---

Business of the House

Those guidelines constitute arrangements made under criminal justice legislation. Previous offenders were in the community with no oversight at all for a substantial part of their sentence. It is important that a more onerous regime for offenders be introduced, so that if they breach licence conditions, they can go back to jail. The problem that the hon. Gentleman highlights, and which was reported, is that young teenagers on a first offence—I am not sure that mugging was the offence; I think that it was snatching of bags that involves no violence—may not, under magistrates’ guidelines, get an automatic custodial sentence. That will be a matter for debate in this House and elsewhere.