Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am afraid the Minister of State will have to wait and see, if he can bear the tension. Alongside the successive criminal justice Bills, we have seen a succession of sentencing reviews and a constantly shifting sentencing framework. There are other sentencing reviews now in train that the Bill does not take into account, including the review on indeterminate sentences, which the Lord Chancellor has announced, but has not confirmed to the House. Let us dwell briefly on the elements of the Bill that we can agree on. In relation to the pornography offences, we support the principle of clause 64, which implements measures to combat possession of images that are both extreme and pornographic. We also support the principle behind clause 67, which relates to the penalties applied for possession of extreme pornographic images, and clauses 68 and 69 relating to indecent photographs of children. As usual, we will need to look at the drafting, but the whole House will share a determination to protect children from paedophilia and society from images that could provoke violence. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who has worked tirelessly to promote more robust action in relation to those issues. We also support the principle of clauses 104 to 106 regarding a new offence of causing nuisance or disturbance on NHS premises and the powers to remove offenders from hospital premises. However, given that that measure will not apply to patients who are violent towards NHS staff, we will have to look in due course at how effective that will be in practice and whether it affords nurses and other NHS personnel the protection that the whole House believes they deserve. We also support the creation of the prisons commissioner, so long as the commissioner has the power to recommend criminal sanctions akin to those in the Corporate Manslaughter Act against the Prison Service and other state agencies that are charged with the custody of individuals, and so long as his appointment is not a ground for delaying the implementation of the Corporate Manslaughter Act. We will look carefully at the proposed offence of inciting homophobic hatred because clearly there are important considerations in terms of the right balance between protecting free speech and a desire to protect gay people from hatred. We will debate the provisions in Committee once we have seen them. The core purpose and effect of the Bill is confused; will the Bill send fewer people to prison or more people? Clause 16 proposes to limit recalls to prison to 28 days, provided the Secretary of State is satisfied that the prisoner will not present a risk of serious harm on release. The Government say that the measure will save 1,000 prison places, but we are opposed to it in principle. We want a more effective process for recalls, but we believe that offenders who breach their conditions should expect to return to prison to serve out the rest of their sentence. The Bill also abolishes the power of magistrates to suspend custodial sentences, and again we oppose this interference with judicial discretion. The crimes in question have passed the custody threshold. Before even considering a suspended sentence, the magistrate must decide that a final probation would be insufficient. If they cannot suspend the sentence, they will have to jail the offender. There is another concern; a provision that is intended by the Government to reduce the prison population could have the opposite effect. The National Association of Probation Officers has warned that the abolition of the power is justified on the grounds that some magistrates use it instead of fines or unpaid work. Nevertheless, there is a real risk that many magistrates will impose custody instead of suspension and the association goes on to predict that it will increase the prison population by 1,000.