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Offender Management Bill

I am sure that the Minister will take this list away and look at it carefully. I wish to make one or two comments about the list and say something about lists generally. My worry is that if I were part of a group of professionals in this area, they would think of half a dozen other things or come up with a different wording. My great worry is that a list becomes a job description. I should like to see a Probation Service that is released from many of these shackles and able to start developing different kinds of services to help offenders. Indeed, many of the very pertinent points that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has made about bureaucracy might not be helped by other measuring provisions in lists. I particularly want to mention paragraph (a) because its wording would do two things. First, it talks about ““working in partnership””. No one can criticise that, unless it excludes the whole concept of commissioning. We need to look at commissioning carefully. Secondly, the amendment mentions, ““at local level””. I declare an interest as the deputy chair of the Faithfull Foundation. We have had extraordinary difficulties commissioning a vital service to deal with sex offenders because the funding was all at local level. Where there is more central funding, some of those more essential services might be commissioned in a different way. Is that behind some of the thinking?