Offender Management Bill

moved Amendment No. 38: 38: Clause 3, page 3, line 21, after ““contractual”” insert ““negotiated partnership”” The noble Lord said: For the convenience of the Committee, I propose to speak to Amendments Nos. 39 and 40 as well. I should first make it clear that I have worked for much of my life in the voluntary charitable sector and am still a trustee to a number of organisations in that sphere. Perhaps I could say a brief word about Amendment No. 39. If we are talking about relationships between government institutions, the public sector and, for example, the voluntary sector, it is terribly important to understand the nature of governance in the voluntary sector. It is very important that the language should be clear to those who operate within its culture. While I quite understand what is intended in terms of accountability and the rest, to refer simply to ““a person”” is confusing for the voluntary sector. Its great strength is that it indulges in meaningful collective leadership in which trustees, for example, are individually and collectively responsible for everything the charity does, everything it says, and all its expenditure. To include words such as ““institution”” would be helpful in making clear what is really involved in a genuine working together. I have a few more words to say on Amendments Nos. 38 and 40. I am a little troubled that we are going rather far in a new concept of the voluntary sector—and, indeed, charitable organisations within it—having a primary role as sub-contractors to government with whom contracts are made because they can deliver, to their credit, efficiently, sensitively and more cheaply than the public sector itself. My anxiety is that we will throw the baby out with the bathwater. In our history, charities and voluntary organisations have been about a great deal more than that. They have, at their best, been about leading in social responsibility, creating, by their pioneering work, a situation in which society as a whole faces up to responsibilities and moves in. They have a catalytic role. It therefore seems to me that when a relationship is being struck in the context of the Bill between the Government or their agents and the voluntary sector, it has to be a negotiated partnership. The best NGOs—if I can put it that controversially—will not make bids simply to get contracts. They will make bids because they are concerned about work in that sphere, because they believe that they can bring additionality and that they have special insight and qualities to offer in meeting the need. It should be very clear that in undertaking a relationship, there has been a genuine dialogue and that the conclusion about the nature of the relationship is mutual and shared by both, with as few reservations as possible, preferably none. I referred to this at Second Reading, when I drew attention to a voluntary organisation with which I had been associated. It had been doing work in a young offender institution and its contract was to get people into jobs. It was marked under the competitive bidding system by its success in getting people into jobs, but it was concerned about the pressure that came to bear on it when it could see that some of the people with whom it was working were not yet ready and that a lot more support was needed before they could be shoved into a job, which would probably have been a counterproductive experience if more work had not been put into preparing them. It was going to lose points. It received absolutely no credit for the work that it did in counselling. There must therefore be a spirit of imagination, flexibility and room for adjustment in the way in which this co-operation is undertaken. There has to be a working partnership, and not simply a detailed contract, cast in stone, by which the voluntary organisation will be judged. There is a further anxiety. It is a controversial point and it is only right to make it in the context of this debate. Among some of the better NGOs, with a history of working in spheres such as this and with real concern, insight and experience, there is an anxiety about—how should I put it?—less reliable NGOs springing up, largely motivated by the concept of getting contracts to undertake government work. Due to their more limited and narrow approach, such NGOs might well be able to underbid organisations that, by their nature, will have a more professional, considered and thorough approach to what they are undertaking. That is why I have proposed these two amendments. They are obviously probing amendments, but I hope that my noble friend, with all her personal experience, quite apart from her ministerial responsibilities, will accept my point and be able to make some reassuring observations when she replies. I beg to move.