Yesterday afternoon was taken up with the National Offender Management Bill – which basically begins to break up the Probation Service and give it to private providers. Whilst the Probation Service has undoubtedly come in for a lot of bad headlines for things going wrong – this Government solution really means that another part of our criminal justice system will be outsourced to the private sector. I made a speech at LibDem conference about this issue – so for your delectation, here’s the link.