Offender Management Bill

moved Amendment No. 55: 55: Clause 5, page 4, line 14, at end insert— ““( ) An order made under subsection (1) may not be made unless a draft has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 56, 57 and 59. My amendments deal with two objections to the drafting of Clause 5. The government concession in Amendment No. 129 in the same group addresses one of our concerns but leaves the other untouched. Clause 5 gives the Secretary of State the power to establish probation trusts. It is a wide power. He can establish a trust, alter its name or purpose and he can dissolve it. The area to be covered by the trust is not specified and will not even be specified in any order that establishes a trust. The Secretary of State can decide that himself, as and when he draws up contracts for trusts. Clause 5(3)(c) provides that the purposes of a probation trust may also include any other purposes specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State. That is another extraordinarily wide power. What parliamentary scrutiny is to be given to these orders and regulations? None. As drafted, the orders under Clause 5 are not statutory instruments and not subject to any parliamentary procedure. The Government have of course agreed to put that right for one part of Clause 5, but not the other. When the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of this House reported on the Bill, it considered that it would be desirable for the Bill explicitly to restrict the purposes which may be added under regulations to probation purposes as defined in Clause 1, especially in view of the negative procedure applying to the statutory instruments there. While the committee accepted that there must be an implied limitation of some sort to the apparently open-ended extent of Clause 5(3)(c), the Bill does not confine the purposes which may be specified to those which contribute to the achievement of any purpose mentioned in Clause 2(1). The inter-relationship of Clauses 1 and 5 causes so much confusion and difficulty in trying to read the two together. The committee recommended that if an express limitation of this sort were included in the Bill, the negative procedure would be sufficient. If the Government refused to do that, however, the committee considered that the affirmative procedure should apply. The route that the Government have chosen to adopt in their Amendment No. 129 avoids any express limitation but allows the affirmative procedure for orders under Clause 5(3)(c). In other words, we will now have the affirmative procedure for orders dealing with the purposes of a probation trust, but still, apparently, no parliamentary scrutiny for their establishment or dissolution. When the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee reported on the Bill in its seventh report, it stated in paragraph 23 that the Government’s memorandum suggests that it is appropriate to have no parliamentary scrutiny, "““as in due course trusts may need to be established or dissolved for commercial reasons””." The committee said that it was not persuaded by this justification, and I agree. It said: "““Parliament might well wish to retain some control over the establishment of a statutory corporate body which is subject to the control of the Secretary of State (who appoints all the appointed members–see paragraph 3 of Schedule 1–and has power of direction over it–see paragraph 14 of Schedule 1) and which will deliver essential services””." The committee recognised that the provision in the Bill might not be inappropriate but, because it had no information on the likely size and number of trusts, it could not make a recommendation. It therefore drew the matter to the attention of this House so that the Minister might be required to justify the lack of parliamentary procedure in Committee. That is why I have tabled my amendment. I ask the Minister to give the Committee the Government’s justification today, if they have one. I beg to move.