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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, these proposals represent incoherence and dither on the part of the Government. In 2003, they brought into place legislation that extended suspended sentences to include the possibility of the provision of conditions similar to a community order. That received considerable support from all parties. That was not brought into being, we are told, until April 2005; although the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, thinks that it started later, towards the end of 2005. After barely a year in practice, the Government then introduced this Bill to remove from the magistrates the power to suspend sentences. Whoops, they made a mistake; whoops, the number has gone up and as the Bill goes through Parliament—whoops, they might be wrong again, so they are now proposing to have the power to revoke this provision. That is not the way that legislation should be dealt with. So much of the Bill has been concerned with piecemeal alterations to the law without any real coherent approach. That is what we on these Benches have said from the very beginning. I made the point—my honourable friend Mr David Howarth in the other place made it far better than I could—that it deals only with suspended sentences in magistrates’ courts. We are told that they have gone up 8 per cent in magistrates’ courts and 10 per cent in the Crown Court. Nothing is said about the power of suspension in the Crown Court. In other words, to use phrase of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, there is no ““holistic”” approach to this issue of suspended sentences. That is unacceptable and we support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland.