My Lords, far from being tedious or boring, I found that an extremely interesting intervention, and I look forward to the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. My noble friend is quite right to draw attention to the Offender Management Act 2007, because the plans that we have for the probation service are provided for on a legislative basis in that Act. The Bill before us is not, as we have fully acknowledged from the beginning, about the reorganisation of the probation service. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, the powers to do that were helpfully left for us in the 2007 Act by the previous Administration.
Under the 2007 Act, the Secretary of State may contract, with a probation trust, providers from the private or voluntary sector, or he may provide probation services directly. The Secretary of State intends to use the powers conferred by that Act, together with his common law powers, to create and sell companies, and to transfer the delivery of a large proportion of the probation service to the private sector via contractual arrangements involving the formation and sale of a number of new community rehabilitation companies. That is the basis of the approach.
Of course, this has not come out of a blue sky. The department’s rehabilitation reforms, like any other major government project, are subject to additional scrutiny by the Cabinet Office and Her Majesty’s Treasury, and through the Government’s Major Projects Review Group. Her Majesty’s Treasury approval is required for projects outside Parliament’s delegated authority, and the programme team is finding this full engagement of particular use in learning from the experience of other government departments.
Therefore, I do not accept that this matter has not received very thorough preparation, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. This major piece of legislation is being managed quite properly. Ultimately, after all the rhetoric, the sting was in the tail. The noble Lord does not want this Bill to proceed and neither does the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. That is good opposition politics.