Offender Management Bill

I congratulate both the Minister and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) on making sense of the alphabet soup of legislative proposals that have been put before us. I am sure that all hon. Members who have attended the debate are now much clearer about where we stand and the features of the proposals that we are considering. I start with the view that was articulated by the hon. and learned Gentleman: I am suspicious of untrammelled and unfettered Executive power and authority. It is increasingly a feature of the Government’s legislation that power is vested in the Secretary of State without as much reference to Parliament as I would like. There is particular cause for concern, because Parliament will not be fully scrutinising decisions taken in this top-down system involving so-called regional offender managers who will be imposing their will and that of the Secretary of State on localities that would be better suited to making such decisions themselves. I welcome the Minister’s concession that orders that would not have received any parliamentary scrutiny at all will now receive a degree of such scrutiny. However, it was extraordinary that the Government even contemplated the way forward that they initially proposed. The fact that they thought that no system of parliamentary scrutiny would be necessary was perhaps indicative of the mindset of a Government who have been in power for more than a decade and are more concerned about making legislation efficient for the convenience of Ministers than about elected Members’ ability to scrutinise the Government effectively. I have a bias towards proper scrutiny of the Government. Ministers should welcome the burden of that scrutiny, because it adds to the quality of legislation. For that reason, although I welcome the Government’s modest step in the right direction, I think that the Minister should be willing to take a bigger, bolder and more ambitious step by allowing the use of the affirmative procedure, rather than the negative procedure. If the matter is pressed to a Division, I will vote accordingly.