Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord and I know that he wants to bring this to an end. Of course no one is suggesting that the Government are doing this because they want more young people to go to prison than at the moment. However, when an analysis is made of how we have reached the position where many more young people go to prison here than in comparable countries, one of the reasons is that we have a system which pushes young people into more serious areas of the law rather than the systems in many other countries which keep them as far away as possible. They do that because it gives young people the best prospect of growing up into law-abiding citizens.