Clause 22.—(THE PROBATION SERVICE.) (Hansard, 30 April 1964)

§ Mr. MacColl

That would be very convenient, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

I approach the task of moving this Amendment with a great sense of my rashness and, perhaps, impertinence, because an Amendment in the same form was moved in Committee by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice), in my absence, and if he, with his great skill, could not wring a concession out of the right hon. Gentleman, my chances do not seem very good. I do not regard myself as a specialist in getting concessions out of the right hon. Gentleman. It always rather startles me if I do.

The point at issue was not fully explored in Committee, I think. The proposal is that, instead of the Home Secretary having a discretion as to the number of members of the probation committee, the number should be laid down in the Bill. As I understood the right hon. Gentleman's argument, he made two points. First, he said that in other parts of the country this was done by means of regulation and there was no case for putting London in a special position. Second, he said that, when the work of the new integrated courts was seen, it would be easier to work out what the various contributions in numbers should be from the different elements of the judicial system.

I make two points in reply. In the country, of course, it has to be done by regulation because there is nothing in the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, which lays down what the probations areas are to be. Therefore, as probation areas may 743 be changed and the number of people involved at the different levels of sessions or magistrates' courts may vary and there may be combinations of areas, it is necessary to have flexibility. In this Bill, however, the right hon. Gentleman is not doing that. He is reserving for London a different state of affairs.

The area of inner London which is to be the area of the probation committee is already known and cannot be altered. It is laid down in the Bill. Therefore, the case for varying the numbers does not apply in London as it does in the rest of the country. He is defining in the Bill the area to be covered by the probation cammittee and the contributory elements, and all that is being left unfixed is the numbers. The whole situation is quite different from what appears in the Schedule to the Criminal Justice Act.

There is a second point which I find difficult to follow. As time went on, the right hon. Gentleman would have been able to see how the new system was working and, therefore, could make the alterations by regulation. I am not clear about the timetable. The existing position is that the Home Department runs the probation service in London, and the probation committee is purely advisory. Rather to the surprise, I think, of the Home Department, when the Morison Committee took evidence from London—and I was one of those who gave evidence on this matter; I gave evidence with a stipendiary magistrate, so that there is no difference of interest—we pressed, as did other people, for the taking over of administration by the probation committee from the Home Department. That is a proposal which is contained in the Bill and is highly welcome. I do not in the least question it. What I question is the degree of uncertainty that is created.

I understand that Clause 22 comes into operation on 1st April, 1965. As soon as it comes into operation, the special position of the London Probation Service will disappear, because there is nothing to say that the matter is subject to further regulation. It is clear that the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act dealing with the administration of the probation system will cease to have effect. Therefore, unless the whole thing is left in the air and nobody is to be responsible for running the probation 744 service, a probation committee must be set up immediately to run it.

It is extraordinary, therefore, that such a position is created by Clause 22 and yet uncertainty remains about the form of the committee which is to be set up. Although the Home Secretary will have a year—or, to be more accurate, the right hon. Gentleman and his successors in title will have a year—to discuss these matters with the probation officers, the justices, and so on, he will not have a year of experience of the working of the integrated system, because the integrated system will not start until Part I of the Bill comes into operation. Therefore, he will be legislating as blindly as he is doing now. He might just as well put these numbers into the Bill as wait until 1st April, 1965, because he will have no more experience then of the success of the integrated system.

The first proposal of the Bill concerning the constitution of the committee is that there should be an uncertain number of judges from the Central Criminal Court. My Amendment suggests that there should be one. If the Home Secretary says that the number should be two, I would not quarrel with him, but proportionately one seems reasonable when considering the amount of probation work which is done at the Central Criminal Court.

We then suggest that one member of the committee should be chosen from among the chairman and deputy-chairmen of sessions. Again, the main work of the probation service is not done at sessions. We then suggest five stipendiary magistrates, because they come from a field in which a good deal of probation work is done. We suggest that there should be four lay justices who sit in adult courts and four from juvenile courts. I emphasise that these are quite different. The organisation of the juvenile courts is being kept out of the integrated system. It will be a separate service. But the juvenile courts probably use the probation system more than any other courts because they are dealing with the younger age groups.

11.0 p.m.

This is an important question, because already a serious position is arising. The probation service is beginning to move towards having an integrated service covering both adult and juvenile courts. 745 That is something one gets in the provinces and is very much welcomed by probation officers on the whole in London. This is creating considerable problems. I would not think that the experiment had been uniformly successful, I have had experience of this, because the North London area, in which I am a chairman, is one of those working an integrated system. Experience is balanced, because there are both advantages and disadvantages in the integrated system.

This is an important question. We should set up a probation committee which can come to decisions and make them quickly and I see no case for hesitating about it. The right hon. Gentleman has all the knowledge he requires already to decide what the number on this committee is to be. I am suggesting a committee of 15 members who would be allocated with some kind of approximation to the amount of probation work which is done in their courts and that the committee should be set up so as to be able to get going as soon as the organisation is done.

It is not desirable to have delay. There are many uncertainties and doubts about the development of the London probation service which should be resolved as quickly as possible. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will have another think about this and make some effort to meet the point.

§ Mr. Brooke

When the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice), on behalf of the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), moved a similar group of Amendments in Standing Committee and I replied, he was good enough to say at the end that he felt entirely convinced by the arguments I had adduced. I will now seek to repeat them and hope that not only can I again convince the right hon. and learned Gentleman but also the hon. Member for Widnes.

This Clause empowers me to prescribe the composition of the London Probation Committee which will replace me as probation authority for the inner London area. It is not intended to wait and do nothing until 1st April, 1965. Clearly, as soon as the Bill reaches the Statute Book, a great deal of preparatory work will have to be done so that 746 the various authorities and committees will be constituted and ready to take over from that date.

There is no dispute as to the five sources from which membership of the Committee should be drawn. The hon. Member for Widnes argued that the order for London would be different from the orders made in the case of provincial areas because here the order was defined by Statute. But surely there is the same situation in each case, whether it is an order for provinces outside London, or this order which we are discussing? The order is required by the Fifth Schedule to the 1948 Act to specify the number of justices and the manner in which they shall be appointed by the justices.

The simple point at issue here is whether we should specify just how many members of the probation committee are to come from the various five sources in the Act, when it will be rigid and inflexible, or whether we are to proceed in the spirit of the Aarvold Committee, that this is something which might have to be modified from time to time. The Morison Committee did not specify the exact numbers, but said that if the lay justices assumed a wider criminal jurisdiction than they had their representation might be modified accordingly, and that the size and constitution of the committee would no doubt be settled after consultation with the interested parties.

I shall want to have consultations with the interested parties before making this order, and I submit that it would be wrong for the House, here and now, to decide exactly how many people were to come from each of those five sources. It would be preferable to proceed in the way indicated under the Bill, whereby these consultations can take place—and there will be ample opportunity for that—and then the order will be made.

Moreover, as I indicated a moment ago, this procedure, that is to say the procedure in the Bill, will have the great advantage that it will allow for the composition of the committee being varied from time to time in the future to meet new circumstances. One of those possible new circumstances is the one that I mentioned, that is to say, growing participation by lay justices in the work of the magistrates' court.

747 With great respect to the hon. Member for Widnes, I cannot see what would be gained, except to uphold in not quite the right way the supreme authority of Parliament if we here and now settled—and settled for all time until another Act of Parliament was passed—the exact proportions which each of the five sources will provide to the whole of this committee. I would have thought that it was far better to proceed as indicated under the Bill to enable the Home Secretary to have his consultations, and then to make an order. That order itself can then be replaced at a later date by another order if circumstances have changed, without the necessity for having to wait for a new Act of Parliament.

Those, broadly, are the considerations which I adduced in Committee upstairs when I urged the Committee not to accept this Amendment, and I repeat them now. I hope that the House will see their force.