Today we are publishing the Government's response to the consultation paper, Restructuring Probation to Reduce Re-offending, published on 20 October 2005.

On 9 February 2006 we set out our Five Year Strategy for Protecting the Public and Reducing Re-offending. At the heart of our strategy is improved public safety and the reduction of re-offending through the development of more effective end-to-end management of offenders, throughout the sentence. Every offender will have a named offender manager who will be responsible for making sure that they are both punished and properly rehabilitated, and that the public are protected. They will manage the offender, often from before they are sentenced, throughout any prison sentence, and then during time on a community sentence or on licence in the community.

Regional offender managers need to be able to fund the delivery of specified contracts based on evidence of what reduces re-offending rather than leaving the prison and probation services to decide what to deliver. The current legal framework allows the Home Office to commission prison services—but not for probation. This asymmetry is one of the biggest barriers to realising our vision of joining up offender management from custody into the community. We will therefore be bringing forward legislation to improve the position.

During the consultation period we received 748 written replies and met a range of key stakeholders. The document we are publishing today summarises those replies and explains how they will be taken into account as we develop our proposals to reduce re-offending and increase public safety.

We will introduce legislation to give effect to these changes as soon as parliamentary time allows.

Copies of the report are being placed in the Libraries.