Offender Management Bill

I shall speak to my Amendments Nos. 31, 32, 72, 76, 80 and 81 in this group. Noble Lords will notice that AmendmentNo. 72 is an amendment to government Amendment No. 70. I appreciate that the Government’s amendments are intended to meet the commitment given not only by the Minister at Second Reading in this House, but by her right honourable friend Mr Reid at Third Reading in another place in response to amendments tabled by my right honourable and honourable friends. Those amendments were debated in Committee and on Report at some length and would require the probation trusts to prepare annual plans. I recognise fully that the government amendment makes improvements to the Bill, particularly because subsection (5) of the Government’s proposed new clause on plans requires a non-trust provider of probation services to prepare plans as well as the trusts. However, that provision would not be needed if the Committee were at some future stage in our debates on the Bill to decide to agree to my Amendment No. 48A, which would introduce a new clause after Clause 3. The core government amendment is Amendment No. 70, which introduces a new clause after Clause 6. When I was trying to look at this group of amendments, they became worse than clear as mud, but I shall try to plough on through the mud. My Amendment No. 72 is probing and was always intended to be. The Minister will be glad to hear that I shall go very quietly tonight, not just because it is getting late, but because the commitment that she gave on consultation is an assurance which it would be churlish of me to turn down. I accept what she said on that. It will be important for the Committee to consider carefully the effect of the Minister’s amendments on the way in which this Bill will operate. The changes in drafting will have a substantial impact on how we may wish to address some of our arguments about the importance of local commissioning as opposed to commissioning by the Minister. By accepting the Minister’s amendments today, I am not in any way jeopardising my ability to bring forward amendments, which I may wish to press, at a later stage of the Bill. I ensured that my own Amendment No. 48A, which would require trusts to prepare plans, was in a different group. I was advised that this would make sure that the Committee could debate it today even if it accepted the Government’s amendment. This is where the procedure becomes as clear as mud. I accept that the Minister has brought forward these amendments in good faith. Consultation is important. She said that lists were invidious and that there was a lack of consensus as to who should be consulted. I noticed that she then made her own list and included Welsh Ministers as statutory consultees. All are equal, but some are more equal than others. The Welsh have got their day, but none of them appears to be in the Chamber to celebrate. They have made it into the list, but others have not. I do not propose to press my own amendment regarding a list. I shall simply put on the record an explanation why, for example, I have two amendments in two places on the Marshalled List on the same issue. It is simply because I wanted to make sure technically that I addressed both the Bill and the Minister’s amendments. My Amendment No. 32 and the final paragraph of Amendment No. 72 would require the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on the outcome of the consultation that had been undertaken, thereby ensuring that the Secretary of State would pay more than lip service to any consultation procedure. The Minister will recall that we were scathing about the way in which the Home Office dealt with the consultation document Restructuring Probation to Reduce Re-Offending. Amendment No. 76 would remove subsection (4) of the new clause, which gives the Secretary of State the power to require a probation trust to produce annual plans where he has entered contractual agreements with the trust under Clause 3(2). That part of Clause 3 gives the Secretary of State the power to make any commissioning arrangements for probation services with anyone whom he chooses. Amendments Nos. 80 and 81 are merely consequential on Amendment No. 76. I cannot resist saying at this stage that when the Minister said that Amendments Nos. 29 and 33 were consequential, I think that she meant paving—cart before horse, and all that. I tabled Amendment No. 76 to signpost the fact that this is one issue to which we shall need to turn our attention when we debate the core issue of who should be the commissioner of services and where the power should be vested. I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the amendments. We shall not necessarily accept all of them at later stages but we accept them today.