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Offender Management Bill

Where does this leavethe role of the regional offender managers? The explanation given by the Minister suggested a secondary, possibly even a minimal role for regional offender managers in this process—certainly not one that justifies the substantial staff they are getting. If I heard her correctly, I also heard her say that regional offender managers can be scrutinised, but I was not quite clear how that process will operate. Since that is the core of a lot of our concerns about the Bill—the degree of local autonomy and the extent to whichthe commissioning authority is being shifted up from the local to the regional level, and thus to the national one—it is an important point.