Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I have a good deal of sympathy for the amendment’s objective. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for indicating already that he does not intend to press it to a vote at this stage, and that there is time for reflection. He is right that this is an important issue. I tried to explore it in part in Committee on 5 June—at col. 1100 of the Official Report—when I spoke to my Amendment No. 82. I wanted the Government to put clearly on the record how they would expect contracts with charities to be drawn up, and to say whether the same type of contractual conditions would be applied to both private companies and not-for-profit organisations. In response, the Minister confirmed that the Government would be able to apply penalties to third sector organisations if they failed to meet their contractual obligations. He implied that contracts would be basically the same for both private companies and not-for-profit organisations. Noble Lords expressed their concerns that treating private companies and not-for-profit organisations the same could have significant disadvantages for the third sector, both in the bidding process and later in the delivery of services. I returned to the issue on the last day in Committee, on 12 June, when we debated the commencement amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I asked why the Government had not yet put draft model contracts before the House and whether they would do so before Report. We heard nothing more until today, the first day on Report, when the Minister’s office delivered to us on these Benches and the House what appears to be a very full series of documents, in the region of 25 pages, on service specifications, drafts for consultation and service level agreements. I appreciate that there may be very useful and interesting information here, but it will not take anyone by surprise when I say that, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, says that he has not looked at ““too much”” of it, I have looked at virtually none of it because of the other amendments to which I have been speaking. It is important that we resolve the issue of how not-for-profit organisations are likely to be treated. The process of awarding contracts must be carried out in such a way that it does not put the third sector at a disadvantage and does follow the principles of best value in the commissioning and delivery of services. Both of those principles work for the public good and the good of the not-for-profit sector.