Lord Foster of Bath (LD)

My Lords, in moving my Amendment 88, I will also speak to the other amendments in this group. Before I do so, it is important for us to understand why the various proposers have thought them necessary. In one way or another, most address a concern about the existing capacity within the MoJ and the very big concern that there will be insufficient capacity to deal with the new responsibilities arising from the Bill. Most, but not all, of the amendments focus on staffing in the Prison Service and the Probation Service. Damning concerns about staffing levels in those two services regularly appear in the annual reports of the prisons and probation inspectorates. In an earlier debate, I mentioned the concern about prison officer numbers and pointed out that, as the prison population has risen, the number of prison officers has declined. Prison officers are leaving at an alarming rate—17% each year—and half of them do so after less than one year in service. On the Probation Service, Ministers themselves have acknowledged that they have inherited a service “under immense pressure”, and the Chief Inspector of Probation has referred to “chronic understaffing”. The Bill envisages more sanctioned early releases from prisons and an almost doubling of the number of people being tagged. That means more people to be supervised and therefore more work for probation officers. Currently, approximately 7,000 officers are doing this existing supervision work, and that number is considered inadequate. As one senior probation officer put it, when talking about things going wrong: “It’s infuriating when some of us are being told it’s our fault we’re not doing enough and that we need to up our game, but actually the workload is sky high”. I will give an example of why this really matters. Just one year ago, 73 out of every 100 released prisoners were recalled to prison. By June this year, the recall population had reached 13,538. That is the equivalent of nine prisons, costing £3.5 billion a year. Most are recalled not for new crimes but for failing to comply with their licence conditions. That is often because, frankly, they have no home or income, and they are supervised by an overworked probation officer. Preparation for release is minimal, and support afterwards is thinner still. The easy solution for these overworked probation officers, when facing licence breaches, is to get the offenders off their books and avoid any comeback if something goes wrong by taking the risk-averse route and simply sending them back to prison. That is the situation now, but some research has indicated that, to effectively manage existing case loads and the new ones that will arise from the Bill, an extra 10,000 probation officers will be needed. The Minister will talk about how we can use new technology to help. He is absolutely right, and we fully support him, but that alone will not resolve the situation. He will also talk about the 1,000 additional probation officers already recruited and the 1,300 additional officers the Government hope to recruit. He will talk about the £700 million over four years of extra funds for the Probation Service. We do not yet know how that money is to be allocated, but it is certain that not all of it will be spent on new staff. It is my contention that combining these measures will certainly help and certainly be welcome, but they seem unlikely to meet current and new demands combined. As I said at Second Reading, I therefore fear that we will not have the means in either the Prison Service or the Probation Service to achieve the ends. That is the context of the amendments in this group, which fall into two categories. The first consists of amendments which call for regular reports on capacity issues. The second consists of amendments that, in effect, would prevent the main measures in the Bill being enacted until proof of adequate capacity to deliver them, or that they will deliver what is intended, is provided. In the first category, reports on capacity issues, my Amendment 88 serves as a clear illustration. It would require an annual report from the Lord Chancellor on prison population predictions, projections of the supply of new prison places, information on Prison Service staffing and information on Probation Service staffing and case loads. Such reports have been produced from time to time. Indeed, there was one last year, but that report had something additional within in it. It included a very specific commitment by this Government that there would be a statutory requirement for similar reports on an annual basis. I confess that I was surprised not to see that commitment appear in the Bill. I hope the Minister will assure me that the Government are still committed to this type of annual capacity report on a statutory basis, that its failure to be included in the Bill was an oversight, and that he is grateful to me for giving them the opportunity to rectify the oversight. I hope, therefore, that he will support the amendment. I hope the Minister will look equally favourably on other amendments in this group calling for reports. My noble friend Lady Hamwee has Amendment 110ZB, on an annual report on the availability in prisons of education and vocational provision, and the training of staff to deliver them. My noble friend Lady Hamwee, in conjunction with my noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, has Amendment 139A, on a report on resources for the Probation Service, including regional resources, and their Amendment 153 is on a report about the operability of the driving prohibition provisions in the Bill. My own Amendment 110ZB is on an annual report looking specifically at Probation Service resources to implement electronic monitoring or tagging provisions.