Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I should like to add my voice to that of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, in respect of this very sensible amendment and would be grateful for the Minister’s assurance that I have understood this. The situation is that the court has a range of options that it can use, depending on what the person in front of them has done and what the right outcome for what that person has done would be. In many cases, the percentages show that the courts use a conditional or an absolute discharge because their view is that what has been done is not serious enough to merit a more punitive sentence. We read often nowadays of young people being brought to court for extremely minor offences. An example came to my attention of a child who was charged with false imprisonment for locking another child in a garden shed for 10 minutes as part of a disagreement between them about sweets, DVDs or something. I understand that the courts are seeing more and more cases of extremely minor offending, if one wants to call it that, but one might just call it behaviour. They deal with that by imposing an absolute or a conditional discharge, recognising that something happened but that there was not a great deal of damage. As I understand it, that cannot be done for two years after a child has had a conditional caution. If that is the case, it is an absurd law. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, will push this in order to reverse the situation, if I have understood it correctly. I look forward to the Minister explaining to me that I have got it wrong.