Offender Management Bill

The Minister was right to anticipate my support for government Amendment No. 129. That means, of course, that automatically my Amendments Nos. 55, 56 and 57 fall. So I address myself now solely to my concerns about the issues behind Amendment No. 59 and the lack of parliamentary scrutiny for the establishment and/or dissolution of trusts. The Minister pointed out that the Government intend the introduction of trusts to be carried out in a cautious and measured fashion. She has put a little more flesh on the bones, as she put it, without the analogy becoming in the slightest bit obese; the Committee would like to see a little more fat and information on these matters. She has taken us a little way down the line but in a way that makes me even more concerned about the lack of parliamentary scrutiny for the establishment and, particularly, the dissolution of trusts when that might be necessary. My real concern was to ask the Government for their justification in treating this aspect differently. The Minister repeated the rather brief argument that it was for commercial reasons. That is not a satisfactory answer. Parliament has a proper part to play in such scrutiny. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, prayed in aid what happens in primary care trusts. He was right not to push the analogy too far because we have been exploring in great detail over the first three days in Committee how we hope contestability might work within providers and probation trusts and we have not compared it like with like to the National Health Service. There are significant differences.