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Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I fully accept the sincerity with which the Minister addresses us about the importance of a non-legislative approach. However, as I understand it, it will always be simpler and, from the point of view of the local community and its budget holders, cheaper to allow the custodial solution to be adopted. It will always be difficult to defend, in a local community, the provision of mental health services for offenders when they are not available for non-offenders. I therefore think that, against the Minister’s arguments against a legislative approach, is there not a case for some central setting of a direction and a real tendency to get us to move in the direction of more adequate provision in the urgent situation that we face?