Offender Management Bill

moved Amendment No. 4: 4: Clause 3, page 3, line 21, leave out ““Secretary of State”” and insert ““probation boards and probation trusts”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall also speak to the remaining amendments in the group, which are all consequential on Amendment No. 4. I am grateful to the Probation Boards’ Association and the National Association of Probation Officers for their support, and I thank noble Lords who have added their names to the amendments. We return to the major bone of contention between these Benches and the Government that we were unable to resolve in Committee. We firmly believe that the power to commission probation services should be in thehands of local probation boards and trusts. My amendments seek to make that happen. The government system puts the power at the centre, with the Secretary of State. That denies the localism that we believe should be at the heart of service delivery. In Committee the Government sought to reassure us by arguing that most services would in fact be commissioned locally by lead providers operating within a framework agreed with the regional commissioner. The noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said there was not as much between us as I thought. I have looked very carefully at everything she said in Committee and at the speech made by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor recently at the probation conference, but the gulf between us remains. The Government’s Bill clearly puts the power to commission services into the hands of the Secretary of State alone. He may delegate that power to others, but it is his choice, his power, to exercise as and when he chooses. There is no guarantee that he would delegate that authority, when he would do so or that he would do so in an appropriate manner which meets local needs. There is no guarantee that he will use his centralised power only if it can be shown first that local probation boards or trusts have failed in their own commissioning to ensure the satisfactory provision of probation services. All the Minister’s assurances about delegation by the Secretary of State cannot disguise the simple fact that the Bill vests the power to commission services centrally, in the Secretary of State’s hands. I was nearly caught out there, still thinking that this was one of the powers in the Home Office now moved to the Ministry of Justice. Let us see what powers remain at the Home Office tomorrow. Perhaps that will go too. Perhaps, like the DTI, it will go ““poof”” into thin air. Let us see what happens. We have redrafted our amendments since Committee to make our intentions even clearer. My amendments would vest the power of commissioning services in the local boards and trusts, but they ensure, too, that the Secretary of State would have a backstop power of commissioning where services would not otherwise properly be provided—or, of course, he could provide the services himself. I hope that that will meet the concerns expressed earlier on Amendment No. 2 by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. Our proposed new clause to require probation trusts and boards to prepare plans also contains a scrutiny and backstop power for the Secretary of State. The trusts are required to produce a plan setting out what services they consider need to bemet during the forthcoming year, who will be commissioned to provide them and at what cost. If the Secretary of State considers that the trusts will not make sufficient provision of probation services, he can modify the trusts’ plan. We believe our amendments give the right balance between the importance of local commissioning and the need to give the Secretary of State the backstop power to step in if things go wrong. They would not hinder the roll-out of contestability; they would empower local probation trusts and boards to commission services that meet local needs. We prefer to see local decision-making wherever possible. In the context of probation provision, we believe it is both possible and preferable. I beg to move.