Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I support these amendments but have one cautionary tale for the Government. Before that, I echo the words of my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf towards the end of his speech, when he said that restorative justice is not for everyone. This I remember being made very clear to me some 15 years ago when I was introduced to restorative justice by Sir Charles Pollard, then the chief constable of Thames Valley Police, to whom all those interested in restorative justice owe a huge debt of gratitude for the determination with which he has followed it. Not long ago, he asked me whether I would like to attend a restorative justice conference at HMP Pentonville, which was extremely ably chaired by a young policeman. The case involved three young women whose flat had been burgled by a young and chaotic man to fuel his heroin habit. During the early part of the conference it was discovered that this young man had been born of a teenage mother and had three young children himself by teenage mothers. He could not read and had an alcohol problem. The girls explained why they felt so strongly about their flat being burgled and everyone was in tears. The agreement was that the young man should be put through a drug treatment course, taught to read and put on an Alcoholics Anonymous course. As he left, and there was a spirit of hope in the room, one of the young women said to him, ““Furthermore, will you write to us every month to tell us how you’re getting on?””, which I thought was an extremely good addition. They left in a spirit of hope and I then said to the governor of Pentonville, who was there, ““How much of that can you deliver?””. He said, ““None””. I said, ““How dare you let those people go? Unless you can support what is being recommended, all the hope engendered by this process is dead””. Therefore, if, as I hope, the Government accept these amendments, I hope they will add the rider that those who are responsible for staging the conferences and seeing that they happen must make certain that what is agreed actually happens, so that the whole process is not undermined.