Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I defer to the huge wisdom and practical experience of all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. In particular, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, on the clarity with which she developed her arguments in respect of both amendments. Like her, I am indebted to the Prison Reform Trust for its briefing. I should say that I am a member of an advisory group on young offenders that is run by the Prison Reform Trust. On the first amendment, clearly it would be helpful to everyone involved in the system for the maximum degree of information to be available to those who are charged with the responsibility of sentencing—and in so doing, to take advantage of the work of the Local Crime: Community Sentence initiative which is run by the Magistrates’ Association and the Probation Association and has been endorsed by the Lord Chief Justice. This is in part to assist magistrates in coming to their decisions, but also in part to ensure that the public are aware that community penalties can be and often are an effective alternative to imprisonment. But there is a feeling that, perhaps due to pressures on the probation service in particular, there has been a reduction in the degree to which the two are working together and communicating effectively in practice. It is no easy task to deal with the volume of cases that come before the courts, either from the standpoint of the probation service or, indeed, from that of the magistracy and those who provide advice to magistrates. This amendment certainly offers an opportunity to develop what has been good practice and ensure that it is spread more widely. On the second amendment, my noble friend Lord Ponsonby touched on an interesting area, which is the degree to which short sentences are used to deal with breaches of community orders and the like. It could be argued that custodial sentences are sometimes imposed too readily in such cases, but in any event, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, implied, they are potentially a discrete category and one could well see them falling within the qualification which, as the noble and learned Lord reminded us, is part of the provision. It is interesting to note that the former chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Mr Edward Leigh—who I think would be the first to say that he could not be counted among the most liberal-minded of politicians—in talking about short prison terms, observed: "““They served little purpose over and above taking the offenders in question out of the community for a short time …The uncomfortable truth is that they are not working, studying or doing almost anything constructive with their time. Indeed, half of then them spend all day, every day sitting in their cells””." That is true of more than those serving short sentences in prison. Whatever else happens as we develop our penal system, it is clearly necessary to do more than simply confine people if they are to be rehabilitated and, indeed, to constructively pay their debt to society. So whether it is a shorter sentence or a longer sentence, support and guidance needs to be provided as well as retribution, along with support once people leave prison. That is not always available, in many cases even for people serving longer sentences than a couple of months. It is a matter which has to be addressed. If I have one other reservation about the amendment it is that, paradoxically, it might push magistrates in the wrong direction from the point of view of the mover of the amendment. They might feel that rather than being obliged to give reasons for imposing short sentences, they could go the whole hog, as it were, and impose longer sentences. I am not sure whether the noble Baroness or other noble Lords would welcome that, but it is a temptation that might present itself in certain circumstances. I have just that one reservation.