Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Good. The amendment concerns sentencing. Those of us on the Joint Committee on Human Rights felt that the interests of the child in the government clause was being subordinated against what has been agreed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child in, I think, Article 3. Our recommendation says: "““We recognise that the obligation in the CRC is to ensure that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in all decisions affecting children, not the sole primary consideration. In our view, however, the effect of clause 9 of the Bill is to subordinate the best interests of the child to the status of a secondary consideration below the primary consideration of crime prevention””." I read that out for the simple reason that it has been put with much greater clarity than I could put it. It was unanimously agreed by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We keep on coming back to the fact that the interests of the child are primary. Not only is it right that that should be so, but, if we have regard to the interests of the child, get them to go straight and turn them away from their ungodly ways, that will be in the interests of the community as a whole. There is no clash with what we want to do or with crime prevention or rehabilitation or anything like that. Our treaty duty is to do that, and it should be in the Bill. I beg to move.