Probation bill "a complete mess"
Gerry Sutcliffe has defended the bill ahead of the vote tonight
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Wednesday, 28, Feb 2007 11:00
The government is facing a backbench rebellion over plans to open the probation service up to private companies and voluntary groups.
Around 40 Labour backbenchers are expected to support an amendment to the offender management bill, proposed by Labour MP Neil Gerrard, which would exclude core probation tasks from the effects of the bill.
If that proves the case then the government is set for another embarrassing defeat in parliament later today.
And the government position is unlikely to have been helped by Martin Wargent, head of the Probation Boards' Association, terming the bill unnecessary and a "complete mess".
"More work with the voluntary sector is fine, we think that more work with the private sector, particularly in accommodation and education is good, but you can do that now, you can do it without legislation," he told the Today programme.
"The problem is this minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, has inherited a bill that's a complete mess, because first of all it centralises everything on the Home Office, it removes responsibility from local people who govern probation services.
"And in effect the bill actually abolishes the probation service. It replaces it with a list of functions that can be undertaken by absolutely anybody and that's why it's a very, very badly designed bill."
Mr Gerrard echoed those views, warning that the bill could bring a "fragmentation" in the probation service.
"The private companies who might come in would probably be the sort of people who are involved in private prisons - some American companies, Group 4 - none of them with any experience of supervising offenders, so they'd probably end up poaching people from the probation service," he told the same programme.
"But I think what we end up then with is a mass of different providers and we lose a national service. You start to get fragmentation - I think very much more difficult then to control what's going on - and we lose all the local connections that are there at the moment with local probation boards."
Commenting on the concerns, Home Office minister Mr Sutcliffe insisted that there were many voluntary sector bodies which believe they can help cut reoffending and that it would be "criminal" not to involve them in the process.
"It's not about killing off the probation service, it's about supporting the work of probation officers but supplementing that through other providers," he added on the Today programme.
"I can't see for the life of me why people would want to stop those organisations being involved."