My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that very full explanation of the Government’s approach, and I derive a reasonable degree of comfort and assurance from it. I am not entirely convinced by the concept of the National Probation Service as an improvement on the more localised service that is
currently being delivered through probation trusts at local level. I was not a great admirer of the previous Government’s decision to create the National Offender Management Service either. The Minister and I are apparently at one about that.