Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

My Lords, I want to add to some of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Beecham on the make-up of the review of the Parole Board. My understanding is that at present Parole Board members can either sit as a single Parole Board member or as two or as three. They can be a mixture of lay people and lawyers. It is of course desirable that the more serious the case, the greater the legal training and the more appropriate the experience of the people sitting on those hearings. I also wonder whether the Minister can comment on the possibility of using lay magistrates to sit on parole hearings. Is this something that the Ministry of Justice is willing to consider? We have a resource in the pool of magistrates throughout England and Wales, so is the ministry considering the use of magistrates in parole hearings? The whole subject of the Parole Board is extremely important, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Beecham, and is something that needs to be managed very carefully, given the reduction in the resources being made available to it.