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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I shall come on to the tariff in due course. Mr Howarth, whom I have quoted, also talked in his speech about this point. I fear that what happens is that, because a suspended sentence order is available for those who have committed summary offences, that is seen as being an option to take rather than the imposition of a community sentence on the defendant. The problem that then arises is that there is a breach of a suspended sentence and, almost as night follows day, the defendant is brought back and receives what it was promised that he would receive if he committed another offence—an immediate period of imprisonment. I am sure that all courts are doing absolutely their best in the context, within the rules that are set for them, to pass the appropriate sentence in each case, but I fear that sometimes suspended sentence orders are given when the tariff for imprisonment has not been reached. I shall just make the point again that it is true that there is increased use of suspended sentence orders by magistrates dealing with triable either-way offences; the same applies to the Crown Court. In all cases, some of them must have been drawn from community orders. As I say, drops in immediate custody are not commensurate. In the Crown Court, with indictable offences between 2005 and 2006, suspended sentence orders have increased by 10 percentage points. Immediate custody has fallen by 3 percentage points.