Question
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the announcement by Lord McNally on 21 November (Official Report, col. 823) regarding reform of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, whether those reforms will be based on the buffer periods proposed in Breaking the Circle: A Report of the Review of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, published in 2002.
Answer
The Government proposed a review of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act as part of the consultation on the Green Paper, Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders, which closed earlier this year. That review has now been completed and, as I said in Parliament on 21 November, the Government now intend to bring forward reforms to the Act. The clauses will be introduced as amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill in due course for debate at Committee.