Offender Management Bill

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, I, too, thank the noble and learned Baroness and the noble Lord for the way in which they have conducted the Bill. It would be quite wrong not to say, too, that we have been enormously impressed by the way in which the noble and learned Baroness has handled the most immense legislative burden over the past few years. We wish her well in her new appointment. While we may not have agreed on everything on this and previous Bills, I am conscious that we have shared the same motivation; namely, that we have been all about the improvement of the management of offenders and the speedy introduction of deliverable change where it is appropriate. During our consideration of this Bill, we have covered an immense amount of ground but, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, a great deal has not been covered in the management of offenders. We mentioned some of the issues during the debate. I agree about the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny. I mention that in the context of the regulatory impact assessment, which I did not think had been carried. We send the Bill back to another place with two important amendments in respect of local commissioning and delaying implementation until further consideration has been given. In this connection, I hope that the attention of the other place will be drawn to the recently published annual report by the Chief Inspector of Probation, in which he says that a review of certain matters is under way in the Ministry of Justice and, in particular, that end-to-end supervision of offenders should be sensibly implemented because the Government’s goal of co-ordinated, continuous management of offenders risks being undeliverable. It was in that context and the context of the further study of prisons by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, as well as against the background of frozen budgets in the prison and probation services and the rising numbers of people in prison, that I felt that consideration should be given to the impact of all the legislation in the field, not only this legislation. In connection with that, I am enormously encouraged by the response of the Ministry of Justice and, in particular, of the new Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, with whom I had a very encouraging meeting last week. We discussed disability and he has assured me that the Disability Discrimination Act applies to both staff and prisoners. He has written to me accordingly and he has undertaken to include the Department of Health in discussions on diversity, because it has responsibility for the primary care trusts, which are responsible for its provision. We have covered an enormous amount of ground in the Bill and I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for the way in which she has taken it through. I hope that the other place will take into consideration not only what has been said but what has been going on around the Bill. That all needs to be taken into consideration in the proper management of offenders, which is something that affects us all.