Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 21st May 2024 Lords Chamber

These are two cases among many, and they amply demonstrate the need for an explicit proportionality assessment, taking into account length of time served. We must grasp this nettle now, since it could be the last chance for many IPP prisoners. If we are not to have a resentencing process, this is an essential alternative in order to mitigate continuing unfairness and injustice. I look to forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I will briefly repeat some of the remarks I made in Committee about the issue which is now dealt with in Amendment 147. The cases the noble Lord, Lord Carter, mentioned demonstrate amply why many serving and recalled IPP prisoners have simply lost hope of ever being properly released. The purpose of Amendment 147 is to create, on a statutory basis, a mentor and advocate scheme to add to the support which may be available to IPP prisoners.

When I spoke about this in Committee, I was quite gratified by the Minister’s response, notwithstanding the fact that such an amendment has not found favour. The Minister said, having listed the kinds of support that exist for IPP prisoners:

“That is not to say that there could not be better organisation of voluntary agencies or, despite what I have said, some other route to consider whether there are ways of strengthening the support of prisoners on some non-statutory basis”.—[Official Report, 12/3/24; col. 1966.]


Since the amendment, in its current form as Amendment 147, has not found favour with the Government, I urgently ask both the Minister and the Government to look at offering the kind of additional support which would have been offered in an advocate and mentor scheme.

It is clear from everything that has been said from all sides of the House about the current situation of IPP prisoners that it is incumbent upon us to do everything we can. Although I understand that a scheme like this will not end up being statutory, it could provide added support for those prisoners and perhaps some small measure of hope that they may ultimately be treated somewhat more fairly than hitherto.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am very pleased that the Government and the Labour Front Bench have improved this Bill, because it was quite a difficult one when it was first presented. However, it would be so amazing if they both accepted this last little tweak of Amendment 149A. Although it applies to very few people, this is an issue of justice and of unfairness that could be put right. I know it is very late, but that amendment is very worth while.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

As we have already heard, he committed suicide a short while after he wrote this. My fervent hope is that if he had had proper continuing support and had not been afraid to seek help because he had had psychological support from the beginning, and if the current measures in this Bill to cut the licence period from 10 years to three had been in force, then Matthew, and many others, would still be with us today. We have damaged these people. Is it not therefore incumbent on us to do all we can to help put them back together again?

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to be in the Chamber for the entirety of the Second Reading, although I heard most of it. I will speak first to Amendment 164, which is in my name and those of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who sadly is not in his place this evening.

As we have heard from many noble Lords’ contributions, serving and recalled IPP prisoners need practical help and support. The purpose of this new clause would be to give effect to some of that practical help and support, which they clearly need. As we all know and have heard several times from noble Lords, these prisoners are often so over-tariff that they have lost any hope of ever being released. They therefore need to develop internal, as well as external, means of support in the build-up to a parole hearing, as well as on release and in transition into the community.

The IPP mentor and advocate scheme would assist prisoners in formulating a detailed release plan with the help of an independent, suitably qualified individual. At the parole hearing, the mentor would provide practical support to the prisoner to assist them in making a clear and articulate contribution to the proceedings, although the new clause is perfectly clear that they would not provide legal advice or make legal submissions. On release, the formulated release plan would assist former IPP prisoners to make a smoother transition into the community and act as a blueprint for successful reintegration.

The organisations that are willing and able to help offenders with resettlement in the community are often not well-known to IPP prisoners, and localised, relevant resources would be signposted to the prisoner by this scheme. While in prison, the IPP prisoner could, with the help of the IPP mentor and advocate, establish communication with organisations relevant to their risk management profile and assist them with proposed resettlement needs. On release, of course, the IPP mentors and advocates would help them to implement their release plan and provide practical support, making further recommendations relating to their specific needs to strengthen their prospects of a successful reintegration into the community. The cost of such a scheme would be modest. Moreover, it would reduce pressure on the prison population, which is at capacity, and prevent recalls to prison.

As we know, there are many ad hoc mentoring schemes in which prisoners are assigned to a mentor to help them during their prison sentence or when they get out on licence. These can help with particular risk factors and provide general support and guidance. It is very important to recognise that IPP prisoners suffer from all these same issues. Whatever the reasons that took them into prison and got them incarcerated, they still need this help and support. One particular and distinct need relates to the fact that many of them—as has been said—have lost faith in the justice system. It is therefore important to ensure that they are given access, on a voluntary basis, to a mentor and advocate who can support them with the steps needed to ensure they are prepared for life in the community.

The scheme could, of course, be subject to a pilot in the first instance and would recruit suitably qualified individuals. These might be, for example, retired probation officers, members of an independent monitoring board, retired members of the Parole Board, or other suitably qualified individuals who have knowledge of the criminal justice system. Following the successful pilot, the scheme would then build up to, perhaps, 50 mentors and advocates working on a part-time or full-time basis.

While it is anticipated that the scheme will be centrally commissioned, there may be innovative ways to fund it using cross-budget resources. Clearly, the better resourced the scheme, the more effective it will be. It is anticipated—these are not my calculations but those of people who have a much clearer understanding of the situation and the likely costs—that the fully rolled-out scheme, employing up to 50 full-time or part-time mentors, would cost less than £3 million a year for a period of three years.

There are still 1,200 IPP prisoners who have never been released, and more than that on recall. Given that it costs the taxpayer £44,000 or £45,000 per annum—my figure is £44,000, but it may be that others know better and it is £45,000—to keep one prisoner in custody, if the scheme were to free up 67 places in the prison estate each year it would pay for itself. How much better it would be if these IPP prisoners were given this extra support, given the particular injustice that they have endured.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and I was delighted to be able to co-sign her amendment. It is also a pleasure to witness a debate in the Chamber this evening which has brought us together in unity, both of purpose and of experience. All of us, in our different ways, have had different experiences of the prison system, the courts system and of prisoners, and yet we have all reached the same conclusions, the starkest of which was presented to us by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, in the first group of amendments, when he observed, entirely correctly, that there is a reluctance to be bold. I would convert his observation—if I can do so while looking at a former Lord Chief Justice—into an injunction: we must no longer be timid, we must be bold.

I have absolutely no doubt that my noble friend the Minister and all his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, and in particular the estimable current Lord Chancellor, are entirely well motivated in what they wish to see in relation to IPPs and indeed to other pretty appalling aspects of our prison system. However, having a benign intention, walking quietly and saying nice things is really not enough; the reluctance to be bold must be got rid of, because we need action. We need it for the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, highlighted of the very sad case of the man on licence who took his own life.

I was very pleased indeed that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, was able to lead on the group of amendments we are now discussing, because if ever a speech fulfilled the promise made at a maiden speech, it was his. I am very grateful to him, because we constantly need prodding and reminding that IPP prisoners are not a subject to be spoken of once every six months, with sympathy and wringing hands. They are a living, constant problem, and indeed, as the late Lord Brown, said, what has been done to them is a stain on our justice system. We should all be very grateful, as I think a number of us have already indicated, to the late Lord Brown for the work that he did.

We should also be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who is absent, for his change in attitude and his admission that he got it so badly wrong when he was Home Secretary in the early part of the Tony Blair Government. It is not difficult to salute him, because you can tell when you talk to him and listen to him that his change of heart is indeed sincere. So, if he can be bold in doing that, please will the Government be bold and get on and do what is right?

Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, I have spent quite a considerable time visiting prisons. I have probably said this before, and I can never remember the precise figure, but I think I have been to about 75 prisons, young offender institutions and secure training units in England and Wales—I have not been to a prison in Scotland or in Northern Ireland. It was abundantly clear, whenever I went to an adult male prison in which there were prisoners serving IPPs, from both looking at, talking to and interacting with them but also with the governing staff, that the most impossible group to manage were the IPP prisoners. They were literally hopeless. They had no future—no boundary and no observable, touchable limit to the torture that they were going through. That is why we must be bold, that is why we cannot allow this to go on, and that is why all these amendments, in every group, deserve the support of this House and the support of the Government.

Joint Enterprise: Young Black Men

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, as I have just said, I do not accept that the study so far reveals disproportionality. I accept that this is a very sensitive subject, and we must avoid anything that could be described as inflammatory language. I take on board the noble Lord’s point that we need a proper data study bringing in relevant comparables.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, the Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that courts had taken a wrong turn over three decades earlier with respect to joint enterprise. Since then, if I am not in error, only one conviction has been overturned, because it is all but impossible to be granted leave to appeal. Does the Minister agree that this appears to be a miscarriage of justice? Does he support the Criminal Appeal (Amendment) Bill put forward by Barry Sheerman to open a new path to appeal?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I am unable to agree that this indicates a miscarriage of justice. We do not have precise figures on the number of persons who successfully appealed following the Jogee case. Mr Jogee himself, who succeeded, was then retried and convicted of manslaughter rather than murder. Mr Crilly, who also succeeded on appeal, if your Lordships remember, was the gentleman who bravely and famously intervened in the Fishmongers’ Hall incident. His retrial for manslaughter was subsequently abandoned.

Imprisonment for Public Protection Action Plan

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to participate in this debate and to follow the right reverend Prelate. Like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his concern about this issue and congratulate him on securing this short debate. As many noble Lords will know, my background is not in law or the justice system, but I am profoundly concerned by injustice. That IPPs have been described by the Justice Minister in another place, to quote the noble Lord, as a “stain” on our justice system has both caught my interest and provoked me to speak in this debate. I am grateful for all the briefings that I have received from the Prison Reform Trust, the Justice Unions Parliamentary Group, UNGRIPP, the independent monitoring boards and, of course, the House of Lords briefing. I was struck particularly by the bald statement in the House of Commons Justice Committee report, which said:

“Whilst there have been some efforts made in the last 10 years to reduce the IPP prison population … not enough has been done”.


I think that focuses our minds on the urgency with which we now need to address this matter.

The report goes on to identify a number of issues—I shall speak to just three. One is the psychological harm caused by the indefinite nature of the sentence. The Prison Reform Trust reports that

“self-harm amongst IPP prisoners is twice that of those serving a life sentence”

and that nine self-inflicted deaths in 2022 was the highest number in a single year since the sentence was introduced. I began to understand this when I read the numbers, as cited by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan: 46% of the people held have been held for 10 years or more beyond their original tariff—no one can imagine that that is justice.

A second area of concern is the limited availability of appropriate courses for IPP prisoners. This seems to amount to a dereliction of duty. If the Parole Board needs to see evidence of a course to address offending behaviour before considering release on licence but no course is available, that must aggravate the deep-seated hopelessness that many IPP prisoners feel. I therefore ask the Minister specifically in relation to those courses what resource would be needed to facilitate access for all IPP prisoners and how the Government propose to provide that. Frankly, it is hard to see how the IPP plan can be accomplished without the necessary resources.

On a related matter, I have now developed a significant interest in education in prisons in a general sense. Although educational courses are not a necessary precursor to release, as I understand it from the Prison Reform Trust, it is clear that interest in and engagement with education by IPP prisoners are taken into account. Therefore, if they cannot access those courses, or if they are moved as the courses are going on and cannot pick them up, that is clearly a significant issue too.

The issue of resources within the probation service is also significant. The Commons Justice Committee found that a lack of resources leads to an ineffective parole system and described it as a “significant barrier” to release.

I believe that there is significant cross-party support for an action plan if it can be shown to deliver real change, of which the Justice Minister spoke on 26 April this year. Can the Minister say how His Majesty’s Government plan to implement principle 2 of the updated IPP plan, which is that:

“HMPPS ensures that those serving an IPP sentence have a sentence plan specifying the required interventions to reduce risk and has access to them”?


Might the deadline for this be the same as the June 2023 deadline for identifying funding streams for expanded psychology services provision in the community?

In conclusion, I was going to ask the Minister about transfer to open provision, but I understand that there was a Question on that this morning while I was in a committee. I will certainly read Hansard to see what the Minister had to say. I am bound to say that I am advised by the Prison Reform Trust that the change to criteria has had a significantly negative impact on IPP prisoners. If the Minister has time, could he say anything further about the transfer to open prison?

Prisons: Education

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Blower]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential merits of bringing the delivery of prison education into the public sector.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, core education in prisons is delivered by four providers: three classified as public sector providers and one as a private sector provider. Wider, non-core prison education is delivered by a range of suppliers, including the third sector. We are engaging with the market to encourage new providers to work with us to deliver high-quality prison education. We do not currently envisage fundamental change to the present system of outsourcing core delivery to specialist education providers.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree with me, Charlie Taylor and the Education Select Committee that education is fundamental to rehabilitation, so the fact that current providers do not have teaching prisoners to read as their responsibility is staggering? Can the Minister agree to look, at least, at the launch of the prisoner education service as an opportunity to bring all prison education back into the public sector, with standardised curriculum and qualifications, which are so important when prisoners are moved, and standardised education staff contracts to assist with recruitment and retention?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. The Government entirely agree that prison education is vital for rehabilitation. In the Government’s view, it does not follow that education, particularly in relation to reading, should be brought back into what the noble Baroness describes as the public sector. Specifically on reading, I can report the Chief of Inspector of Prisons’ remarks of yesterday. Following his report last year, he considers that we are seeing some improvement in reading and that there are encouraging signs of good developing practice in relation to reading education in prisons.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Lords Hansard - part two & Report stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

I commend my amendment to the House. If it were to become law, it would represent an important step towards dealing with child offenders in a way that was more humane, more in line with the reality of children’s development and more effective than our current approach in addressing the environmental and welfare needs that cause the offending. This is one of the shortest amendments I have introduced, but, if implemented, it will change the shape of the criminal justice system for our children.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is late, and I have very little to add to this debate, since it has already been extensively outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and other speakers, save this. I have extensive experience of working with educators from many jurisdictions, including all those mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and many beyond. Some will have, as I have myself, worked with a small number of 10 year-olds who, for a variety of reasons usually to do with adverse childhood experiences, behave in ways that are exceedingly difficult to manage—and some can, under certain circumstances, become aggressive or violent. But what I know is that educators from all those jurisdictions, in general, understand that 10 is simply too young to be an age of criminal responsibility, and many from the countries mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and many others are astounded it is 10 in England.

Ten year-olds, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti has said, need to be nurtured if they have hitherto had circumstances in their short lives that have damaged them seriously. In my own view, 12 is still too young to be an age of criminal responsibility, and had the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, been able to be in her place tonight, she would certainly, I am sure, have listed all the jurisdictions that have an age significantly above 12, as well as notably, as referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. But it is the case that a move from 10 to 12 would be a move in the right direction, and I hope the Government will consider this seriously.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, we have two amendments before us in the sense of concept. I will take Amendment 88A first and then Amendments 89 and 90 together—they raise quite discrete issues.

Amendment 88A is twofold. It requires the centralised monitoring of youth remand decisions made by the court and the laying of a report of findings before Parliament on an annual basis. On centralised monitoring, as I made clear in Committee, courts will now be required to provide the reasons for their decision in writing. This will be provided to the child, their legal representative and the youth offending team, and it goes beyond what courts already do at present. The record will therefore provide qualitative information, which is not currently readily available. That will enable us and partners in the criminal justice system to understand and better monitor the reasons given for the use of custodial remand.

However, those decisions are complex. We should not prescribe in law at this time how the information should be collected and processed. I am also mindful not to impose unrealistic burdens on operations. As I have indicated previously, HMCTS is also currently designing a new digital case management system, which will deliver better data capturing and reporting. We will consider the best way to collect, analyse and, if appropriate, publish that information.

On the second point, as I explained in Committee, my department already regularly publishes statistics on remand: youth justice statistics are published annually; youth custodial statistics are published monthly. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, will agree that our objectives are in fact aligned here, and understand the need for pragmatism at this time. I therefore urge him to withdraw Amendment 88A.

Amendments 89 and 90, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, would raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 years and require a review of the age of criminal responsibility. As I have said before, the primary objective of the youth justice system is to prevent children offending in the first place. Where it occurs, we must provide the police and courts with effective tools to tackle offending. That is why we believe that setting the age of criminal responsibility at 10 is the correct response. It provides flexibility in dealing with children and allows for early intervention with the aim of preventing subsequent offending.

Importantly, having the age of criminal responsibility at 10 does not preclude other types of intervention where they would be a better and more proportionate response. This could include diversion from the criminal justice system in the first place. I can answer with a simple “yes” my noble friend Lord Attlee’s question about whether the age of the child is taken into account by the CPS as part of the public interest test. Diversion from the criminal justice system is happening in practice. There has been a dramatic fall since 2009 in the number of children aged between 10 and 12 years in the youth justice system. We want that downward trend to continue.

As I said in Committee, no 10 or 11 year-old has received a custodial sentence since 2010. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, talked about never seeing a 10 or 11 year-old in court. In response to the specific point about criminal damage or arson, in 2020, 171 children were proceeded against for either criminal damage or arson. Of those, the number aged either 10 or 11 was zero. We discussed the appalling Bulger case in Committee. It is a rare case, but it is important that when awful cases such as that arise, we have the correct mechanisms to deal with them.

The fact is that there are a range of approaches across Europe—and the wider world—to the age of criminal responsibility. Other European countries also have an age of criminal responsibility set at 10. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, said that she was astounded that we had the age of 10, but so does Switzerland—not a country one normally associates with human rights breaches—and I suggest that neither Switzerland nor the UK is in contravention of our international obligations.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, our first aim with Amendment 223A, to which I have added my name, is to ensure that secure academies may be run by local authorities. The present position is that, under the Academies Act, the local authority may not maintain a school that becomes an academy. The result is, as my noble friend Lord German said, to prevent local authorities running secure academies, apparently in the interests of consistency between secure academies and other academies.

Our amendment would enable a local authority to play its part. However, it is entirely non-prescriptive and does not require secure academies to be run by local authorities. It simply permits them to be so. We believe that local authorities have a very important part to play in the running of secure academies, with the very best prospect of success in educating, training and rehabilitating young offenders.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, mentioned Charlie Taylor. He has always taken and expressed the view that education for young offenders is at the heart of youth justice, and at the heart of reform and rehabilitation. We have considered in Committee the role of local authorities in youth justice at a number of levels and in a number of spheres. Education is, of course, at the forefront, but we should also not underestimate the importance of the local authority role in housing and social services. Both departments have a great deal to do with the criminality of young people. There can, we suggest, be no justification at all for ruling out local authority involvement in these secure academies.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, that generally we should be keen to avoid dogma and that what we are doing should be about outcomes. Nevertheless, the second purpose of our amendment is to ensure that secure academies are run on an entirely altruistic basis by not-for-profit organisations. The purpose of this part of the amendment is to ensure that secure academies must be run not for profit but for the good of those who attend them as students.

We have all seen the difficulties that befell the probation service under the Grayling changes, which have since been abandoned. Then the larger part of the probation service was shunted off to community rehabilitation companies, and that led to a decline in voluntary sector involvement, which is particularly important in this area. A failure of collaboration with local authorities and an excessive and single-minded pursuit of profit was to the detriment of the clients that the CRCs were established to help and look after.

I do not believe for a moment that that is in the Government’s mind, but it is a danger that may be inherent in the present proposals, and we suggest that the care of damaged young people who have been sent to secure academies by the courts should never be in the hands of organisations run for profit.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it takes a very particular kind of person to be a teacher, but it takes a much more particular kind of person to work in an institution with young people who are clearly already damaged when they arrive. The idea that the Government appear to be taking—a rather dogmatic view about how 16 to 19 provision should be run, in terms of there being only academies and only reflecting the way academies are seen in law in the schools sector—seems to be completely wrong.

It is obvious that the profit motive simply cannot function in this type of provision. Teachers, whether in secure accommodation or other places, are not as well paid as they should be, but the fact is that they are not motivated in general by the level of their salary. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason why we should think that anyone affording that provision should be motivated by profit.

My own experience of young people of this type is that I did, very many years ago, work in a non-custodial, non-residential setting for young people who were at risk of care or custody. I have to say that they were all at risk of custody. But the fact that I worked in a local authority provision, where we were able to work very closely with the youth offending team, our local social services and our probation service, and all of our play therapists and other types of therapists, meant that, in general, it was a very successful provision.

I have, like the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, had the opportunity through my union experience to visit teachers working in a whole range of institutions—some of which, I am sorry to say, no longer function. This type of provision, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said, should be at the irreducible core of what the state does and affords for some of our most vulnerable young people. For that reason, I am very happy to support the amendments.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to those who have spoken in this short debate. Clearly this amendment is at the centre of this group of amendments. In summing up what everyone has said, I would say that the direction everyone has travelled in is not that these schools or academies should be provided by local authorities, but that they should be given the right to tender to provide those schools or academies.

The judgment that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, made, was that it does not matter who runs them, providing they get the very best education for these very vulnerable children. The standard of education is what is important, not who runs them. At present, local authorities are excluded simply because there is a view that anything called an “academy” in England cannot be run by a local authority, which seems to create an absolute block to the opportunity for everyone in these institutions to have the best opportunities for life and education.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, these are the most vulnerable of children and young people; their lives and futures are at stake. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, talked of the qualities of the teachers. These teachers have to be the very best, because they are facing the most difficult of circumstances and it becomes a real challenge. It requires a very special person indeed to devote their life to this sort of education. Where you find the best teachers is in the quality of the tender exercise for these establishments.

Excluding local authorities because they breach the Government’s standard that any academy must not be run by a local authority seems to miss the point. My noble friend Lord Marks talked about the experiment with the rehabilitation companies. A lot of effort went into those. The one thing that was totally absent at the end was the engagement of the charitable and voluntary sector. In other words, because they were driven by having to meet a contract, they were not driven by providing the best service for rehabilitation. Quite rightly, that system has now been overturned.

It drives one to think that, if you have as your goals what is best for the child and what are the best services you can provide, excluding those with the most expertise in this area seems simply crazy. I hope that the Minister will be able to address these matters and take on board the whole point of these amendments, which is not to prescribe local government but to offer it the opportunity where it can compete, providing it can offer the best. What matters is the best for our children, not who should run the service.