Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 38: 38: Clause 9, page 7, line 14, after ““of”” insert ““financial compensation or other appropriate”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, this amendment came upon me a little more swiftly than I expected; I apologise. This is a short matter compared to previous ones or compared to most matters in the Bill. I have only brought it back to your Lordships because of the very generous offer that the Minister made at the end of his reply to me in Committee: "““I am happy to take away the provision to see whether anything more could be done to encourage more use of the order in the future ””.—[Official Report, 6/2/08; col. 1134.]" The amendment is about financial compensation orders. The view that I advanced in Committee was that this could be an effective way of impressing on offenders the significance of their crime. We are talking here about fairly low order offences; primarily but not exclusively vandalism. It would be a way of bringing home the reality of the damage that is being done by vandals to law-abiding householders and shopkeepers. I went on to express my surprise that only limited use appeared to be made of the orders in the courtroom. The Minister, fairly, came back to me and made a number of observations. First, he said that a provision in the Bill was not necessary because adequate powers already existed under Section 130 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, where it is clear that a compensation order can be made in favour of a victim. Secondly, he said—and again I entirely accept the reason why the Government made this observation—that quite often the courts take the view that it is so unlikely that the offender would be able to pay that passing such a sentence would in effect be futile. However, the Minister concluded that, because he himself undoubtedly accepted the principle that lay behind the amendment, that he would go away and give the matter some thought and come back to your Lordships on Report. That is why I retabled this amendment. I beg to move.