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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— ““Custody of children: conditions to be met (1) A court must not pass a custodial sentence unless— (a) the offender has already been the subject of a youth rehabilitation order, or orders, which falls within section 1(3), or (b) the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it, and the risks the offender poses to the public are so serious that, notwithstanding the age of the offender, a youth rehabilitation order which falls within section 1(3) cannot be justified for the offence. (2) Where the court does pass a custodial sentence it shall set out in writing its reasons for doing so, both in general and with specific reference to the individual conditions set out in section 1.”” The noble Earl said: My Lords, we are back to the custody of children. I am afraid that noble Lords will not hear from me the eloquence we heard in the Royal Gallery. My French is certainly not as good as Monsieur Sarkozy’s, and I do not have the hard neck to try to charm the Government Front Bench in the way that he charmed us. I shall just bang on in my old-fashioned way to try to persuade the Government of the error of their ways. The point of this amendment is that we should not be sending children to prison or giving them a custodial sentence unless it is absolutely unavoidable. This amendment attempts to introduce a threshold. We went over this matter in considerable detail in Committee, and in the Committee stage in the House of Commons there was an implication that something could be done about this. The Government have used Section 152 of the—I cannot remember which Act it is—and say that it is the guiding body behind how sentencing should be carried out. The youth justice people think that is not good enough, the JCHR thinks it is not good enough and I do not think it is good enough. The Government must have a much better reason for objecting to this amendment than the one they introduced in Committee. There is one flawette—if that is the right word—in that subsection (2) is, I am told, probably unnecessary for the simple reason that all courts have everything they say recorded. Subsection (2) is otiose, but if we were to agree this amendment there would be no difficulty in taking it out at Third Reading. I beg to move.