bang” move to probation trusts, but a phased approach over a period of years. The regulations address the period from 1 April 2007, with, at the earliest, some boards converting to trusts in 2008. That change is obviously reliant on legislation, but it is seen as part of a longer-term process. The
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I will give noble Lords some brief background to why we seek to make the changes. When the statutory instruments governing the formation of probation boards were written in 2000 and 2001, they took into account the previous funding arrangements between central and local government, and they were intended to be a bridge between what had gone before and the new wholly centrally funded boards. It was therefore decided that each board would, where practicable, have four magistrate members and two local councillors. I wish the House to be quite clear that the regulation in respect of magistrate and councillor members does not minimise the value that we place on their contribution to probation boards. It is clear that each board will wish to retain magistrate and councillor members wherever possible, but we also need to ensure that they bring with them an understanding of the needs of greater business sensitivity to improve the performance of the probation service.
Why are we seeking to introduce these regulations now? Board chairs and members are appointed to hold office for a maximum of two three-year terms, and thus a substantial number of chairs and board members who were appointed in 2001 will come to the end of their terms of office on 31 March 2007, and a major campaign is under way to recruit their replacements. The regulations allow flexibility in the length of appointment of up to three years, rather than a fixed period of three years. When this recruitment exercise was initially discussed, several boards identified an opportunity to reduce the quorum of board meetings, leading to smaller, more effective boards. Legislation requires that probation boards have a membership of between seven and 15 members. Some 36 of the 42 boards have opted to reduce the number of board members, and that is most easily achieved if we reduce the present quorum of board meetings from seven to five. It is a positive message that local boards want smaller boards and a reduced quorum at meetings. Now, with the recruitment campaign under way, this is the right opportunity and environment in which to make the changes outlined in the regulations.
To facilitate the preferred reduction in the size of boards, we need to rebalance the board profile. In addition to the chair, the chief officer and the judge appointed by the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the board would lack balance if it were to maintain the block of four magistrate and two councillor members. This inflexibility regarding membership creates a lack of local choice. A number of Members have already referred to the importance of partnership, and we place a very heavy reliance on that because we see it as having great value. We believe in the importance of local choice; and that is what we want to ensure in the future.
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With no reduction in the current arrangement, there would be a board of nine—the chair, the chief officer, the judge, four magistrates and two councillors—and if a board wanted to reduce its total membership from 15 to, say, 12, that would allow for only three lay members. We do not think that such a position is sustainable, as we feel that boards need to have a more balanced and broader membership.
We entirely accept the argument made by a number of noble Lords about the value of rooting probation boards in local communities, and we have sought to retain and enhance localism in the current recruitment campaign. The local response to the campaign has been excellent, with more than 3,000 applications, and the interview process is now under way. As part of the recruitment process, Ministers and officials specifically wrote to, among others, MPs, the Local Government Association and the Magistrates’ Association, encouraging locally based individuals to apply for board membership.
These regulations meet the needs of today’s probation boards and will allow them to be more effective and responsive, providing them with more local discretion and the ability to meet more closely local circumstances and needs. We consider the regulations as essential to the development of probation boards, and that is why we wish to introduce them now, thus allowing the challenges to be met in the interim period between now and the introduction of probation trusts.
I listened very closely to what was said about the value of the local magistracy and local councillors. I assure the House that we do not in any way devalue the contribution that those members make to the work of probation boards. It is not our intention to force them out and eliminate their representation on boards. I was an elected member of a local authority for some 16 years and I know the value that local councillors can add to other local services. Indeed, I think that over a considerable number of years my authority regularly appointed members to probation boards, and many of them were, as ever, involved in the work of the magistracy. I know, too, from my work in local crime and disorder reduction partnerships that a broad mix of people has to be involved in the localist aspect of criminal justice. I bring that flavour to this debate, and I know that it is a view much shared by Ministers in the Home Office.
Noble Lords made a number of specific points and raised concerns. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, was concerned about the position of alcohol services. That will be the subject of contestability within the new arrangements, as with many of the other probation programmes. However, I think that the noble Lord was probably more generally concerned about outsourcing. As is the case now, there will be a variety of providers, from which I think the service is benefiting, so that expertise can be focused on the service that is required. That is one reason why, in a nutshell, we need a broader range of membership on the boards. We need to develop the ability to manage contracts and ensure effective supervision of the different providers.
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The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, was, as ever, very concerned about morale in the service—a matter that he has raised in connection with other services, not least the Prison Service and the Prison Service inspectorate in recent weeks. It is obviously an important issue. It is worth saying that, as we have been in government since 1997, we have put significant funds into the probation service and there has been a large increase in the number of people employed in it. The statistics that I have tell me that the number of those employed has risen by some 51 per cent. When we came into government, I remember hearing much criticism of the previous Government over the way in which it was thought that the probation service had been run down. I make no comment other than that. It was during the previous Government’s time that the ability to fund trainees on degree courses was taken away.
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