Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

All of those comments have been helpful, and I will of course study the remarks with interest. However, perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, that there are issues of resources, priorities and appropriate use of the skills of probation officers. I understand the noble Lord’s point: that an early intervention might be a better preventive approach and that the result of that would be fewer breaches of these orders and, therefore, fewer people going into prison. I suspect that it would be at a heavy cost, and given all of the pressures I am not sure that the answer would be in the affirmative. I understand why noble Lords are keen to retain the discretion of the magistracy in this area. I have already paid tribute to the work of magistrates. The fact is that we have hit a substantive problem, which has led to a significant increase in the prison population. In general, I think all noble Lords are as concerned as I about the current level of the prison population. We think that this measure will deal with part of the problem. There is evidence—I guarantee to the Committee and to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, to find what further information I can to justify this response—suggesting that accepting Clause 10 will lead to a lessening of the pressure. Based on the statistics, it is certainly our supposition that SSOs may have been used—I hesitate to say ““inappropriately””, or I will fall into the trap set for me by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas—in the grey area to which the Lord Chief Justice referred. It may be that magistrates might have been over-zealous in using the order. There is really nothing further that I can say to the Committee at this stage on what has been a very good debate.