Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for taking the time and trouble to make those helpful points. My impression, from discussing private prisons and visiting one, is that they can be very good, but there is pressure due to fewer people working on the front line. That is generally true. My understanding was that the eight-week induction is therefore recognised to be quite short for working in that sort of setting. Ongoing training on the job would ensure that we could be confident of the security of the work they do. The Minister has helped me to a degree with what he has said, and I will study it carefully, but I am concerned that the day-to-day pressures of fewer people on the front line with such a large prison population—the fact that the staff have to walk with the prisoner from their cell to the gymnasium or wherever—appear to be preventing that continual training afterwards.