Member

However, there is a significant problem that I hope to pick up in later amendments, but the Minister may wish to comment on it now: if we are going to achieve what is in Amendment 35, we need proper pre-sentencing reports, but the current Probation Service is already overstretched to the point where the number of pre-sentencing reports that are produced is remarkably low. Sentencing will often take place without such a report, which would have looked at the areas that should be covered in the community sentence. Yet again, we see the problem of a shortage of resources in delivering what we want. That brings us back to the need to address the shortfall in our Probation Service.