Offender Management Bill

I am very grateful for the care and detail with which the noble Baroness explained her amendments. I do not think that my amendment in any way contradicts what she said. I put it forward in the first place because I was very concerned about the place of local area agreements in the work done locally by probation services. Frankly, I did not see that reflected clearly enough in the Bill and I therefore tabled Amendment No. 127. It was suggested by the marvellous Public Bill Office, whose work I could not praise more, that this was the best place to put in something which did not appear to have another home. The amendment has—rightly, I think—been grouped with those proposed by the noble Baroness because they refer to exactly the same thing. There is an underlying question about local area agreements which I referred to at Second Reading. One thing that concerns many people regarding the provision of probation services is what is done to supervise low-level offenders. One great government success in the whole criminal justice area is the introduction of youth offending teams run by local government to look after young offenders. For a long time, I have felt that one of the best ways of doing that—and one way of reducing the strain on senior probation officers, making use of the partnerships being developed by all the organisations and trusts mentioned by the noble Baroness—would be to establish separate adult male and female local offender teams, also under local government, so that the partnership was used to do the work which has been so admirably proved by the youth offending teams. The local area agreement would be the vehicle by which to set up those teams. The requirement on local areas to produce them would in any case need to come via a direction from the Secretary of State to make certain that it was a duty, and I suggest that it would come in exactly the same way as it has done from the Youth Justice Board to establish the youth offending teams. I entirely accept that the local area agreements would have to be subject to the agreement of all the players on both the delivery and commissioning sides. Thankfully, the machinery for that exists. However, I am slightly concerned about the targets for assessing reduction in reoffending, which we will be discussing later. Reduction in reoffending is a phrase that is used a great deal but, in any case, we are not certain what reduces reoffending. We do not know the results of particular programmes in terms of such a reduction, and I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could expand on that. I am concerned about placing targets on something which is impossible to measure in case it derails the very important process of involving local areas in the commissioning of local measures to deal with offenders who live locally.