Offender Management Bill

My Lords, the amendment has enabled the House to have a full discussion of the role of probation in ensuring the proper punishment of offenders. I listened with very great interest to the debate, which, as has been said, we have had before and at length. However, it falls to me to set out again the reasons why we cannot accept the amendment. I fully understand the spirit in which it has been moved and the purpose behind the debate. There was fair reflection from all sides of the House that one of the purposes of probation work is to ensure the effective carrying out of sentences and that those sentences rightly include punishment. As noble Lords will recall, the probation aims were added to the Bill, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, in response to requests made in Committee in another place. She was right to say that that was the case and right to insist on that clarity. As the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, pointed out, the Bill now places a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the aims in ensuring the provision of probation services. That is exactly why that part of the Bill is there. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, stole my thunder, because I was going to quote back to your Lordships’ House the words of the Member for Harborough, Edward Garnier, in confirming the Opposition’s view. I rather agree with the noble Baroness that applauding an amendment is a novel practice in Parliament and might be considered by some to be a bit over the top. Nevertheless, Edward Garnier made his position very clear and we are grateful to him for that. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, picked out, the aims replicate the aims that currently apply to probation by virtue of Section 2 of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000. The noble Baroness is entirely consistent: she did not like it then and she does not like it today. They are intended to define the core outcomes and the core work of probation. Of course, no list is ever perfect or complete, but the aims are very easily understood and have served their purpose well. When they were added to the Bill in the other place, there was no suggestion that it would be useful as a task to reopen them atthis stage. More fundamentally, it would be most unusualif the aims of the Probation Service, one of the linchpins of the criminal justice system, did not,as the amendment suggests, include the proper punishment of offenders. After all, society asks that those who have committed an offence should, as many noble Lords said during the debate, be properly punished. That is a well established concept. It has been set out in statute in the current probation aims going back to 2000 and as part of the purposes of sentencing in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The concept of punishment fits into a wider context. Society also expects to be protected and expects offenders to be rehabilitated in order to reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend. That is why that is also included in the aims and in the purposes of sentencing. The aims reflect what society expects the criminal justice system to achieve and it is entirely right that probation providers should have regard to them when working to deliver the sentences passed by the courts. I also point out that the amendment is technically inaccurate. The enforcement of court orders is, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will understand, a function, not an aim. Indeed, the enforcement could play just as important a part in the protection of the public or in the rehabilitation of offenders as it could in the proper punishment of offenders, depending on the requirements of the order. I am grateful for what noble Lords have said in the debate. I hope that, having heard my very simple and straightforward reply, they will think again about whether they should push the amendment to a vote. We cannot agree with it, because it runs counter to all that we seek to achieve in the Bill and in earlier legislation.