Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow in the footsteps of the two noble Lords who have already spoken in favour of the Bill, but while it is a pleasure, it makes the task of someone coming third a difficult one because, in many ways, everything that can be said has already been said. However, perhaps I will be forgiven if I detain your Lordships for a short time to stress that while this is a modest and certainly a sensible proposal to improve the criminal justice system, it is also one that has an important dimension. We know that, within the criminal justice system, we have a huge problem with reoffending. We know also that the circle is most likely to be broken if an ex-offender obtains employment. The purpose of the Bill is to assist in the task of getting ex-offenders into employment so that they remain ex-offenders. That surely must be a worthy objective and one that I would expect both the Government and the Opposition strongly to support. Criticism has been made of the lack of action. There can be many explanations for that. We know that there is always pressure on the legislative programme of any Government, but this is just the sort of measure which must not disappear because of that pressure. Like my predecessor and successors as Lord Chief Justice, I have gone on record on many occasions in complaining about the amount of unhelpful legislation which arrives annually within the criminal justice system. This Bill is truly helpful to one of the principal objectives of the criminal justice system—to reduce offending. In those circumstances, this measure is an opportunity to show commitment to the need to assist those who seek to break the habit of crime to do so. I ask the House to give the Bill a fair passage.