Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

That is as I understand it, but I will write to the noble Lord if I am wrong. The other point that has been made—but of course if you try to be reasonable, you are derided—is that the courts are exempted from imposing the mandatory life sentences where they believe it is unjust to do so in all circumstances. It is the policy intention that offenders who have committed two serious offences not carrying life sentences will be liable to the mandatory sentence. However, we cannot at this moment assess the likely numbers that would be affected by that. As I said before, we have a sense of schizophrenia about this. Perhaps I may finish with a quote from Sadiq Khan: "““Through their ““two strikes”” policy, the Government absolve themselves totally of any responsibility to identify the serious, violent offenders who are most likely to reoffend. That should be done at the time when the first sentence is handed down for the commission of a heinous crime””.—[Official Report, 1/11/11; col. 796.]" There is not much sense of rehabilitation or reform there. We have to deal with a serious set of reforms and what we get is headline-grabbing attacks on the basis that we are going to let out violent criminals and the rest of it. That is why I hope that some of the unity that was shown earlier about penal reform will resolve itself around support for the Government as we try to manage these proposals through the House.