Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2015
I am absolutely sure that the member is right, although I probably will not be there to write the history.
The point is that, although we can see ways in which the proposals can work well, it is not difficult to see the threat, which is poor leadership at local level, particularly where two people who think they should lead are permanently at odds—we have all seen that in public life. The bill does not prescribe a way past that and therefore leaves the threat very much in front of us.
Nobody has yet mentioned what we might measure as the outcomes or what might be achievable. In human life, some things are easy to change, other things are more difficult to change and some things prove to be intractable, because the amount of effort that would go into changing them would be disproportionate to anything that we would get out of it, so those things are not achieved.
Reoffending rates are apparently static at around 30 per cent. I do not want to be in any way negative about what people can achieve, but I wonder whether, fairly soon, we could do some research—I am always in favour of that—to work out what kind of reoffending levels we can achieve. We could put serious effort into appropriate places. That might be a bit of a postcode lottery, but it would at least allow us to see whether we can get from 30 per cent to 20 per cent or 10 per cent or whatever. That would perhaps let us work out that we can get to a certain point but that reducing the figure beyond that would require disproportionate effort. It would be nice to know at least roughly where that number is because, otherwise, there is a risk that we will constantly try to achieve something that will get more and more difficult.
Dave Stewart made the point that lack of housing is one thing that we know, statistically and from common sense, is likely to push somebody back into prison. I imagine that there is some correlation somewhere, although I have not seen it. Maybe we could get some figures on that issue and others to get an idea of how important they are so that we can ensure that the important things are being done and are measured.
16:20