MoJ Give Evidence 2

Here we have another chunk of the recent dialogue with the Justice Committee and a bit more 'granularity':-

Q406 Victoria Prentis: It occurs to me that as part of this session I should declare that I am a trustee of Nacro and a non-practising barrister. 

You have already talked about the transition strategy. Is that part of a wider transition strategy for ensuring that there is continuous support? 

Amy Rees: The straightforward answer is absolutely. We are conscious that we now need to get to the end of the contractual period, which is likely, as Jim has just said, to be spring 2021, with everything in the best shape possible. We are going to do that in three ways: first, ongoing contract management that will continue throughout the period and is well understood; secondly, the benefit of what happened in Working Links is that we now have tried and tested contingency plans if we cannot make it to the end with any particular provider through unforeseen circumstances; and, thirdly, there will be active dialogue with the current providers about how we can best manage the transition. That is all on the CRC side of the house; there is also quite a lot we will need to do on the NPS side of the house to be ready. We are starting that work and planning now. 

Q407 Victoria Prentis: How are you going to incentivise the CRC companies to keep up the work? 

Amy Rees: First, our contractual terms are very clear about what they are obliged to do. Secondly, as we have just discussed, we have quite a lot of stabilisation measures to try to make a stable business for them going forward. In addition, we are working closely with them on how we can manage transition so that it is beneficial to both sides; and we are in active discussion, as you would expect, with trade unions about how we manage the change for the staff who will be affected. 

Q408 Bambos Charalambous: I have two points, the first of which is about the contracts. The contracts were very badly drafted in the beginning, which led to lots of problems. Has any lesson been learned from the procurement process? I think it was rushed through and that has led to untold problems now. 

Robert Buckland: Mr Charalambous, you reiterate and perhaps develop some of the points we have already discussed. I have already dealt with some of the baseline assumptions made about the type of cases that were going to be coming through the system, and the fact that we ended up with more serious offences that had to be dealt with by the NPS. That meant that fewer less serious cases would have been dealt with by the CRCs. We were also making sure that there was a full and proper understanding of the need for as stable a staff base as possible. My experience of the probation service is that we should encourage as much longevity of service and experience as possible. Nothing is better than experience, bearing in mind that we are dealing with a cohort of individuals who display all sorts of challenges. One learns from experience how to deal with them. 

More fundamentally, there is the role of probation staff and the wider public understanding of the importance of their role. I want to make sure that, in future, probation officers are valued by everybody as much as they are by people in this room and those of us who have worked with them, and that their vital role is enhanced and understood. That aspect of the reforms is going to be really important. 

To take your point, as you have heard from my officials, we are taking great care with any assumptions that are made about the future, but the big advantage of this change is that we will no longer have the division between serious and non-serious; we will have an overall framework with the regional model. Let us take an individual probation officer, for example. The inspectorate said that a caseload of more than 60 is too much. We are already mindful of that and want to help probation officers manage a lower caseload and a wider range of offences, not just all serious offences. A lot of NPS officers have had to deal with quite a serious diet of heavy cases. It is right to level that out so that there is a mixed caseload, to acknowledge the fact that it can take a very heavy toll when you are dealing with complex and challenging individuals. That wider understanding of the context is very much part of how we are going to develop the process. I take on board your comments. I think that this time, with the timescale we are talking about, we can and will do better. 

Amy Rees: TR was certainly an ambitious and innovative reform, and we acknowledge that there were two particular areas of complexity that will not exist in the new model. The first, as the Minister said, is that there will not be split offender management. That was quite difficult to contract for. We will not have to contract for offender management, which was a complicated and tricky thing to do. 

The other area was the inclusion of payment by results, which, as you can appreciate, was also a pretty tricky thing to try to contract for. We will not be doing that in the new model, so we are certainly looking to simplify the new contracts that we will be signing with new providers. 

Q409 Chair: It seems to be accepted in light of experience that payment by results was not the right model for probation. 

Amy Rees: We would certainly acknowledge that PBR added a massive level of complexity and risk that we and providers have been learning about in reality. 

Q410 Chair: You are not going to pursue it anyway; that is understood. Ms Crozier, turning to the relationship with the workforce, they have been through a good deal of upheaval and probably need some stability as well as support, don’t they? 

Sonia Crozier: Absolutely, but I have to say from my direct contact with NPS staff that the announcements have been broadly welcomed. There is a real sense that they want to get behind the changes as we go forward. Let us not forget that, whether you work in the NPS or a CRC, there is a strong culture of vocation in the probation service. People do not give up despite adversity, and that has been seen and assessed by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation; they have gone into probation areas where things are not as they should be, but people carry on. Obviously, we cannot rely on that good will forever, so the transitional work Jim will be leading has to put supports in place to make sure that we carry people forward to contract change. 

Q411 Ms Marie Rimmer: The National Audit Office said that the possibility of multiple provider failures is a live risk. How are you managing that? 

Robert Buckland: I think you are referring to the issue of what happens between now and the end of the CRC contractual period. We have already talked to the Committee about the experiences we have had, for example with Working Links, where we had to take action to make sure that another provider came in. That was done via Seetec. I am happy with regard to the transfer of undertakings, for example; it is not TUPE, but it is analogous to it. That happened in as smooth a way as possible so that staff were not unduly inconvenienced.

We took a lot of learning from that, which I think makes us very resilient if we are to face another challenge of that nature between now and the end of 2020. Wales is leading the way, because by the end of 2019 we will have a unified service up and running. That has been a very important source of information to equip officials with the wherewithal to deal with any failure. 

We have to be mindful of the fact that it would not be right, according to competition rules, to slot another private provider into a region because of the 25% rule, so there would have to be another solution, which will be a GovCo solution. We have thought ahead on this. We have had the experience already and we will put it to good use if needed. It is my belief that the provisions and contingencies we have made in order to support the CRCs will be enough to carry them through to the end of 2020, but we are ready if there is an issue. 

Q412 Ms Marie Rimmer: How are you going to monitor it as it goes along, without waiting until it collapses? 

Amy Rees: As you would expect, we monitor these contracts really carefully. Since the lifetime of the contract, we have been in active dialogue, hence the changes we made to the contracts over the last couple of years. We will be in even more active dialogue now about how we manage transition. We have an existing experienced contract management team that will continue to monitor the health of those contracts going forward. 

Q413 Ms Marie Rimmer: Our report was deeply concerned that the voluntary sector was less involved in probation than before the TR reforms were implemented, which was an unintended consequence. What is the MOJ doing about that? 

Robert Buckland: Perhaps I could preface the remarks and then Jim can come in. On the basis of what I said before, we think the new model, with its direct link between the NPS and providers, means there will be room for smaller localised organisations, whether it is the third sector or other types of organisation, to provide localised tailored support. I talked earlier to the Committee about co-commissioning with police and crime commissioners. You make an absolutely fair point. That was lost in the mix when it came to previous provision. We do not want to do that. In short, we are going to design a system to make sure that we can and will involve the smaller organisations. Jim might want to come in on that. 

Jim Barton: I have a couple of minor additional points. As the Minister pointed to, we are consciously designing the shape of the new market in a way that reduces barriers to entry for the voluntary sector. For the innovation partners, we intend to put in place larger contracts aligned with the future NPS regions. The first thing we are doing is fundamentally changing the payment mechanism. As we have already referenced, there will be no payment by results. Therefore, the financial sums that organisations need to put at risk, or have in their reserves earmarked to cover risk, will be significantly lower. That should make it possible for larger voluntary sector organisations or consortia to consider themselves credible bidders for those contracts. 

The second thing we will make sure that we do, which again is learning from transforming rehabilitation, is to provide much earlier clarity on what financial guarantees organisations need to put up, because I think that came as a slightly unpleasant shock to some organisations towards the tail-end of a procurement process, having invested a fair amount of time and effort to get there. We will make sure that people have sight up front of all the information that is relevant to them when making a decision with their trustees as to whether they can bid for contracts. 

As the Minister referenced, the second part of our market strategy is a framework or dynamic purchasing system that has consciously been chosen and will be created with the aim of reaching out to more specialist and, therefore, predominantly smaller not-for-profit organisations that can support individual offender need and specific cohorts of offenders. We have learned the lessons and we aim to apply them. 

Q414 Ms Marie Rimmer: Is the voluntary sector still strong enough to carry out the role you envisage for it? As I am sure you are aware, we have lost some incredibly good smaller providers, particularly BAME providers. Is the strength still there in the voluntary sector to provide services? 

Jim Barton: As you will know, we fund Clinks, the umbrella organisation for the sector, for a number of reasons. One is to do precisely that—to monitor the health of the sector. Their last report, “TrackTR”, was published last year, and gave some evidence that we are on a declining trajectory. It is getting worse and harder for the sector as a whole, and we acknowledge that. We will continue to work closely with Clinks and, through them, the rest of the sector during transition, because it is not in our interests for the voluntary sector to be hollowed out. 

Q415 Ms Marie Rimmer: It is going to be incredibly difficult, isn’t it? 

Amy Rees: Anecdotally, in Wales, where I am based, we have been discussing this with the VCS for longer, since last July. It is true that the market and the VCS have found the landscape more difficult, but we are reassured that there are still providers out there; they absolutely want to work with us and are in active dialogue with us about how we can strengthen them and shape the contract so that it is better for them. They need a bit more certainty for a bit longer than we have perhaps given them in the past. I am reassured that there is still a market and a vibrant sector that we can work with, but it definitely has been difficult for them over the last couple of years. 

Q416 Ms Marie Rimmer: In October, the MOJ accepted our recommendation that it should publish a workforce strategy. Indeed, we were told that the Department was working on one. By May, the MOJ said instead that it had rejected the recommendation. Why did you change position? 

Robert Buckland: Being frank, with regard to strategies, one can spend a lot of time drawing up a plan. It is far better to get on with it, and the figures are yielding some positive results. In the last year, 2018-19, we have appointed an extra 624 probation service officers, which is already a substantial increase for the NPS. My plan is to recruit more officers. We have an active recruitment campaign now; I want to see it very much focused not just on the NPS but on where there are issues with provision at the CRCs, so that we crack on with recruiting more officers there as well. 

In short, we want more probation officers doing a caseload, as I was saying, in accordance with the recommendations of the inspectorate, and handling a more mixed caseload, to acknowledge the fact that it can be a very stressful and difficult job; plus the enhancement of the role of probation officers in terms of their professional status. That is a strategy. I have set it out to the Committee, and I am happy to write to the Committee to explain it. That is our strategy. We have it, and we are going to crack on with it. 

Q417 Ms Marie Rimmer: You are using the inspector’s report and other reports, so you must have some idea of the numbers you need, and where. How do we know that it is actually happening, and when is it planned to happen? Is it keeping up to date, Ms Crozier? 

Sonia Crozier: One of the key lessons we learned from transforming rehabilitation is the cost of breaking the probation pipeline in terms of qualified officers coming through. We had a break, and it has taken us some time to recover from that, but we now have a well-rehearsed process for recruiting new officers to the National Probation Service and a commitment, as the Minister has just outlined, that, through transition, we will not break that pipeline again in preparing for the future. We have a good system now to project forward and reach out to the market, to attract graduates into the organisation. 

Q418 Ms Marie Rimmer: The Committee is still concerned about the critical shortage of probation officers. It seems to me that what you are saying is that you can give us some information and we might not need to be as concerned as we are. Would you let us have that information, please? 

Robert Buckland: Indeed. As I said, the very significant increase in appointments last year is a good sign that we are moving in a positive direction to achieve the ambition I have for the service. 

Q419 Ms Marie Rimmer: Could you let us have something that we can see and test ourselves? 

Robert Buckland: By all means. 

Ms Marie Rimmer: Thank you. 

Amy Rees: I just want to add a little bit on workforce. There is obviously recruitment, but the other important announcement we made as part of the announcement the Minister alluded to earlier is that we will be creating a statutory professional framework. That is really important, because people qualifying on day one is one issue, but going forward we have to ensure that professional learning, training and development is maintained. This is a guarantee that that will happen for everyone existing in the system and for new people coming into the system. We also think that it is a really important statement to the criminal justice system more widely about acknowledging the professionalism and the critical importance of the work that probation staff do.

Q420 Ms Marie Rimmer: We welcome the intention of implementing the independent statutory register for probation. Would you like to tell us a little more about that? Which body will own it, how will it work and when will it come into force? 

Robert Buckland: The statutory basis is the big departure. We will develop the detail of the plans as we come to the legislative stage, because it will require legislation. As Amy said, it will be a new framework of standards and excellence, which will support probation officers not just in enhancing their role but in setting a standard to which they will work, which allows the sharing of best practice. We have many examples among local probation officers of individuals doing great and innovative work. Let’s share and understand that better and spread it through the service. What better way than via a framework? To coin a phrase, it is a royal college approach, which has worked so well in other professions that I want to see it in the probation profession. 

As I was saying to you, Ms Rimmer, you do not need to convince me about their value. I have seen it for myself. What I want to do is to convince the public about their value and to understand them. I do not want them to be a forgotten corner of public service; they are a vital part of public service and, without them, we would soon notice the difference. 

Q421 Ms Marie Rimmer: Yes, we have noticed the difference. 

Sonia Crozier: I am absolutely delighted about the announcement on formal registration. That will give confidence to staff that, in future delivery of probation, there will be a commitment from us on the quality of the training they should be offered post qualification, which will give greater consistency and enhance quality. It will restore some of the sense of confidence, in the way the Minister just described, and the sense that we are not a forgotten corner of the criminal justice system but have something of value to add, in our ability both to effect change in individuals and to protect the public. 

It also gives assurance to victims of crime. Some of the most difficult conversations I have with victims, particularly of serious crime, are about their concerns whether the professionals overseeing individuals are actually properly qualified and trained to do their job. Once we have registration, it will give confidence to victims of serious crime as well—the confidence piece that the Minister so well articulated.

(To be continued)