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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 62: 62: Clause 21, leave out Clause 21 The noble Lord said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 63 and 64. These amendments would simply leave out Clauses 21 to 23. My noble friend Lord Kingsland spoke to these briefly on one of the latter days in Committee back in February, at some relatively late time of night: I think that it was at 9.25, after dinner. He did not move them on that occasion, but he set out our case. The Minister assured the Committee at that time that the Government were, as he described it, "““on a roll at the moment””.—[Official Report, 26/2/08; col. 642.]" I do not know whether they still are; they can tell us that later, but I can assure him that we will certainly want to divide on this in due course. These clauses amend the 2003 Act to provide for creating a, "““period of remand on bail””," on an electronically monitored curfew, and to take that against a subsequent sentence. Put very simply, we believe that this is loopy, and I suspect that most of the population would agree that it is mad. The Government are saying, briefly, that while someone is at home on an electronic curfew—as long as they are there for more than nine and a half hours, I think—and sitting or lying in bed there, perhaps watching ““Match of the Day””, or ““I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!””, or possibly even a party political broadcast from the party opposite, that time shall be taken into account in any subsequent custodial sentence. As I say, that is loopy and most people would think it mad. It is not the right way to go about it. We know exactly why the Government are doing this; to reduce artificially the number of people in prison. That is a perfectly laudable ambition—there is nothing wrong with the idea of trying to reduce that number—but we do not happen to think this is the right way to go about it. When he responded to this matter back on 26 February, the Minister said that credit is not being given on the basis that defendants have been denied their liberty, but rather that they have complied with their bail condition while on curfew. Well, that is not how most of us see it. We understand perfectly well that if someone is properly locked up and on remand, it should be taken into account, but not when they are at home on electronic curfew watching ““Match of the Day”” or whatever, as I said. Further, as my noble friend made quite clear, there is the possibility of perverse incentives, as in the position where defence solicitors could ask for a longer curfew period just to make sure that the custodial sentence was likely to be reduced because, as he put it, it covered more than the eight and a half hours, or whatever the limit was. We would have defence counsel arguing for a longer curfew period than he would otherwise think necessary purely to get time off for his client on a later occasion. As I said the Minister thought that he and the Government were on a roll when they dealt with this issue last time. It might have been because we had just had one of those Divisions that sometimes happen late at night that the Government had managed to win. On this occasion, I will listen carefully to what the Government have to say but unless the Minister can come up with better answers than he did before I will be tempted to test the opinion of the House again. I beg to move.