Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

This has been a very interesting debate. I shall not intrude on the conversation between the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, although no doubt we will see the outcome on Report. I welcome the opportunity given to us by the noble Baroness to debate the general principles. She has been ingenious in how she has done it, and it will be helpful to our later discussion. I must reiterate that the Government see custody as a last resort. The reasons in the Bill, particularly in the first part, are entirely consistent with that approach. We believe in rehabilitation—clearly that has to be an incredibly important part of what we seek to do in the youth criminal justice system. I understand the desire to set out principles at the front of the Bill. That is usually the desire of noble Lords for any Bill on which I have taken part. As it is now nearly 10 years since I first took a Bill through your Lordships' House, it is a debate that I have frequently witnessed. I did not agree with the line of argument of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, because I think that there will always be a balance in terms of discretion on sentencing. When we come to the breach question, we will discuss that further, where the Government consider that there needs to be some mandatory action to show people that there is a bite against breaches. However, the noble Lord pointed out one of the problems in putting a set of principles in the Bill without understanding what impact it might have on other legislation where principles are also set out. I know that that sounds like a rather techie detail, but it is an important consideration. The Government's view is that the principal aim of the youth justice system is set out in Section 37 of the Crime and Disorder Act. The Act imposes duties on anyone involved in youth justice to have regard to that aim. There are issues about how the set of principles proposed by the noble Baroness would fit with that, and with Clause 9, which says that the principal aim of sentencing is the prevention of offending. I have no difficulty whatever in defending that as the rightful aim. We will debate later the question of the best interest of the child. That is clearly vital. There can be no question about that, but there are other factors to be taken into account, such as the interests of victims and the public—not in the pejorative sense, as was used in what was described earlier as media frenzy, but a reasonable view of the public. I fully understand the concerns about the number of young people in custody. We have also heard from the Committee concerns about particular aspects of experience within custody. I respect those views.