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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a persuasive case to encourage the Government to invest not money but a modest degree of guidance to assist the process of magistrates effectively learning more about sentencing options, about what happens when they institute different forms of punishment and about what happens, in particular, in relation to community sentencing. This is not a huge burden. When one thinks of some of the legislation that has passed through your Lordships' House in recent months —a Localism Act that with its impact analysis weighed in at something over 8 pounds, as I recall, and contained 225 clauses, a health Bill that had 1,000 amendments en route to your Lordships' House and all the rest of it—one cannot imagine that it would take very much effort on the part of those responsible to produce fairly simple guidelines on a very narrow topic, which is the subject of this amendment, that could facilitate greater awareness of what is available to magistrates in terms of sentencing options. It seems to me an overwhelmingly simple matter and one that the Government could graciously concede without any damage to the Bill. On the contrary, it would enhance the intentions of the Bill and the intentions of government policy, to which we have referred and which, no doubt, we will shortly hear again from the Minister. Along with the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I would be at a loss to understand what could possibly persuade the Government that this is not a simple and desirable course to follow. I hope that the Minister will not feel that she is constrained to remain rigid on the position that has hitherto been adopted, which produces nothing to assist magistrates or, indeed, anybody else.