I want concentrate the first part of the clause title, namely the abolition of local probation boards, subject to one or two remarks that may be more appropriate to schedule 2. The Government’s apparent policy is to reorganise the probation service  for the third time in a short period and to reorganise the structures that are provided to secure probation services in England and Wales for the public’s benefit. In 2001, the national probation service was set up and probation boards, broadly coterminous with the counties of England and Wales, were established to ensure local provision of probation services. Despite a number of criticisms at the time, that system has worked quite well. There have been difficulties with some aspects of provision in particular areas, but the system is barely five years old, for goodness’ sake, and the Government want to turn it upside down all over again. It is therefore unsurprising that the proposal is causing a great deal of controversy. It is the cause of concern about staff retention and attracting new people to probation work, and a matter of great political controversy, as I said on Second Reading and in earlier sittings of the Committee.

I take the example of my own county of Leicestershire, where the probation board, which operates for the city of Leicester and for Leicestershire and Rutland, is one of the best performing. It is well led and well staffed, and has hit more of the Government’s targets than many other local probation boards.

If Leicester and Rutland probation board is doing so well, why will it have to be reorganised? Why will the people who work within it have to devote as much time to dealing with the reorganisation as they do to the service itself? Why will the probation board’s limited resources from the Home Office—there is a 0 per cent. budget increase over the next three years—have to divert money and management time to reorganisation instead of getting on with the job?

I do not accept that the establishment of NOMS, with a chief executive, regional offender managers, and the bureaucracy, additional staff and expenditure that are involved, is a good thing, but even if I did accept it, I would still ask why those officers and that bureaucracy cannot continue to deal with local probation boards rather than the new probation trusts. Ministers have not thought adequately about the effective delivery of a vital public service.

It is very easy to sit in Whitehall drawing graphs, maps and plans and having the joy of being powerful and reorganising things without understanding the effect of that paper exercise on real people doing real jobs on behalf of real members of the public. For the life of me, I simply do not understand the point of replacing local probation boards, which have only recently been set up, with probation trusts, which are the equivalent of primary care trusts, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s understanding of the proposal.

We all know the financial problems that primary care trusts have had, and I do not need to be too much of a Cassandra to anticipate that under this Government’s management probation trusts may soon end up in the same parlous state.