Clause 2
Offender Management Bill
2:15 pm
Gerry Sutcliffe (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Bradford South, Labour)
The hon. and learned Member for Harborough has wholly misunderstood our intentions. At the moment, the powers lie with the probation boards, and the Secretary of State will take those powers to give them to commissioners. I am sure we will discuss in great detail later in the Bill whether that is centralisation, whether that is privatisation and what the approach should be in local areas. I certainly want to see local communities involved and, as I said this morning, it is clear that we need to get ownership by local communities of how we deal with reoffending and its impact on them and the wider country. It is about changing the relationship from the current monopoly held by local probation boards into the Secretary of State having the means to get the provision.
The Secretary of State will not reach his conclusions in isolation. We will shortly discuss the commissioners’ roles, who the commissioners will be required to consult and who they have already been consulting. There is a great deal of evidence from the consultations with the regional offender managers, and we will get on to that matter later in the debate.
The point of subsection (3) is to ensure that the Secretary of State is not required to take action in circumstances where it is unnecessary for him to do so. Just as we do not want him to have to take action where appropriate alternative arrangements are already in place, so we do not want him to have to take action in circumstances where such arrangements will be made, because we believe that that would be a waste of resources, which could create a possible duplication of effort and deter alternative provision from being made. The amendment would restrict flexibility and local autonomy and force the Secretary of State to intervene. We do not believe that any of that is desirable, and it would not meet the hon. Gentleman’s requirements. Given that we are going to get on to a wider discussion about the roles of the commissioners, I hope that that explanation is acceptable and that he will withdraw his amendment.