Offender Management Bill

I express profound gratitude to all those noble Lords who have spoken in this very important debate. I genuinely thank my noble friend for her powerful and in many ways convincing reply, and for the passion with which she has again expressed her own personal commitment to the issues about which we have been speaking. My noble friend said that a couple of the amendments were unnecessary. I think that this is partly what goes wrong in politics. She knows what she means; her officials in the ministry know what they mean; and we, having heard her, understand what she means. But it is clear—or the amendments would not have been tabled—that the Bill is not as explicit as the debate that we have just had. Given the way the world operates, people will not go back to Hansard in future years to find out what the Minister of State, in all earnestness, said. Debates are inclined to get down to what the Bill actually says. If, for example, the word ““institution”” is not necessary but happens to express what my noble friend says she favours better than the word ““person””, it is quite absurd not to replace ““person”” with ““institution””. That is the kind of almost professional conservatism and inertia in public administration that we were worried about in elements of the Probation Service. Open-mindedness says, ““If that’s a better way to express it, let’s do that””. I would like my noble friend, in the spirit in which this exchange has taken place, to go away and think about that and see whether she cannot meet it at Report. On provision, the same point applies. What has come across from this debate is that the Chamber feels strongly about the responsibility of the Secretary of State to provide the financial means for making effective the arrangements that are put in place or which have been theoretically prepared for ensuring that the resources are there to make a reality of aspiration. Aspirational legislation can become quite dangerous, because people become very cynical. What matters is that the meat and the mechanisms are there. From that standpoint, I again ask my noble friend whether she will not go away and think seriously about what has been said and whether, in the spirit of the creative open-mindedness which she has argued should have a place in the Probation Service, she cannot, within the channels of government, meet it at Report. In the mean time, and full of hope, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 68 not moved.] Clause 6 agreed to.