Obfuscation Masterclass 6

Regular readers will be pleased to know that today sees the last episode of this series! I feel it's important though to put on record, in fairly easily accessible format, these extraordinary exchanges, offering as they do the official weasel words of explanation for the TR disaster in a masterclass of obfuscation, equivocation and some might say, economy with the truth.  

Q125 Shabana Mahmood: Okay. Can we go on to the Reducing Reoffending Board that has been set up? I think it has been going for a year or so now. What has it delivered? 

Sir Richard Heaton: It has met two or three times, I think. It was designed to meet quarterly. I think its benefit is in bringing Departments together at working level, rather than just the ministerial meetings. The things that I am pleased about are work with the Department of Health and my Department on an offender personality disorder pathway programme; work on a community sentence treatment requirement with NHS England and Public Health England; and proof of concept trials on a universal credit sign-up from custody programme to secure jobs for exoffenders with Government Departments, called Going Forward into Employment. We have a handful of things— 

Q126 Chair: Housing? 

Sir Richard Heaton: On housing, the MHCLG rough sleeping strategy came out of this as well. 

Chair: Sorry, that is rough sleeping. 

Sir Richard Heaton: It is rough sleeping, but it is the acute end of homelessness. Those are the sorts of things that Government Departments can do by working well together. I am not saying for a moment that that is enough, or goes far enough, but I am cautiously pleased that we have some decent initiatives going. Rather than just sitting around thinking about the problems and writing strategies, we are actually doing things. 

Q127 Shabana Mahmood: Those things that you just rattled off—I’ve got a Department of Health pathway programme—are these all things that are being delivered? Are they all at the planning stage? You said you have met two or three times. It was set up in March 2018; that’s quite a lot of work to have achieved in two or three meetings. I am rather impressed, if that is actually being delivered. 

Sir Richard Heaton: The offender personality disorder pathway programme is a commitment being delivered by NHS England and HMPPS. The community sentence treatment requirement is being piloted. The universal credit sign-up is at proof of concept stage, so I am not pretending that we have conquered the world, but these are early steps. With the MHCLG rough sleeping strategy, we have got to invitation to tender, so that has not been rolled out. We are procuring bids—securing suppliers, rather. 

Q128 Shabana Mahmood: It might be helpful if we got from you in writing a full read-out of all of these programmes and what stages they are at. 

Sir Richard Heaton: Yes, and I do not want to over-promise. It is hard work getting things in Government, particularly at the moment. 

Q129 Chair: I think the reason Ms Mahmood is asking that—we think as one in this Committee—is that some of those, or many of those, relate to other Departments. If you provide us with a list, Mr Heaton, that might actually help you, because we might end up challenging the other Departments in front of us. 

Sir Richard Heaton: Thank you. I won’t over-claim success, but thank you. 

Chair: We need to know what you are doing and what other Departments need to be working with that, because we are picking up some of these issues across other Departments as well. 

Q130 Shabana Mahmood: Finally from me, how realistic is it for you to be able to provide a fit-for-purpose probation service, given all the financial constraints and timing constraints? What is the forward view? 

Sir Richard Heaton: There is a huge prize here, and one of my reflections in preparing for this is that we have had some great people, great civil servants—some of whom are sitting behind me—working on probation, but really working on contracts, compliance and payment mechanisms. There are people who really want to provide excellent probation services and are just crying out for a bit of integration, a bit of common sense, a bit of simplicity and a bit of proper incentives. I am absolutely convinced that if those are conditions for success, we can make something much better in the timeframe available and put energy into creating an outcome rather than adjusting contracts, which is basically what we have been doing for three years. 

Shabana Mahmood: We will be holding you to that, Sir Richard, given that you are— 

Sir Richard Heaton: It is an aspiration. 

Q131 Chair: Although we always see a knighthood arriving just before civil servants move Departments, so I do not know if you are planning to go anywhere. I just want to pick up on a couple of questions. On the housing front, we were talking earlier about the numbers not getting housing. At one point, the figure of a quarter of people being released without accommodation was mentioned; I think you mentioned that, as I recall. Is there an acceptable level, do you think, of people being released from prison without accommodation? 

Sir Richard Heaton: I suspect that there is no answer I can give to that that would be the right one. In human terms, there should be housing available for everyone except through sheer choice of their own. 

Q132 Chair: I think we would all agree with that, and it is obviously pretty critical to reducing reoffending, which is why I asked about whether the Reducing Reoffending Board is delivering that. You are not the only Department to sit in front of us and tell us that there is a problem with housing, but that it will all be solved because local authorities or housing associations will pick them up. 

Is there any serious conversation going on with other parts of government—not just the Government, but local authorities corporately— about how to plug into the shortage of affordable housing in some parts of the country the very people who, without it, will end up reoffending or creating more problems for themselves and the community or more costs for the taxpayer? Ultimately, it is a cost shunting thing. If you get it right now, when they first come out, it will save money, time and problems later on. 

Sir Richard Heaton: That is the case that we make to MHCLG: that this is a priority housing need. 

Q133 Chair: So you are making the case. What are you asking them for? 

Sir Richard Heaton: We are asking for priority to be given to this group of homeless people. 

Q134 Chair: So that is against the families who are in hostels for three years, waiting with a child. 

Sir Richard Heaton: Indeed. It is a zero-sum game unless there is an increase in housing stock. 

Q135 Chair: Have you had any serious discussions? You talked earlier about hostels and procuring accommodation. Are you planning to do any of that directly? Given that you are setting targets on probation and reoffending and that one of the issues is housing, because being without a stable home is obviously very likely to have an impact on reoffending, are you looking at any targets in the new system? 

Michael Spurr: We are increasing the number of approved premises which are probation hostel places, but it is relatively small numbers and it tends to be for higher risk individuals. 

Q136 Chair: And are they private? Are you looking at the private sector? 

Michael Spurr: No, we run them ourselves, generally, because they tend to be for higher risk offenders. I would not want to pretend that that will address the volume numbers that we have been talking about, but we are doing it because we recognise that, particularly for that cohort, we have to provide more places—and more supervised places—for people coming out, which is more difficult. 

Q137 Chair: Such as sex offenders, for instance. 

Michael Spurr: Yes. 

Q138 Chair: Given that, do you have any idea of the numbers that you are talking about and of where they are based regionally, so that you know what the scale of the challenge is? 

Michael Spurr: It is relatively small numbers—a few hundred rather than thousands—but the stock is not huge. I can give you the formal numbers, if you want me to write to you. 

Q139 Chair: It would be very helpful to have the formal numbers, and to have them broken down regionally, because it may be that sometimes there is a neighbouring local authority and a negotiation can be had with the released offender that they live somewhere else. 

Sir Richard Heaton: Those numbers are for approved premises. 

Michael Spurr: Yes, for hostels and approved premises. We manage those as a national system, so we do not have to— 

Q140 Chair: Do you have any numbers for all prisoners released? We have the shocking figures from Cardiff that the chief inspector picked up, but that was only because they interviewed the 23 people leaving that day. That is quite a shocking issue. Do you keep figures like that for all releases? Do you have any method of knowing whether housing has been allocated to them? 

Michael Spurr: We have had great difficulty in getting figures back, proven, about where people end up, from the DWP and so on. We used to, and we had some figures that were not right. When you ask a prison, you know how many people are discharged with a discharge grant or on the basis of not having a home—we have those figures. That is where you generally get what proportion of people are going out with accommodation. 

Q141 Chair: Sorry—are you saying that you do have those figures or that you don’t? 

Michael Spurr: We do have those figures, but what we do not have is figures about levels of settled accommodation or type of accommodation. But we would know the number of people who— 

Q142 Chair: But if they are under probation, surely it is not beyond the wit of the probation service to find some way of tracking whether someone is still living, six months later, with a relative or friend putting them up on the sofa, or whether they actually have something settled. 

Michael Spurr: You can ask people about it, but if you want to be absolutely clear, you need verified data, which is harder. One of the big problems for CRCs, which we have talked about before, is the number of people who leave prison and do not stay in contact. Part of the point about recalls is that you have people who leave and do not stay in contact with probation. Right from the outset, effectively, they do not have accommodation where they can be contacted; they are picked up later by the police, and that becomes part of the cycle and the difficulty. 

Q143 Chair: It would be very helpful if you sent us any data that you have. 

Michael Spurr: We will look at that. 

Q144 Chair: It is something that we can pursue as a Committee, but we need some data to challenge elsewhere in the system. We have talked a bit about the voluntary sector getting involved. We heard some quite compelling evidence last time from the Howard League about women prisoners; because of how the CRCs worked, they were often spread very thinly and there was no specialist provision for them. I appreciate, Sir Richard, that Ministers have yet to announce policy. In the new regime, is it your intention to look at how those groups perhaps with mental health problems, and women—groups of prisoners with particular issues who may be spread thinly nationally—will get the right support? 

Sir Richard Heaton: Yes, it is. I am not sure that we have the correct analysis yet on women prisoners and recall, for example, so “yes” is the short answer. 

Q145 Chair: But is it in the forefront of your mind? 

Sir Richard Heaton: It is. 

Chair: So we can expect you to tell us— 

Sir Richard Heaton: Which were the two groups that you mentioned? Women and— 

Chair: Anyone with specialist needs, but women and people with mental health problems where a general provider may find it challenging to provide the specific support that they need. 

Sir Richard Heaton: Certainly those two groups we have in our sights, yes. 

Q146 Chair: You talked earlier about MAPPA not fitting very well with the through-the-gate thing, but with MAPPA, when you cross a boundary from one CRC area to another, is a receiving probation service allowed simply to refuse to take somebody when it has been agreed by their home probation service that they could move? 

Michael Spurr: All MAPPA cases are managed by the NPS. Because it is a national service, no probation service can refuse to take a case if we direct that they are going to take them. They can access resettlement services and other services provided by the CRC, but the management of the individual is a matter for the NPS. 

Chair: That was very helpful. 

Q147 Caroline Flint: Just a quick question, going back to the voluntary sector. A report was produced, I think last year, by Clinks, NCVO and the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership looking at the impact of what we have been talking about today on that sector. One of the things that they raised was that an adverse effect was that some of the smaller charity organisations were finding it difficult to gain funding from other sources, because there was confusion about what the NPS and the CRCs are meant to be funding. 

One of their asks was that the Ministry of Justice produce clear and accessible public guidance on this, setting out the roles of prisons and of the NPS and the CRCs in this area. Have you followed up on that recommendation and the others that were made in that report? 

Michael Spurr: I think the answer to that is yes, in the sense that that will absolutely inform what we are doing with the re-procuring. It is one of the unintended consequences of putting statutory provision in. People say, “Should we be funding at that point? Shouldn’t that be provided statutorily?” We funded that piece of work by Clinks—I think it is the same piece of work that you are referring to. We want to respond to that. We are going to respond to that; it will inform what we do with the revised contracts, et cetera. That is where we are. 

Q148 Chair: The voluntary sector is something that we touched on, in the prison in Doncaster, about it not being involved. From what we have heard today, just to get it clearly on the record, the intention is that you will try to design it so that the input of the specialist voluntary sector organisations that have been rather cut out of the CRC process can be more usefully used and can help in rehabilitation. 

Sir Richard Heaton: Yes, I think that is fair.

Q149 Chair: Okay. It is very odd not to have anything to pin you down on for the future. Usually we are told that everything is fine and we get the details in the future. We appreciate that the Minister has to make an announcement. We are giving you early warning that we will therefore be calling you back, though not Mr Spurr. 

Mr Spurr, a final word from you. You have Dr Farrar taking over your role from the beginning of April. What will be in your private note to her about what to keep an eye out for, and what to watch in her new role? 

Michael Spurr: I don’t think I have long enough to answer that. 

Chair: Give us a top three. 

Michael Spurr: The one thing I might say is, on this, the overriding thing is that reducing reoffending is really difficult and complicated. It requires targeted interventions, which are often quite costly. You can make a small but significant impact, but it is not straightforward to do. 

As for the over-optimism that was there—that has been a fault of ours in the past as well: you do an accredited programme, and it looks to be good, so you become optimistic that you can get big reductions. That has not proven to be the case in reality. What this reinforces is that targeted, evidence-based interventions can make an impact and reduce the number of offences on victims. That is where we should be targeting the limited resources that we have to be as effective as possible. 

That is what we are going to try to do under the next set of contracts, and I would absolutely say that that is the right approach. We can work with partners. Mixed market can give you value, but you have to work with them in a way that recognises that this is not straightforward or easy, and we should target resources on the best evidence that we have on what makes an impact. 

Q150 Chair: And clearly going at it at the pace at which the last one happened is not a good idea. We will worry about the pace of the next change when it happens. 

Michael Spurr: The scale of change is often underestimated. This Committee has said that before; the NAO has said it before. This just reinforces that. Big, major change takes a lot of attention and detail, and it isn’t done at the point you have delivered the—it wasn’t done in 2015. It has taken a huge amount of work to keep this system running and we have found out a lot out of it. That is why I believe that the next set will be better, because if we don’t take learning from what we have just done then something has gone really badly wrong. 

Chair: Don’t worry, we will be giving her a hard time in a year’s time or so anyway. You have been a repeat witness here, so thank you for that. I guess that this might be one bit of the job you will not miss, but maybe not. 

One of our ambitions as a Committee is to try, with the support of the NAO, to track the long-term savings of early investment, whether it be in early years or in this sort of thing, in order to make life for communities and individuals better, and the cost to the taxpayer better in the long run. That is our ambition. You will have to hold us up to that, Mr Spurr, from wherever you are sitting and watching us. I am sure you will be tuning in in future. Thank you for your time. The uncorrected transcript will be up on the website in the next couple of days and our report will be out after you have left, Mr Spurr, so we will make sure that we send you a copy.

The End