Coroners and Justice Bill

I support those who have put their names to the amendment. I have not, in the past—I have to admit—been an avid reader of sentencing guidelines. However, lately, it is an activity that I have taken up. Most lately, I have read the definitive guideline, Breach of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. I want to make a few comments on it in order, I hope, to elicit from the Minister an idea of how he sees the guidelines working in practice in everyday life in a courtroom. When looking at this guideline, I had before me the image of an old, alcoholic man with an ASBO, which says that he must not go into the city centre where the pubs are, and where his presence has been found to be unpalatable. I had that image before me because a number of press reports have come my way of such people breaching their ASBOs. This man wanders into the city centre and is therefore arrested and brought to court for breach. The court then has to deal with him and, to do so properly, as I understand it—I look to the Minister to correct me if I have not understood—the court must follow a 19-page document explaining the law, the meaning of it and the stages that the court has to go through. Under the heading "The decision making process", the document says: ""The process set out below is intended to show that the sentencing approach for the offence of breach of an anti-social behaviour order is fluid and requires the structured exercise of discretion"." There follow seven headings. But that is not quite all, because there is another section called, "Factors to be taken into consideration", which says: ""Aggravating and mitigating factors specifically relevant to sentencing for breach of an ASBO are included in the guideline. Care needs to be taken to ensure that there is no double counting where an element of the breach determines the level of seriousness where it might in other circumstances be an aggravating factor. When assessing the seriousness of an offence, the court must always refer to the full list of aggravating and mitigating factors in the Council guideline on Seriousness (see Annex B)"." So people have to read another document as well. Then, as I understand it, according to the grid that I studied, the old alcoholic who broke his ABSO will get a fine, band B—which I assume he will not be able to pay, because if he had any money he would have spent it on drink. Alternatively, he will get a "community order (medium)", which I assume he will not turn up for. In the light of the amendment, my question to the Minister is whether this is a good way of using judicial brains and resources, as well as the resources of the criminal justice system. Does the end result serve communities and solve the problems of alcoholic old men on the streets, or are we becoming slightly too framework-bound and determined to put everything into a grid? Is there no room for a little more flexibility, fluidity and looseness in dealing with the many human problems that courts come up against every day?