Lord Sandhurst (Con)

My Lords, I will first deal with the two amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. We believe that Amendment 2 is unnecessary; probation officers should be left to get on with their jobs. The Bill does not prevent them addressing matters likely to reduce offending and we should have some confidence that they will share this view when it is necessary and appropriate. Why would they wish not to go down that route? That, after all, is what their job is about: preventing reoffending. We do not believe that Amendment 8 is necessary, but we are sympathetic to where it goes. Again, this is on the basis that our amendments in group 3, which will bring the guidelines before Parliament, are accepted and acted on, so that Parliament gets to look at what is actually happening in the guidelines themselves. Again, we are sympathetic to the aims of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, but, although reports are necessary in appropriate cases, they are not necessary in every case. It is the probation officer who is best placed to alert the court in cases where a report is not proposed. A probation officer will be in court and can speak to defendants before sentencing in court. In my experience, having sat in the court myself as a recorder for many years—and even, many years before that, having appeared in Crown Courts on quite a number of occasions—a probation officer is best placed to alert the court to the benefit of obtaining a report, or saying that they actually do not need one in a given case. However, that can be left to Parliament when it looks at the guidelines, if it gets the chance to do so.