---

Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this amendment, because I did not think that there was anything contentious in it until I heard my noble friend's speech. In my vision, these things work together. It is one vision: the vision of a service where the best wins out for those for whom the service is there—as the noble Baroness said, for those to whom it is delivered, those who need to enjoy a better life and not go back to prison. I think that those two things can go hand-in-hand. I am sure that Members on the Conservative Benches—I am careful not to say the Benches opposite, even though they sit opposite, because I am a Cross-Bencher; it is a difficult language—accept that competition often brings out the best. It can bring out the worst, if it is competition for the cheapest. We have been assured by the Government that they are not looking for the cheapest and some of us will be holding them to all that they have said about quality services. I hope that those two things can go hand-in-hand because that is what co-operation and work in the service is about.