My Lords, this group consists of three government amendments that, if not technical amendments, are certainly not controversial. Amendment 114 is intended to remove uncommenced elements of Section 67 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and make a minor consequential amendment to the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
I know that it might seem odd for this House to be considering again a provision that was debated so recently both here and in the other place, but it is right for us to do so. This amendment repeals provisions in the LASPO Act that, if brought into force, would mean that the courts could consider a case where an offender has breached a community order without reasonable excuse and allow the order to continue unchanged.
Having reconsidered their position, the Government do not think that it is appropriate for offenders to breach their community order and not face any sanction at all. We must ensure that both offenders and the public have confidence in community orders and take them seriously. Offenders will not take their order seriously if breaching does not have consequences. If an offender breaches a community order, we believe that a court should be able to take one of the three following actions: make the order more onerous; revoke the order and resentence for the original offence; or impose a fine. The last option allows the order to remain unchanged, while at the same time imposing a penalty for the breach. The courts did not have this power until it was included in the LASPO Act 2012. I am sure noble Lords will be pleased to know that it was brought into force on 3 December.
The Government believe that this revised framework provides the courts with the right options for dealing with failures to comply with community orders. It will still give the courts different options to tailor responses to breaches to individual offenders. However, it will also ensure there is a sanction of some sort for any offender who is found to have breached. Accordingly, on further consideration, we now believe that there is no good case for allowing offenders who fail to comply with court orders without a reasonable excuse to receive no penalty.
Amendment 114 also corrects a technical error in Section 150 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. This section was amended by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, which prevents a court from making a community sentence where a mandatory minimum sentence for the new aggravated knife possession offences in the LASPO Act apply. The LASPO change inadvertently prevents the court from giving a 16 or 17 year-old a youth rehabilitation order, which is the youth equivalent of the adult community order for these offences. Amendment 114 corrects this technical error so that the new provisions work as they were originally intended to. Without this amendment, were the court to decide to set aside the mandatory minimum, it would not be able to give a youth rehabilitation order and would therefore have no option but to give a lesser penalty such as a referral order or a fine.
Amendments 113H and 113J are of a technical nature. The intention is to allow for the transfer of community orders and suspended sentences to Northern Ireland, where an order containing location monitoring under the new electronic monitoring requirement is made in England or Wales but the offender lives in, or is planning to move to, Northern Ireland. It is already possible to transfer existing orders to Northern Ireland, so this provision merely extends that capability to the new location monitoring provision that we are introducing
in the Bill. Although location monitoring is not currently available in Northern Ireland under existing contractual arrangements, this will be addressed in the retendering of the contract in 2013. This provision will therefore enable appropriate cases to be transferred when the operational arrangements are in place in Northern Ireland. The transfer will be possible only where the court is satisfied that the appropriate arrangements are in place. This means that the tag will be capable of being fitted and the offender’s location will then be able to be monitored. If the court is not satisfied that the necessary tracking technology is available, the court in England and Wales will not be able to transfer the order.
Noble Lords will have noticed that the provision covers Northern Ireland but not Scotland. This is because at the moment there is no statutory provision for the imposition of tracking as a requirement in Scotland. If and when the time comes that Scottish courts can impose location monitoring as a requirement, we will bring forward legislation enabling the transfer of orders, including such requirements, from England and Wales to the Scottish jurisdiction. I beg to move.