CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Minister for Prisons and Probation
Crispin Blunt MP
Ministry of Justice Payment by Results Innovation Pilots
11 August 2011
Good morning and thank you for taking the time to come to this event.
Since I was appointed to the Ministry of Justice I have had the opportunity to visit a number of prisons, projects and organisations. On these visits I’ve met people from the public, voluntary and private sectors who are running interesting and original projects to tackle offending. I am confident from seeing this work that the creativity exists to bring real innovation to the delivery of these services.
I want to talk today about why the innovation pilots programme is important and why you should want to be part of it. I also want to set out an overview for you of the of the wider government reforms that are informing this work.
Before I begin, I should emphasise that payment by results does not in any way change our obligation to protect the public. The changes we propose to implement will not alter the fact that punishment – be it imprisonment or a community sentence - will be punitive and challenging. This certainly will be the case for individuals who are convicted of looting and vandalising in our communities in recent days. Our work here is adding to what we do by creating more opportunities for offenders to change their criminal behaviour.
Payment by results in the justice system
This whole programme, our ‘rehabilitation revolution’, is important and necessary. Every year around fifty thousand offenders complete a custodial sentence of less than twelve months. Around sixty percent of these offenders reoffend within a year of their release. In all, the National Audit Office estimates that this cycle of reoffending carries a societal cost perhaps as high as seven to ten billion pounds. This is unacceptable. We must, and we do, demand better.
The coalition agreement sets out the Government’s position on reducing offending. It says that we will ‘pay independent providers to reduce reoffending, paid for by the savings this new approach will generate within the criminal justice system’.
Taking this as a starting point the Ministry of Justice’s Green Paper, published last year, set out how we plan to enact the government’s commitment via payment by results. We want to shift the focus of all providers to ensure that they deliver the sentence set out by the court, but also ensure that they reduce reoffending. We said we want to pay for what works and by this we mean some of the income of providers will dependent on them delivering reductions in reoffending. Through this we believe we will make the public safer, while reducing the demand on the justice system and making savings.
We are committed to rolling out principles of payment by results by 2015. To learn how this will function in practise we are piloting different approaches in a number of locations.
Already we have pilots running at HMP Peterborough and in Greater Manchester and London. A pilot will start in October at HMP Doncaster and we are working on pilots in a public sector prison and with probation trusts.
We know that there is a wealth of enthusiasm from people working on the front line, from social investors and from organisations that have good ideas but aren’t currently involved in delivery. That is why we have such a diverse audience here today. We believe that the innovation pilots programme can bring this broad range of knowledge and experience into the limelight.
It’s an exciting time to be working in criminal justice. Right now there’s an opportunity to be part of re-shaping the way we do things for the better.
The emphasis on reforming public services does not apply only to criminal justice. The innovation pilot programme is part of the government’s broader reforms.
Opening public services to innovation
It has, for too long in my view, been held that Whitehall knows best. I can only imagine how dispiriting it must be for well-intentioned organisations to try to influence the government and come up against what must sometimes seem like an impenetrable barrier.
I meet regularly with colleagues from all sectors – public, voluntary, and private – and in many of these discussions a passionate case is made for doing things differently. The message I hear is loud and clear: We can deliver better outcomes. We can meet the needs of offenders better. We can do the same, and in some cases, better for less cost. The government has listened and is not shying away from creating a market for public service delivery that is open to this innovation. The Prime Minister sets this out in last month’s Open Public Services white paper. The document says:
“There is an overwhelming imperative – an urgent moral purpose – which drives our desire to reform public services…it is only by tackling the unfairnesses and inefficiencies which still exist in the public sector that we can play fair by all.”
We, the Ministry of Justice, have echoed this position in our competition strategy for offender services, also published in July. The Secretary of State, Ken Clarke, wrote:
“Top down Whitehall based target setting will be replaced by greater choice and power in communities, increased professional discretion and diversity of supply.”
And we mean to achieve this. Fair and open competition will benefit providers from all sectors by creating a playing field on which a greater range of providers can participate for the public good. The goal is services that achieve better outcomes, that are more innovative and are more efficient.
When the white paper talks of ‘playing fair by all’ I understand it as referring to both those who would deliver our services and those who use our services. The payment by results pilot programme in general is an opportunity for new organisations to get involved in service delivery. It’s fairer for you, because you can get involved and share the proceeds of success. It’s fairer for the taxpayer because we’re paying for what works. Ultimately it’s fairer for society as we will be encouraging innovation to reduce reoffending and to guide those sentenced by the courts towards lives free from criminality.
So, why should you be part of the innovation pilot programme?
If you are successful in applying for an innovation pilot, your scheme will run for up to four years; you will receive outcome payments for your successes. To acknowledge the challenge of delivery and the work required to design a successful project the outcome payments will be substantial. We have set aside up to twenty million pounds for this – so, for example, if we have two pilots each could receive up to two and a half million pounds of success payments for each of its four years.
We have set criteria which proposals must meet to be accepted. Perhaps the most significant of these is scale. We want the pilots to be run at scale in order to demonstrate proof of concept. While there may be a number of interventions that help rehabilitate an offender, we can only justify making potentially substantial payments if the impact is seen across a large group of individuals. What we discover through the pilots may form part of the principles we roll out nationally in 2015. For this reason, scale – and the analytical proof that this can bring – is a must.
This is not to say for a moment that smaller programmes lack merit. The purpose of running a pilot at scale is to ensure the accuracy of assumptions we may draw from a pilot’s impact. By piloting at scale we can be increasingly certain of the impact that interventions have. A large-scale pilot will be an appropriate subject for detailed evaluation and therefore will create better evidence to use when we are designing the national payment by results policy principles.
If some smaller organisations do not think they are capable of running an innovation pilot in their own right they should not be excluded from the delivery of payment by results. We want to see a diverse market for payment by results. If an organisation cannot meet our criteria on its own, we will accept – and we encourage - consortia of voluntary organisations, social enterprises and social investors to apply. In a similar vein we would be pleased to see proposals from a ‘prime’ provider that is subcontracting service delivery from voluntary sector organisations. We leave it to you to decide what is most appropriate. I hope that you use networking opportunities available today to make connections and to discuss the barriers you may face to participation.
Let me emphasise my department’s position once more:
· One: there is the problem we face – unacceptable levels of reoffending;
· Two: we have the high level government principles – to open public services, and;
· Three: we are proposing a solution- turn our focus to outcomes and to open up rehabilitative services to innovation and payment by results.
In the frame of the programme’s criteria we are giving you a blank canvas. This is a real opportunity and I hope you seize it.
Conclusion
This pilot programme is something I think is important. The programme is an opportunity for you to get involved in the delivery of criminal justice services, but it’s more than that. It’s part of a fundamental restructuring of what public services should be, a restructuring that has its sights on better outcomes for all. We want to see innovation and we want to see innovation rewarded.
After this event we will be accepting initial proposals from you. I wish you every success and I look forward to seeing successful pilots in action.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.
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