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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, our time in government retreats into the mists of time day by day, month by month, and my memory fails. I certainly am not in a position to answer the specific question that the noble Lord asks, but to say that there were not concerns about the probation service at the time would be to tell an untruth. Some of the cuts that our Government felt were necessary to make—as do the present Government, too—related to the probation service. One of the achievements of my then ministerial colleague, the honourable Maria Eagle, was to make sure that the cuts were not so great as originally planned and that the probation service had some extra resources that it was not expecting. However, I have to concede that it was not a period, particularly in the latter years, when the probation service was getting as much money as it needed to deal with the problem. On costs, I think that the noble Lord’s noble friend Lady Linklater had it right, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. Comparing costs is very difficult throughout the Bill, not least in this particular area. I am sorry that I cannot help the noble Lord with more detail.