Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I support strongly what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) said about the difficulties of sentencing in the criminal courts. I entirely agree that sentencing is one of the most difficult tasks of the trial judge, and it has become enormously more complicated in recent years. That makes the process on which we are embarking today thoroughly undesirable, because these amendments, which we are having to discuss in a sharply compressed period, make very substantial changes. They should not have been tabled on Report. For a start, they place Mr. Speaker in an impossible position, in that a variety of difficult issues are grouped together in such a way that the House cannot seriously discuss them. As they were tabled on Report and not in Committee, they have not been the subject of extensive external consultation—at least, not of which I am aware—or, put differently, the result of any such consultation has not come to the attention of right hon. and hon. Members.