Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)

I am sorry. It is nearly Christmas, and it is late. There are policies that sit on shelves in Westminster and Whitehall for many years, and over the years and the decades people reach for the shelf and pull them off. It is very easy to blame civil servants, but the special adviser class—a cross-party class—have their files on the shelves too, and this naming and shaming thing has been doing the rounds for decades. Our lovely friends the special advisers are not here in the Chamber at this time; they are at the Spectator party or the New Statesman party or whatever it happens to be this evening, but naming and shaming of offenders is a really bad idea. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. The one point of difference is that, if one were to be charitable, one would say it is really important that the public have faith and confidence in community orders. I agree with that, so I would support a slight alternative to this approach, so that we are not naming and shaming particular offenders but taking other steps to make very clear in the community that this was built, cleaned or done by offenders serving sentences in the community. That would achieve the best ambitions of this policy without the cruelty and humiliation that the noble Baroness rightly identifies. That is what I ask my noble friends the Ministers to take back to the department and reflect upon. I think that would be something the Government could think about before Report.