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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, this is the second clause in the Bill which is useless and will draw the contempt of the legal profession and the judiciary if it is allowed to remain. This Government have had the tendency to look overseas to the United States of America and adopt its practices. That is a country where 750 out of 100,000 people are in prison, as opposed to 150 out of 100,000 in this country and an average of about 70 or 80 in the rest of Europe. For that reason, they introduced as a good wheeze the idea of ““two strikes and you’re out””. The Government have recognised that that has done nothing to assist the administration of justice in this country. All it has done is serve to fill our prisons and produce the ridiculous anomalies of people being given indeterminate sentences, but with the proviso that they can apply for parole after 28 days. The end of that is very welcome to us. But we are now left with nothing, other than simply a repetition of what already has been the practice, as the Lord Chancellor has recognised in his letter. I urge your Lordships not to make nonsense of the criminal law in this way. The Government should go the whole hog. If they want to get rid of ““two strikes and you’re out””, they should get rid of it and not leave useless bits of legislation hanging about.