Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I have some sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. I appreciate that, in an ideal world, judicial decisions should never be made by non-judicial personnel. That has never worked out in practice. As far as the Home Office is concerned, quasi-judicial decisions have very much been a part of its role all along. One only has to think back to pre-1965 days, when the Home Secretary had the ultimate discretion to commute a sentence of death to one of life imprisonment. One can hardly think of a judicial decision that so blatantly belonged more to the judiciary than a politician. There is some lack of consistency here, which is not something one could often hold against the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, who is normally so perfect in his remorseless and unremitting logic. In this situation, however, we have a case where a person is already within the bounds of a sentence. Within the scope of that sentence, he has already been released. Further along the line, he has committed some breach of licence and been recalled, not by a judge, but by the Home Secretary. If in fact there was an overwhelming case for a judicial person to intervene here, it would be surely at that stage—the stage of the recall. The infraction for which the prisoner is responsible may, indeed, have been fairly trivial and borderline, but the Secretary of State—in practice, a skilled and senior official—will determine whether he should be recalled. Once you have allowed that to take place, surely it is not illogical to allow the release after recall, still within the bracket of the totality of that sentence, to be determined by a non-judicial officer—although one trusts that in his semi-judicial capacity he would act judiciously.