Offender Management Bill

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for what he said. My reason for not rising immediately to support the noble Lord, Lord Judd, is that both his amendments, to which I have added my name, lead perfectly into my Amendment No. 5, which is coming, and I was going to delay my comments until then. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, mentioned end-to-end offender management. Throughout the lead-up to this Bill and previously, this has been an area where we have tried to tease out of the Government and officials in the National Offender Management Service what they actually mean. How many people are involved? How many offenders will each manager deal with? What is the implication for serving probation officers of putting this additional task on them? How will the management be conducted over long periods and short periods when people are rapidly moving within the system? What we have never heard about is what is popularly referred to in government circles as a regulatory impact assessment. Has there been an assessment of the introduction of end-to-end offender management to work out the practical implications for the Probation Service in terms of numbers, time, cost and so on? As my noble friend Lord Northbourne said, everyone agrees with the principle. Absolutely—it is a self-evident requirement, but the devil is in the detail. We have heard the rhetoric, but we have not heard the detail. I am extremely glad that the noble Lord has tabled his amendment, because I hope that the Government will then have to carry out a regulatory impact assessment to ensure that we understand what is implied.