Rehabilitation and Sentencing

With great respect, I am obviously being particularly obscure today, because I agree with the hon. Gentleman; indeed, I was saying precisely the opposite of what he described. We have spent the last 10 years or so believing that sections of statute—some of which read rather like local government circulars—are required in order to tell the judges what to do in individual cases, and that we should prescribe exactly what they do, according to some careful analysis. The judges complain like mad about the incomprehensibility of the legislation they are supposed to be applying. I firmly agree with the hon. Gentleman that, by and large, judges are in the best position to judge the appropriate way of dealing with each case and each offender, just as juries are the right people to decide guilt or innocence in serious cases. Parliament must stop trying to second-guess and introduce rules that we believe, with the best of intentions, cover all cases but which will not cover the absolutely amazing variety of circumstances that tend to accompany any particular category of crime.