Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I well appreciate and respect the principles and the desires underlying Amendments Nos. 79 and 80. I certainly bow to the view of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that the vast majority of courts have over the years approached these issues in this way and sentences have spelt out the very things in Amendment No. 79. It may be that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is placing a rather narrow gloss on the words of the Minister in the Standing Committee, but I have not read his speech and I may be wrong. If that Minister was suggesting for a moment that financial economies were more important than the future of a child, I would wholeheartedly agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said. I suspect, however, that that is not what was meant. In other words, the Minister was applying his mind here to the question of the local authority’s involvement. Was it necessary for the local authority to be represented in court when the probation officer, presumably, would have already consulted the local authority and would be able to speak for it in an authoritative way? If it was the latter, the Minister should be absolved from what clearly otherwise would be a very narrow and improper analysis of the situation. I wholeheartedly agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that Amendment No. 80 is to be preferred on the whole to Amendment No. 79. On Amendment No. 79, quite apart from the specific reference, and possibly unnecessary reference, to the local authority as such, it seems to me that that can be dealt with to a large extent by administrative precept. I suspect that it probably is dealt with already by administrative precept in that regard. All that one needs is in Amendment No. 80. Very few courts would ever proceed to sentencing a person under the age of 18 to custody without a written report. Sometimes, reports need not be written, but, almost invariably, the judge would ask the resident probation officer whether he or she would be so kind as to interview a person in circumstances where the learned judge very probably had already made up his or her mind not to exercise the assumption of custody in that case. I very much welcome Amendment No. 80 for the reasons that I have articulated.