Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

That is a characteristically helpful intervention by the noble Lord, and I am grateful for his having made it. We have two preoccupations on Clause 29. First, the Minister—this is no criticism of him—did not address the inflexibility of the 28 days. That inflexibility is a serious defect. I know that there are provisions in the Bill to extend the period or, indeed, to reduce it. However, our concern is not so much the length of the period but the inflexibility of the requirement that it should always be 28 days. We are talking about offences that are not violent or sexual. The second issue, which has provoked a most interesting and stimulating debate in Committee, is the appropriateness of judicial involvement and the role of the Secretary of State rather than the Parole Board. I should have thought that Secretaries of State would be rather glad not to have this responsibility. On controversial matters, the first port of call of the newspapers—the tabloids, in particular—is the Home Office. It is the Secretary of State who is under the cosh. Surely it would be in his interests to implicate either the judiciary or the Parole Board in a decision that is often extremely politically sensitive. I am not including just this Government in my observation; there has been a trend over, say, the past 20 years for Secretaries of State to offload certain types of activities on to so-called independent bodies—no doubt for very good reasons, but sometimes for the reason that it will relieve them from embarrassing political responsibilities. As I said, I should have thought that Secretaries of State would be rather glad not to have the responsibilities that the Government are inserting into the Bill. Apart from the jurisprudential dimensions, it is good politics to exclude the Secretary of State from these decisions. Why his role is being intensified escapes me. I am grateful for the Minster’s remarks about Clause 31. I hope that he will also think again about certain aspects of Clause 29 between now and Report. It is important to come back to this issue on Report, but in the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.