My Lords, I beg to move an Amendment that, at this hour of the night, might seem one that could have been moved on another occasion—but that is timing. This is a probing amendment to deal with a matter that is becoming important across many areas of justice, and Wales will return on a lot of Bills that are currently going through Parliament. I raised this issue at Second Reading and the Minister was kind enough to explain to me roughly where the problem is.

I think the problem can basically be described in this way: there are extremely good reasons, to which I shall come in a moment, for the devolution of probation to Wales. But the Government in Wales are anxious to have devolution to Wales, while the Government in London do not regard that as something they want to do—it is certainly not a priority—as they see their job as putting the Probation Service right first, whenever that may happen. What is very important is that what is happening is the subject of public debate, particularly because the elections are coming in Wales in May, and the various aspects of devolution are being highlighted by what one might call “friendly family discussions” between two different parts of the Labour Party: the Labour Party in Wales and the parliamentary party in London. It is so topical that, in fact, yesterday the research unit of the Senedd Cymru published a paper on this matter.

There are three options. The first is what I would call the Manchester model, which is a sort of dual commissioning for devolution to Wales. The second is passing executive responsibility to Welsh Ministers but maintaining control over policy in London; and the third is the devolution of both services and policy. There is a lot of information so, rather than trying to go through and explain it all, I will say that an extremely good paper by the Wales Centre for Public Policy and another paper by the Welsh Centre for Crime and Social Justice, through the Probation Development Group, set out many of the complex considerations.

The devolution of probation services was the solution when a commission that I chaired, which reported under the title Justice in Wales for the People of Wales, concluded in its chapter 4 that all penal services, including probation, should be devolved. This was an entirely non-political group. It included people well known in this area, such as Juliet Lyon, Sarah Payne and Peter Vaughan, the former chief constable of South Wales.

Why was it that we all came to the view that there should be devolution? First, and critically, justice in Wales is, for some reason, the one area of domestic policy that is not devolved. This is entirely irrational and is derived from the history of the way in which devolution emerged. In no other country in the world would you think that justice was so unimportant that you could leave it to one side and not devolve it with other services. In Wales, it is important that justice, and particular aspects of it, including the Probation Service, are devolved, so that they can work alongside the other parts of government.

Secondly, one has the benefit in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland—there is no one from Northern Ireland here at the moment—of being able to formulate policy as an integral whole. You can look at justice policy and probation policy, and you can fit it in with everything else you are doing. Wales is not allowed to do that.

Thirdly, Wales is rather different. In this respect, it is quite important that it does not have a big city like Manchester, London, Leeds or Birmingham. Large parts of it are rural; government services are organised differently, because local government is different; it unfortunately suffers from a very poor economy, with large areas of poverty, both rural and urban; and, of course, Wales has its own language.

There is a further reason. Research shows that the rate of imprisonment in Wales is higher than it is in England. Why that is so is not clear; it may be because of the way the Government keep their statistics, but it is an important issue. It is thought that, if probation services could be integrated more, one could address these questions.

More importantly, there are many in this country—and no doubt a number in this Committee—who would wish the Government to pursue a more enlightened penal policy. I have said on many occasions that it would be a great blessing here in England if we stopped sending so many people to prison. As my two predecessors as Lord Chief Justice—who are with us still—and Sir Brian Leveson argued, we should go back to levels of punishment and imprisonment that we enjoyed 20 or 30 years ago, because that is the only way we will ever have sufficient money to deal with probation.

I appreciate that there are very real problems in getting this done in England, but I do not believe those exist in Wales. By stepping along this road, we could pursue a proper, enlightened prison policy and use the money in a more sensible way.

Why is this not being done? There are two reasons. First, I regret to say that some departments keep the view, “Whitehall knows best”. It is a stain that runs through the entirety of devolution, but it is still a problem in certain departments in London. Secondly, I have alluded to the problems and differences between the Labour Government in Cardiff and the Parliamentary Labour Party and Government in London, and why they cannot agree on doing something sensible—but it is not for me to go into that. That is why devolution is not going forward.

I understand, from what I have read, that the model thought up for Manchester is to be imposed on Wales. I am very sympathetic to the position of the Welsh Government, because, faced as they are with the control over this being vested in the London Government, they have, in effect, no option but to agree to something that I think is contrary to the interests of Wales. There should be proper devolution—but that is how it is.

This is a probing amendment, and I very much hope that the Minister will be able to bring into the public domain what is going on in this area. I look forward to his explanation. I should say that this is an issue similar to the devolution of policing and youth justice, and to the problem we have at the moment with the assisted dying Bill. The problem of not addressing devolution in Wales sensibly and with discussion will, I am afraid, weary this Parliament on a number of issues where the differences of opinion between the Government here and the Government in Cardiff ought to come out into the open so that we can have a proper debate. I will say now that I intend to do that on each successive occasion that these issues come up. I beg to move.