Sir Jeremy Wright
MP for Kenilworth and Southam · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I applaud my right hon. Friend’s passion and clarity on this issue. On the subject of democratic accountability, he knows that if, as the hon.”
“I welcome the intent that the Secretary of State has set out this afternoon, and the urgency with which she will require the relevant companies to act.”
“The Electoral Commission has made no formal assessment of this. It would be a matter for Parliament to introduce such legal protections. It is prescribed in law that poll cards and ballot papers must be provided in English or Welsh, but there are no other prescribed language requirements relating to election materials.”
“We can all cynically speculate about the reasons why this sudden about-turn has taken place this week, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who spoke from the Front Bench, said earlier, it is our job to scrutinise this legislation and to ensure that whatever we put in place does justice to the determination o…”
“In today’s version of the amendment paper, for the first time, that amendment has disappeared and been replaced not with the detailed compromise that Intelligence and Security Committee members, who have been engaged with this process, have been working towards, along with many others, but with Government amendment 157.”
“As the House would expect, we engaged with that process as diligently as we could, with no partisan politics, in an effort to make good law in the pursuit of greater state transparency while preserving our national security equities. As the hon.”
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“As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Corston report’s recommendation that smaller units should replace women’s prisons was one of the few recommendations that the previous Labour Government did not accept. We think that it is important to have a balance of provision. The hon. Gentleman may know that we intend to trial a smaller unit on the outside of Styal prison. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred to Styal’s history and it is perhaps appropriate that we should choose Styal as the location for such an institution. We want to see exactly how that type of institution can perform. The intention will be that women who have the appropriate risk rating should be able to live in that type of environment, and work outside the prison walls but still have access to some facilities in the prison.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way and, as ever, for her kind words. I suggest, however, that I am not asking her to take only my word about the safeguards in the contracts. We will publish the contracts in draft so that the House can see for itself.”
“Perhaps I can help. The list of prime bidders has now been published, and Members may well find it worth their while to have a look at it. It is true that neither G4S nor Serco appears on the list, but a number of others organisations do, including 10 probation mutuals.”
“The hon. Lady is right that the previous Labour Government set out exactly such an aspiration and she is right, too, that they came to the conclusion that they could not achieve it, but does she not accept that they came to that conclusion because they could not find a way of affording it? That is precisely why we have put forward these proposals—it is the only way we can see of affording that extra cost. So far, I have heard nothing to suggest that there is an alternative.”
“Of course democratic accountability is important. The hon. Lady has mentioned the opportunities the House has had to debate these matters. She has mentioned the Opposition day debate, in which there was a vote and the House voted against her point of view. She has also mentioned the Second Reading debate, after which the House voted against her point of view. She was also in the Committee, where the Committee voted against her point of view. How much more democracy does she need?”
“It might help the hon. Lady if I clarified two points relating to what she has just said. First, in all contracts we will expect those taking on the work to employ properly skilled staff—not to do so will not be permitted. Secondly, those who decide whether someone is a high, medium or low-risk offender will be public sector national probation service employees, not contractors.”
“I am not sure I will be able to help the right hon. Gentleman sleep easier in his bed. Equally, I do not want to pull rank on him, but I have to put to him something that was said by his then boss—the then Home Secretary and the now noble Lord Reid—on Third Reading of the Offender Management Bill in this House: “I can therefore give an assurance today…that the core offender management tasks of the probation service—for example, offender report writing, offender supervision and breach proceedings—will remain in the public sector for the next three years.” —[ Official Report , 28 February 2007; Vol. 457, c. 1024.] Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why his then boss did not say “for ever” instead of “for the next three years”?”
“I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point that I will have a chance to respond later and I suspect I will have quite a bit to respond to by then, but I wish to address this specific point. I apologise to him for my misunderstanding of the chain of command back in the days of his time in government. However, unless I misunderstand him, I do not think he is suggesting that the noble Lord Reid was not speaking for the Government on that occasion. On the question of whether I will publish legal advice, I can do better than that by referring the right hon. Gentleman to the Offender Management Act itself. Section 3(2) states: “The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.” That is clear authority to do what we are doing, is it not?”
“The first point I want to make to the hon. Lady is that the proposals we are discussing do not cover young offenders, but only adults. The second point is one that I made earlier, but I am not sure whether she was in the Chamber at the time. It is that in relation to risk assessments and the judgments she describes—I accept that they are difficult—such judgments will be made by employees of the national probation service, who are public sector employees.”
“I know that we will all miss him in the Chamber more generally. We have had an interesting and informed debate on this group of new clauses. There is no doubt that the substantial burden of the debate on the Bill has been not about the contents of the Bill, which are broadly uncontroversial, but about the wider reforms that surround the Bill. I understand why that is. It might therefore be helpful if I spend a little time dealing with what is at the heart of the Government’s reforms to probation and why we believe they are so urgent. That will relate to the issue of piloting, which has been raised this afternoon.”
“May I begin by endorsing entirely what the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) and the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said about Paul Goggins? Paul was the first Minister I went to see as a newly elected Back Bencher. I was struck not only by his command of the brief, but by his inherent kindness, his reaction to somebody who was not of his party and his willingness to give me whatever assistance he could. That continued throughout the time that I knew him in this House. As others have said, he will be missed on a personal level by a great many people on both sides of the Chamber. It is right for us to recognise today that he will be missed in debates such as this. The lack of his warmth and wisdom on these subjects and many others will make our debates all the poorer.”
“He knows that what I have described was the policy of the Government at that time. The Opposition want to forget it now, but they have to be reminded that the powers for which they legislated and to which Parliament agreed in 2007 entirely underpin the reforms that this Government are making. I have explained what Lord Reid said when he was Home Secretary. He made the matter perfectly clear when he said: “The Secretary of State…will be responsible for ensuring service provision by entering into contracts with the public, private or voluntary sectors. With that burden lifted, the public sector can play to its strengths while others play to theirs.” —[ Official Report , 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 593.]”
“We could simply have imposed further significant cuts on the 35 probation trusts without targeting our efforts on those with the highest reoffending rates, or we could have brought in innovative approaches to supporting offenders that would also be more efficient and that would allow us to reinvest some of the savings to target support through the gate on the under 12-month group. We chose the latter option. At the heart of our proposals is the aim of opening up the supervision of low and medium-risk offenders to a diverse range of new rehabilitation providers to bring in the best of all sectors to tackle reoffending. The right hon. Member for Delyn discussed the Offender Management Act 2007. He was here at the time and witnessed the passage of the Act at first hand.”
“The pilots that we cancelled were not sufficiently close to the proposals that we are making for us to learn as much as Opposition Members would like us to have learned from their conclusion. That does not mean that we learned nothing from their period of operation. The point has been made from the Opposition Benches that it is possible to learn from pilots even if they are not allowed to run to full term. We certainly have learned from those pilots and from other experiences of payment by results. I will return to that point in a moment. The Government essentially had two options. We had to decide how to approach the task of tackling reoffending rates within our means. The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) is right that reoffending rates are too high. We could not allow that situation to continue without a response.”
“I have already made the point that section 3(2) of the Offender Management Act 2007 states: “The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.” In Committee, the Opposition were unable to dispute that the power that they legislated for is clear and unambiguous. The phrase “contractual or other arrangements with any other person” does not mean solely with probation trusts or trusts commissioning other providers, or solely with the public sector.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important to keep existing staff informed about what is going on. We are trying very hard to do that. If there are specific issues in her area, I am happy to look at them. We are keen to ensure that staff are informed. If she will forgive me, I will come back a little later to the pace of the changes that we are making, which has been a substantial issue this afternoon. Before I do that, I want to make a couple more points about the background to this point, and the issue of further parliamentary approval for what we are suggesting.”
“Again—I made this point earlier when I intervened on the right hon. Gentleman—I do not think that Lord Reid could have been any clearer on Third Reading. No doubt under considerable pressure from Back Benchers in his party, he undertook that those core functions, including two things that we do not propose to move from the public sector—advice to court and breach of proceedings—would remain in the public sector for three years. That was not in perpetuity, not as a matter of principle, but for three years which, conveniently enough, took him up to the date of the general election. I think we can all take from that a pretty clear understanding that the Labour Government were not promising that those functions would stay in the public sector for ever; they did it to take them up to the general election.”
“I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but it is pretty clear that Lord Reid was speaking on Third Reading of that Bill on behalf of the Government. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that what Lord Reid was saying did not represent the Government’s position, he had better take it up with him. We have to go by what Hansard tells us.”
“As drafted, they would apply only after a competition has concluded, and would not prevent organisations from bidding, which is what I believe he wants to do.”
“On the substance of the reforms, we have spoken about the establishment of 21 new community rehabilitation companies in England and Wales. In the first instance, they will be publicly owned for a number of months before we consider whether to transfer ownership to other organisations. It is open to organisations from the private, voluntary and community sectors, as well as organisations currently working in probation trusts, to bid for those first-tier contracts. Part of the payment of those organisations will be based on results, so that we incentivise a greater focus on tackling reoffending and achieving better value for the taxpayer. A number of the proposals tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell)—he has tabled new clauses 9, 10 and 11—remain flawed, as they were in Committee.”
“Thirdly, the previous Government’s position was that the public sector monopoly on providers would be guaranteed for only three years. The hon. Member for Darlington now proposes a new version of the new clause. I am not convinced that new clause 1 does exactly what the Opposition want, because the word “national” next to the word “restructure”, which is designed to avoid the need for any small change of probation to be debated in the House, does not necessarily apply to the word “reform”. Therefore, we might end up being asked to discuss very minor changes to the probation service. Beyond that, the basic point is that the Labour Government were given the opportunity to ask for a further check in Parliament for the provision but did not do so. It is a little odd that Labour Members now say that they want one.”
“What is more, the Labour Government were prepared to guarantee that the supervision of offenders more widely would remain in the public sector for only three years, as I have said. Let us be clear: the Labour Government’s position was that the supervision of any offender—not just medium or low-risk offenders—could at some stage be competed for outside the public sector. This Government are not saying that. We say that medium and low-risk offenders should be competed for. Secondly, the Labour Government’s position was that the only element of parliamentary scrutiny of the Secretary of State’s powers to organise the probation service relates to the relatively narrow concept of advice to courts, which this Government do not intend to alter.”
“More to the point and in connection with further parliamentary approval, the Offender Management Act says nothing about requiring Parliament to approve the exercise of that power. By contrast, section 15 of the Offender Management Act provides that an order repealing or disapplying the restriction of certain functions, including advice to court, to the public sector, must be subject to parliamentary approval. If, when in government, the Opposition had wanted to ensure that the power in section 3 for the Secretary of State to enter into arrangements for probation provision was subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, they could have done so, but they did not.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a slightly different point. I am talking about what authority is given to this Government by the Offender Management Act and, more broadly, what the previous Government thought they were doing when they passed it. The case made by Labour Members is that we have in some way taken that Act and twisted its meaning. It has been taken wholly out of context, and we have a travesty of a representation of what that Act says and means. I have been saying to the right hon. Member for Delyn and his colleagues that what the Act says is very clear, and the Hansard that supports it is also clear. Not only did the previous Government anticipate that such a thing could happen, they chose not to rule out the possibility of its happening. They had every opportunity to do so but they did not take it. That is my point.”
“Even at that stage, we would not have been legally allowed to exclude a bidder on the grounds that they were under investigation for fraud. The grounds for mandatory exclusion under procurement law are that the bidder has, or any of its directors have, been convicted of fraud. The ongoing investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into the conduct of G4S and Serco—which, I remind the House, this Secretary of State initiated—in delivering the Government’s electronic monitoring contracts would not have provided a legal basis for excluding those organisations from the current competition.”
“Let me be clear that the Justice Secretary and I are determined to ensure the integrity of future contracts to deliver value for money for the taxpayer. The Ministry of Justice is currently following a proper procurement process and will do so in future competitions. It is that process that should rightly be used to determine who can bid for contracts and who the future providers of services should be. Procurement law permits consideration of issues that affect a bidder’s eligibility, such as fraud, only at the initial prequalification stage, and not after that stage unless a bidder’s circumstances have changed. In respect of the current competition to identify the future owners of the 21 CRCs, the prequalification stage was completed in December.”
“Of course, the NAO might require access to the community rehabilitation companies’ financial systems when there is a need for public assurance. That will be reflected in the contracts. That also answers the point made by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier). The new clauses seek to limit who can bid for contracts by excluding certain organisations. For example, prime providers for the Work programme could be excluded. I am afraid that that would simply reduce the diversity of the market of rehabilitation providers. Many organisations are doing important work within the Work programme, including voluntary organisations working with disabled and disadvantaged people. The hon. Member for Darlington made a point on fraud, which the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington address.”
“I entirely understand what the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is getting at, but I am afraid that I do not dismiss as lightly as the hon. Lady flaws in the proposals that we are being asked to support. If they are flawed, the House should not support them. Let me reiterate the Government’s commitment to publishing contracts for the delivery of services to low and medium-risk offenders. That includes not just draft contracts, as I have said, but final versions of the future contracts for probation services. I hope that that is some reassurance to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington. Likewise, I reassure him that the Government will include within the contracts for rehabilitation services a provision that enables the National Audit Office to access private providers’ records and documents for audit purposes.”
“Member for Hayes and Harlington raised the question of whether those organisations could act in a supporting role. The answer is that we will want to look very carefully not just at the process of corporate renewal those companies are undergoing at the moment but at the specific bids they are making. However, they are not on the list of lead providers. I remind Opposition Members that we were told not so very long ago that the proposals could never work without G4S and Serco, that no one would be interested in bidding. We have a list of 30 different bidders, comprising 50 different organisations at lead bidder level. The Opposition are simply wrong about the level of interest.”
“The point I am making is that the rules, which pre-existed this Government by the way, are very clear: investigation is not the same thing as conviction. We have made it very clear, however, that we have initiated our own investigations. I have warned the hon. Lady before that she is sitting in a very large glass house and that she should think before throwing stones. This is a contract negotiated by her Government and substantially abused, it would seem, during her Government’s term in office. That abuse was discovered by this Government and acted on by this Government. She is hardly in a position to suggest that we have behaved in any way improperly. In any event, I remind the House that both organisations, Serco and G4S, are not on the list of lead providers. The hon.”
“Below the community rehabilitation company level, we want to ensure that smaller organisations from the voluntary community and social enterprise sectors are able to play a key role in delivering rehabilitation.”
“The hon. Gentleman needs to be very careful with his language. He needs to understand that someone being investigated is not the same thing as someone being found responsible for poor conduct. It is important for a Justice Minister, in particular, to recognise that distinction. I assure him that in relation to each and every bid we receive we will look very carefully not just at the bid but at the organisations making the bid. He has heard me say on many occasions that we will not be awarding contracts to any organisation we think unfit to hold them. Let me make the point, because it has been raised, that all the bidders on our list have experience of either working with offenders or across the wider criminal justice system. This is exactly the broad market that we want to see deliver these services.”
“In the process of contract management, we will want to manage properly the relationships between the larger and smaller players to ensure that those relationships are sustainable in the long term.”
“I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of the Work programme, and anyway, as he might have heard me say more than once, this proposal is not a clone of that programme. It is a different proposal, as it must be, because the criminal justice system is a different entity. It is important to recognise that. On smaller voluntary organisations, about which people have understandable concerns, the House might be interested to know that along with the 30 lead providers that have passed the competition’s first stage, a further 800 organisations have expressed an interest in playing a role as part of the wider supply chain, with more than 550 voluntary sector organisations among them.”
“This gives us further opportunities to carry on testing and to refine the system. Caseloads will not all necessarily transfer at the point the NPS and CRCs come into being, and we have made it clear to trusts that where there is a case for doing so, we will give greater latitude to allow for caseload transfer to operate more slowly than the people transfer process. That will avoid disruption and the type of dangers that that might create, which Opposition members have described. Thirdly, there is the testing that we are carrying out of our approach to payment by results. We have consulted extensively on this and there are also pilots under way to test different approaches to payment by results. Opposition members would have us believe that there has been no piloting and that there is no piloting. Neither of those two things is true.”
“Competing services in only one area of the country, if that is what is being proposed—I have heard little detail as to what sort of piloting is being proposed here—would extend supervision to short-sentenced offenders but, in every other respect, we are carrying out extensive local testing of the reforms in no fewer than 14 probation trusts. There is also the testing we are carrying out on the new operating model for the CRCs and the NPS. Those tests will enable us to inform how the new processes will operate once implemented. The first round of tests has already started and will continue over the coming months. Secondly, there is the important fact that the 21 CRCs that we are creating will remain in public sector ownership for some months after their creation until the conclusion of the competition.”
“To do so would risk postcode justice, with some offenders getting different sentences from others. To expand supervision to the under-12-month group, as we all say we want to do, we need to make the changes at a national level. That means funding those changes at a national level. The savings to fund the changes come from two sources; first, the efficiencies generated by competing supervision of low and medium-risk offenders and, secondly, the back office savings from moving to 21 from 35 CRCs, along with a single national probation service.”
“On new clause 4, I understand that the case of Opposition Members is that this is a huge leap in the dark and that no testing of what we are doing is or will be going on. That is not the case. Let me set out to the House the key elements that make up our reforms, what we are doing to test them and the steps we have built in to assess how effectively they are working at key stages of implementation. First, there are the reforms at the heart of the Bill: the extension of licence and supervision to offenders released from short custodial sentences. There are lawyers among Opposition Members, and they will know, and ought to appreciate, that with a change to the sentencing framework of this magnitude, it cannot be desirable to introduce it one part of the country but not another.”
“Right from the outset of these reforms, we established a joint working group on this topic that reports to senior officials and ultimately to Ministers. The working group has commissioned an analytical model of prisoner flows through the prison estate. That allows us to test the impact on prisoner flows and locations from implementing the resettlement prison allocation model. Furthermore, I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the Prison Service is undertaking a full review of facilities and staffing levels at all proposed resettlement prisons. Together all these things will ensure that the changes we are proposing are deliverable and sustainable, which I think is exactly his concern.”
“Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I want to reassure him that as part of our reforms there will be a new resettlement service provided in custody for all offenders before their release. This will be tailored to the individual’s needs, but is likely to include support in finding accommodation, family support, mentoring and financial advice. Services in custody will be underpinned by the changes to the way in which the prison estate is organised. That will mean that, in most cases, the same professional can work with offenders in custody and continue their rehabilitation work in the community. As the right hon. Gentleman would expect, the Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service are working closely together to ensure that the Prison Service is well prepared to implement these proposals.”
“Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Select Committee, outlined earlier, and in accordance with his Committee’s reports and conclusions. On penalties, we are developing a performance framework that will include financial penalties for services not delivered to time or to quality. Contracts for CRCs will reflect that and, as I have said, the House will be able to see that this is the case when we publish those contracts in draft. I do not want to lose sight—nor should the House—of the major prizes here: first, expanding support for offenders released from short sentences and, secondly, developing a through-the-gate system for offenders released from prison. I think that that commands a broad measure of support. That brings me to new clause 6, tabled by the right hon.”
“I am happy to commit to the House that, in the future, the reports will break down reoffending rates for the different CRCs and the NPS. Indeed, as a first step, we have already published on the MOJ website a set of indicative figures to show what reoffending rates and cohort sizes in each contract package area would have looked like had the new structure been in place for the 2005-10 period. We are also piloting the justice data lab, about which I have spoken before, which will give providers the opportunity to match the performance of their cohort with something comparable. On freedom of information, CRCs will be required in contracts to assist the MOJ in discharging its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act—very much along the lines of what my right hon.”
“They will also be contractually required to refer cases back to the NPS if they consider that the risk of serious harm might be escalating. In the end, the decision will be taken by the NPS. New clauses 5 and 13 deal with reports by the Secretary of State to Parliament and the public on the impact of the reforms we intend to make. I want to reassure the House that the Government are already committed to acting in the spirit of those amendments. We are already considering how we can provide information about reoffending rates broken down by CRCs and the NPS. As Members will know, the MOJ already publishes reoffending statistics, not just annually but every three months, broken down by probation trust, prison and upper and lower-tier local authorities.”
“We are creating a new national probation service to manage directly all offenders who pose a high risk of serious harm and any sexual or violent offenders subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements. After an offender has been sentenced, the NPS will make an initial assessment of an offender’s risk of causing harm, and all offenders assessed as posing a high risk of serious harm will be the responsibility of the NPS. For low and medium-risk offenders, CRCs will be required to manage any risk of serious harm that the offender might present and to have appropriately trained staff and robust procedures in place for the management of cases where the risk of serious harm escalates to high during the offender’s supervision.”
“I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern, but I do not agree with his characterisation of Serco’s contract. As he would expect, we have looked closely at its performance under the contract and, again, I assure him that we will look closely at all those who bid for this work. As with all competitions, the decision to award each contract depends on our being satisfied that bidders can meet our standards in respect of quality of service and price and, in this case too, on our being satisfied about the financial risk being taken to reduce reoffending and ensuring good value for the taxpayer. If we are not satisfied that overall bidders can meet our requirements, we will not award them contracts. Hon. Members have raised the issue of the management of high-risk offenders, so let me make it clear exactly what will be involved.”
“In just a moment. The pilots that we are already undertaking—HMP Peterborough and Doncaster—are providing significant lessons for our wider reforms. Not only that, but they are engaged in another aspect of the reforms—the move to a through-the-gate system supporting the transition from custody to the community. The difference between them and the other pilots referred to is that these are much closer to the model we seek to pursue.”
“There are therefore a number of things that we are doing to test these reforms—completely contrary to the characterisation of Opposition Members—and we are determined to implement them in a measured and orderly way to ensure that public safety is in no way impacted. That is why we are taking a structured approach to implementation, as I have set out.”
“It is worth making the point that the interim figures from the pilot—we have been told often this afternoon that there is no evidence for the changes we are making, so let me offer some up—show an 8% fall in reconvictions among offenders released from Peterborough between September 2010 and June 2012 as compared with the preceding period. Similarly in the Doncaster pilot, the sixth-month reoffending rate fell 5.7 percentage points compared with the preceding period. That clearly demonstrates that with targeted support and help aimed at the right people at the right time, we can divert more offenders from a return to crime. We have built into our plans a set of our own business and system readiness tests, which will be carried out throughout the implementation process.”
“The hon. Lady keeps asking the same question and she is going to keep getting the same answer: that is called consistency. Let me tell her once again that she will have to wait until she sees the documentation on the invitation to negotiate. What she will see from it is that we are very interested not just in the initial figure, but in how those bidding for this work will develop the amount they are prepared to put at risk over time. That will assist precisely the type of organisations that Labour Members claim they are interesting in helping—voluntary sector organisations that might not be able to put a great deal at risk to start with, but might be able to build on it in the future. We think that is important, and I very much hope that the hon. Lady will support it. Let me deal with the Peterborough pilot and what it does.”
“The difference between the Government and Opposition Members is that we know how we are going to do it and they do not have the faintest idea. They do not know how they would pay for it, either. We know that the last Government set out to achieve this, but could not afford to do it within existing budgets. That option is out. We know how we will pay for this; they do not. They have not told us; they should certainly support what we propose.”