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§ Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab)Like most Members of Parliament, I believe that I work very hard: I have a surgery most weeks, I phone 30 or so people in my constituency most nights, and I have my "meet the MP for a cup of tea" sessions. After distilling all that experience and connection with my local communities, I come up with one key question that my constituents want answered, and that we should seek to answer: how do we restore faith in the criminal justice system? In tough areas and outer estates such as mine, that faith is often absent. People's experience of courts, probation, prosecution and the police is poor or—it is probably fairer to say—based on poor perceptions. All those who work in the criminal justice system work extremely hard, and I commend their work. However, they often appear to be working reactively rather than proactively when cases come before them, when paperwork has to be processed and when offenders come into contact with the various institutions.
So far, almost all the Government's—welcome—efforts in this field have been about internal processes. They ask how fast we can get offenders through the system and where the pinch points in the procedures are? All of that effort is valuable and of course procedures should be tackled. However, of equal importance, but largely ignored so far, is the need for a proactive role for criminal justice. Above all, we are talking about the new county criminal justice boards, as well as the individual constituent services themselves.
In the context of my constituency, that means encouraging the use of special payments by the chief constable to keep the beat bobby infrastructure staffed, up to strength and motivated. It means returning some of our probation services from being HQ-based to the estates where staff know the offenders, families, acquaintances and problems. It means Crown prosecutors seeing their job not only as being in local police stations, which has been a very welcome development in my city, but as systematically engaging with our communities. It means all those connected with the courts learning to interact with and support law-abiding citizens as much as they interact with those who are accused. That in itself is a massive culture change for those connected with the courts, who tend to look inwards to their procedures rather than outwards to the community that they serve.
I welcome the letter that I received from the Minister this morning, which indicated that magistrates may make recommendations about the type of work that offenders can usefully do under a community punishment order. How many magistrates know that? Of those who do, how many attempt consistently to link offenders back to doing good works in their own neighbourhoods? The incredible assistance from the ministerial team has been very helpful; the breakdown sometimes seems to occur among local practitioners, who may not know the motivation behind certain proposals and who often lack the guidance, clarity and direction needed to make the proposals work.
Criminal justice professionals have now begun talking to each other, which is real progress that I welcome. Certainly in Nottinghamshire, that process 26WH was evident when I met the criminal justice board on Friday. However, that in itself is not enough. The criminal justice system has to be reunited with its public. That is the next step. Having got members of the criminal justice system talking to each other about their own processes, we need to take that a stage further and get the system as a whole and all its constituent parts to look outwards to the people whom it is meant to serve.
This morning, I want to give one example of how the Government and MPs can help the criminal justice system do that. It deals with the work of young offenders doing community hours. That work needs to connect far more directly and immediately with local communities, so that those communities will see that the criminal justice system is working for them at their request. That will increase the likelihood of the community working with the criminal justice system—giving evidence, helping victims, building neighbourhood watch, and reporting crime. It is about building trust and reaching out to communities, and getting the payback from the community as faith is restored, making a virtuous circle.
Much excellent work is done in allocating offenders to useful work in our communities, such as removing fly posting, litter picking and erasing graffiti. It is exactly the sort of work that a blighted outer-city estate needs to tackle the environmental degradation brought about by antisocial behaviour. Some of it is done at the behest of the community, but—with the greatest respect to those who work immensely hard with young offenders—it usually happens in a roundabout, somewhat leisurely and occasionally bureaucratic way, which dislocates the work from the neighbourhoods in which it is taking place. The aim is to get the connections cleaner, tighter, faster and more timely. When people see something happening in their community at their request, it will give a tremendous boost to the restoration of faith in the criminal justice system.
We need to build on what we have and to establish something that is far sharper arid more direct. The community, represented by Members of Parliament, local councillors and, above all, by tenants or residents associations and neighbourhood watches, should be able to ring a highly publicised hotline number staffed by a named person to nominate suitable work to be done in the neighbourhood, and offenders in orange jackets should appear within a week to do it. That is the aim that I hope that the Minister wants to set local authorities and criminal justice institutions up and down the land. We must be clear about our ambition and our targets, so that work is done because somebody in the community has recognised a need for it, and that person can then see people in the street doing it.
I must put on record the tremendous efforts of local people in Nottingham, as it might serve as an example of best practice that the Minister could help us with, or it could be used to help people in other towns and cities. There is to be a dedicated post based in street scene, which is part of one of the departments of the council. That will be the link point for both the community and the work. That officer will be the contact point for tenants associations and others who want to suggest activities or identify problems; the officer will also be proactive in reaching out to those institutions to ensure that they are aware of the possibilities open to them to have work done in the area. The officer will then ask the youth offending team to identify young people available 27WH to do the work, and to organize sessional workers for the placements. The problem with having that officer located within the youth offending team is that such a person might not know enough about the nature of the tasks to judge whether particular jobs are within the capacity of young people or whether they are suitable in health and safety terms. The effect should be the same for community groups: they will have one point of contact, and the same person will be able to make the judgment about suitability of the tasks, and to liaise with the YOT. A pilot scheme will run during the coming school holidays—hopefully in the area known as Bulwell in my constituency—to test the links and communications and to ensure that teething problems are dealt with. The aim is to roll it out across the city over the rest of the year.
We have worked through some of the barriers that we encountered locally, such as health and safety issues, potential trade union concerns that needed to be allayed and child protection concerns. The work should be about putting something back, but it is also positive for the offenders, as can be seen in the comments of some of the youths involved in clearing fly posting. They said, "This job is the most useful because it is really helping the community," "We had someone come up to us and say that what we were doing was really good," "I reckon it will stop me reoffending," and "I might consider it as a job." One youth's mother said, "He feels like he's doing something worth while. His whole attitude has changed." Such comments, I hope, are evidence that such work is useful and may lead to other employment, and gives a sense of putting something back into the community.
If we can identify the tasks that mean something to local communities, we will complete the circle in which young offenders are doing something valuable to make amends, in which they see a purpose, and which will help them to gain the skills and confidence that will steer them towards work and enhance their life chances. That process will also build confidence within communities that the criminal justice system is aware of and responding to their experience of crime, and is not some fusty thing that goes on somewhere in the courts, where there are lot of bureaucrats who are not very welcoming or friendly. Instead of, "It is a frightening experience that we do not want to be involved with," people will think, "The criminal justice system came to us and fulfilled a need to make our estate better." An immediate link will be established, which will be vital to rebuilding faith in the long term. Most importantly, the "putting it right officer", if I can use that expression, would be charged with notifying the community that work was going on at their request.
Currently—I have broached this issue with the Minister privately—we have to ensure that residents and tenants do not know when such activities are to take place, so that the identity of the young offenders is not disclosed. I do not propose the naming and shaming of offenders, as I do not think that that is the way forward, but if the scheme that I propose is to be effective, the community must be informed about where work is going to take place, so that they can see it happening—so that they can see a timely response to their requests. I would like the Minister to consider that at his leisure— 28WH although I know he has no leisure—and to think about how we can take it forward. There has to be a balance: the community should be able to witness the work taking place without it being a punitive sanction where people take photographs of young offenders, or where other problems might ensue. The matter requires some further thought, because that immediate link must be retained.
I have another, smaller, plea to the Minister: that we do not baffle the community and simple-minded Members of Parliament with too much jargon. We can surely do better than titles such as the "probations enhanced community punishment scheme" in trying to get over to our constituents the opportunities that lie behind that mouthful.
Those who suffer antisocial behaviour do not draw any distinction between young offenders and adult offenders, yet I have found that everything needs to be negotiated twice—once with the young offenders team and once with the probation service. Will the Minister consider whether that distinction might be done away with, at least in this instance, or whether we could simplify in some other way to make a reality of the practice that we all seek?
I have raised this issue with the Minister almost since the day he was appointed, and I have always had a positive and encouraging response from him. I have also raised it locally, but have occasionally felt that I was being deflected and managed by those who feel that they, rather than the community, have proprietorial rights over the criminal justice system. We need to rediscover the fact that justice is a public service, just as health and education are. It is the property not of local professionals, but of the community whom we are meant to serve. I sometimes think that we are not as outward-looking as we could be, but that is a minor caveat. That attitude is passing, certainly in Nottingham, and passing very quickly.
A massive injection of positive motivation has come from the grass roots. Bob Uden from the youth offending team and David Hodgson from the council's street cleaning team are getting on with the job—they are not waiting, they are doing it right now. Many others deserve recognition, including Ken Beaumont, Chris Bailey, the council leader Jon Collins, Val Matinson from the city's chief executive's department and many other hard-working and committed individuals who want this approach to work and who have been getting on and doing the job. I am proud that Nottingham is starting to show the way and that where problems are arising they are being tackled rather than taken as an excuse not to do anything.
The Government must not only attack antisocial behaviour, but promote social behaviour, and this is one way to do that. Local professionals, and MPs first and foremost, must not only react to cases but be proactive in reaching out to the communities they serve. Communities must not passively have services done to them, but should initiate and experience the benefits of a criminal justice system as a public service. Yesterday, the Prime Minister talked the talk about the law-abiding citizen being the boss and being at the centre of the criminal justice system. The Minister knows me quite well, and he knows that I will follow this specific practical example closely in order to judge how real the follow-through is to the Prime Minister's fine words.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Paul Goggins)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on obtaining this debate and on the assiduous way in which he pursues these issues, not only in Westminster but in his constituency. His speech this morning and the information that he has shared with the Chamber are based on his daily experiences in his constituency. I endorse entirely the role of the Member of Parliament in making the connection between policy making at the centre and what happens in local communities. Unless we make those connections, we do not learn the lessons or make the improvements that we need.
Throughout his speech, my hon. Friend kept coming back to the need to restore faith and confidence in the criminal justice system. He mentioned the comments made by our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about making sure that at the heart of the system is the ordinary law-abiding citizen, rather than the offender, as has happened too often in the past. The community should be at the heart and we should be doing everything that we can to restore confidence.
I join my hon. Friend in his generous thanks to the professionals in his constituency and city who deliver the service. However, he was right when he said at the outset that the public do not always perceive their work. Sometimes they do not see all the decisions that are made and the programmes that are carefully put together. We have to change that and make sure that they see what is happening and can make a connection with it.
My hon. Friend argued forcefully for a service that is proactive, not just reactive, and I agree entirely. It is important that young people who have committed crimes and offended against individuals or the wider community should be punished. It is also important that that punishment, wherever possible, should be a form of payback to the community where those offences were committed. I agree that we have to continue to develop our probation service as a neighbourhood service—not as something remote, but as something that is closely connected with, and deals with, offending behaviour problems in the communities.
All those things fit together. The five-year strategic plan announced yesterday by the Home Secretary, which puts an emphasis on neighbourhood policing, the new antisocial behaviour prosecutors whom we are developing at local level, and the extra 20,000 community support officers are all important ways of building up the capacity of the system. However, we have to join them all together in a way that makes a difference and connects with the lives of local people.
I am glad that my hon. Friend has received the letter that I sent to him at a late hour yesterday. I was certainly interested in the proposal that he made in his letter to the Home Secretary. I can confirm that there is no reason why a bench that is in full possession of information about what is available in the community should not recommend the type of work that the offender should do. Clearly, we could not allow an order to depend on a particular type of work, because that would be difficult to organise and enforce. A fully informed bench would, however, reflect the connectivity for which my hon. 30WH Friend argued. The magistrates would know what was going on and, on behalf of the community, could impose penalties that really meant something to the offender and the wider community.
§ Mr. AllenDo magistrates currently know of that possibility? If not, would it be possible to send them a copy of the letter or a guidance note? I suspect that they are not fully aware of the possibilities in their hands, not least because of the pressures of work.
§ Paul GogginsI am happy to look into that. I suspect that their training will confirm that magistrates can make use of such possibilities, although that relies on their knowing what is available on the ground and being well informed by those who prepare court reports. However, I will take a close look at the issue.
My hon. Friend argued cogently for us all to make connections between policies, the agencies that deliver them and the local community. He captured the mood very accurately in one telling phrase when he talked about the need for the criminal justice system to be "reunited with its public". We should all share that aspiration and work to achieve it. What better way could there be of dealing with young offenders than enabling them to put something back into the community, make good the damage that they have done and improve their community's environment through practical enhancements while changing their own behaviour and attitudes so that they can be more successfully integrated into their community?
My hon. Friend suggested that members of the community or a community association could have access to a readily known local phone number so that they could put in a request for work that needed doing and get a response. That is a sensible and practical idea, and I hope that it can be developed in his area. I recently visited Cardiff and saw how the probation service had developed a graffiti-busting project. With funding from the crime reduction partnership, it had bought the equipment required to remove graffiti. Community groups need now only make a phone call, and the team can get out there and make a difference, with offenders putting something back. We need probation services to be fully integrated with crime reduction partnerships and other local partnerships so that people have the information and confidence to make contact. My hon. Friend outlined arrangements in his area, which I fully endorse, and I hope that they can be deepened.
I was interested in my hon. Friend's comments about the pilot project in his area. Indeed, I am sure that people throughout his city of Nottingham will be interested in it. He said that it would be rolled out in due course. I will certainly be interested to find out how it goes and I am sure that he will keep me informed, as he frequently does. If we can learn from the project nationally, we should do so.
My hon. Friend listed a number of people who are making a real difference in his city. I am aware of the leadership of Councillor Jon Collins and of his work in tackling the difficult issues that sometimes get in the way—the health and safety issues that my hon. Friend mentioned and the reservations that trade unionists in the city may have. Councillor Collins likes to cut through such things and try to provide a practical solution. With my hon. Friend, he can make a real difference.
31WH My hon. Friend quoted the views of local young people whose lives and attitudes have been changed by the work that they have done. What could be better than putting something back, learning a new skill, perhaps gaining in confidence and seeing new opportunities and horizons opening up? Amends are made for the wrong that has been done, and new opportunities arise for the young offender. The youth offending team in my hon. Friend's constituency wants to co-operate closely with him in putting schemes together. I commend the team for that and him for the work that he has done.
My hon. Friend raises an interesting question about how the local community can be better informed about work that is being done. There is a balance to be struck between ensuring that people are aware of such work and ensuring that the young offenders involved are not demeaned or exposed to ridicule, because that could subvert the positive work that we are trying to do to change their lives and attitudes. I am not an advocate of yellow jackets, which my hon. Friend mentioned, but it is important to brand the work that young offenders do. The local community should know if litter has been picked up or a piece of land restored by offenders and should be able to celebrate the fact that amends have been made and something has been put back.
My hon. Friend made a plea for limiting jargon and bureaucracy, and I endorse what he said. All this is best summed up by the term "payback", because everyone knows what it means. We should focus on simple words such as that to ensure that people understand that this is about restoring our communities and putting something back.
§ Mr. AllenBy accident, I headed some of my e-mails "Putting it right". That phrase seems to have caught the imagination of many people locally and they are using it. Whether we talk about "putting it right" or "payback", we must use words that the community understands, rather than talk about the community liaison strategic partnership review community offender operations programme sub-officer. "Putting it right" is probably a snappier phrase than some we have been used to in the past.
§ Paul GogginsIndeed. It may well be my hon. Friend's experience—it certainly is mine—that local communities are intolerant of young people when they are committing offences, but as well as punishment they want a real effort to be made to turn offenders' attitudes 32WH and behaviour around. Payback really resonates with them. If local communities see people putting something back to make amends for what they have done, they are happy that justice has been done and there is a chance for the young offenders to make progress and move beyond their offending behaviour.
I have been happy to respond directly to the questions that my hon. Friend has raised. Of course, all this must be seen within the wider environment of policy, the development of the Youth Justice Board and our whole approach nationally and locally to all these questions. That approach has been transformed in recent years. We have put the prevention of offending at the heart of the system and sentencing policy. It is important to consider other issues to do with welfare and, as we have emphasised, restoration and reparation are important, but the prevention of offending should be at the heart of everything that we are trying to do.
§ Mr. AllenMy hon. Friend has been generous in giving way. On the assumption that he is not promoted to the Cabinet by the end of the week, as many of us would like him to be, and he continues in the same job, will he consider coming to Nottingham some time before the end of the year to see whether we have been able to make this system work and whether there are lessons that he could transfer to elsewhere in the UK?
§ Paul GogginsIt is kind of my hon. Friend to talk about promotion, but I hope to be able to take up his offer of a visit. When I come to Nottingham, I will be able to meet members of the youth offending team. I know that 90 staff now operate in the team, including social workers, probation officers and police as well as specialist staff such as mental health staff, substance misuse workers and victim liaison workers. They all work together at local level to try to make a difference.
We have developed a range of court disposals, such as the reparation order and the action plan order. The referral order is a new and effective initiative used when offenders are in court for the first time and admit the offence. Again, we are involving the community in referral orders: 5,000 volunteers nationally serve on referral order panels. I understand that, in Nottingham, 64 local people serve on the panels and work out appropriate interventions for young people who have been in trouble. Again, that is about trying to change young offenders' lives.
§ Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.