Public Protection

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his broad welcome to our proposals. I appreciate his constructive approach, and I shall deal with his points in the order in which he raised them. I have said that I will publish proposals on the violent offender order before the summer because I want precisely to evaluate the way in which the sex offender regime has worked and to examine any good points. I assure the hon. Gentleman that a proper evaluation will take place. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that early release should be reviewed in the context of the proposals, and I am discussing the issue with the Parole Board and others. He will recall that the system that we have established was an attempt to focus on the greatest danger to the community, which is our precise ambition for the five-year strategy and the contestability agenda. This may be asking too much, but perhaps he will consider constructively our proposals in that area, which are designed to ensure that the professionalism of the probation service is focused on the areas in which it can be most accurately applied. On costs and prison overcrowding, which are extremely serious issues, more resources are needed for training and support on the difficult decisions that highly professional staff have to take—in general, staff make those decisions very successfully. Within the probation and prison system, which needs to be well led and managed, we need to focus existing resources on the most challenging cases, which will require some of the changes that I have described. A range of different measures is needed to address those questions rather than simply more resources.