Member

I have added my name to new clause 2, tabled by my good friend my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), which seeks to ensure that the Probation Service, not Serco or any other private company, oversees this increasingly important criminal justice technology, as is the case in almost all of Europe. The key to the success of the Bill is the tremendous opportunities for this new generation of electronic tagging of offenders. The new clause would also ensure that it is not the responsibility of an already overstretched Prison Service to tag offenders before release—not when Serco is being paid handsomely for this contract. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick has pointed out, such contracts were awarded by the previous Conservative Government, and Serco, as the provider, has suffered considerable financial penalties.