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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

rose to move Motion A1, as an amendment to Motion A, to leave out from ““House”” to end and insert ““do insist on its Amendments Nos. 9, 301 and 327. The noble Lord said: My Lords, Clause 10 amends Section 189 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. It removes the recently granted power to magistrates to make suspended sentence orders in summary cases. As many of your Lordships will be aware, this matter was debated at length both in Committee and on Report and I have no intention whatever of rehearsing in any detail the arguments that were advanced. For those of you who were present at those debates it would be an irritant because you are already extremely well versed. Those of you who were not there might be a little better informed at the end of what I would have to say but, to adapt the famous words of Mr F E Smith, I am almost certain that you would be none the wiser. Suffice it to say that at the end of Report the Government were defeated by a majority which I think I can fairly describe as very substantial. Why do the Government want to do this? This power was introduced in the 2003 Act. Its implementation was delayed to right until the end of 2005. It was allowed then—