Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister, who has characteristically given a full and earnest response to my amendment in his customary way. In fact, I can save myself most of the trouble in winding up, because the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said it all for me in the most telling way in his previous intervention. The Government can reasonably be accused in a phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has often used—““order, counter-order, disorder””. The Government have only recently introduced these changes. They have decided after a very short period that the changes are not working and to reverse rules that they made only a few years ago. Quite apart from the uncertainty of the statistics, the very least that your Lordships’ House can ask of the Government is to give the present system a chance to see whether it could work. Perhaps I may say, with enormous respect to the noble Lord, that some of the observations that he made about the conduct of magistrates in their courts are rather unfair. Magistrates are bound by the sentencing guidelines. They have to follow them. The sentencing guidelines are crystal clear about the circumstances in which suspended sentences can be applied. Is he suggesting that magistrates are now breaking those rules for some reason? I am sure that he is not, or I am sure that he did not intend to suggest that. The case for our position is quite irrefutable and for those reasons I wish to test the opinion of the House. On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 48) shall be agreed to? Their Lordships divided: Contents, 147; Not-Contents, 106. Clause 12 [Restriction on power to make a community order]: