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Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, not because I know whether the exact form of words in it is right or whether this particular method will achieve its aim, but because I want to hear from the Attorney-General what we will do to inject some very necessary urgency into the issue of mental health in the criminal justice system. It would be odd to have on the statute book an Offender Management Act that did not seek to make effective provision for a situation in which 70 per cent of those in the criminal justice system have two or more diagnosable mental illnesses. Surely, we have to admit that we have run as a society into a position whereby the number of such people who have found themselves in the criminal justice system—I do not belittle what may have been the consequences of many of their actions—has reached such a proportion that a Bill without such a clause would attend effectively to 30 per cent of those in the criminal justice system and not the other 70 per cent. I hope that the Attorney-General has something to say to us, if she does not feel able to support the amendment.