Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am not going to answer directly—and the noble Baroness would not really expect me to be able to comment on those particular circumstances. What is the guarantee within the Bill that in a similar case a person does not inappropriately end up in wilful breach and then in custody? I refer the noble Baroness to page 168 of the Bill. First, the responsible officer has to use his or her own discretion in making judgments. On page 168, at paragraph 3(1) of Schedule 2, the Bill says: "““If the responsible officer is of the opinion that the offender has failed without reasonable excuse””." We start from that point. We have already discussed the discretion that is available to the responsible officer within the guidelines that will be set down. Then there is the discretion given to the courts. In our previous debate, I referred to the court’s ability to substitute one rehabilitation order for another. It could well be that in the circumstances that the noble Baroness raised, one option would be to substitute the RO that the young person was on for another, which would enable that young person to attend to his sick mother. Those are the guarantees.