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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

As the hon. and learned Gentleman says, that happens most of the time, but we do not know whether that effect has been reversed or whether the normal pressure to do what he outlines has been lessened. It is also possible that general public concern about violent crime has caused a change in sentencing behaviour. Recorded crime is falling—and has been falling for the past 15 years—but violent crime has not reduced commensurately. Indeed, sometimes violent crime increases—certainly anxiety about violent crime is growing. Let me propose a third explanation, which the Government should consider. The use of the suspended sentence is concentrated on re-sentencing for community orders. What happens when an offender is given a community order, a programme to attend, unpaid work to complete and supervision to undergo but fails to fulfil the conditions? The offender returns to the magistrates court to be re-sentenced. In the past, magistrates have had little choice; they have re-sentenced with a different community order and sometimes a fine, which is difficult, but now they have the option of a suspended sentence. If that explanation is correct, the problem is concentrated in one area and does not apply across the range in all summary cases. Magistrates may not be concentrating sufficiently closely on the tariff argument in that specific matter. When re-sentencing, a court does not pay as much attention as it does when originally sentencing on the structured approach that the Judicial Studies Board recommends. I would like the Government to consider whether that is the explanation, and if so, to examine whether their approach is right. My other point follows from something that the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) said about what is happening in the Crown court and the magistrates courts when sentencing for indictable offences, rather than summary-only offences. The same figures that the Minister cited on summary offences show an ever bigger increase—indeed, an enormous increase—in the use of suspended sentences in magistrates courts for indictable offences from 2005-06. Such cases are not ones for which suspended sentences were previously unavailable. The explanation is not that courts are using a sentence that they could not use before—they could—but there has been an enormous increase, of three to four times. There has been an even bigger proportional increase—indeed, a massive increase—in the use of suspended sentences on indictment in the Crown court. In the Crown court, that increase has come at the expense of community orders, whereas in the magistrates courts, it has come at the expense of fines. The explanation for what is happening cannot have anything to do with the availability of suspension, so it must be about something else. One possibility is to do with the new form of the suspended sentence order that was introduced under the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The 2003 Act allowed far more flexibility to order something else in addition to a suspended sentence, which was agreed on all sides to be a good thing. The whole panoply of sentencing options that a court has under a community order—the supervision, work, curfews, restrictions and so on—are, under the 2003 Act, also available to a court on a suspended sentence. The Government might have created too attractive a sentencing option. Courts say to themselves, ““This is a good thing that we haven't been able to do in the past on a suspended sentence””—it used to be a bare suspended sentence, with little additional action. However, under the 2003 Act, the suspended sentence, with all the other things happening, has become more attractive. In addition, a suspended sentence looks like a good way of getting an offender to do what they are supposed to do. Instead of just saying, ““You've got a community order—you've got to turn up for this and that,”” there is also the threat of imprisonment hanging over the offender's head. That makes a suspended sentence more attractive. That is more likely to be what is happening than simply something to do with summary offences. If that is the case, the remedy cannot just be the abolition of the power on summary offences, nor can it be to remove the power of suspension or all the other attractive options that go with it under the 2003 Act, which would be a retrograde step. The only option that covers all the ground is training and the reiteration of guidance, to ensure that judges are aware of the problem caused if they ignore the structured approach to sentencing that has been agreed by the Judicial Studies Board, under which they should use the suspended sentence order, attractive though it is, only in cases where they have decided to imprison. There is also a strange psychological problem, in that all the other, community order-type options do not seem to go naturally with a suspended sentence, which is a sentence that says, ““Go to jail.”” When people are in jail, they do not normally get all the other options. There is a problem with how courts are thinking about suspended sentence orders as a whole. Another reason why the better option is guidance and training is related to the Government's policy towards the moving of the tariff. It is possible to say that the tariff has moved in the wrong direction on summary convictions and that we want to move it back—I am not too sure that it will, however—by removing the option. However, by maintaining the current position for magistrates courts sentencing on indictable offences and for Crown courts sentencing on indictment, the Government appear to be saying that it is fine in those circumstances for the change in the tariff to continue in the wrong direction. I do not think that can be right. Magistrates courts are being sent two conflicting messages: that in summary cases the tariff has moved the wrong way, but that in indictable cases it has not. That does not make sense. For that reason, and in order to have a coherent approach to the whole problem, which has arisen because of the success of the new suspended sentence order, the only way to deal with the issue is through training and guidance.