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Offender Management Bill

I will come to the hon. and learned Gentleman’s first point—the assertion—in a moment. On the second part of his contribution, which was a question, I can say that the provisions of the Bill are neither new nor have gone undiscussed, in any way. The Government’s consultation paper on proposals for reforming probation, ““Restructuring Probation to Reduce Re-Offending””, was issued in October 2005. The Government response to that consultation, ““Working with probation to protect the public and reduce re-offending””, was issued in March 2006. The proposals for involving alternative providers, ““Improving Prison and Probation Services: Public Value Partnerships””, was issued in August 2006. The Home Affairs Committee held an evidence session on the matter in November 2005, and there will be discussions during the Bill’s progress. Many things could be said about the Bill, but lack of discussion is not one of them. At some stage, we need to move forward. It was claimed that I was making questionable assertions. I invite the hon. and learned Gentleman to tell me which of them was inaccurate. More than 50,000 offenders completing unpaid work in the community this year—does he question that?