Offender Management Bill

I am very grateful to the Minister for the way she has answered the question. I am also very grateful to those who have contributed. We have had an extremely useful discussion, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, to wind up the rather wider issues we have been discussing today. I would like to reassure my noble friends Lady Howarth and Lord Listowel that I did not ignore commissioning, because commissioning is how the partnership will be processed. I was not going to raise that issue in this part, I wanted to make the point that they were working together, and that that was in the method. There are ways that the actual business of commissioning has to be obtained, and I deliberately left that out. On central management and the direction, and fragmentation, which my noble friend Lord Listowel mentioned, that is one of the reasons why I believe there needs to be a central management structure. One of the weaknesses in the Prison Service, for example, is that there is no way to spread good practice. One of the most important things in spreading good practice is to have a system for doing so. From the chief of the Probation Service down through the director of probation and the chief officers is one way to do that. That is simple, clear and people know from who they will get direction. I am aware of fragmentation and it is to prevent fragmentation that I suggest that that structure should exist. That way, good practice will be spread. I was very glad that the noble Baroness mentioned the enormous success that some chief probation officers have had in leading local criminal justice boards. That needs emphasising. Indeed, I go further to say that perhaps that should be regarded as the default position. Chief probation officers who have acted in that role to whom I have spoken have spoken warmly of the opportunity that has been given to them and said that their delivery of service has improved as a result of the relationships that have developed as a result of working in that way. In that connection, I was interested because I thought that, at last, I had had an answer from the noble Baroness about what NOMS was. What she described was a system conjoining two services. I accept that; that is fine by me; I will buy that, because then we know where stands. But then she called it a service again, so I was back to where I was. I absolutely accept the need to commission according to need. Of course that is what will be done locally when it is determined what is needed to be done. Of course, as my noble friend Lady Howarth mentioned, certain things must be done nationally and certain things regionally. That is why, in introducing my amendment, I suggested that it was important that what was to be done at national, regional and local level should be laid down. Some things can and some things cannot be left to a lower level. In the amendment, I describe the general method by which probation would be delivered, which emphasises the local level—I do not discount that. I accept what the Minister said: that much of my amendment is already enshrined in other Acts, but I understood that one of the Government’s purposes in putting the provisions together in this way was to bring them together in the Bill so that people could know their purpose without having to rummage through to find where they were. All that I was doing was lifting things that I felt appropriate to the purposes and putting them all there, acknowledging that they all have another source. I am much comforted by the fact that the noble Baroness, representing the Government as a whole, said that what we have said will be taken away and considered carefully in the processing of the Bill. In that spirit, I am very happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 6 to 10 not moved.]