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Prisons: Population

My Lords, without in any way criticising the measures announced by the noble and learned Lord, they are, as I think he candidly accepts, short-term and limited in their potential. Are the Government prepared to look at the situation in the light of two main factors? First, the prison population has, I believe, doubled in the past 16 years and the curve of the increase has sharpened. In the longer term, none of these measures can have any hope of answering that basic problem. Secondly, broadly speaking, we imprison more people than almost any other country in Europe. In the light of those two massive factors, is there not a strong and unanswerable case for setting up the most powerful authoritative inquiry into why we are at the top of that European league? Is it because our community is more evil than those of the Greeks, the Germans, the French, the Italians and others or, in our case, is the range of imprisonable offences too wide? Are there other factors? Surely that would be a wise way in which to begin tackling that basic question.