---

Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

That is entirely right. I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for making that point. This is not a good way of making law. It is not the way in which the House is supposed to operate. I hope that we have emphasised that point sufficiently this afternoon. Let me come to the general tenor of the new clauses and amendments, as I cannot deal with the detail. They contain a number of constructs that are intended to remove people from the overcrowded prison system. The Minister knows perfectly well that I agree that we have too many people in our prisons. My argument, which I have made many times, is that if we ran our penal system properly a great many people who are in the prison estate would not be there taking up places that ought to be used for those who need to be in prison for protection of the public. Sadly, the amendments do not for one moment answer the needs of the service by taking out those with mental illness, who need secure accommodation that enables them to be treated properly. It is a national disgrace that such people are kept in prison cells. The amendments do not deal with alcohol or drug addicts who find themselves in prison and do not get the proper treatment that they need. The amendments do not deal with the children in our prisons—it is a most inappropriate way of disposing of them—who do not get the developmental help that they deserve. All those factors mean that the system is not capable of providing the basic elements of rehabilitation that we ought to expect the Prison Service to achieve. We are dealing with a dysfunctional system. The Government are attempting to paper over the cracks by introducing an array of manoeuvres to get people out of the estate almost randomly. They are not based on any real, assessed need, but purely on various mechanistic bases that enable the prison population to be reduced. For that reason alone, I do not think that that is the right way to manage the service.