07/07/2013 Sunday Politics East

leads the way in the government 's plans to reduce reoffending. A

private company is now paid by results to keep former prisoners out

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 2166 seconds

programme. I am Etholle George. It has been described as a revolution

in the way that we manage offenders. Forging the way ahead is

Peterborough Prison. Probation officers warn that the government is

gambling with the public's safety. This could be cataclysmic. The speed

at which it is being done is not good. There is no evidence that this

will work. Plus the referendum vote on EU

membership. We speak to a business who thinks we would be better off

out of it. If we are not in the EU, they will still want to trade with

us and their businesses will still want to trade with us.

Let us meet our guests. Richard Howitt, MEP for the East and David

Campbell Bannerman who as a Conservative MEP. Let us talk about

this bill that passed its first hurdle on Friday to allow a

referendum on whether or not we want to leave the EU. Our region has a

lot of links with Europe. Not only is it geographically close, it is a

big trading partner and the home for more short-term migrants than almost

anywhere else in Britain. Not surprisingly, a lot of our MEPs were

present for Friday's debate. Luton's Kelvin Hopkins got a loud

cheer when he said he would be supporting the bill. Many other MPs

for the East made their views clear. This is an issue about trust between

politicians and general and the British electorate, giving that too

many promises have been broken in the past, including Labour's

promises about a referendum when it came to the EU constitution on

Lisbon. Richard Howitt, is this a serious attempt to give more say to

the British public or is it about that bench pressure and pressure

from backbenchers in the East? was little over one year ago that

the David Cameron march through the same division lobby saying that this

referendum could be damaging. Mr Hague told the Commons on Friday

that a referendum would not solve anything and it would be damaging to

jobs in business and southernly because of that pressure they have

been forced to rush through this Private Members' Bill which as an

absorbed way to deal with the issue. They all went off to a barbecue at

the Downing Street to have their sausages and burgers. This is all

about David Cameron seeing a split Tory Party under threat from UKIP

and rewarding has Eurosceptic backbenchers! You represented UKIP

before you defected to the Conservatives. Is it about heading

off the threat from UKIP? I do not think it is. What Richard has not

said is that the great majority of the British people want a referendum

and Kate Hoey in the debate on Friday said that the majority of

Labour Party members want a referendum. It is not just about

Conservatives and this is why I have come back from UKIP because I think

a referendum is the correct way forward. Why can it not be a

government bill? The in-house referendum is officially their

policy but they have blocked it so we have to do it by a Private

Members' Bill. I think it is very important, it is what the majority

of people want to see and I am delighted by it. Thank you. More on

Europe later but let us move on to the pilot scheme for former

offenders at Peterborough Prison. It is part of a huge shake-up going on

in the probation service. As part of the government's reforms, private

companies and charities will supervise rehabilitation for

prisoners. They will receive payment by results if reoffending falls. The

national probation service will only manage high risk offenders. Official

figures stroll a slight drop in reoffending but critics believe this

is putting the public at risk. You are on job-seeker's allowance?

Making his mentor to help him with life on the outside, former prisoner

Michael served time for attempted robbery and smashing a shop and

though so he could go back to behind the bars to avoid being homeless. He

is one of hundreds of repeat offenders on a pilot scheme to help

them stay on the straight and narrow. If they had not been here,

where do you think you would be now? Prison. It is a vicious circle. I

would have come out and had nowhere to go, back onto the streets when I

do not want to be. I would do something shifted like smashing shop

window and get back into prison. More than half of all prisoners end

up back in jail. The government is banking on this pilot to work so

that it can be rolled out nationally as part of its so-called

rehabilitation revolution. Inside the Bregier, prisoners identified to

go on the pilot are talking -- are told about this new service and how

it is aimed to break the cycle of reoffending. The pilot has recorded

a slight drop in reoffending so far. The plan is for businesses and

voluntary organisations to be rewarded with payments if they

succeed. They can try to help people who are addicted to alcohol and

drugs. They will be given mentor 's for emotional support. It is all

part of a bigger picture. Privatisation of the probation

service, with companies like G4S supervising the 200,000 or so low to

medium risk offenders and the state-run probation service handling

the 50,000 most dangerous offenders. I think this is cataclysmic. It is

the speed at which it is being done. There is no evidence that this will

work. The government is playing a dangerous game and the public will

be put at risk. The risk should never be a contractual matter and

those other plans from the government to actually privatise the

majority of the probation service in order to fund these supervisions of

short-term custody. As long as you have people doing it for profit

there is the real potential of risk being compromised by financial and

business reasons. The danger is that risk changes all of the time and it

is very difficult to tell when someone moves from being a low risk

to a high risk. The probation service has expertise in that but

they will be working for people on the lower end of the risk and they

will not be able to recognise when that change happens.

Critics argue the plan changes mean that provision will be on the cheap

and that it is too rapid and the system is ill thought out. The

government is looking for the Peterborough pilot to champion its

case and said there is no going back, Spike Allam voiced in

Parliament this week that the Justice Secretary has adopted an

aggressive timetable. Earlier in the week, Andrew Sinclair

met Jeremy Wright, the Minister for Prisons to discuss the changes to

the probation service and he asked Mr Wright about the Peterborough

pilot. With the intervention of a variety of different organisations

and voluntary organisations with some mentoring, we can see a real

change in the way in which reoffending is being brought down

among that group, and that is very encouraging and gives us a good

indication of what can be achieved across the country with our

rehabilitation reforms. There is no extra funding for this project. You

are relying on charities and volunteers to do this work. Is this

the best way to deal with something that is a serious problem? We spend

�1 billion each year on custodial disposals. I think that money could

be spent better and I think it could be spent in such a way that we are

able to bring in a very important and overlooked group of offenders

with the highest reoffending rates. If we do that we will be able to do

a great deal for the tax payer and we will be extending rehabilitation

to more people. That must be the right approach. You are outsourcing

low and medium risk offenders. The others will be retained by the

public sector. Those in the now tell me that someone can go quite easily

from being able to a high risk prisoner. With so many organisations

involved is there not a danger that someone will slip through the net?

It is true that people can change their risk profile and we must

design a system capable of dealing with that. The public sector

probation service must look after those who are at a higher risk of

causing serious harm. If someone becomes of a higher risk they will

be transferred to the other except probation service. If the provider

dealing with them at the time... you sure this will happen? Yes it

will. The assessment process will be done by the public sector. If that

assessment changes, if there are warning signs or a change in

behaviour, we will require the provider who is dealing with them

more time to revert them back to the public sector probation service for

another risk assessment. What kind of staff will these private

companies recruit? It takes two years to train a probation officer.

Will this mean the job will be downgraded? Anyone who would like to

bid for one of these contracts and there are 21 areas in the country

where these contracts will be available, anyone who wants to bid

for this work will need to satisfy us that they will start with the

appropriate skills and training. No one will get this work until they

satisfy us in that regard and they will have to demonstrate to us that

they are fit to take on this work. This is happening very quickly with

an ambitious timescale. You want this in place by the end of next

year. Is this realistic? There is a sense of urgency and this is a

challenging timetable but it has been designed because the urgency

here really is that every year at the moment 600,000 offences are

committed by people who have previously committed eight offence.

What about that timescale. We heard the former provision of us are

saying at is cataclysmic, do you agree with that, David? You can see

from the results there has been a drop in reoffending as opposed to a

national average of a 16% rise in the offending. This is a successful

pilot, let us see how it does. I think it is going in the rate

direction and it could be a national model. Richard Howitt, fewer

prisoners reoffending for less money, a good deal for the taxpayer?

I know the people at Peterborough Prison and I have helped them some

time ago and they have done some really excellent work where on

literacy training for prisoners which can most often stop them

reoffending. Privatising probation services, these are the people who

the hole society, they are the people who monitor child abusers and

sex offenders and this will begin to G4S, the people who made errors at

the Olympics, they have completely failed. We should not focus on that

particular company, they are not here to defend themselves. We are

talking about a low-risk prisoners and medium risk prisoners. What is

the problem with that staying within the probation service itself?

Prisoners do not uniquely fit into different categories and we all

remember the Soham tragedy where one police force did not share

information with the other one. One of the real concerns about this

arrangement is that of the will not have the proper information sharing

and that dangerous people in our society may slip through the net.

you disagree with that, David? does not apply to serious

offenders. I would not call those serious offenders in that category.

These are lighter offenders, not in that serious category and I think it

is worthwhile overseeing this. crimes are you talking about?

Obviously not murder and serious crimes. Which ones? Burglaries and

so on. If you are a victim of a burglary you do not regard that as a

light crime. I am just think that is another category. What about the

aspects of training? It takes two years to train a probation officer,

are you confident the training as resilient enough? As the Minister

has made clear, there are standards and you will not lower them. The

idea that you cannot make things work better in the public sector and

public services as ridiculous. Unison or others should not be

dictating the agenda. We have got to make these kind of initiatives

because we are under enormous pressure. The Work Programme said

give it to private providers, they will do it cheaper. Two years later

they cannot do it and have come back to the government. That will happen

on this issue as well. Back to Europe. The Dejan's

Conservative MPs and one of its Labour MPs have voted for a

referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. If it makes its way onto

the statute books that could have that in or out referendum within the

next four years. A few weeks ago we looked at the case for staying in

the European Union. This week we have met some of the arguments

against it. Andrew Howard runs the Peterborough logistics company PC

Howard Ltd. They told us why he has changed his mind about staying in

Europe. One of the biggest changes the

impact on our industry is the upgrading of the emissions

requirements for vehicles in the United Kingdom. We are going from

Level five to six which means that for every vehicle you purchase at

ten to �15,000 onto the top cost. Bearing in mind the number of

vehicles we have that is a significant cost over the lifetime

of the vehicle. Not only as we as an industry could do without it, the

country could do without it. I just try to come out of the worst

recession that we have ever had and here we are actually putting more

costs onto the businesses and moving goods around the United Kingdom. My

view has completely changed. 20 years ago if you had been talking to

me I would have been in favour of being in the European Union and the

potential that could give us. I only see one we know, to be honest. I

cannot say negotiations working. There are 28 members, lots of them

are small members and we are net contributor. Can you see on a

majority voting basis that the jollity of them are going to vote to

support us? It does not work and I cannot see how it will work for UK

companies. Those who scare us with the stories that we will lose trade

are misleading. We are the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world

and the Europeans and the Southern Europeans were the market is

limited, are they really going to put out a market on one-sided? Of

course they are not. If we are not in the European Union they will

still want to keep with us and their businesses will definitely want to

take with us. All the time new things are coming into play. Whilst

these new rules may be well intended and in principle may be OK, the

timing is just unbelievable not only for our business but everyone who

works for us because we must get the economy running and, again, we

cannot afford to put barriers in place that slows everything down.

There are changes in lots of different holiday pay, things like

that. They all come into play and have an effect on a small business

when someone is off and the rest of the team have to cover it.

Definitely adds to the red tape and I have not seen any reduction in

that over the recent years. Richard Howitt, we heard some of the case

for coming out of Europe, what about staying in Europe? What are your

main reasons for wanting to stay in Europe? The idea that we should have

lower environmental standards that people should not have holidays or

take time off to have a baby, these are great advantage is that we have

for working in the European Union, and that is the shortcut way to

dealing with this issue. Of course, things must change if we are going

to continue to trade. But if we are going to trade with European Union

we will pay the price if we are not part of it. It always costs more per

capita so we will get all of the costs but none of the benefits.

know about red tape and legislation and that it costs time and money.

you have a heavy lorry running outside your road and the fumes have

been the in by your children, you want higher environmental standards.

That distribution company, we have to listen to them and I respect

their point of view, it was only a few weeks ago we looked at a company

in Norfolk that wants to export to the European Union and understands

that every exports to the European Union are outside of it, we still

must comply with the rules as far as exports go, so we will have one

company meeting high standards and one not. There are high costs of

that. It is �75 billion that we put into the pot in 2011 than the took

out, that surely is a good reason for coming out? That is 1% of public

spending. You can make it sound a large but look at the money that

central government spends. That money should be well spent at

whatever level. It is my job as a Member of the European Parliament to

make sure it is spent in Europe but when I was talking last Friday at a

meeting with the businesses and the enterprise partnerships in

Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire about how we will spend nearly �1

billion of European funding in our region... Excuse me, let me bring

back David Campbell Bannerman. did you make of that? There is a sea

change. There has been ace change in the attitudes and I think the

Referendum Bill as part of that. Personally, I would like to leave

the European Union and I have argued for that. Have just come back from

Norway and it is doing incredibly well. It has the lowest unemployment

in Europe. It is the richest country per head in Europe and it has a

welfare fund of 700 million dollars. Do we not want to be like that? We

could have all of those advantages and still trade with the European

Union. According to the polls at the moment, more people want to stay in

the European Union than come out, so if there was a referendum you would

lose. It depends on what polls you look at. We are trying to

renegotiate but if we cannot get what we want, then we can negotiate

an out deal in Switzerland and Norway. Switzerland is the third

largest trading partner in the EU. It has full access to the EU market

as we would, as Mr Howard's company would. Should people not have a

choice? It is a huge mistake for us to leave the European Union. Why go

down the road with something you disagree with.

Talking of changes, nowadays it is all speed dating and action on

Twitter. Deborah has been trying to keep up.

This speed dating in Norwich was for social housing tenants hunting for

new homes, so no romance in the air but signs of growth for the

Chancellor on a visit to Northampton. They are making signs

for other businesses that are opening new premises. That is

encouraging. Encouragement for children to take up sport, the

government is putting in �150 million as part of the Olympic

legacy fund social media whipped up a storm this week when the MP for

Harpal called for aid rector at Tesco to resign after he wrote a

message on Twitter. The tweet was incredibly callous and almost sick

because it basically says it celebrates the closing of the depot

in Harlow. The only way is Essex it would seem

as Sir Bob Russell as Heald as a style inspiration by another

tweeter. Good Sir Bob Russell catch on? It could be a welcome addition

to others or perhaps not! David Campbell Bannerman, would you

consider that sort of your card? really! Richard, what about those

Tesco workers in Harlow? Do they have the right to complain about

that tweet? Yes. 800 people losing their job and Havel, I was

devastated by the decision made by Tesco's. It has nothing to do with

what! If you are a family unemployed in Harlow today the idea is

revolting. Do you do business by Twitter, David? I do tweet. I think

there has been a mistake made here. It has come across appalling and I

deeply regret the loss of those jobs.