Offender Management Bill

I have a concern about my hon. Friend’s amendment No. 2. It says that the Secretary of State can make and carry out arrangements ““solely with probation trusts””. It is my interpretation that under the amendment it would therefore not be possible to have such co-operative local arrangements between probation services and servers from the voluntary and private sectors. Therefore, all the cases of good practice that Members witness locally would have to stop if the amendment were agreed to.