Offender Management Bill

If that is the Minister’s intention, he is going a very funny way about it. He conceded earlier that there might be a role for local communities through local authorities. However, he is saying that boards will be established made up of business people, and they will talk to other business people about what provisions they might make under a contract, and that they will set contracts that communities are not party to—the point made by the hon. Member for Walthamstow—in order to establish in those communities a culture of support for the rehabilitation and control of offenders. I am sorry, but that equation makes no sense to me at all.