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Remand on Bail (Disapplication of Credit Period) Rules 2008

My Lords, I hope that I can brief. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for explaining the order, because, as I normally do with orders, I found it incomprehensible. I had problems even with the Explanatory Memorandum, but we have been assisted by the Minister. During the past 24 hours, we have seen two versions of the Minister in responding to things. Yesterday, we saw him dealing with the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, on the European Parliament (House of Lords Disqualification) Regulations 2008, where he was apologetic on behalf of his department, admitted that it had got things wrong and said it should possibly have consulted more. Today, at Question Time, we had a slightly more robust noble Lord, Lord Bach, who was firm in his belief that there was no need for him to provide information for my noble friend Lord Onslow, who sadly is not here, despite being a member of the Government who introduced the Freedom of Information Act. We hope today that, of those two versions of the noble Lord, the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, it will be the Dr Jekyll who triumphs, that we will get the apologetic, friendlier version of him and that he will assist us. I must ask just one or two questions to guide me in our tour through the regulation. The minute that I saw that it was related to the credit period, I suspected that it was another excuse for the Government, particularly in relation to the Times article that I mentioned today at Question Time, to keep the prison population down and thereby save money, even if its long-term consequence would be to increase the spend. I then discovered that, because the rules are related to disapplication of credit period, there must be some other motive in introducing them. I then looked carefully at the Explanatory Memorandum and listened to the Minister’s explanation, for which I am grateful. He explained that draft Rule 2 is related to double counting, draft Rule 3 to double counting in connection with early release, and draft Rule 4 to release on temporary licence. In other words, it is designed to put right the inadequacies of a Bill that we passed as recently as last summer and was going to come into effect on 3 November, and the Government have had to come back with the draft instrument to say, ““On 3 November, when this comes into effect, it will only come into effect in one part and we’ll have to remove one part for it””. If I can go back to the Dr Jekyll side of the Minister, I think that a brief apology on his behalf and that of the department for not getting it right with the 2008 Act is due. We made it clear that we did not particularly like the idea of the credit period, but if the department was going to have one, it might have got it right in the Bill, without the need to bring forward the rules. We suspect that, as it passed through this House, the Ministers involved did not spot this and did not deal with it as it should, and that is why we are dealing with the rules today. For that reason only, I hope again that the noble Lord, because he is very good at apologies late at night, would feel that he could apologise on behalf of his department for getting it wrong and wasting just a few minutes of the House’s time on these rules.