Offender Management Bill

I am coming to that. The letter is significant. It represents real movement from the Government’s position some time ago. On Third Reading the then Home Secretary said of local area agreements and partnerships:"““At the moment, one of those partners is the present probation board, which is both a commissioner and a provider. That will change and the commissioner element of that will go to the regional commissioner.””—[Official Report, 28 February 2007; Vol. 457, c. 1023.]" Clearly, on Third Reading it was intended that the local probation trust would not be a commissioner. I accept that there has been a significant shift, and that the present Secretary of State says that the local probation trust will be both provider and commissioner and will take the lead in local commissioning. My concern, which others raised earlier, is that that is not on the face of the Bill. Will the Minister think again? The Bill, with amendments, will obviously go back to the other place. Will he consider putting on the face of the Bill what has been said—that the lead provider and commissioner will be the local probation trust, and that the Secretary of State will, rightly, have the power to step in when what is done locally is not satisfactory. Poor quality service should not be allowed to continue, so the power for the Secretary of State to step in is needed. If that was in the Bill, someone could, if necessary, challenge that intervention, perhaps by judicial review. I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s letter, because it gets us, if not to where we want to be—there are still elements of the Bill that cause me considerable concern—much closer to where we want to be than where we were, certainly on Second Reading. I am still worried about the bureaucracy that will be involved in the regional structures. I am still not clear about who makes the decisions on commissioning. The Bill originally said that it would be the Secretary of State, the amendment suggests probation trusts, and Ministers are saying that we will have to have both. In fact, there are three possibilities—the Secretary of State, the regional offender manager, or the local trust working at different levels, with the focus on the local, which is where it should be. The question is who decides what is commissioned at the regional level and at the local level. I want the emphasis to be with the local—with the probation trust—not with the regional offender manager.