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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I hope the House will forgive another lawyer from the Cross Benches having his say. I agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan said, but I am not sure that I agree with his conclusion, as I am not sure that I understood what it was. Noble Lords on the Government Front Bench will know that I have supported them in their proper attempts to reduce the pressure on prison places brought about by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. For example, in the case of indeterminate sentences I did not think that the Government went far enough. It would have been better to raise the threshold for indeterminate sentences from two years to three or perhaps four years. I did not persuade the Government of that, and I certainly did not persuade the Conservative Party, which was in favour of quite the opposite course of reducing two years—back to where it is currently. Clause 10 is another clause that is aimed in the same direction—to reduce the pressure on prison places. Therefore, I strongly support the objective. The noble Lord has produced some figures which, on the face of it, are persuasive, but they do not persuade me sufficiently strongly that we should in the mean time deprive magistrates of a sentence that they obviously find of the greatest utility in dealing with the cases before them. Although the Government may be right on this, based on their figures, I would prefer to back the opposite horse and will vote for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland.