Clause 2
Offender Management Bill
2:15 pm
Gerry Sutcliffe (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Bradford South, Labour)
I add my welcome to you, Mr. Bayley. We look forward to your support in helping us to get through the Bill this afternoon and beyond.
I also welcome the hon. Member for Hornchurch to his Front-Bench responsibilities. I do not wish to be rude to him, but he has consistently accused the Government of vagueness, generality and misunderstandings. That may be part of his style of operation, but I do not accept those contentions. We have been very clear about what we are trying to achieve in this Bill.
This morning, I explained that these discussions have been taking place since the Carter report in 2003. There may have been differences of opinion about how we are going to get there, but I think that people understand the Government’s intentions. This amendment is probably more of a probing amendment than anything else, but we will have a crack at trying to help the hon. Gentleman and see how we go. He is right to say that, under the current legislation, the statutory function for ensuring that sufficient provision is made for a probation service rests with the local probation boards. The purpose of clause 2 is to transfer this function to the Secretary of State to enable a greater range of providers to deliver services in a more flexible way which better meets the needs of offenders and communities, which are the main driving force that we talked about this morning.
The key is that the provision is about providing a better service, so subsection (3) does not require the Secretary of State to make provision, if it appears to him that appropriate provision can be made through other means.