Offender Management Bill

I agree with the Minister that the Bill was considerably improved in the other place. I agree with the Attorney-General, when she said:"““The Bill has a joint purpose: to improve the supervision of offenders and better to protect victims. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that what all have done in this House has been to that end. As the Bill moves back to the other place, we wish it God’s speed.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 July 2007; Vol. 694, c. 25.]" I also agree with the Minister when he says that the motives of both Houses have been of the highest. Unusually for such a contentious Bill, party political argument has been mostly absent, and we have had some good arguments on it. We have had some rigorous and intellectual debates about the Bill’s motives, and I hope that will continue this afternoon. That said, I shall now move away from that consensual spirit by telling the Minister that he should not describe the amendment as an Opposition amendment. We are seeking to defend an all-party and no-party set of amendments that were introduced in the other place. If he looks at the debate in the other place, especially on this amendment, he will find that Conservative peers—he quoted Baroness Anelay—Liberal Democrat peers, Cross-Bench peers and Labour peers went into the Lobby against the Government. The Minister is therefore seeking to overturn amendments that had all-party and no-party support in the other place. To reduce the argument to Government versus Opposition is to make a false point and devalue his arguments for resisting the amendments. I would explain the essential difference between the Minister and me by saying that the Opposition do not want probation services to be micro-managed from the top down—from the office of the Secretary of State for Justice. I should note in passing that, when the Bill began its life in this House before Christmas, we were of course talking about the Home Secretary. The hon. Members for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and for Selby (Mr. Grogan) might advance some collateral but different arguments, but we believe that, in certain circumstances, supervisory services could properly be contracted out to the third sector—charities, church groups and not-for-profit enterprises—and commercial enterprises.