Member

The Minister has in this House frequently described our probation officers as dedicated and fantastic, and so they are. These amendments, we suggest, are unduly dirigiste. They attempt to tie the hands of probation officers in an unnecessary and untrusting way. They demonstrate a lack of trust in the probation officers whom we are asking to do a very difficult task. Sentencing is, as the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, said, for judges, but Clause 12 does not shift the discretion from judges to probation officers. Rather, it leaves probation officers to decide how they undertake their task of assisting in the rehabilitation of offenders, and therefore of reducing reoffending. The number of days they impose should be for them. We need more high-quality specialist training to enable our probation officers, particularly those new ones who are going to have to be recruited, to make and implement decisions about rehabilitation activity in the light of full knowledge of what is available and a real sense of what is likely to work in individual cases.