Offender Management Bill

I do not dare try to interpret what goes on in the Minister’s mind, but he will no doubt let us know in a moment. I want to pray in aid some other people’s views. The Howard League for Penal Reform said:"““The regional structure will prevent most voluntary organisations, which operate on a local scale, from bidding…The regional structure will threaten local relationships with MPs, councils and small groups…The judiciary will be cut out of the management of community sentences as they will not sit on the new management trusts as it would be a conflict for magistrates or judges to award contracts to private companies to run sentences to which they had sent people. This means that JPs and judges would not be accountable for outcomes of sentences, a bizarre and retrograde step””." Whether or not one agrees with the aims of the Howard League, that seems to demonstrate that the current arrangements in the Bill will not meet local need. I dare say that the Minister will say in response to this debate that clause 2(4) says:"““The Secretary of State shall at least once in every year consult such persons as he thinks fit about the provision that should be made for the following year for the purposes mentioned in subsection (1).””" The Secretary of State has form when it comes to explaining what he thinks fit, and consultation is not his watchword. One would think that a Home Secretary who wanted to consult, for example, the probation service, would have called in its officers, or even been to the annual conference of the National Association of Probation Officers or the Probation Boards Association to explain his views and hear theirs. But he did not. He went to Wormwood Scrubs, a prison, where he unburdened himself to an uninvited audience, that is to say the inmates—