Justice Week 8-12 December 2008

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June 11, 2007

Offender Management Bill, the Lords and Committee

The Offender Management Bill has now had 4 full days in Committee in the Lords and it will be debated again this evening and tomorrow (11 and 12 June). It will then move to Report Stage in the Lords on 27 June.

Concessions

The Government has conceded that there needs to be safeguards in the Bill to ensure that all probation providers are covevered by the gender, race and disability Duty. This follows amendments tabled by Peers on behalf of both Napo and Unison.

Government Defeats

The Government was defeated by 20 votes when an amendment to prevent conflicts of interest, i.e. where someone works for a private company that has a vested interest in the outcome, was successfully passed.

The Government was also defeated on an amendment which will ensure that a resolution has to be presented to Parliament before a Probation Trust is established. And it suffered a further defeat by 4 votes in Committee on 5 June on a Liberal Democrat/Conservative amendment which ensures that Probation Boards or Trusts have both a magistrate and a representative of the local council as members.

A number of key debates also occurred on:

- the purposes of Probation
- national collective bargaining
- exclusions from the Bill, and
- local commissioning

It is highly likely that most of those amendments, not voted on in Committee, will be retabled at Report Stage and pressed to a vote.

Links to the Hansard reports of both today's and tomorrow's debates will be posted on the website.

Napo nationally has produced further briefing papers on the various amendments. The two latest can be downloaded below.

Lords Briefing No 5

Lords Briefing No 6

Posted by kfalcon at June 11, 2007 12:53 PM