Offender Management Bill

I, too, support this important and helpful amendment. We are trying to move from management-speak to organisation-speak—the noble Baroness mentioned organograms. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, the amendment would establish the need for an overarching board for offender management, which would bring coherence and comprehensibility, currently lacking, to the structure which the Bill envisages. Most importantly, the board would include in its membership both the director-general of the Prison Service and the chairman of the Youth Justice Board, both of whom represent two key bodies which have virtually no place in the Bill as it is drafted, which is a major omission. When so many offenders, both young and not-so-young, are detained in prison for at least part of a sentence, it must be axiomatic that those who are responsible for them while inside have a place at the table and a part to play in planning for them on release into the community. This applies above all to the most crucial moment of transition, when even the best-laid resettlement plans can unravel, as they frequently do when the prison and probation services do not communicate as well as they could or should, and even sometimes when they do. Those two people must have a seat at the table.