Offender Management Bill

I do not propose to go into the rights or wrongs of having the trial; we satisfactorily debated that on clause stand part. As I understand it, however, the Minister’s amendment is not in fact to have the power to run the pilot, but relates to how the Government may exercise that power. The amendment says that the rules under subsection (6) will be exercisable by statutory instrument. Amendment No. 113 has been withdrawn. That was my amendment, which was to ask the Government to do precisely what they are doing in Amendment No. 114. I withdrew it simply because at a later date the Government came forward with their own concession on the issue—not a concession to me, of course, but to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. In its seventh report, the committee made the point that Clause 25, the basis for all this, is very similar to Clause 48—long in the memory of those of us who were around then—of the Management of Offenders and Sentencing Bill, which the Government introduced way back in the Session of 2004-05. That Bill did not reach the statute book due to the dissolution of Parliament. Under that Bill, the equivalent rules were to be made by statutory instrument, subject to the negative resolution procedure. In the memorandum the Government produced for the committee, they expressed the view that negative resolution was thought to provide an appropriate level of scrutiny. We are fine with that. But this time the Government have introduced a similar power without having any parliamentary scrutiny by statutory instrument. They appear to have revised their view of the appropriate procedure, from what the Minister says, and follow the recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that the rules be made by statutory instrument subject to the negative procedure. I am glad to see the Government doing what the committee requested, and we support them in so doing. On other occasions we will disagree with the Government over whether they have adequately observed the committee’s report, but on this occasion they appear to have done so.