Coroners and Justice Bill

I will be brief, but perhaps I should first gently point out to the Secretary of State that crime has fallen in every western European country since 1995, except Belgium, so his claims for the unique success of his policy are a little odd. I draw the Secretary of State's attention to what the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) said about the problems in the probation service, which mean that no matter what is said in this place, certain sentences will not be available to the courts. Probation officers will have to tell the courts that some sentences are not available in the area. The ideal is what is proposed by the Conservatives in amendment 44, which deals with the relationship between total resources and sentences. However, in reality, if the resources are not provided, we end up with the position that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington talked about. I am in a bit of a dilemma on amendment 43, although the discussion between Labour and Conservative Front Benchers about the meaning of "apply", as opposed to "follow", helped me to conclude that there is not much difference between what they said. However, to the extent that the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) is correct, and that what the Government propose is meant to be slightly more restrictive than what the Conservatives propose, I come down, in the end, on the Government's side. That is not because I agree with what they are doing in the Bill, which is to say that we should follow guidelines that are mainly still about punition and the seriousness of the offence. In an ideal world, the guidelines would say more about reducing reoffending and would be properly designed to draw the courts' attention to sentences that they would otherwise probably not impose. The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham is absolutely right: judges are not fantastically well informed about criminology, although perhaps they ought to be. In that ideal world, the guidelines should be followed, because it would mean that judges had to think about other sentences, and would have to give reasons before moving from them towards a more traditional, comfort-zone sentence. On the amendments that I tabled, I was glad to hear what the Secretary of State said right at the end of his remarks; I take what he said to the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) to have been said to me, too, because we signed the same amendments. On the basis that the Secretary of State will consider what we said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.