Offender Management Act 2007 (Consequential Amendments) Order 2008

We, too, thank the Minister for his very detailed explanation and particularly for the useful Explanatory Memorandum. I am rather new to this area and was not involved in the Criminal Justice and Courts Services Act 2000 and the Criminal Justice Act 2003, so I appreciate having the background information. We support the order, which is designed inter alia to reflect new designations to the existing architecture. In Committee we were told that a number of consequential amendments would be required since the probation boards would cease to exist at some point. We therefore recognise that this is more or less just a tidying-up legislative exercise. We welcome a clear statement that the principles of equality and anti-discrimination will apply to the providers of services and that this order makes that possible. We are where we are in terms of the existing probation boards going. We were not entirely confident that the replacements would work and we rehearsed those arguments but, again, this is a consequence of the 2000 Act so I will not go back over that area. Nevertheless, paragraph 5 of the Explanatory Memorandum refers to the territorial extent and the application of the order. It would be helpful to know about the territorial extent and application in Scotland. The instrument states that it applies to the United Kingdom, but we cannot see how it will sit with the Scottish system which, as we know, is rather different. Can the Minister clarify that for us? Apropos the expansion of the providers of probation services as detailed in paragraph 7.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum, can the Minister indicate whether it is possible for us to see the draft contractual arrangements between the probation trusts and the new public service providers of services? We really want to know how the arrangements differ from the private and third sectors in terms of the contracts that might apply to those. Moreover, while we are reassured that the changes from local to national and regional contracting will be approached cautiously, can the Minister elaborate on the timeframe for the rollout of these changes? The memorandum states that a cautious approach will be taken in moving from local arrangements, those we know and are comfortable with, to regional and national contracting. It will be a significant change and no doubt certain repercussions will attend upon it. During the passage of the 2000 Act we made strong representations that the voluntary sector should not be disadvantaged in the way that contractual arrangements are defined. Can the Minister explain how this will be done? Does he intend to consult the voluntary sector to ensure that it suffers no disadvantage when applying for contracts? Finally, other than these few points, we hope that the changes envisaged in the order will go some way to improving the architecture and operational efficiency of NOMS, and offender management more generally.