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• Report: Probation: Landscape Review
• Report: Probation: Landscape Review (PDF)
• Report: Criminal Justice System 
• Report: Criminal Justice System (PDF)
• Public Accounts Committee

The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, today said:

“The Ministry of Justice’s reforms to the Probation Service carry significant risks. 

It intends to introduce new private and voluntary sector providers, bring in a payment by results system, create a new National Probation Service and extend the service to short-term prisoners, all in a very short period of time.

We recognise that the reform programme is still developing, but the scale, complexity and pace of the changes are very challenging, and the MoJ’s extremely poor track record of contracting out – such as the recent high-profile failures on its electronic tagging contracts – gives rise to particular concern.

The Ministry intends to pay Community Rehabilitation Companies by a combination of payment by results and fee for service. This is complex, untested and remains subject to agreement with providers. 

The Ministry must ensure that the new contracts contain open-book accounting arrangements and allow the National Audit Office full access to contractual information, so that we can follow the taxpayers’ pound and be assured that value for money is being served and contractors are not gaming the system as has happened in the past.

The supervision and management of offenders is an essential public service that must be maintained in the event of a supplier failing or withdrawing from the contract. The Ministry pointed to the existence of the National Probation Service as a provider of last resort, but could not provide details of its contingency plans as commercial negotiations are still in progress.

The provision of rehabilitation services will be extended for the first time to those sentenced to less than 12 months in custody, an estimated 50,000 offenders. This represents a 22% increase on the 225,000 offenders managed by the probation service during 2012-13. However the Ministry could not tell us how this significant increase in the case load of probation staff would be managed.

The Ministry must ensure that the current ‘good’ standard of performance is maintained during the transition to new providers and the increase in offender numbers.

The new arrangements have not been fully piloted and the Ministry expects the new National Probation Service and the 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies to begin operating from 1 June 2014, allowing only a limited opportunity for parallel running of the new arrangements during April and May 2014.

We therefore welcome the Ministry’s commitment to only proceed at each stage of the programme if it is satisfied it is safe to do so and that value for money will not be jeopardized.

The Committee also looked across the wider Criminal Justice System. We identified a number of weaknesses that have persisted for far too long and which cause delay and inefficiency, and serve to undermine public confidence.  

The Departments responsible (Home Office, Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General’s Office) are struggling to ensure the smooth passage of criminal cases through the System. A quarter of trials are cancelled or delayed because of late decisions by Prosecutors or Court managers.

Also the quality of police case files is poor and getting worse. In 2011 around half of police files given to the CPS did not give an adequate summary of the case, rising to 73% in 2013. The Criminal Justice Board needs to monitor performance and drive consistent standards, so they can identify the poor performers and take action where necessary.

Collaboration between police forces undoubtedly improves efficiency. However, cooperation is voluntary, and the present level of collaboration is at best patchy across England and Wales. There is far more scope for good practice examples to be shared and replicated. 

The remarkably slow progress in improving IT systems over the last decade means there are still too many disparate systems which fail to operate together. There are some 2,000 IT systems in use in the police service, and the Metropolitan Police alone uses over 300. The Departments need to set a clear vision for future IT with a timetable for how different initiatives will come together to provide a coherent and seamless case management system.

The Home Office, Ministry of Justice and Crown Prosecution Service have made some efforts to improve efficiency, but these are taking place against a background of reduced resources and staffing, and progress in addressing the key problems remains disappointingly slow.”

Margaret Hodge was speaking as the Committee published its 58th and 59th Reports of this Session which, on the basis of evidence from Dame Ursula Brennan (Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Justice), Mark Sedwill (Permanent Secretary, Home Office), Alison Saunders (Director of Public Prosecutions), Peter Lewis (Chief Executive, Crown Prosecution Service) and Sarah Payne, Antonia Romeo, Michael Spurr and Nick Brown (National Offender Management Group, Ministry of Justice), examined the subjects of the Criminal Justice System and Probation.

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