UK Parliament / Open data

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]

Those are matters of contract with the providers, but you can probe me further on that in Committee, when I will try to give more specific answers.

It does not surprise me, given the speakers list today and the range of experience and expertise on view, that a lot of questions have been asked. I hope we can delve deeper into this in Committee. I do not accept that this is not worth pursuing. Most people have welcomed the objectives and, as I have told the House before, we must accept that, in these straitened times, the department cannot call on other resources to fund ambitious programmes. However, we are spending just less than £1 billion on the wide range of rehabilitation services. We have heard about holistic approaches and making sure that we have buy-in from other departments and from local government; these are all important to

its success and I passionately believe it is worth trying. I understand the dangers but, in the end, you can spot so many dangers that you are paralysed. I do not believe that is the right approach. We should press ahead with this, let this House use its expertise to examine it in detail and see if we can put in place a piece of legislation that will give the framework to bring in ideas, flexibility, innovation and value for money in an area where there is a great deal of common agreement about objectives, as today’s debate has shown. As we take this Bill forward, our job is to see if we can tease out the practicalities so that it is also effective. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

745 cc675-6 

Session

2013-14

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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