UK Parliament / Open data

Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, for our interesting but short debate within the time available before the programme motion kicks in . A number of points have been made, many of which go wider than the amendments, but which are obviously still related to them. The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) have contributed in their usual helpful way to some of the issues. There has been some consultation on the changes proposed by my noble Friend Lord Carter, for which we are legislating today. The previous Lord Chancellor, the noble Lord Falconer, commissioned Lord Carter to consider the whole question of prison population and pressure issues in May 2007. Between then and my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor producing the report on 5 December, Lord Carter engaged in significant consultation with the judiciary, with interested parties, with the Prison Service and the National Offender Management Service, and with my right hon. Friend and me. The package of measures, which the legislative proposals before the House today deal with in part, was about not just some of the measures relating to IPPs, bail credits and sentencing in the amendments and new clauses, but a much wider set of proposals that cover some of the points raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, the hon. and learned Member for Harborough and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome. They will be aware that Lord Carter has not just dealt with the new clauses before us today but has announced recommendations, which we have accepted, to build additional prison capacity, so that by the end of 2012-13 we will have some 96,000 net places in the prison system in England and Wales, three titan prisons of 2,500 in London, the midlands and the north-west and emergency accommodation in Norfolk, for example, at the RAF base at Coltishall. We will consider the possibility of a prison ship following Lord Carter's recommendations, and, importantly, in reply to the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, we will consider improving and extending community-based sentences, and tackling some of the confidence issues in those sentences. Under the youth provision orders in the earlier clauses of the Bill, we are looking at increasing confidence in such sentences by putting together a generic youth order that deals with drug and alcohol treatment, learning and the matters that the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) mentioned in his helpful interventions. So the Carter package considers a range of measures, including new build and those before the House today. I will reflect on the matters that have been raised today, but I want to make a couple of particular points. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough referred to bail credit and said that it was not like for like with the potential for remand in prison, because the loss of liberty was not the same as having time for credit on curfew at home. As I said in my opening remarks, the offender gets credit for only half the time spent on curfew, rather than the full time. We recognise that there is a difference between remand and curfew, but it is important to ensure that individuals can maintain their life. It is important that we consider the use of sentences in the community on curfew before potential sentencing in full. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough and I must have an honest disagreement about IPPs. I thought he would welcome our proposals. In Committee and elsewhere we recognised that the provisions, however well meaning they were in the past, do not serve a proper purpose now, for the very reasons that he mentioned, including the availability of courses and prisoners' ability to be helpfully trained to come to terms with some of the offending behaviour that has led them to be sentenced in the first place. We need to address that properly; it is an important measure to bring before the House. The hon. and learned Gentleman has argued that we look at the issue through different ends of the telescope, but the Government's end of the telescope—a minimum period for IPPs—allows for planning and proper investment, for offending behaviour to be addressed and for the assessment to be made. That is why I support the minimum tariff that we proposed in the amendments.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
470 c380-1 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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