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Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, as we said at Second Reading, we acknowledge that the Bill reflects the Government’s thinking as set out in 2003. However, we are not convinced that it necessarily represents the best way forward for reform of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in a very changed landscape. Since 2003, there has been comprehensive reform of the adult and youth sentencing frameworks, as well as a new scheme for vetting and barring people who wish to work with children and vulnerable adults. In reforming the Act, there is always a delicate balance to be maintained between the resettlement of offenders and public protection. The Government take the view that they need to take a fresh look at the Act in the round, and that this should be informed by full public consultation. We have no objections to the amendments. It clearly makes sense to exclude imprisonment for public protection, and indeterminate sentences where release is determined by the risk presented by the offender, from the scope of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. There is also a strong case for excluding extended sentences from the scope of the Act. On a technical point, the drafting would normally include a reference to the defining legislation for each sentence, and there should be a reference to the corresponding court martial punishments in the Armed Forces legislation. I, too, will speak to both amendments, with the leave of the House. In 2003, we were minded to consider a provision such as the one in subsection (9) whereby a court would disapply the Act in specific cases where it considered that the offender posed a serious risk to the public. However, further reflection suggests that such a mechanism would be likely to be cumbersome and expensive. In addition, the availability of public protection sentences for dangerous offenders probably negates the need for the courts to have such a power. We therefore consider it sensible to delete subsection (9). However, the Government retain their general reservations about the Bill. We will neither support nor oppose it, as is usually the case, but we do consider that a thorough new review of the Act and its current context will be necessary before we can consider any reforming legislation.