Offender Management Bill

Although I shall be brief, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, will not underestimate my admiration for him for bringing forward this amendment. It has performed a valuable exercise in drawing our attention to the importance of charities and the work that they do. He will know from our debate so far that all sides of the House stand in admiration of that work. But we all still have ringing in our ears the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on an earlier amendment. I shall certainly wish to revisit the speech that he made in withdrawing his amendment, in which he urged caution in relation to the future role of charities. It is clear that there are concerns about the lack of a guaranteed funding stream, which is currently made available to charities. Sometimes they receive pump-priming, they just get going and then, without completing their task, they find that the pump-priming is removed, often for very good reasons. It is given to them in the first place only on the basis of their finding replacement funding to continue the work, so there is no sleight of hand in this; the Government make it clear from the beginning that that will be the case. Concerns have also been expressed that, when charities work in partnership with the Home Office, they are not always paid the full amount of the money promised to them at the beginning. That is carefully reflected in subsection (3) of the amendment, so I think that the amendment has some advantages. My concern is one that I know the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, will understand; that is, as soon as one tries to put a budgetary percentage into statute, suddenly it becomes the ceiling. Therefore, 7 per cent would become the maximum, although I know that that is not what the noble Lord wishes. I am sure that he would want some flexibility, with the voluntary sector getting more than 7 per cent if appropriate. I am sure that, at this stage, this is a probing amendment and it gives us an opportunity to debate the matter but, if the amendment were accepted, it might well constrain and not expand the role of the voluntary sector. The amendment is a very useful way of taking us forward. We will have to address in more detail at later stages what impact contestability will have on charities and on the deliverability of services.