Criminal Justice Bill

Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2003.

Standing Committee B

Clause 265 - Orders and rules

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

I beg to move amendment No. 111, in

clause 265, page 147, line 31, at end add

'and—

(c) may be exercised for the purpose of improving incentives for the collection of fines.'.

The amendment is self-explanatory.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

We have discussed fine enforcement several times in Committee. As my hon. Friend will have gathered, the Government are interested in the issue and take it seriously. That is the reason for the provisions that we are including in the Courts Bill. I shall remind my hon. Friend of those and ask him to withdraw his amendment on the basis that it concerns something that we are already doing.

The Lord Chancellor's Department has the lead responsibility for fine enforcement. Provisions for improving the collection of fines are already being dealt with in clauses 31, 89 and 90 and in schedule 2 of the Courts Bill. Those measures will establish a new framework for fine enforcement, including ways to obtain prompt payment, more severe sanctions for those who try to play the system, and a dedicated fines officer managing the collection of fines. The system will provide for discounts for prompt payers and increases for those who delay payment. I hope that the fact that the Government already have this matter in hand by virtue of the Courts Bill will encourage my hon. Friend to withdraw his amendment.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

At the risk of prolonging proceedings, I want to mention that I was interested in the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), which seems very pertinent. A problem is that although we have touched, peripherally, on the issue of fines, we have not succeeded in holding a discrete debate, although it may be possible to do that on new clause 8. The amendment, which is designed to facilitate fine collection, raises the question of sanctions. It is interesting that we are moving towards a much more liberal regime of sanctions which will arguably make fine enforcement less easy. Equally, there are arguments for alternatives to the ultimate sanction of locking people up, and those should be tried as much as possible.

I hope that the Government have this interesting and important issue in mind. I hope also that we shall consider it in more detail when we consider new clause 8. We want fines to work and we want the Home

Secretary to be able to make enforcement work. However, I fear that the issue has not been fully addressed yet.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

My apologies, Mr. Illsley, for not paying you the normal courtesy of welcoming you to the Chair.

The Minister will be aware of the National Audit Office's reports on the poor level of fine collection in magistrates courts and I know that he takes it extremely seriously, as does Parliament. I have written to him about the possibility of incentivising courts to pick up additional fines. If they can do better than they do now, a percentage of the revenue should be kept within the purview of that court for use for local matters, many of which we have discussed, such as publicising its activities and making itself more user-friendly. I hope that the Minister will consider that.

Finally, as both Conservative and Labour Governments have looked at the impact of general management on education and on the health service, does the Minister feel that it is now time to have general managers for courts? They would not have a direct interest in the process of the courts, or the cases before them, but would be accountable either to the Minister or to the Lord Chancellor's Department. I do not expect a reply to that now, but I hope that the Minister will take it on board when he considers the pathetic number of fines that are paid appropriately to courts. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I beg to move amendment No. 937, in

clause 265, page 147, line 32, leave out subsection (4).

Eric Illsley (Labour, Barnsley Central)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 938, in

clause 265, page 148, line 4, leave out ', or' and insert ', Section 268(1), or'.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

These amendments revisit familiar territory, so I shall not detain the Committee for long. They make a point and enable us to ask a couple of questions about the Government's intentions.

Clause 265 is a general clause that gives Ministers the power to make rules by statutory instrument. That is normal and understandable. We are all used to it, and we have just debated an amendment that would have added a further opportunity to the two set out in clause 265(3). The first allows variations; it says that the power

''may be exercised so as to make different provision for different purposes or different areas'',

and the second, slightly delphically—perhaps it is a drafting convention—says that it

''may be exercised either for all the purposes to which the power extends or for those purposes subject to specified exceptions, or only for specified purposes'',

which covers all bases. Basically, it says that there is a wide-ranging set of alternatives available to Ministers, and there is nothing new about that. The question is how widespread or limited and tied to the Bill they should be. There is always a danger of clauses starting off too widely drawn. Happily, in the case of Home Office Bills in which I have been involved on behalf of

my party, we have managed, if not in this House then in the other place, to restrict such provisions. The object of amendment No. 937 is to probe whether the scope of subsection (4) can be reduced. At the moment it includes power to make

''(a) any supplementary, incidental or consequential provision''—

any. Supplementary provisions are, by definition, further down a waterfall than the main proposal and ''incidental'' allows one to get a bit further away, but ''consequential'' could be widely interpreted.

Those are not the worst aspects of the subsection, although they come within the famous Henry VIII definition. I have never checked those powers. It is one of those terms of art that have been used for a long time. It is entirely likely that Henry VIII did have such powers. He used extreme powers in his public and private life at every opportunity. A monarch who was willing to behead his wives and break with the Pope strikes me as being likely to push the powers to the limit. [Interruption.] I will be good, and not repeat the exchange that has just taken place.

Subsection (4)(b) is understandable as it refers to ''transitory, transitional or saving'' provisions. However, we then get the wide sweep provision, which is that the Minister making the order must consider it ''necessary or expedient''. Ministers sometimes consider things necessary or expedient in a way that may not command the unanimous support of the House, let alone of their party.

We had an important debate yesterday about certain Government policies that Ministers considered to be necessary and expedient, but the Government did not carry a substantial number of their own party with them, and they certainly did not have the support of the Liberal Democrats. I raise the matter because it strikes me that the provision gives Ministers too much power. I shall give an example.

If the Home Secretary of the day thought that a judge's interpretation of a provision in what will become the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was something that he did not wish for, he could, if he thought it necessary or expedient, bring forward an order to clarify the legislation. He could argue that it would be exercised in a way that was ''supplementary, incidental or consequential'' upon the Act, but that could go a long way.

I heard of an exchange in the House of Lords yesterday that included criticism of the Home Secretary's remarks on a High Court judgment in a case brought under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 about changes to the benefits law. The Home Secretary had suggested that the judge should not have behaved as he did; yet I have read the whole of the judgment given by Lord Justice Collins, and he was absolutely clear that his judgment was based on the law as he understood it and on what he thought Parliament meant by it, taking into account the other obligations imposed on him by other legislation, including the Human Rights Act 1998.

The danger is that the provision in subsection (4)(b) may be far too wide. The words ''or expedient'' are by

definition subjective, not objective; they are too wide and potentially dangerous. We should avoid such provisions unless they are tidying-up operations, or make a de minimis change—the sort of thing that comes to light when Ministers realise that an inconsistency in the drafting had not been spotted in Committee, an incompatibility between clauses or a repeal that had not been spotted. Such things are fine—a proper procedure is needed, but it should not detain Parliament—but there should not be such a wide sweep.

That is the reason for amendment No. 937. My instinct is to seek to divide the Committee, unless the Minister can reassure me, because we would resist such a wide definition.

Amendment No. 938 would simply add the provision that a statutory instrument made under the clause should go through only if it is approved by both Houses under the affirmative resolution procedure. That would give us the best control. That would add clause 268(1), the general sweep-up provisions, to the list in subsection (6) that should be dealt with under the affirmative resolution procedure. For those who are not Members or close followers of procedure, I should explain the importance of that. If the Government want to bring in something important, and if the Bill allows for secondary legislation, our view is that Parliament should none the less automatically have the chance to consider it. However, that does not mean that we detain Parliament unnecessarily. The reality is that if subsequent provisions are uncontroversial, they go through on the nod—they are on the Order Paper and no one objects to them. Ministers know well that a Committee can consider several uncontroversial statutory instruments together. We do not have an over-laborious, over-complicated and time-consuming system, so there is not a danger to parliamentary business management or other things.

We usually consider such important matters and the proper role of Parliament at the end of a Committee. However, I should be grateful to hear the Minister's general response and what things he envisages would be governed by the provisions both in the clause, in particular in subsection (4), and in clause 268(1).

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I do not want to repeat his arguments, but it is worth while for the Committee to pause to consider for a moment how the system that is projected by the provisions in their unamended form works in practice.

In the last Parliament, it was my interesting lot—some would say unhappy lot—to serve on the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which is one of those Committees that most people who join want to get off as quickly as possible. They are probably mistaken, because seeing how Henry VIII clauses and statutory instruments are generally managed is an educational experience.

The key question—the hon. Gentleman mentioned this—is whether the power that the Minister is being granted is used in one of two ways that are objectionable. The first way would be for the power

to be used more widely than anticipated, although I expect that the Minister will reassure us that he intends the provision to have quite a narrow scope. The second way covers those instances in which the Minister seeks to use powers wider than those that are in fact conferred. When I served on the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments there were quite a few occasions on which Speaker's Counsel came along to advise the Committee and said that he had anxieties about the vires of a proposed statutory instrument, because he had read the enabling legislation and the SI, and had found the two difficult to reconcile.

Far from being able to intervene in that process, Parliament finds that what I describe is the end of the matter. One writes off to the Department concerned and says, ''We question whether in fact this statutory instrument is within the powers conferred by the legislation,'' and the departmental advisers to the Minister write back and say, ''We disagree with you.'' At that point Parliament's role is effectively at an end, and it is left to the judiciary to pick up the pieces of any subsequent dispute and decide whether the Minister has acted within his powers. That is why, as a matter of principle, I, like the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), am always worried by the conferring of wide powers to amend legislation. I appreciate that there is provision to attempt to reverse such things through a negative resolution—not an affirmative provision. However, negative resolutions do not attract much attention or publicity, and they tend to be a foregone conclusion, despite one or two rare exceptions. The matter always causes me anxiety.

I should be interested to hear from the Minister, for Hansard purposes, exactly what he anticipates that the scope of the provisions will be, and examples of incidents in which he expects them to be applied. That would be very helpful, and it is one reason why the matter must be dealt with by a probing amendment so that we have a record of the intention behind the clause. I worry about the word ''expedient'', although it may simply be a standard phrase. However, ''expediency'' in ordinary English usage has a rather nasty connotation. It would seem to allow a very wide use of powers. I hope that the Minister can reassure us on the meaning of the word. I accept that it would be impossible to govern the country without statutory instruments; however, it was possible to do so in the 1960s when 30 were introduced per annum. I do not know the latest figure, but I believe that when I left the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments at the last election we were nudging the 4,000 mark. That is the extent to which this country is now governed by subordinate orders and legislation.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

As the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey said, being familiar territory does not make this unimportant territory. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the points that were raised. First, I understand that the word ''expedient'' is the standard phrase used in such drafting; it has no hidden meanings. It is also applied elsewhere.

Of course I recognise that the power is wide. There is a balance to be struck between effective parliamentary scrutiny and the best use of parliamentary time. I am sure that all hon. Members recognise that, and indeed the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) recognised it in his remarks. In this instance, we believe that such a degree of parliamentary scrutiny would be disproportionate, given the nature of the likely supplementary, incidental and consequential provisions required. All hon. Members would accept that in a Bill of such scale and complexity there is a need for, in the words of clause 265(4)(b), a

''transitory, transitional or saving provision''.

That applies particularly to those provisions in the Bill that would need to be piloted and phased in.

The Committee that considers such matters has taken a particular interest in the issue, and hon. Members will, I am sure, be aware of the third special report of the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in the current session. They are called ''Henry VIII powers'' in common parlance, but given the description that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey gave the Committee of how that monarch used his powers, anything that Ministers might seek to do under these provisions would be modest in comparison.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

Does the Minister recognise the possibility of the Henry VIII in Queen Anne's gate colliding with the self-proclaimed Cardinal Wolsey on the Woolsack on the matter?

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I can only say that I know of no such Henry VIII in Queen Anne's gate. We shall move on.

The report said:

''We have no doubt, however, that there are occasions when Henry VIII powers to make incidental, consequential and similar provision are justified: for example, when the number of incidental, consequential etc. amendments would cause a disproportionate increase in the length of a bill or when, as a matter of practicality, it would be difficult to anticipate the full extent of such amendments during the passage of a bill.''

That, in essence, is why the provisions are included. The truth, as hon. Members will be aware, is that, given the scale and complexity of the Bill and the process that we went through in Committee, we may miss some things in order to give effect to the principles and to the clauses. Therefore it is sensible to have this provision.

It is also worth saying that the report found:

''We recognise that in some instances the negative procedure provides a sufficient level of Parliamentary scrutiny.''

Clause 265(5) sets out clearly the powers that must be exercised by statutory instrument by the affirmative resolution procedure; all others are set out in subsection (6), subject to the provisions of subsection (7).

It may reassure members of the Committee if I give an example of what those references in the Bill refer to where neither the affirmative nor negative resolution procedure applies. For example, clause 195(3) would enable description of a person responsible for monitoring where a relevant order includes an electronic monitoring requirement. A change of that

description is one example where we think that it is appropriate to deal with statutory instruments in the way in which it is set out here.

In response to what the third special report said about the balance between the affirmative and the negative resolution procedures, it may be helpful to say that the Committee said that

''reasons for any departure from affirmative procedure should be set out in full in the Explanatory Notes accompanying a bill and in the memorandum submitted to this Committee.''

As the Bill passes to the other place, a memorandum will need to be submitted to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee setting out the delegated powers sought in the Bill and the justification for seeking them. It is intended that the memorandum should set out where we think that the negative resolution procedure offers an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny for those orders. The report was issued during the passage of the Bill, and we are keen to respond to it when we have had a chance to consider it.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

First, I should be grateful if the Minister would deal specifically with amendment No. 938. Rather than dealing with the generality, it seeks to bring into clause 265(5) the list of the sections where supplementary legislation would require affirmative procedure under clause 268(1). I appreciate that the Minister touched on that point incidentally.

There is a point about drafting that I would like explained now to save us debating it when we come to clause stand part. I do not understand the interrelationship of subsections (5), (6) and (7). I understand that subsection (5)(a) and (b) set out those statutory instruments that require affirmative resolution. I also understand that subsection (6) effectively provides that any other statutory instrument shall be subject to negative resolution procedure.

Then, slightly confusingly, the clause provides that anything else that has a negative procedure does not apply to a statutory instrument containing only an order made under one of the five sections on the list. A simple reading of the clause did not tell me, and will not tell the reader, whether that means that a statutory instrument goes back to being subject to affirmative resolution or does not have any requirement at all. I presume that it is the latter; that there are a few statutory instruments that do not have to go back to Parliament and that are effectively opted out of further parliamentary scrutiny. I should be grateful for further clarification on that.

The Minister quoted the Joint Committee report. I was conscious that that Committee had been asked to consider that issue, but I own up to not having read the report. I was unaware that it had been published, which was a failure on my part and one to which I plead guilty.

At the end of the last Session, the House of Lords was debating Home Office business. There was considerable concern about that issue, which partly

triggered the wider reference back to the Joint Committee for specific deliberation. I have not been able to check this, but the Minister may be able to tell us whether the House of Lords has had a chance to debate the report to which he referred. Although we reflected the concerns in our House—as the Conservatives did equally—it is clearly in the Lords where the combined power of our parties is greater, relative to the Government's, leading to a greater ability to require that the matter be reconsidered. There was general concern in the Lords, not limited to our parties but stretching also across the Cross Benches into the Labour party, that it was necessary to get a grip on the wording and not to presume that the formulation that had always been used was all right. Different wording might be necessary and care would be needed to avoid subjectivity. I think that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield and I agree about that and have made the point in our different ways.

I should like the Minister to clarify his view of amendment No. 938, and to confirm whether my understanding of subsection (7) is right. Is it normal for big Bills to allow a few instances of a supplementary legislative process that does not require a return to Parliament? Could the Minister also bring us up to speed on whether anyone other than the Committee—particularly in the House of Lords—has examined and approved the general view of the Joint Committee about whether safeguards exist?

I appreciate that this is not entirely a matter for the Minister's Department, but do the Government have a view, given that this will be relevant whoever is in government, on whether consensus may be sought between the parties on an acceptable wording—and possibly a different one, depending on what we intend to provide for, and in what piece of legislation? Agreement on that issue, which arises in relation to all major Bills, would be worth achieving.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I hope that I did address the central argument of amendment No. 938 when I said that in the Government's view there was a balance to be struck between affirmative and negative procedures, and what I shall describe not as the third way procedure—

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

The non-procedure.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

That is one way of putting it. I can confirm that subsection (7) refers to a statutory instrument being laid without further procedure; I think that that is probably the best description. However, I hope that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey will be reassured when I tell him that that approach is closely confined to the provisions listed in subsection (7). I provided an example earlier. The relevant circumstances are very limited ones in which it would not, frankly, be sensible to use either of the two aforementioned procedures to make the changes.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

In fairness to the Minister, I think that he is right to say that such an order would still go before the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. We used to spend a great deal of time examining them, although I am not sure to what purpose. Nevertheless,

procedure was involved to the extent that they passed before our eyes and were occasionally commented on.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I am deeply reassured to hear that that is so.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

I am not sure whether this is quite the apposite moment, but I was looking through the provisions listed in subsection (7), which my hon. Friend has said will not return to the Floor of the House, to see whether any of them contained grave and weighty matters. I had reached section 262(6)(i) in the list, but I cannot find it.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

My hon. and learned Friend has used her eagle eye. It may help her to know that we, too, had spotted that. We shall correct it this morning or this afternoon, depending on our rate of progress.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

Is it supposed to be section 262(7)? That would seem to be the likely alternative.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

It should be subsection (6)(h).

In answer to the other point raised by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey, I do not know whether the other place has given the matter further consideration, but I will endeavour to find out.

In a broader sense, this is really a matter for others. That said, we debated the affirmative and negative resolution procedures when we considered amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 at the beginning of the Bill—that seems so long ago. As those debates made clear, it makes sense for the House to continue to reflect on how to strike the right balance between ensuring effective parliamentary scrutiny and giving practical effect to provisions that have been debated and agreed. In that way, consequentials and the other bits and pieces that, as all hon. Members recognise, arise from time to time can be dealt with in the most efficient way.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

First, congratulations to the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird). I gave up two lines before her, so I completely failed in my duty to scrutinise every line of the Government's proposals, although I did satisfy myself about the general point before I gave up. We are grateful to her, and we look forward to the opportunities that the Minister has presented.

I understand the Government's position. We are always nervous about such issues, and we have not yet had a chance to ask our colleagues in the House of Lords—it was they who raised particular concerns—whether they are satisfied. I will therefore seek to divide the Committee on the amendment, which would provide a mechanism for protecting Parliament's rights.

I hope that there is a basis for negotiation. In that way, the parties and others may arrive at an agreement that gives us what the Minister seeks—the best balance between impractical politics and the legislative process on the one hand and attempts to hold the Executive to account on the other. I hope that the Committee will understand and that other hon. Members will join us, because this is an important matter. Ultimately, it is about ensuring that Parliament allows through only

those measures that have been dealt with under the proper process.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 2, Noes 11.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I beg to move amendment No. 676, in

clause 265, page 147, leave out line 40.

In a sense, the amendment is the reverse of what went before. It would remove section 139 from the affirmative resolution procedure. That is not my intention: this is a probing amendment designed to highlight the way in which we propose changes in respect of the sentencing powers of the magistrates court. Although we have already discussed that, I wish to register my continuing anxiety.

Section 139 is the power of the Home Secretary to increase limits for the magistrates court by order at some subsequent date from 12 to 18 months and to substitute for the reference to 65 weeks in section 133 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 a reference to 24 months. We debated that in the context of an earlier part of the Bill, but I cannot let the matter pass without continuing to express my concern about how we are going about it.

We already know that it is the plan to increase the sentencing power to 12 months without there being in place the custody plus and custody minus element, which will be very important in determining the number of people in the prison population. Here, we give the Minister, by order, a power to raise it yet again—not something that I necessarily disagree with—without our having the opportunity to debate the consequences. I do not want to see a negative resolution, but I worry about whether an affirmative procedure is satisfactory for what will be a very important change, if and when he decides to bring it in.

I hope that the Home Affairs Committee will have an opportunity to consider and scrutinise the measure, and that the Government will publish a paper explaining how it will work in practice and how it will affect the prison population. Otherwise, we are in danger of bringing about a substantial change in sentencing procedure at some indeterminate time, by order, on a short debate in the House or in Committee. It bothers me very much that we should leave as a hostage to fortune for a future date something that could have profound consequences for the way in which the prison system is operated.

Will the Minister consider the fact that we do not know whether the power to increase limits might be invoked next year, the year after or in five or 10 years' time? The House has not the slightest idea what the

crime rate will be then, what the prison population and the pressures on it will be, or whether there will have been adequate review of the decision that we have taken to raise sentencing limits for magistrates courts. There is a danger—I say this in all sincerity—that we shall take a decision on insufficient evidence, when a decision of such magnitude probably calls for separate legislation in a short Bill. I have no desire to see this removed into negative procedure, but I am not happy with it where it is. I do not want the Bill to leave the Committee without expressing my deep concern that we should be doing this in this way, and leaving a power to a subsequent Home Secretary—who could be Labour or Conservative—

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Could be Liberal Democrat, too.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

That, I have to say to the hon. Gentleman, is very wild speculation. Nevertheless, whoever the Home Secretary might be and of whatever party he—[Hon. Members: ''Or she'']—or she might be, I am reluctant to see him or her entrusted with such a power, because I do not think that Parliament will be able to exercise its proper scrutiny and to have an influence if it thinks that that is the wrong time to make such an order, or that the order should not be made at all. Those are my objections.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

I support the hon. Gentleman's contention, and I do so in the context of our rapidly growing prison population. Figures released by the Home Office yesterday show that the UK now jails a higher proportion of its citizens than any other country in western Europe. We have now overtaken Portugal in that respect, and even jail more of our citizens than Libya or Malaysia. Some 72,144 of our citizens are in prison this week. The average sentence for adults has increased by five months to two years and two months. We have a burgeoning prison population. However, in clauses 137 and 138 the Government have already provided for the biggest increase in sentencing powers for magistrates courts that we have seen for a long time. Clause 139 goes beyond that and provides for powers to give further increases, without recourse to a proper debate or any satisfactory analysis of the consequences of the implementation of clauses 137 and 138.

I have to agree with the hon. Member for Beaconsfield: I do not think that that is a satisfactory arrangement. We are, to an extent, debating the matter after the horse has bolted. We have already touched on the matter, and this point in the Bill is our last chance in the Committee to raise a serious concern. I agree that the amendment is an unsatisfactory way of dealing with the matter, in that it would take things further away from parliamentary scrutiny, but it underlines, I hope, a serious point, which is that the matter should not be dealt with by order or with only casual consideration either by Ministers or by the House. It merits detailed and considered debate on the basis of evidence. We talk so often about evidence-based law making, but I am not satisfied that the process envisaged under the Bill will provide for that.

I do not think that the Bill is satisfactory as it stands, and I suspect that colleagues in another place will find it even more unsatisfactory. I hope that the Minister will at least try to satisfy the Committee of the rightness of the path that he has chosen. However, it would be better still to reconsider the matter and perhaps find an alternative way of introducing further proposals at a later stage if he feels that those would be necessary, rather than renewing primary legislation. We all feel that that would be the most appropriate way of dealing with the issue.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield for pointing out the technical deficiency in the amendment. However, that does not detract from the force of the point that he made, which we have debated at some length before. I have reflected on those debates, and although I recognise that some members of the Committee felt strongly about the matter, I do not recollect strong objections to the principle of revisiting the upper limits. That is an important consideration to bear in mind.

I shall quickly recap the argument. There is no evidence that magistrates' sentences are more severe than those of the Crown court. It is important that we hold on to that fact. I would not want anyone to have the impression that making use of the power contained in the clause to increase magistrates' sentencing powers further—to 18 months' custody in respect of one offence and 24 months' custody in respect of two or more offences to be served consecutively—would be done in a casual manner.

I accept entirely the argument about the need to reflect on the impact of the changes that the Bill would make, and the fact that we should consider all the issues referred to by the hon. Members for Beaconsfield and for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), before the Home Secretary can decide whether it would be sensible to use the powers in the Bill further to increase those sentencing powers. In other words, we will have to evaluate it properly and consider the evidence in order to see what the impact it will have before a future Home Secretary can decide whether it is sensible to extend the sentencing powers of magistrates.

Once that has been done, it should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure—although some may take a different view. In the light of our debate about the principle, and the fact that there has been no objection to the possibility of further extension—I think that I am right in saying that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield indicated assent to that argument—I do not think that the affirmative resolution procedure is an inappropriate way to do it. However, I acknowledge that it will be a significant step and that it will have to be done on the basis of evidence and proper evaluation.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

For the avoidance of doubt, and because I do not think that the Minister was trying to misrepresent the points put earlier in the debate, we have indicated that we are prepared to accept the provision for 12 months. However, we have not said at any stage that we would accept an extension of that

without the most rigorous examination. We believe that it would take some time to adduce the necessary evidence, and among other things we would need to consider it in the context of the criminal justice and penal system as a whole. That will take years, not months, so we are talking about some distance in the future.

I shall have doubts then about making a further substantial change to sentencing policy by order rather than primary legislation. It may be 10 years ahead from the Bill's enactment, but it is a significant change in sentencing powers. It is something that should be properly considered by the House. The right way of doing that is through primary legislation, not by slipping in a provision of this kind into the Bill, as a sort of delayed-action power that can be invoked at some stage in the future. We clearly disagree with the Government. I suspect that we agree with the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, but he can speak for himself.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I do indeed agree with the hon. Gentleman. Our position has always been that we would be prepared to consider it. We certainly did not stand in the way of the increase to 12 months—indeed, we welcomed it, accepting that it should be open to review. However, it is vastly premature to decide now that it would be correct to go for a further extension, although the Minister has reassured me to an extent by acknowledging that no such step could be taken without a great deal of consultation and scrutiny. The difficulty is that the proper mechanism for scrutiny is the passing of legislation by the House—even a short Bill. Second Reading would give hon. Members the opportunity to express their views on the principle, and in Committee and on Report, they might come up with alternative figures—for example, 15 months rather than 18 months. There are all sorts of possibilities, but they are not included in the Bill, although there appears to be at least an intention by the Government that they wish to do that at some point in the future.

I find the situation profoundly unsatisfactory.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

It is not as though the Home Office normally has a lack of legislative opportunities. Not many years go by without a Criminal Justice Bill or something similar being passed as a vehicle for such change. The Home Office does not have the difficulty that some Departments might have of finding an appropriate legislative principle; they happen all the time, like a queue of buses.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I know that the Home Secretary hopes that this defining Criminal Justice Bill will lessen the need for future such Bills. However, if I were a betting man, I would speculate that we will have another such Bill in some form or other within the next two years.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

Exactly.

Mark Francois (Conservative, Rayleigh)

I cannot wait.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I am glad to hear that, but I am not sure that I put myself into the same category as my hon. Friend. I seem to have been very absorbed in Bills of a criminal nature over the past two years, and a short break might be quite in order. The fact is that the

clause is unsatisfactory, but I will not press the amendment to a vote. I do not know what will be done there about this, but if I were in the other place I would take out clause 139. I do not think that it should be in the Bill in its current form. The Government should be willing to accept that such a further change should be introduced only through primary legislation. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments made: No. 753, in

clause 265, page 148, line 3, at end insert—

'section (Fine defaulters: driving disqualification)(5),'.

No. 754, in

clause 265, page 148, line 4, after '262(7),' insert—

'paragraph 5 of Schedule (Default orders: modification of provisions relating to community orders),'.—[Hilary Benn.]

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 965, in

clause 265, page 148, line 16, leave out 'section 262(6)(i)' and insert 'section 262(6)(h)'.

This is indeed the amendment that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) spotted in her contribution. I am therefore sure that the Committee will pass it with acclaim.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I do not wish to be too contrary, but it was a subject of intrigued speculation for me as to how clause 262(6)(i) got muddled up with clause 262(6)(h). Someone may have typed the wrong key or it may have been originally intended to have a clause 262(6)(i), which was deleted at some point. Can the Minister enlighten us as to what actually happened?

Amendment agreed to.

Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

We have indicated our concerns about this clause and clause 268. I want to make one constructive suggestion and then confirm our position, which is that I anticipate that we will not win an argument today to amend the clause in a way in that we would be happy with. I will flag up opposition without seeking to divide the Committee further on that point. It is a matter that we may want to come back to downstairs, and we may want to pursue it even more vigorously in the House of Lords. I do not think that it is a secret that I, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield and others will work to get an agreed position. If we can agree it with the Government, so much the better; if we cannot, we may have to defeat them.

On the constructive suggestion, will the Minister be so kind as to ask those responsible for drafting to look at whether the separation of clause 265 and 268 is as logical as they think, as 265 is the general power and 268 the power that deals with amendments necessary to bring other legislation into line? There may be a tidier arrangement than having two separate places with cross-references to clauses all over the place.

I see that we are about to discuss amendments Nos. 1005 to 1017; I do not remember being on a Committee in which the amendments ran into four figures. I do not object to so many amendments—Bills are here to be amended and improved, and that is a

good thing. However, if we can make them as short as possible we shall have improved them. There must be a shorter and tidier way of doing this. Some of us on the Committee will not be happy to let the Bill go through with this clause unamended, and we will take the appropriate action.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

The hon. Gentleman is right. The fact that I did not vote on amendment No. 937 did not mean that I was not concerned. I was unsure whether it was sensible to divide the Committee at that point. It did not denote indifference to an extremely important issue.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I am happy to reflect on the point that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey made about the relationship between clauses 265 and 268.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 265, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 266 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 25 - Further minor and consequential amendments

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 44, in

schedule 25, page 274, line 35, at end insert—

'(1A) In subsection (1)(g) after ''examination)'' there is inserted '', section 52(5) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (adjournment of proceedings under section 51 etc)''.'

Eric Illsley (Labour, Barnsley Central)

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 47 and 48.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

These are very minor tidying up amendments, which, I should explain to hon. Members, were not included in the letter that I sent to them. Amendment No. 44 makes a consequential amendment to the Supreme Court Act 1981, adding a reference to adjournment under section 52(5) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. This is a missed consequential: it is consequential not on this Bill but on a provision in the 1998 Act that was overlooked at the time of enactment. We are tidying up after the event.

Amendments Nos. 47 and 48 remove a redundant reference from section 22 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967, which deals with the power of the High Court to grant or vary bail, and which clause 14 of this Bill amends. The reference is redundant because it could never apply in the circumstances in which section 22, as amended, would operate.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments made: No. 45, in

schedule 25, page 274, line 38, leave out 'or'.

No. 46, in

schedule 25, page 274, line 38, at end insert—

'(2A) In subsection (1)(g) after subparagraph (iii) there is inserted ''or

(iiia) section 24C (intention as to plea by child or young person: adjournment);''.'

—[Hilary Benn.]

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 957, in

schedule 25, page 274, line 38, at end insert—

Charging etc

Criminal Law Act 1977 (c.45)

2A In section 39 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 (service of summons and citation throughout United Kingdom) for subsection (1) there is substituted—

''(1) The following documents, namely—

(a) a summons requiring a person charged with an offence to appear before a court in England or Wales,

(b) a written charge (within the meaning of section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003) charging a person with an offence,

(c) a requisition (within the meaning of that section) requiring a person charged with an offence to appear before a court in England or Wales, and

(d) any other document which, by virtue of any enactment, may or must be served on a person with, or at the same time as, a document mentioned in paragraph (a), (b) or (c) above,

may, in such manner as may be prescribed by rules of court, be served on him in Scotland or Northern Ireland.''

Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 (c.43)

2B The Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 is amended as follows.

2C (1) Section 1 (issue of summons to accused or warrant for his arrest) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (3) after ''section'' there is inserted ''upon an information being laid''.

(3) In subsection (4) after ''summons'' there is inserted '', or a written charge and requisition,''.

(4) In subsection (6) after ''has'' there is inserted '', or a written charge and requisition have,''.

(5) After subsection (6) there is inserted—

''(6A) Where the offence charged is an indictable offence and a written charge and requisition have previously been issued, a warrant may be issued under this section by a justice of the peace upon a copy of the written charge (rather than an information) being laid before the justice by a public prosecutor.''

(6) After subsection (7) there is inserted—

''(7A) For the purposes of subsection (6A) above, a copy of a written charge may be laid before, and a warrant under this section may be issued by, a single justice of the peace.''

2D In section 150(1) (interpretation of other terms) after the definition of ''prescribed'' there is inserted—

'' ''public prosecutor'', ''requisition'' and ''written charge'' have the same meaning as in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003;''

Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (c.23)

2E (1) Section 15 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (interpretation) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (1) after the definition of ''public authority'' there is inserted—

'' ''public prosecutor'', ''requisition'' and ''written charge'' have the same meaning as in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003;''.

(3) In subsection (2), after paragraph (b) there is inserted—

''(ba) where a public prosecutor issues a written charge and requisition for the offence, when the written charge and requisition are issued;''.

Criminal Justice (International Cooperation) Act 1990 (c.5)

2F In section 2(1) of the Criminal Justice (International Cooperation) Act 1990 (service of United Kingdom process overseas) after paragraph (a) there is inserted—

''(aa) a written charge and requisition (within the meaning of section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003) charging a person with an offence and requiring that person to appear before a court in England and Wales; and''.

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (c.33)

2G (1) Section 51 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (intimidation, etc, of witnesses, jurors and others) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (9), for the word ''and'' at the end of the definition of ''potential'' there is substituted—

'' ''public prosecutor'', ''requisition'' and ''written charge'' have the same meaning as in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003;''.

(3) In subsection (10)(a), after subparagraph (i) there is inserted—

''(ia) when a public prosecutor issues a written charge and requisition in respect of the offence;''.

Drug Trafficking Act 1994 (c.37)

2H (1) Section 60 of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994 (prosecution by order of Commissioners of Customs and Excise) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (6) for the word ''and'' at the end of the definition of ''officer'' there is substituted—

'' ''public prosecutor'', ''requisition'' and ''written charge'' have the same meaning as in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003;''.

(3) In subsection (6A), after paragraph (a) there is inserted—

''(aa) when a public prosecutor issues a written charge and requisition in respect of the offence;''.

Merchant Shipping Act 1995 (c.21)

2I (1) Section 145 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 (interpretation of section 144) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (2)(a), after subparagraph (i) there is inserted—

''(ia) when a public prosecutor issues a written charge and requisition in respect of the offence;''.

(3) After subsection (2) there is inserted—

''(2A) In subsection (2) above ''public prosecutor'', ''requisition'' and ''written charge'' have the same meaning as in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.''

Terrorism Act 2000 (c.11)

2J (1) Paragraph 11 of Schedule 4 to the Terrorism Act 2000 (proceedings for an offence: timing) is amended as follows.

(2) In subparagraph (1), after paragraph (a) there is inserted—

''(aa) when a public prosecutor issues a written charge and requisition in respect of the offence;''.

(3) After subparagraph (2) there is inserted—

''(2A) In subparagraph (1) ''public prosecutor'', ''requisition'' and ''written charge'' have the same meaning as in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.''

Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (c.29)

2K (1) Section 85 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (proceedings) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (1), after paragraph (a) there is inserted—

''(aa) when a public prosecutor issues a written charge and requisition in respect of the offence;''.

(3) After subsection (8) there is inserted—

''(9) In this section ''public prosecutor'', ''requisition'' and ''written charge'' have the same meaning as in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.''.'.

This amendment adds to schedule 25 some minor amendments that are consequential on part 4 and deal with charging. Despite their length, they amend various statutory references to the laying of an information or the issuing of a summons to take account of the new procedure under clause 24 whereby a public prosecutor or, in certain circumstances, the police, instead of laying an information to obtain the issue of a summons, will issue a written charge accompanied by a requisition. That is a change that we debated and agreed.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

We have not debated it. We have not touched on it at any point. It was one of the things that caused me particular anxiety, because it constitutes a profound change, and I tabled some probing amendments, but we never reached them. I have to say to the Minister that that was due to the timetable.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I am duly corrected, and I apologise. However, in its wisdom, the Committee approved the clauses. The amendments that will be consequential on the provisions are minor ones.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I am conscious that I must be careful or I shall be ruled out of order. Although the text is highly technical, it cross-references to an issue that the Committee has not so far had the opportunity to consider at all and that, although apparently innocuous, raises a number of important issues. I do not know how much the Minister might be able to help me if I use this as my guideline and keep myself in order. He looks unhappy, I suspect because his notes, written with reference to the original clause, which we never debated, are long consigned to the dustbin.

The issue is narrow. The Minister says that this is about replacing the system of laying of information with the system of issuing written charges. The big distinction that arises, or could do, is that the old system required information to be laid on oath. Police officers had to go before magistrates and take an oath that the information was correct. The new system specifically precludes the need to do that. It is a technical issue, because generally such things go through on the nod. However, under the old system, officers attending in order to issue summonses and lay information rendered themselves liable to prosecution for perjury if they acted maliciously and laid it on insufficient grounds that they knew to be untrue, whereas I am not sure that that applies under the new system.

The new system is an administrative form of rubber-stamping. That is a significant change, and it is unfortunate that my hopes that it would be debated in Committee have not been realised. Now, seeing that we have an amendment that refers to the matter—I think that I have kept myself in order throughout the process—I should like to raise it with the Minister. He might find that he has speaking notes, because I tabled amendments, which are on the record—this is not ex improviso. Alternatively, he might care to write me a long letter long before Report so that, if I find his answer unsatisfactory, I can do something about it.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I will gladly write the hon. Gentleman the letter that he requests.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

On that basis, I cannot take the matter any further; I have put it on the record. I do not have my speaking notes with me, but I remember clearly drafting the amendments in the hope that we should be able to discuss them. Perhaps I should not say this until the end of our proceedings in Committee, but although the Government Whip has been most helpful and we have done our best, it is slightly regrettable that we have still not been able to scrutinise some of the provisions, and this is one of them.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I endorse what the hon. Gentleman says about the Government Whip and the Minister. We are grateful to them and to the Solicitor-General for their co-operation, and no criticism of them is meant. I am also grateful to the Minister for very punctual correspondence about matters that have been raised, and I should like him to pass on thanks to those who assisted him. The only defect has been the inability to debate some provisions. We have tried; the failure is not for want of trying to reach the right balance. However, it is highly unsatisfactory that we have not done that when considering a Bill that deals with whether people are criminals or not.

The Liberal Democrats requested a significant amount of time on Report—the Conservatives or the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) may well have asked for that too—and I understand that that has found favour with the Government, for which I am grateful. That will give us some comfort. Rather than repeating a point, and on the understanding that the present thinking of Government business managers is that there will be two full days for Report, which is a consolation—although I know that the arrangement is provisional—my hon. Friend and I will work with other members of the Committee and their colleagues to achieve the right balance and to isolate matters that we have not yet been able to debate. In that way we may be able to share out time reasonably on matters of concern, to obtain the maximum opportunity for debate.

Amendment agreed to.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 1005, in

schedule 25, page 276, line 34, at end insert—

'Indictments Act 1915 (c.90)

24A (1) Section 5 of the Indictments Act 1915 (orders for amendment of indictment, separate trial and postponement of trial) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (5)(a) for ''are to'' there is substituted ''(if there is one)''.

(3) In subsection (5)(b) after ''discharged'' there is inserted ''under paragraph (a)''.

Criminal Law Act 1967 (c.58)

24B In section 6(4) of the Criminal Law Act 1967 (trial of offences) after ''jury'' there is inserted ''or otherwise act''.

Criminal Justice Act 1967 (c.80)

24C In section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967 (entry of verdict of not guilty by order of a judge)—

(a) for ''the defendant being given in charge to a jury'' there is substituted ''any further steps being taken in the proceedings'', and

(b) after ''verdict of a jury'' there is inserted ''or a court''.

Criminal Appeal Act 1968 (c.19)

24D In section 7(2)(c) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 (power to order retrial)—

(a) for ''the jury were discharged from giving a verdict'' there is substituted ''no verdict was given'', and

(b) for ''convicting him'' there is substituted ''his being convicted''.'.

Eric Illsley (Labour, Barnsley Central)

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 1006 to 1017.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

Amendments Nos. 1005 to 1017 are minor and consequential amendments to references to

the jury in existing legislation. One of my many missives to members of the Committee was to tell them in general terms about the changes.

Clause 42(4) makes consequential provision on a very general basis for statutory references to a jury or a jury's verdict or finding to be construed as references to a court, except where the context requires otherwise. In essence, where there is provision in the Bill for trial without jury, consequential changes need to be made to various items of legislation to ensure that they are fully consistent with the provisions that we have considered.

The clause is adapted from section 75(3) of the Terrorism Act 2000, which provides for trials by judge alone in Northern Ireland. We are confident that that general provision, which has apparently worked well in Northern Ireland for several years, will achieve the right result and make the relevant statute law work satisfactorily at a technical level for trials on indictment both with and without juries. However, for the avoidance of doubt, we are making consequential provision in a limited number of cases in which we cannot be sure that the combination of an existing statutory provision and clause 42(4) will produce the right result. That is the purpose of the amendments, which I appreciate are quite lengthy.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments made: No. 1006, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 4, at end insert—

'Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (c.60)

25A (1) Section 77 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (confessions of mentally handicapped persons) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (1) after ''indictment'' there is inserted ''with a jury''.

(3) In subsection (2) after ''indictment'' there is inserted ''with a jury''.

(4) After subsection (2) there is inserted—

''(2A) In any case where at the trial on indictment without a jury of a person for an offence it appears to the court that a warning under subsection (1) above would be required if the trial were with a jury, the court shall treat the case as one in which there is a special need for caution before convicting the accused on his confession.''.'.

No. 1007, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 5, at end insert—

'25B The Criminal Justice Act 1987 is amended as follows.'.

No. 1008, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 6, leave out

'of the Criminal Justice Act 1987 (c.38)'.

No. 1009, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 14, at end insert—

'26A (1) Section 9 (the preparatory hearing) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (4)(b) for ''the jury'' there is substituted ''a jury''.

(3) In subsection (13) for ''no jury shall be sworn'' there is substituted ''the preparatory hearing shall not be concluded''.

26B (1) Section 10 (later stages of trial) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (2) after ''jury'' there is inserted ''or, in the case of a trial without a jury, the judge''.

(3) In subsection (3) for ''deciding whether to give leave'' there is substituted ''doing anything under subsection (2) above or in deciding whether to do anything under it''.

(4) In subsection (4) for ''Except as provided by this section'' there is substituted ''Except as provided by this section, in the case of a trial with a jury''.'.

No. 1010, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 15, at end insert—

'26C The Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 is amended as follows.

26D In section 7A(6)(a) (powers of non-legal staff) for ''by a jury'' there is substituted ''on indictment''.'.

No. 1011, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 16, leave out

'of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (c.23)'.

No. 1012, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 28, at end insert—

'Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (c.33)

27A The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 is amended as follows.

27B In section 35(2) (effect of accused's silence at trial) after ''indictment'' there is inserted ''with a jury''.

27C In section 51(10)(b) (intimidation of witnesses, jurors and others) after ''finding'' there is inserted ''otherwise than in circumstances where the proceedings are continued without a jury''.'.

No. 1013, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 29, at end insert—

'27D The Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 is amended as follows.'.

No. 1014, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 30, leave out

'of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 (c.25)'.

No. 1015, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 38, at end insert—

'28A In section 31(4)(b) (the preparatory hearing) for ''the jury'' there is substituted ''a jury''.

28B (1) Section 34 (later stages of trial) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (2) after ''jury'' there is inserted ''or, in the case of a trial without a jury, the judge''.

(3) In subsection (3) for ''deciding whether to give leave'' there is substituted ''doing anything under subsection (2) or in deciding whether to do anything under it''.

(4) In subsection (4) for ''Except as provided by this section'' there is substituted ''Except as provided by this section, in the case of a trial with a jury''.

28C In section 35(2) (appeals to Court of Appeal) for ''no jury shall be sworn'' there is substituted ''the preparatory hearing shall not be concluded''.

28D In section 36(2) (appeals to House of Lords) for ''no jury shall be sworn'' there is substituted ''the preparatory hearing shall not be concluded''.'.

No. 1016, in

schedule 25, page 277, line 39, leave out 'of that Act'.

No. 1017, in

schedule 25, page 278, line 7, at end insert—

'Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (c.37)

29A In paragraph 2(2) of Schedule 3 to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (applications for dismissal) for ''a jury properly to convict him'' there is substituted ''him to be properly convicted''.

Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 (c.23)

29B The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 is amended as follows.

29C In section 32 (warning to jury) after ''indictment'' there is inserted ''with a jury''.

29D In section 39(1) (warning to jury) after ''indictment'' there is inserted ''with a jury''.

Antiterrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (c.24)

29E In paragraph 19(6)(c) of Schedule 1 to the Antiterrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (general interpretation) after ''finding'' there is inserted ''otherwise than in circumstances where the proceedings are continued without a jury''.

Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (c.29)

29F In section 316(9)(c) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (general interpretation) after ''finding'' there is inserted ''otherwise than in circumstances where the proceedings are continued without a jury''.'.—[Hilary Benn.]

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 958, in

schedule 25, page 278, line 27, at end insert—

'Criminal Appeal (Northern Ireland) Act 1980 (c.47)

32A (1) Section 19 of the Criminal Appeal (Northern Ireland) Act 1980 (legal aid) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (1) after ''an appeal'' there is inserted ''under this Part of this Act''.

(3) In subsection (1A) for ''for the purpose'' there is substituted ''in respect''.

(4) In subsection (1A)(a)—

(a) the words ''application for leave to'' are omitted, and

(b) after ''hearings)'' there is inserted ''or section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003''.

(5) For subsection (1A)(b) there is substituted—

''(b) any other appeal to the Court of Appeal under any Northern Ireland legislation (whenever passed or made) from proceedings before the Crown Court; or

(c) an application for leave to appeal in relation to an appeal mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) above.''

(6) In subsection (3) for ''an appellant'' there is substituted ''a person''.'.

Eric Illsley (Labour, Barnsley Central)

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 976 and 959.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

The Government's policy intention is that criminal legal aid should be available for criminal proceedings in Northern Ireland. Existing legal aid legislation does not allow criminal legal aid to be granted for appeals to the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords under part 7, on trials on indictment without a jury, as extended to Northern Ireland, or under the Northern Ireland Order in Council that will be made to extend part 9, on prosecution appeals, to Northern Ireland.

Government amendments Nos. 958 and 959 therefore extend the scope of section 19 of the Criminal Appeal (Northern Ireland) Act 1980 to ensure that criminal legal aid can be granted in Northern Ireland to a person—other than the prosecution—who appears before the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords as a consequence of an appeal under part 7 or under the order extending part 9 to Northern Ireland.

Those changes to legal aid provision in Northern Ireland are consistent with the approach that we have taken in England and Wales, where criminal legal aid is to be made available for such proceedings by way of amendment to secondary legislation.

Government amendment No. 976 will remove a duplication. Members of the Committee will have

spotted that paragraph 33 of schedule 25 duplicates an amendment in paragraph 17 of schedule 1.

Sylvia Hermon (UUP, North Down)

May I say how much I welcome the extension of criminal legal aid to Northern Ireland, which brings the provisions in line with those in the rest of the United Kingdom? I appreciate the fact that the Minister is fully implementing the Belfast agreement in recognition of Northern Ireland's constitutional position. That is hugely important, given that criminal justice and justice are not devolved matters—they were not devolved before the suspension of the Assembly and they have still not been devolved. The changes are very welcome.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment made: No. 976, in

schedule 25, page 278, line 28, leave out from beginning to end of line 6 on page 279.—[Hilary Benn.]

Schedule 25, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 267 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 26 - Repeals

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 816, in

schedule 26, page 282, line 41, at end insert—

'Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 (c.43)

In Schedule 4, paragraphs 6(2), 7, 12(1) and 15(10).'

Eric Illsley (Labour, Barnsley Central)

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 817 to 825, 827 to 832 and 834 to 838.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

This is a large group of amendments, all of which are additions to the repeals schedule. To help hon. Members in their deliberations, I sent them a detailed description of the amendments in correspondence. I will therefore outline only briefly the four types of repeals involved.

The most significant are those that repeal provisions that the Bill replaces. They include amendment No. 824, which relates to the definition of the terms ''sexual offence'' and ''violent offence''. Those are being replaced by the lists of sexual and violent offences in schedule 11. The groups also includes amendments Nos. 832, which deals with calculating remand time and which is replaced by clause 220, and 816, which relates to the role of the Parole Board, calculating remand time and dangerous offenders.

Another set repeals provisions that are being re-enacted in the Bill without change. The third and fourth category are second level repeals. That is to say, they repeal amendments or references to provisions that the Bill is repealing. The first level repeals that are at the base of those are either covered by the other categories that I have already described, or they have been already dealt with in Committee by being grouped with consequential amendments.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments made: No. 817, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 2, column 2, at end insert—

'In section 38(4)(i), the words ''section 37(4A) or 65 of the 1991 Act or''.

'Sections 59 and 60.'

No. 818, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 3, column 2, at end insert—

'Sections 99 and 100.

Sections 101(1)

Sections 103 to 105.

In Schedule 7, paragraph 50.

In Schedule 8, paragraphs 11, 13(2), 79 to 84, 86 to 91, 94, 97 and 132.'

No. 819, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 3, at end insert—

'Access to Justice Act 1999 (c.22)

Section 58(5).'

No. 820, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 4, column 2, at beginning insert—

'Section 6(4)(d).'

No. 593, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 22, column 2, at end insert—

'Section 84.'.

No. 821, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 34, column 2, at end insert—

'In section 115, the word ''109,''.

Sections 116 and 117.'

No. 822, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 36, column 2, at end insert—

'Sections 151 to 153.'

No. 823, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 37, column 2, at end insert—

'In section 159, the words '', 121(1) or 123(1)'' and ''paragraph 6(6) of Schedule 4 to this Act,''.'

No. 824, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 38, column 2, at end insert—

'Section 161(2) to (4).'

No. 825, in

schedule 26, page 283, line 38, column 2, at end insert—

'Section 162.'

No. 826, in

schedule 26, page 284, line 10, column 2, leave out from '''curfew order''' to 'the' in line 11 and insert

'the words ''section 59 above or'', ''or section 35 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997'', ''section 59 or'' and ''or the said section 35,'' '.

No. 827, in

schedule 26, page 284, line 14, after '11(2),' insert

' ''presentence report'', ''protecting the public from serious harm'' '.

No. 828, in

schedule 26, page 284, line 18, after 'hearing'',' insert '''sexual offence'','.

No. 829, in

schedule 26, page 284, line 22, leave out 'and ''trigger offence''' and insert

' ''trigger offence'' and ''violent offence''.'

No. 830, in

schedule 26, page 284, line 24, column 2, at end insert—

'Section 168(2).'

No. 831, in

schedule 26, page 285, line 23, column 2, at end insert—

'In Schedule 9, paragraphs 7, 24(a), 26(2), 28, 29, 52, 54(3), 55, 61, 76, 81, 82, 89(2), 90(2), 137 to 145, 147(2) and (3)(a) to (d) and (e)(i), 151, 184, 185, 187(2), 174, 176(2) to (5) and (7), 177(2) and (3), 196 and 202.'

No. 832, in

schedule 26, page 285, line 23, at end insert—

'Terrorism Act 2000 (c.11)

Schedule 15, paragraph 20.'

No. 833, in

schedule 26, page 285, line 23, at end insert—

'Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 (c.19)

Section 62(10).'

No. 834, in

schedule 26, page 285, line 24, column 2, at end insert—

'Section 55.'

No. 835, in

schedule 26, page 285, line 27, column 2, leave out line 27.

No. 836, in

schedule 26, page 285, line 29, column 2, at end insert—

'In Schedule 7, paragraphs 139 and 140.'

No. 837, in

schedule 26, page 285, line 29, at end insert—

'Antiterrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (c.24)

Section 39(7).'.

No. 838, in

schedule 26, page 285, line 29, at end insert—

'Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (c.29)

In Schedule 11, paragraph 32.'

No. 876, in

schedule 26, page 285, leave out lines 34 and 35 and insert—

'Vagrancy Act 1824 (c.83)

Section 5.

Section 10.

Railway Regulation Act 1842 (c.55)

In section 17, the words from ''be imprisoned'' (where first occurring) to ''discretion of such justice, shall''.'.

No. 877, in

schedule 26, page 285, column 2, leave out lines 38 to 43 and insert—

'In section 28, the words from '', or, in the discretion'' to ''fourteen days''.'.

No. 878, in

schedule 26, page 286, leave out lines 10 and 11 and insert—

'North Sea Fisheries Act 1893 (c.17)

In section 2—

in paragraph (a), the words from '', or, in the discretion'' to the end, and

in paragraph (b), the words from '', or in the discretion'' to the end.

In section 3(a), the words from '', or, in the discretion'' to the end.'.

No. 879, in

schedule 26, page 286, line 15, at end insert—

'Public Health Act 1936 (c.49)

In section 287(5), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.

Essential Commodities Reserves Act 1938 (c.51)

In section 4(2), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.

London Building Acts (Amendment) Act 1939 (c.xcvii)

In section 142(5), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.

Cancer Act 1939 (c.13)

In section 4(2), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.

Civil Defence Act 1939 (c.31)

In section 77, the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.'

No. 880, in

schedule 26, page 286, line 31, at end insert—

'Civil Defence Act 1948 (c.5)

In section 4(4), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.'.

No. 881, in

schedule 26, page 286, line 39, at end insert—

'Coast Protection Act 1949 (c.74)

In section 25(9), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.'

No. 882, in

schedule 26, page 287, line 50, at end insert—

'Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act 1961 (c.50)

In section 12(2), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.'

No. 883, in

schedule 26, page 288, line 26, at end insert—

'Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 (c.12)

In section 16(5), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.

In section 48(2), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.'.

No. 884, in

schedule 26, page 288, line 36, column 2, at end insert—

'In section 69, the words from ''or imprisonment'' to the end.'.

No. 885, in

schedule 26, page 289, column 2, leave out lines 26 to 29.

No. 886, in

schedule 26, page 289, line 31, at end insert—

'Criminal Justice Act 1982 (c.48)

Section 70.'.

No. 887, in

schedule 26, page 290, line 20, at end insert—

'Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (c.8)

In Schedule 15, in paragraph 14(4), the words from ''or to imprisonment'' to the end.'.

No. 888, in

schedule 26, page 290, line 22, at end insert—

'Criminal Justice Act 1991 (c.53)

Section 26(5).'.

No. 889, in

schedule 26, page 290, column 2, leave out lines 33 and 34 and insert—

'In section 105(1), the words—

(a) ''to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or'', and

(b) ''or to both''.'.

No. 890, in

schedule 26, page 291, line 41, at end insert—

'Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (c.37)

In section 81, subsections (2) and (3).'

No. 178, in

schedule 26, page 293, line 3, at end insert—

'Bail Act 1976 (c.63)

In section 5(1)(c), the words ''a court or officer of a court appoints''.'

No. 750, in

schedule 26, page 293, line 8, at end insert—

'Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 (c.25)

In Schedule 4, paragraph 16.'.

No. 959, in

schedule 26, page 293, line 8, at end insert—

'Criminal Appeal (Northern Ireland) Act 1980 (c.47)

In section 19(1A)(a), the words ''application for leave to''.'.

—[Hilary Benn.]

Schedule 26, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 268 - Supplementary and consequential provision, etc.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Following my suggestion about putting clauses 265 and 268 together, can the Minister explain why subsection (2) says:

''An order under subsection (1) may, in particular''

do various things? The Government seem to be saying, ''Let's protect our opportunities.'' My understanding was that the clause is about supplementary, incidental and consequential changes, which are to do with the interrelationship between one Bill and another, and the timetables, which I entirely understand. In that case, the words ''in particular'' are not necessary and the provisions should be limited. There is no need for those words in any event, because clause 265 deals with the general power to do such things. The clause is meant to be specific, but those two words give a second opportunity to cover general matters, which are dealt with in clause 265. That seems to be unnecessary.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

In general, the distinction between clauses 265 and 268 is that whereas clause 265 is about other powers in the Bill, clause 268 is free-standing. However, both can be about transitional provisions. Since we have said that we would consider the two together, I shall reflect on the point that the hon. Gentleman raised about the words, ''in particular''.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 268 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 24 - Transitory, transitional and saving provisions

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Will the Minister briefly explain the import of the schedule?

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

This schedule enables the Secretary of State to make any supplementary, incidental or consequential provisions, and any transitory, transitional or saving provisions when that is considered necessary or expedient, subject to the negative resolution procedures. The schedule also provides that when one provision of the Bill is brought into force before another, there is a power to modify the one brought into force to take account of the fact that the other is not yet in force. The provision also includes a general power to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Schedule 24 contains transitory and transitional proceedings and savings, which it may be helpful to explain. Section 61 of Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 lowers the age at which an offender can be in prison, from 21 to 18. The sentences of detention in a young offenders institution, custody for life and so on will disappear for that age group.

Paragraph 1 provides that if any of the sentencing provisions in part 12 come into force before section 61 of the 2000 Act is commenced, any order made under clause 268 or supplementary and consequential provisions can be used to adapt the provisions of part 12 to reflect the continuation, for the time being, of section 61.

Paragraph 2 makes it clear that the authority of the existing guidelines in judgments by the Court of Appeal is not affected by the repeal of relevant provisions in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. However, it also provides that they may be superseded in due course by guidelines produced by the Sentencing Guidelines Council.

The drug rehabilitation requirements in clauses 189 and 190 will replace the drug treatment and testing order. Paragraph 3 provides that DTTOs of less than 12 months do not have to contain provision for review by the courts. That aligns the DTTO with the new drug rehabilitation requirement.

In paragraph 4, section 65 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 will be repealed as part of the wider sentencing changes in the Bill, but it is anticipated that that will occur after clause 239, which deals with drug testing requirements for offenders released on licence, comes into force. Paragraph 4 simply ensures that the new arrangements for drug testing set out in clause 239 will also apply to offenders supervised under section 65 of the 1991 Act until it is repealed.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

That is helpful. I want the Minister to reflect on one issue arising from the age changes for young adult offenders. I am conscious that there have been debates for quite a long time about the implications of the creation of the Youth Justice Board. With widespread support both here and elsewhere, the Youth Justice Board has responsibility, as it has had from its inception, for the management of the regime for the youngest offenders in the teenage and young adult category. There has also been a debate about whether that might be extended to the next age group, which we touched on in earlier debates.

The one thing that seems to remain inconsistent and somewhat illogical—I am not criticising the Minister,

but this was borne out in his explanation—is that these arrangements have changed the way in which we sentence 18 to 21-year-olds to bring them into mainstream provision, so that they can go to prison if necessary. I do not object to that, yet in many other parts of the criminal justice system in England and Wales—I do not know whether it is the same in Northern Ireland—the relevant age where adult provision starts seems to be 17. It strikes me that there needs to be consistency in the system. I have said elsewhere that I do not have hard and fixed views about where the boundaries should be, but they should obviously be set in light of experience and after wise deliberation.

It strikes me that the arrangements for holding young people in social services accommodation, and secure accommodation if necessary, means that once people reach age 16, young offenders provision applies. Such provision can also apply to people under 16 in some circumstances, but there appears to be another cut-off point at age 17 in the criminal justice system in relation to sentencing and where they are held. Schedule 24 introduces another age limit of 18, bringing 18 to 21-year-olds fully into the adult category.

I ask the Minister to reflect on those matters. The matter is not one necessarily to be debated and decided immediately. I appreciate that, in the Prison Service, the Youth Justice Board and the Home Office, and among others with an interest, such issues are subjects for continuing thought. If the Home Secretary hopes that we shall pass a measure of longer duration, and if we want to obtain the right balance between custody and non-custodial alternatives—given that there is widespread support for the Government's initiatives on alternative forms of disposal and the Halliday approach incorporated in the Bill—this might be the best opportunity to use for tidying matters up.

We also need to take into account as background the number of likely users for the services in question, with reference to young offenders institutions, under-17s and under-18s and others who might be looked after by the Youth Justice Board. I put the proposition in the most general of terms, but it would seem nonsensical, when the Bill is about the reform of the sentencing process as much as reform of the criminal justice process in the courts, not to deal with the issue and try to resolve it in a way that is logical for the Prison Service and society as a whole. Age limits are already complicated enough, without additional complications to the way in which people are treated by the courts and the prison system.

I have historically viewed 17 as the appropriate age at which to make a distinction. Others have argued, and in some cases persuaded me, that 16 is a better point of division, since under well-established practice it is the age at which people can work, pay taxes, join the services and get married, among other things. The Prime Minister has been reported as saying that the Government are thinking about lowering the voting age to 16. I appreciate that a simplistic answer cannot be applied across the entire range of public policy. However, it would be helpful if we could achieve the right result in the matter of which courts or parts of

the Prison Service deal with people as young people or children, and which deal with them as adults. There is much wisdom in this House and in the House of Lords. This opportunity may not recur in the foreseeable future.

Question put and agreed to.

Schedule 24, as amended, agreed to.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move,

That Schedule 24 be transferred to end of line 17 on page 293.

The motion would move schedule 24, which has been misplaced, so that the schedules would be set out in an order in keeping with the sequence of the clauses that give them effect. On the reprinting of the Bill as amended, schedules 24 to 26 would automatically be renumbered. Schedule 25 would become schedule 24, schedule 26 would become schedule 25 and schedule 24 would assume its rightful place as schedule 26.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

From time to time in our proceedings, there has been some criticism of the parliamentary draftsmen, but I must say that their versatility is extraordinary. Whether one agrees with schedule 24 or not, how anyone can pull together the various strands of transitory, transitional and saving provisions and then rejig the Bill is an arcane mystery. I suspect that the Bill must have been a nightmare to put together, and this may be a good opportunity to express admiration for what has been done.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 269 - Provision for Northern Ireland

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 960, in

clause 269, page 149, line 4, after 'Part', insert '9 or'.

Clause 269 extends parts of the Bill to Northern Ireland. Government amendment No. 960 adds part 9 to the list of those that can be extended to Northern Ireland using an Order in Council that is subject to the negative resolution procedure under section 85 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 or the schedule to the Northern Ireland Act 2000. We have done that because the Committee has had the opportunity to discuss the provisions of the Bill to which the amendment relates.

Sylvia Hermon (UUP, North Down)

I want to put on the record how much I detest the use of Orders in Council to legislate for the people of Northern Ireland. When the Assembly was suspended on 14 October 2002, 22 Bills were before it, and all but one have been pushed through the House using Orders in Council. Northern Ireland Members who take their seats in this place—it is right that they do so, and I wish that the other four would, too—can talk until they are blue in the face, but they will not make a jot of difference to those Orders in Council. Will the Minister therefore explain why the Government have made this unsatisfactory procedure for legislating for the people of Northern Ireland even more offensive by opting for the negative rather than the affirmative resolution procedure? He

might make me a little happier although, at the end of the day, Orders in Council are wholly inappropriate.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

The hon. Lady knows that I absolutely agree with her concerns, and I have expressed the same view ever since I came to the House. The matter is not entirely the responsibility of the Home Office, although the Bill is. However, it is unacceptable that citizens in one part of the United Kingdom should not have the same rights as those in other parts. Their representatives should be able to debate and amend Government proposals that affect them. Representatives of people in Northern Ireland have a chance to debate and amend Bills that relate to the United Kingdom in general. Because of the constitutional nature of the Province, however, they cannot debate and amend proposals that relate only to Northern Ireland, which is absolutely unacceptable. It may, in theory, be possible to force a debate and to defeat them, but that is not possible in practice, because the Government will get their way. That could discredit politics in Northern Ireland and make people wonder why they should involve themselves in the political process if so much central legislation cannot be amended to benefit them.

As the Minister rightly said, Bills are always improved by debate in Committee, on Report and so on. Home Officers Ministers regularly say that, and the Secretary of State and his predecessor did so, too. However, the same must apply to measures relating to Northern Ireland.

I again make a plea to the Minister, who is intelligent, sensitive and constitutionally alert to such issues. Will he pass back into the system the thought that it would hugely help the modernisation of Parliament if we changed the present arrangements once and for all? In that way, there would be equal rights for all citizens and Members of Parliament.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I hear the hon. Lady's point, which is clearly relevant to this amendment and the following one. I gladly undertake to draw the matter to my colleagues' attention. Particular issues obviously arise at present because the Assembly is suspended. In the light of that and of our debate about the principle behind the change, the Government feel that the proposals are the appropriate way forward.

Amendment agreed to.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 961, in

clause 269, page 149, line 5, leave out 'and (4)' and insert 'to (9)'.

Eric Illsley (Labour, Barnsley Central)

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 962 and 963.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

As I said a moment ago, the clause is concerned with the extension of certain parts of the Bill to Northern Ireland. Under section 85 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, the Northern Ireland Assembly must be consulted on any Orders in Council that are to be made. Amendment No. 961 would remove consultation with the Northern Ireland Assembly for orders made under clause 269. As we have heard, criminal justice is a reserved matter in Northern Ireland, and in any event the Northern Ireland Assembly is currently suspended.

Under paragraph 2 of the schedule to the Northern Ireland Act 2000, Orders in Council made under the schedule will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. Amendments Nos. 962 and 963, like amendment No. 960, would ensure that Orders in Council made under the schedule for the purposes of clause 269 would be subject to the negative resolution procedure.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments made: No. 962, in

clause 269, page 149, line 10, after 'Northern Ireland)', insert—

'(a)'.

No. 963, in

clause 269, page 149, line 14, at end insert

'and

(b) the reference in subsection (1)(a) above to subsections (3) to (9) of that section shall be read as a reference to paragraph 2 of that Schedule.'.—[Hilary Benn.]

Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

Sylvia Hermon (UUP, North Down)

I was disappointed that the Minister did not address my one specific question. I asked why the Government had decided to use the negative rather than the affirmative resolution procedure. I have grave reservations about and a bitter dislike of Orders in Council.

The Minister may be aware of proposals for criminal justice and policing to be transferred to a devolved Assembly, which we hope to have in place after the acts of completion by republican paramilitaries. It may be good for justice and policing to be devolved to the Assembly, because the people of Northern Ireland and their elected representatives—the 108 Assembly Members—can scrutinise criminal justice and policing legislation. Things are wholly unsatisfactory as they are.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 269, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 270 - Expenses

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I am conscious that we have only half an hour left of the morning sitting, but we have come to one of the most important clauses—important because it deals with the cost of the whole enterprise. I would have preferred a proper debate on the questions that flow from it, but we are not going to get one.

The explanatory notes include a section on the financial effects of the Bill. It states that the cost of implementation in the first year will be £34 million, that it will cost £195 million next year and £301 million, £361 million, £378 million and £390 million in the following four financial years, and that there will be costs of the order of £390 million a year thereafter. Those are described as gross costs. It next states:

''There will also be significant potential savings, although these have not yet been fully quantified.''

My first question relates to those two elements, the costs and the savings. Is the Minister able to tell us whether there has been any change in the gross costs since we started working on the Bill; and more important, has any work been done on what might be the potential savings of the changes?

My second question relates to whether further progress has been made regarding the implementation date of custody plus and custody minus. One of the bases on which the Bill was intended to proceed was that we should move to that new regime, but we have received mixed messages as to whether and when the money will be available. It is no good passing laws relating to new systems that will not be implemented for years.

My third question concerns the fact that the average cost of keeping a prisoner inside is now £36,000 a year, as confirmed by today's papers. It would be helpful for the Minister to put on record the average annual cost of dealing with a prisoner who has a non-custodial sentence—such as a suspended sentence or a community order—so that both we and the public can make a comparison.

I appreciate that, for reasons of time, the Minister might have to reply to my fourth point later. Starting on page 129 of the explanatory notes, there is a page-long list of things that are described in paragraph 640 as

''The main financial implications of the Bill for the public sector''.

Some of those items are amplified in the following notes, but others are not mentioned. That is a general concern, but I will just concentrate on two matters. Can the Minister give an indication of the cost of the move to recording witness statements on video, which is covered in clauses 121 and 122? That is not amplified elsewhere. More important is the controversial change that we have discussed:

''General limits on magistrates' court's power to impose imprisonment (clauses 137 to 139)'',

which will increase the power to change to up to 12 months. It is flagged up as having a cost but that cost is not explained, as far as I can see. In paragraph 656 there is a general description of the cost of clauses 137 to 139. Has any work been done to assess the costs that would be incurred if magistrates' powers were to be extended beyond 12 months?

Lastly, I refer to the breakdown of the cost implications of the key areas in the second half of the list on page 130, which is not set out in the paragraphs up to the end of paragraph 659. Can the Minister ensure that we have them as soon as possible?

The Bill is described by the Government as having huge financial implications. The most interesting question is how much money it is expected to save. Ministers in the Home Office and in the Lord Chancellor's Department keep talking about having a more efficient criminal justice system. I would hope that that would mean that there were some savings, not just additional costs.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I do not entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that a reading of the financial effects of the

Bill, as provided for in the explanatory notes, suggests that, by the standards of the Government's expenditure, there will be an enormous financial impact. There will be an enormous financial impact, but not necessarily for the reasons set out in the notes. I am not clear about the extent to which the increase in the number of people in custody is reflected in the notes. I suspect that it is not. I hazard the suggestion that that will be the single biggest element.

If the Minister were in a position to help us, he might take us into the realms of saying that the Bill will be substantial in every sense: a financial Bill rather than a legislative Bill. I would be grateful to hear from the Minister on that. Of the other costs, although they are certainly not insubstantial, £7 million or £8 million seems to be money that the Exchequer puts into petty cash these days; although those sums matter very much to the taxpayer and to those who have to scrutinise Government expenditure. I am particularly concerned about the financial effect of the rising prison population. It is a very opaque area because there is a great deal of uncertainty about the real effect of this legislation on the prison population.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I cannot add much to what I have already told the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey about the phasing in of the implementation. The Government continue to reflect on the best and quickest way of doing that. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the major determining factor in the introduction of custody plus, a measure on which everyone is very keen, is increasing the capacity of the probation service. More money is being invested in the service and more staff are being recruited to it. The sooner those staff are in place, the quicker the measures can be effected. It might help if I say that revised costs and savings, which was the central thrust of the questions, will be provided in the explanatory notes when the Bill goes to the other place.

I can give the hon. Gentleman some information about the cost of non-custodial sentences. For example, the cost of a community rehabilitation order is £2,030; including an accredited programme to it would add a further £350. A community punishment order costs £1,780; enhanced community punishment is slightly more costly at £1,895. A drug testing and treatment order costs £6,000, and a curfew order costs £1,600. The intensive control and change programme, which is in effect the equivalent of the intensive supervision and surveillance programme—ISSP—and which the probation service plans to pilot for 18 to 20-year-olds, costs about £6,000. I will reflect on the point that the hon. Gentleman made about further specific costing, where that is possible, in the explanatory notes. As I say, revised figures will be provided in further copies of the notes.

In relation to magistrates' sentencing powers and the courts' interpretation and use of the Bill's provisions, the Government have already said that they believe that the impact on the prison population will, when all the provisions have worked their way

through, be slightly below 1,000. I say that with the proviso that ultimately it will depend on courts' decisions on individual defendants. We must wait to see the sum total of all those decisions. We have tried to set out in the legislation the significant changes to the sentencing arrangements, particularly the new generic community sentences. They will provide greater flexibility, which, as everybody recognises, the system lacks at present. As effective community sentences are shown to reduce reoffending, the confidence of the courts and of the community in them will increase. We hope that that will be reflected in the position of the courts.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I understand the Minister's reasoning. Indeed, it can be seen from the list that some of the biggest costs are those of the probation service for community sentences. I fully appreciate that there will be savings if community sentences are used rather than custodial sentences. The Halliday report has suggested that the prison population will rise as a result of this legislation. The Minister has not yet been able to deal with that issue. He should perhaps write to the Committee on the matter. I am interested to know the Government's estimate of the cost implications.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I was in the process of making a point about the net impact of all that. We can see what is currently happening to the prison population and we understand what has happened to it over the last decade or so. As we have previously discussed, what has happened has been the product of less use of fines and greater use of community penalties. There has also been greater use of custody, with sentences increasing in length. That is the explanation for the situation, at a time when the total number of people coming before the courts has remained largely the same and when crime has fallen. It will be the interrelationship between those factors that will determine the outcome. As we have discussed, and as all members of the Committee will agree, more successful collection of fines is a fundamental precondition to building greater confidence in fines and therefore encouraging the courts to make greater use of them.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

The Minister is being straightforward, but I want to push him one step further. First, does his projection, when everything is worked through to the increase of 1,000 in the prison population, take into account both the increase in average sentence that he referred to and the figure that my hon. Friend quoted? Figures for the last available year published yesterday show an increase by five months to two years and two months.

Secondly, does it take into account the prospective change for the magistrates courts' sentencing powers from six months to 12 months? I want to be clear that the expectation includes that, because the likelihood is that that will increase sentences passed by the magistrates court.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

The assessment that the Government have made of just under 1,000 is based on the Bill's provisions, for obvious reasons. Separately from that, a process regarding custody length has been taking place. That is outwith the particular assessment in relation to the Bill but it has clearly informed the

projections that were published recently suggesting what may happen to the prison population in future.

In relation to magistrates' sentencing powers, I repeat the point that magistrates dealing with cases will have greater sentencing power. The current alternative would be for the case to be dealt with by the Crown court. There is no clear evidence that magistrates are likely to sentence more people to longer periods of custody than the Crown court would do under current arrangements.

It will remain to be seen how the interrelationship of all the changes contained in the Bill and the extent to which the courts make use of them will work. That will determine the answer to the question that the two hon. Gentlemen have quite rightly raised about the overall impact of those changes, especially on the prison population and, therefore, on the cost.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 270 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 271 - Commencement

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 966, in

clause 271, page 149, leave out line 23.

The amendment seeks to change the commencement of the provisions in clause 248 and schedule 20 relating to the increasing penalties for drugs-related offences, a subject that has involved a great deal of debate within the Committee, from Royal Assent to a later date in accordance with a provision made by the Secretary of State. The interval is needed to ensure that the guidance needed to accompany the commencement of the provisions is in place. That partly answers a question that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey raised when we discussed those matters previously.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

This is an interesting amendment. We, together with the hon. Members for Witney and for Beaconsfield and Labour Back Benchers, debated clause 248 at length and expressed considerable concern about it and about details that are developed in schedule 20. The fact that the amendment would remove that clause and schedule from the list in clause 271, and thus from immediate implementation, is therefore welcome. All that would be left in clause 271 would be the consequential provisions.

The implication of what the Minister said is not entirely clear. I should like to push him a little to tell us more about the Government's thinking. I do not want to rerun the debate; we can probably finish in time if we keep things short. Our concern is that the Government are being inconsistent. I think that hon. Members from both Opposition parties have said that it is unlikely that clause 248 and schedule 20 will survive in their present form, because of inconsistency. We all intend to reflect, after the Committee's proceedings are over, on how to achieve the consistency that, irrespective of our different starting positions in considering this matter, we think would be better.

We shall obviously agree to the amendment, so that clause 248 will not come into force straight away. What process and timetable do the Government anticipate then? How will that relate to the changing of classification, which must be brought about by order, as I understand it, to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971? How does it relate to any other timetables concerning the police or Crown Prosecution Service and the guidance?

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

To answer the specific question that has just been asked, the amendment—which I am glad the hon. Gentleman welcomes—allows the Government to fit together three things: first, the coming into force of the provisions under the Bill; secondly, the effective date for reclassification, which is dealt with in another way; and thirdly, making sure that the guidance needed to make all that work is in place. It obviously makes sense to secure the flexibility to fit all three bits together at the same time.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Yes, but let me put one last direct question to the Minister. What is the earliest date at which the Government expect or intend any changes in the maximum penalties to come into force?

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I do not mean to be flippant when I say that the honest answer is in due course. The Government do not have a date in mind.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

Is not this making heavy weather of the fact that provision should never have been made for clause 248 to come into force on the passing of the Act? It had to be kept discrete, and that is what the amendment corrects.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

The hon. Gentleman is right. That is why I am sure that the amendment will be passed.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 271, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 272 - Extent

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move amendment No. 711, in

clause 272, page 149, line 35, at end insert—

'Section (Transfer of community orders to Scotland or Northern Ireland) and Schedule (Transfer of community orders to Scotland or Northern Ireland);'.

Eric Illsley (Labour, Barnsley Central)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government new clause 13—Transfer of community orders to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Government new schedule 1—'Transfer of community orders to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

The amendment, new clause and new schedule enable community orders to transfer to Scotland and Northern Ireland. The provisions are modelled on schedule 4 to the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, with modifications made necessary by the changes to community sentences in England and Wales. A community order can be transferred to Scotland and Northern Ireland either at the point of sentencing or during the sentence. When considering the transfer, it must appear to the court that the requirements can be complied with in

the area where the offender proposes to go. The order must specify where in Scotland or Northern Ireland the offender will reside, and the appropriate local court, to which the sentencing or amending court will send all the relevant papers.

The sentencing court will decide which order in Scotland or Northern Ireland corresponds to the community order. The offender will then serve his sentence, and be treated by the Scottish or Northern Ireland probation service equivalents, in the same way as though it had originally been made in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

If it appears to a Scottish or Northern Ireland court that the offender has failed to comply with any of the requirements of the order, or that the order should be revoked, with or without re-sentencing, that court may require the offender to appear before the court in England and Wales that originally sentenced him. The sentencing court can then deal with him in the way specified in schedule 7.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

On the face of it, this is a sensible amendment. The difficulty is the Committee's profound ignorance of the Scottish legal system—there may be exceptions to that, but the reality is that we do not know much about it, and even less now that it is devolved. I have one question. I assume that there is and will continue to be no difficulty in identifying a community sentence structure in Scotland that corresponds fully to that in England.

I have a slight anxiety. If a different system develops, somebody may one day seek judicial review on the basis that the punishment to which he had been sentenced was being implemented differently. I do not want to be too esoteric about it, but that could become an issue—one that we need to keep in mind. However, I assume that the Minister has a dialogue with the Deputy First Minister and Minister for Justice in the Scottish Executive.

As time goes by, the trend—I remember it being described by the Scottish judiciary—has been for a coming together of the English and Scottish criminal legal systems. That process has been going on for a long period. Indeed, it was encouraged by the Government, probably for that reason. With devolution one can see separation coming about. Indeed, it has been highlighted during our debates that certain parts of the Bill are not being applied in Scotland. On the question of jury trial, Scotland did not feature. As a result, there will be profound differences in procedure north and south of the border. When it comes to sentencing and implementation, given that sentences can be served north of the border, a close degree of conformity is going to be needed if the system is to work; otherwise, I apprehend that there will come a moment when someone will say that the court gave him a sentence that is being implemented in a way that is at such variance with the way that it is being implemented south of the border, that it should not be proceeded with. I should be grateful for the Minister's comments.

Sylvia Hermon (UUP, North Down)

I listened carefully to the Minister's introductory words. I welcome the extension of community orders to Scotland and Northern Ireland. That being the case, will the Minister explain the use of the conjunction ''or'' in amendment No. 711? It states:

''Transfer of community orders to Scotland or Northern Ireland''.

Why does it not use the word ''and''?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I have no objection in principle. I have regular meetings—I am about to have another—with my colleague and friend Jim Wallace, the Deputy First Minister and Minister for Justice of the Scottish Executive. I should be grateful if the Minister would say whether the extension of the provisions to Scotland has been discussed with and has the full agreement of the Scottish Executive. That is my understanding, but it is important that it is put on record.

Northern Ireland is a more complex issue. Without wishing to trespass on the hon. Lady's territory, it would be helpful to know what consultation there has been about the proposal to extend the provisions to Northern Ireland. Who was asked, and who gave their assent?

Thirdly, I understand the point made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. As my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome said, there may be a greater leniency after transfer, as well as a greater severity, in terms of implementation of an order. The amendment relates specifically to community orders. Can the Minister tell us whether it is current policy in practice to transfer as soon as is practical somebody who is sentenced to a non-community sentence—that is, a custodial sentence—in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England or Wales to the part of the UK from which they come and to which they request to be transferred?

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

I had a vision of people running away to Gretna Green to do their community sentences if there was indeed a difference in severity. But seriously, what are the financial provisions between the different probation services? Will there be a ''knock-knock'' basis on the assumption that the cost will be roughly equalised when there is a transfer between two jurisdictions, or will funds follow the offender in order to allow for the completion of a community order? Is a system envisaged, or is it simply assumed that the appropriate jurisdiction will make the necessary arrangements wherever that person is situated?

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

It might be helpful to say that we have consulted. However, the provisions, with minimal modifications, replicate what already exists and which is not extensively used. Principally, what is proposed is to cover circumstances when an offender, for whatever reason, has to move from England to Wales or from England to Northern Ireland. I am advised that ''or'' is the proper word; otherwise, the suggestion would be that one could live simultaneously in Northern Ireland and Scotland, which is why the wording is as it is.

The probation service, the Scottish social work departments and others work together quite closely to ensure that things can work in practice. In answer to

the question that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield asked, appropriate recommendations will be made to the court. The amendment provides for the ability to transfer, but that is subject to the conditions and requirements that I explained. The amendment is premised on the basis of there being an order that corresponds appropriately to the community order that the court in England placed in the first instance. I am sure that you would rule me out of order, Mr. Illsley, if I talked about what might happen if the eventualities on which the hon. Gentleman speculated came to pass.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I said wrongly that I was referring to jury trial, whereas in fact I was referring to the retrial provisions not being followed for serious offences. With a single legislature no longer dealing with both areas, the gap might widen over time, in terms of sentencing structures. I think that there is therefore a danger that someone might one day say, ''What is being applied in Scotland is sufficiently dissimilar from England to make this provision difficult to implement.''

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I heard what the hon. Gentleman said earlier about the possibility that someone might bring a challenge. However, the provision's purpose is in large measure to accommodate people who have to move. That raises the question of to what extent they would want to balance their wish to move with the challenge of the terms that they would have to fulfil if they moved to Scotland or Northern Ireland. It is for the court to decide whether the order can be transferred, having had regard to the nature of the provisions.

Finally, I undertake to write to the hon. Gentleman about prison transfers. A provision is in place, but I cannot quite remember what it is, so I will let him know.

Amendment agreed to.

It being twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, The Chairman put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at that time.

Amendments made: No. 845, in

clause 272, page 149, leave out line 36.

No. 967, in

clause 272, page 149, line 37, at end insert

'this Part, except sections 266 and 267'.

No. 846, in

clause 272, page 149, line 37, at end insert—

'paragraphs 3, 6 and 7 of Schedule (enabling powers:alteration of maximum penalties etc.).'.

No. 968, in

clause 272, page 149, line 38, at beginning insert

'The following provisions extend also to Scotland—'.

No. 969, in

clause 272, page 149, line 38, leave out '10(3)' and insert '11(3)'.

No. 755, in

clause 272, page 149, line 39, after 'provision)' insert—

'section (Execution of process between England and Wales and Scotland).'

No. 847, in

clause 272, page 149, line 39, after 'provision)' insert

'and paragraphs 1, 2 and 5 of Schedule (enabling powers:alteration of maximum penalties etc.)'.

No. 970, in

clause 272, page 149, line 39, after 'provision)', insert—

'paragraph 2 of Schedule 16 (and section 242 so far as relating to that paragraph)'.

No. 971, in

clause 272, page 149, line 39, leave out 'extend also to Scotland'.

No. 964, in

clause 272, page 149, line 41, after 'Part 5;', insert 'Part 7;'.

No. 972, in

clause 272, page 149, leave out line 42.

No. 973, in

clause 272, page 150, line 12, leave out 'Part 3' and insert 'Parts 3 and 6'.

No. 974, in

clause 272, page 150, line 12, leave out 'that Part' and insert 'those Parts'.—[Hilary Benn.]

Clause 272, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 273 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Adjourned at twenty-six minutes past Eleven o'clock till this day at half-past Two o'clock.

Standing Committee B

Criminal Justice Bill

New Clause 8 - Early release of fine defaulters

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause re-enacts, with appropriate modifications, section 45 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, as amended, which sets out the release provisions for offenders committed to custody in default of payment of a fine or for contempt of court. The new clause provides for the unconditional release at the halfway point and will cover those serving terms of both less than and more than 12 months. It preserves the effect of part of the old provision, which provided for the unconditional release at the halfway point of a person committed for a term of less than 12 months or at the two-thirds point in the case of a person committed for a term of more than 12 months. However, under the new framework, offenders sentenced to a ''normal'' term of imprisonment of more than 12 months will be released automatically at the halfway point, so it seemed sensible to extend the provision to fine defaulters and contemnors.

The new clause also provides a power to release such offenders unconditionally on compassionate grounds because the clause is self-contained and therefore does not attract the provision to release on compassionate grounds from sentences of imprisonment in chapter 6 of the Bill.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

In principle, I have no objection to the measure, but it gives us the opportunity to discuss how we enforce fines. It can be done in several ways, but if the message is sent out that even those offenders who try to buck the system will have to serve only a short term of imprisonment, we may fail to emphasise the need to comply with the payment of fines. The Minister may find this odd, but if we reach the point of locking someone up for fine default, it could be argued that they should be locked up for the full term, especially as terms of imprisonment tend not to be long and a person will usually have been dragged through a series of hoops to get to that position.

I reassure the Minister that I do not intend to vote against the new clause, but it does raise certain issues. The fining system needs to work better. We have discussed the amount of outstanding fines. We know that a huge percentage of fines are not paid or collected and that people manage to slip completely from the clutches of the law. No one wants to lock up people for non-payment if there are other ways of dealing with the problem. We discussed seizing cars and other measures that could be equally effective, but we need to send an appropriate message about failure to co-operate. After all, if someone genuinely cannot pay a fine, there should be no difficulty in their going back to court and asking for the fine to be reduced or remitted. We need a system with some bite. I welcome new clause 8 but hope that the Minister will bear those points in mind when considering the issue of fine enforcement.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

I do not intend to divide the Committee on new clause 8, although I have a few comments to make. The hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) has repeatedly made a point about the clarity of the court's decision. We have a situation where the court is determining a period of committal to prison and then releasing the prisoner early rather than specifying a term and a potential additional term. That point was also made by the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron).

James Cran (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Order. I cannot hear Mr. Heath because of the conversations taking place in this Room. I want to listen to him.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

Thank you, Mr. Cran. I am indebted to you for your attention. Obviously I am not commanding the attention of some of the other Committee members. When we talk about honesty in sentencing we should talk about honesty and clarity in this area. The Committee as a whole has agreed on that point.

We need to consider the extent to which people are being committed to prison for what are effectively civil offences, be they fine defaulters or whatever, and whether that is the appropriate disposal for them. A different approach is needed for them from that to contemnors, who by definition open themselves to

whatever recourse the court may feel appropriate. The Auld report's basic recommendation is that conduct that cannot properly be regarded as criminal and which would be better dealt with elsewhere should not be the subject of criminal court proceedings.

The same applies to imprisonment. Things have changed over recent years and far fewer fine defaulters are imprisoned now. I hope that my figures are accurate: in 1994 22,469 males were imprisoned for an average of seven days and 1,454 women for an average of five days; by 2001 those figures were greatly reduced to 1,382 males for an average of six days and 73 females for an average of two days. That is a result of changes that were brought in.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

Of course I welcome the reduction in the number of people in prison for fine default, but does the hon. Gentleman have the figures for outstanding fine amounts and the extent to which outstanding fines have been rising for the respective years for which he is quoting? I do not have the figures, but I fear he will find that the amount outstanding on fines today is higher than it was then.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

The honest answer is that I do not have the figures. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is right that the number of fine defaulters has increased. That has been the subject of a recent investigation by the National Audit Office. We should be concerned about that matter, but it is a question of what is the appropriate remedy. Imprisonment is rarely the appropriate remedy, but we have discussed other remedies in the Bill's context. The hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) made the excellent suggestion of credit rating, which I still hope will find its way into Government thinking by circuitous means. We have discussed preventing the use of motor vehicles, which is a sensible route and one appropriate to the misdemeanour of default—I will not use the word crime. Prison is probably not the appropriate way to deal with it, especially in the context of the rapidly burgeoning prison population, which we discussed earlier.

I welcome what the Minister said about the proposal. Prison is used as a sanction for default in some sorts of cases; in others, which gave cause for concern a few years ago, it is used less often. It was a ridiculous misuse of the system to put people into prison for TV licence evasion, which is essentially a civil debt, or for council tax offences. Contempt of court is the largest category and it is probably right that prison should remain as the appropriate sanction open to the court for contempt. We need to explore alternative, and better, ways to enforce fines so that they retain their deterrent quality, which should be the basis of their effect. Imprisonment is not the best, or the most cost-effective, way of dealing with the matter, notwithstanding the ameliorative effect of the Minister's proposal.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

This is the third opportunity that the Committee has had to debate fines, so I shall be mercifully brief. I confirm what the hon. Gentleman said about the significant decline in the number of fine defaulters imprisoned in the past decade. I endorse

what he and the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) said about the importance of maintaining and enhancing the credibility of fines as a penalty and the Government are proposing measures in the Courts Bill to that effect, including clamping vehicles, which the hon. Member for Rayleigh raised in the debate on his amendment. We will reflect on whether those measures are successful, learn from them, apply them more widely and then reflect further on them. It is important that fines should have credibility as part of the criminal justice system.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New clause 9 - Restriction on consecutive sentences for released prisoners

New clause 13 - Transfer of community orders to Scotland or Northern Ireland

New clause 19 - Power to impose unpaid work requirement or curfew requirement on fine defaulter

New clause 20 - Fine defaulters: driving disqualification

New clause 21 - Execution of process between England

New clause 25 - Application of Part 7 to Northern Ireland

New clause 1 - Increase in sentences for illegal trade in endangered species

John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Good afternoon, Mr. Cran. I hope that in this afternoon's spirit of rapid legislating the Minister will consider suitably this modest clause. It is designed to increase the maximum sentence for illegal wildlife trading from two to five years' imprisonment, which would make offences under the Control of Trade in Endangered Species (Enforcement) Regulations 1997 arrestable.

I do not intend to take up much of the Committee's time with the argument. The issue was the subject of early-day motion 862 last year, which garnered the support of more than half of the Members of the House. I am sure that Ministers, Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople and Parliamentary Private Secretaries would have joined the queue to add their names if protocol had deemed that suitable. Indeed, informal soundings suggested that many would have done so if released from their more onerous duties.

The aim of the clause is to strengthen the law, and considering the feeling of Parliament and the country, we have a duty to the wider world as well as ourselves to pass it.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

The hon. Gentleman does the Committee a great service in introducing the clause, and I hope that he will take in good spirit the comments and suggestions that I may make about it. My reading of the clause and the briefings that I received on the background prompted both considerable sympathy with his aims and one or two slight concerns, which I felt that I should share with the Committee. We may be able to formulate a way forward, or the Committee may decide to accept the new clause in toto.

We need to decide what we are trying to get at. I have a basic reservation about raising the maximum tariff of an offence for the purpose of making it arrestable. The hon. Gentleman will understand what I am getting at. I accept that offences need to carry a potential penalty of five years' imprisonment for them to be arrestable, but there are exceptions. If Parliament so chooses, we could make the offence arrestable without making it carry a five-year sentence. We could simply provide that notwithstanding the fact that the maximum sentence is two years, the offence should be arrestable.

That prompts further questions. First, is the current tariff too low for the highly objectionable offences? Have judges faced with sentencing indicated that they are unhappy about the two-year maximum and that a five-year maximum would be more appropriate and help the sentencing in a case of mass trafficking in endangered species? On the other hand—the Minister may be able to help us on this—does the history show that the vast majority of sentences have been fines or short terms of imprisonment? If so, it would be difficult to suggest that there was a problem with the tariff and that it needed to be raised from two to five years.

The second issue that the Committee must consider is whether the inability to arrest someone immediately for such offences has caused problems for those who seek to enforce the law. Someone who turns up at an airport with products from an endangered species in their luggage will be summonsed—or, under the new provisions, receive a written charge. Is there evidence that, as a result, people are being intercepted but never brought to court because the lack of arrestability of the offence makes that a problem?

Those are the two key issues, and I need to be satisfied about them, rather than told in a nebulous way that it would be sensible to raise the sentence to five years to make it arrestable. If I can be persuaded on either matter, I shall not stand in the Committee's way.

I shall listen carefully to the Minister, but I return to my basic point. If the problem is the lack of arrestability, it may be better to make the offence arrestable, and we could do that in a slightly different way from that suggested in the amendment. On the other hand, if there is a joint problem of a lack of arrestability and the fact that the courts find it impossible to sentence properly and feel that their hands are tied behind their back, the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) has

much to commend it. However, we must look at the two issues separately, and the Minister or, indeed, the hon. Gentleman may be able to help us.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

For several reasons, I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw for tabling the new clause. First, I agree with it, and I will say why in a moment. Secondly, some of us have pursued the same line for a great many years. I do not want to go too far back into history, but there was a time when I worked for the World Wide Fund for Nature and made such proposals in the context of the Environmental Protection Bill back in the early 1990s.

During the Committee stages of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000—it was about wider environmental issues, rather than endangered species—we struggled to ensure that there were appropriate tariffs for crimes against the environment. There was often considerable agreement between me, as the spokesman for my party, and the Minister for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), who spoke for the Government. However, the problem with dealing with such issues in a wildlife Bill was that there was inevitably a read-across to the Home Office, which was not represented. This is not a criticism of Government communications; it is simply difficult in the context of a wildlife Bill, which deals essentially with environmental issues, to have the right advice to hand as to the effect of offences and how they are dealt with by the investigating authorities and the courts. It is useful to have an opportunity now to discuss at least one such issue in the context of a criminal justice Bill, and that does not often happen.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw said that the new clause addressed a serious problem, and I know that he has pursued it in other ways and in other debates in the House. Now is not the right time to make a general speech about the trade in endangered species and the implications for the convention on international trade in endangered species. However, we must recognise that there is a great deal of trafficking of endangered species and products made from them. That happens throughout the world, including regularly in this country. One estimate is that, on average, two and a half items of ivory or elephant-skin products enter the country every day of every year. That places the issue in context.

The problem with CITES, which has its critics and its supporters, is that it is only as good as the individual jurisdictions' ability to enforce it in the various countries throughout the world. Although this country has sometimes been reasonably good at interdiction of material, it has not always been good at achieving successful prosecutions.

There have been extraordinary cases. In July 2002, 10 live crocodiles were intercepted in the hold of a plane at Heathrow. That strikes me as a fairly extraordinary seizure. I, in my naive way, might think that 10 live crocodiles were quite difficult to hide in one's hand baggage when entering Heathrow airport, but someone attempted to do so and clearly felt that they had a reasonable chance of success.

I have figures for seizures and prosecutions through CITES, which perhaps relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. In 1997, there were 495 seizures, but no one was successfully prosecuted. In 1998, there were 498 seizures, but no one was prosecuted. In 1999, there were 336 seizures, but no one was prosecuted. In 2000, there were 441 seizures and one prosecution. In 2001, there were 434 seizures and two prosecutions. There have been three prosecutions so far, according to the latest figures available. Obviously, 2002 has passed, but we do not yet have the final figures for it. In any case, the figures that I have given show that there is something wrong with the system.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

Yes, I suspect that something is wrong with the system, but I would still like some help on what. I have been to Heathrow. I looked in particular into the seizure of illegal foodstuffs being imported. Stuff is seized on a massive scale if people apply their mind to it, although a lot gets in because they do not have the necessary resources. The truth, I have noted, is that there is no will to prosecute having seized, because people are so overburdened with other things to do that they do not seem to get their act together. However, that does not quite answer the question about whether the failure to prosecute is due to the inability to locate the person once he has moved on.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

I think that that is a fair criticism, although I cannot answer it. Perhaps the Minister can. There is an issue about the will to make the laws apply effectively, but I am happy to say that the atmosphere is changing. For instance, the Magistrates Association said recently that it wanted environmental crimes to be put before local benches much more often, and for courts to take those offences much more seriously.

The National Criminal Intelligence Service recently extended its sphere of operation to have a specialist wildlife group. That is wholly welcome, because one problem that police forces throughout the country have is that, sadly, this matter is always a very low priority. I understand why it is a low priority: because the system is so stretched in other ways and it is difficult to maintain a fully equipped unit within a police force area to deal specifically with such crime. In any case, it is often conducted on a national or international basis. Organised crime is often involved nowadays, because we are talking about very large sums.

One sad result of listing particular endangered species is that substitute products are often made from related species and they, in turn, become endangered. There are all sorts of complexities. I believe that people are finally waking up to the fact that this area of crime must be treated seriously in the courts. I agree that there should be an evidential base for it, but my instinct is that the tariff is part of the problem. The fact that there are so few prosecutions compared with the number of seizures supports that contention, although I accept that it is not conclusive. If that environment is changing and we are prepared to take those crimes more seriously, the Bill can play a part.

Obviously, the Minister must tell us whether he agrees with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw that there is a case to answer and that he is prepared to accept the amendment or to provide an alternative. I return to the important point made by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw: we can do something in the context of this Bill that could not be done by a different set of people with a different set of priorities in relation to wildlife legislation.

James Clappison (Conservative, Hertsmere)

I defer to those who have carried out more recent research on the subject than I have. It is clearly complex and some important legal issues arise from it. When I heard the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw and looked at the clause, I was surprised to see that the sentence is as low as it is. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield is right in saying that we must respond to what the courts tell us about the adequacy of sentence and to judges who feel that they do not have a sufficiently high maximum sentence available to them.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I qualify my own remarks. If nobody has ever been prosecuted for this offence, it is difficult for us to establish on a reasonable basis whether the available upper limit of sentence will ever be adequate.

James Clappison (Conservative, Hertsmere)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In setting maximum sentences, we must have regard to the seriousness of the mischief at which they are aimed, and to public concern. I do not know whether the trade was first made an offence in 1976. It might have been legal before, but the decision was then taken to make it a criminal offence. The time is overdue to consider setting a higher maximum sentence. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's view. I appreciate that this will probably cover a wide variety of offences. If, with a higher maximum sentence, we will attack and get at the people who are making large sums of money out of trading in endangered species, I shall be sympathetic to the spirit of the new clause. I should know more about the matter than I do; it is a serious mischief, and we shall be responding to the concern of many of our constituents. They want the House to send a signal about how seriously we regard the offence of trading in endangered species. I cannot see how making it an arrestable offence would harm the enforcement of the law.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

This has been an important and useful debate. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw for having initiated it by tabling the new clause. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome referred to the seizure and prosecution figures. Most of the seizures are items taken from tourists returning to the United Kingdom. In those circumstances, there is no public interest in prosecuting following seizure. It might also be helpful to the Committee to point out that the penalty for smuggling offences in relation to these species is up to seven years in prison. We are considering the current two-year penalty for trading in the species.

On arrestability, police officers can enter premises where they believe that there might be evidence only after applying for and obtaining a search warrant. In the meantime—we have had representations from the police on this matter—the individual may have the opportunity to move or conceal evidence, making it more difficult for them to be prosecuted. Making the offences arrestable in the way that the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) supports would give police officers stronger powers, including, when a person is believed to have committed an arrestable offence, to enter and search their premises and seize evidence without a search warrant.

There have been some prosecutions under the provisions. There are a relatively small number a year—I understand that there are fewer than 10. However, it is precisely because the Government accept the argument that there is a case for increasing the penalty, for the reason that I have explained in relation to arrestability but also because of the seriousness of the offences, that the Government have already proposed that the penalties for such offences should be increased. We published a consultation document earlier in the year but have not quite finished the period of consultation yet. However, we shall soon have a clear idea of the response to our proposal. If my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw would be prepared to withdraw the motion, we shall return to the issue on Report.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

I thank the Minister for his reply. However, it is important that we do not miss the boat—if that is not inappropriate—because timing is critical with regard to preparing new clauses for Report. Vehicles for such legislation do not go past very often. I worry that the matter will be pushed into a tray pending a countryside Bill or a wildlife Bill, and those, unlike Criminal Justice Bills, do not come past very often at all, as we know to our cost. The issue is urgent and critical. The hon. Member for Hertsmere referred to 1976. I think that 1976 was probably the time of the enactment of legislation on the basis of CITES in 1973. However, we have not taken the issue sufficiently seriously in this country for a long time, and now there is an opportunity to do so. I welcome what has been said, but please, let us not miss the boat.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I welcome the Minister's remarks and look forward to seeing the Government's ideas on Report, to which we are likely to respond favourably.

Mark Francois (Conservative, Rayleigh)

I also welcome what the Minister has said. He asked us to be patient and said that things would be forthcoming, and I think that we are all grateful for that. I happen to know that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), who has had a long-standing interest in these matters too, feels especially strongly on the issue, so I am sure that he will be delighted to read in Hansard what the Minister has said.

John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)

I welcome what the Minister said. I am in such an unrebellious mood this week that I perhaps was overly brief. I should have pointed out that the penalty for smuggling, which comes under the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979, is seven years. In essence, we have the absurdity whereby if one is caught at Customs, there is a proper penalty, but if

one gets through and starts trading in the country, one might not even get a slap on the wrist. There are a number of notorious cases in recent years in which that has been the case. The worst example that has been highlighted was that involving the shahtoosh shawls, in which 2 per cent. of the entire world numbers of a Tibetan antelope were slaughtered and imported by one London company. Those responsible were eventually caught and were fined £1,500. That was in 2000, so the case for strengthening the law and making such offences arrestable is, in my view, proven.

The others who would give evidence to that effect are the wildlife crime officers. About half of British police forces have one. I hosted a reception with them here some time ago, and their view was that if they had more power—if it was an arrestable offence—they would be able to pursue those who trade in such materials more vigorously and more effectively.

Finally, I have spoken to the Indian Wildlife Board about the matter and it is in no doubt that the same gangs, particularly from the far east, who smuggle people and drugs and launder money, are also smuggling those items. It is therefore not the individual entrepreneur who is breaking the law but organised criminals.

I heard what the Minister had to say. I look forward to hearing a further response at a later stage. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New clause 14 - Duty of Probation Officers to consult with magistrates (No. 2)

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The clause would re-establish local consultation between the probation service and magistrates. It also introduces an obligation for local probation areas to consult local communities, which are generally ill-informed about the work of the probation service. The National Association of Probation Officers is quite attached to the new clause. I wonder whether the Minister will consider it to be of value.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

This proposal, too, appears to have some merit. I would raise a couple of points. First, does it require to be put on a statutory basis? I would hope that it could be achieved without being spelled out in statute. Frankly, if courts are not operating such a system, they ought to. Parliament has a tendency to impose a series of burdens on organisations, and it is terribly easy for the organisations to pay lip service to them, which results in their not being particularly constructive.

I would be interested to hear the Minister's views. There needs to be some liaison, but I question whether it needs to be put on a statutory footing.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North for allowing us, with new clause 14 and other new clauses that we shall debate later, to debate other issues linked to the Bill. I hope to find considerable common ground on some of those issues, and that many other hon. Members will be able to join a constructive debate.

I am absolutely clear that local liaison between the probation service, the courts and the local community needs to be improved. I am on record as saying that we may need to put it on a statutory footing, but I want to paint a slightly different picture, and I want a sort of Second Reading debate on this sub-issue in the hope that we might be able to get something on the statute book. It seems to me that four relevant agencies have a duty to be accountable to the local community; and then there is local government. I start with local government. The hon. Gentleman says that we need to establish consultation arrangements with local communities, and we shall come in a moment to new clause 15 and other linked issues.

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which was generally welcomed, established the crime and disorder partnerships, which work well. They certainly work better than the previous non-existent structures. I can speak only from personal experience of London, but the Solicitor-General, I and others in our borough participated in the local police and community consultative group, which was set up somewhat belatedly after the Scarman inquiry into the Brixton riots. That scheme was eventually rolled out and used in every London borough.

The three MPs in my borough are members as of right of that body; it also includes representatives of the local authority, and others are elected to it from community groups. It is a good forum, but it is better now that it is more formal. A councillor has that responsibility, but it is not a party political matter. Under Labour and Liberal Democrat Administrations, a councillor has been responsible for community safety and for leading the police-council interface and the coalition of collaboration. That is very welcome.

The first stakeholder—that is the word of the decade—to be included in the consultative structure is the local authority. The second group is the probation service, which has a hugely important role. To be honest, no ordinary member of the public will know who runs the local probation service; no one would know where to find the probation office; and the service is never publicly held to account in the same way as the local authority.

In an earlier debate about the probation service, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome argued that community service should be more visible. He did not mean that people doing community service should be marked with their prison numbers, like prisoners on a day out, but that those supervising them should have something on their donkey jacket or whatever they are wearing which signifies that those

people are doing community service as a punishment but also as a community benefit.

I am keen to increase that sort of accountability. The probation service is increasingly organised in a way that is at least compatible with the principal local authority boundaries. I guess that that is the case in Leeds and other counties, including the county that includes the constituency of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. One can find the local authority parallel.

The third group of stakeholders is those who run the courts. My one suggestion to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North is that the structure should not include only those who run magistrates courts. The Government are now reforming the courts system to ensure an integrated administration for magistrates and Crown courts. I support that, although I am uncomfortable about the way in which it is likely to roll out, because of the danger that it might close the local magistrates courts—I would not support that.

The court system needs to be accountable, but that should apply to all the courts. To take the borough that I know best, it would be nonsense for only magistrates courts to liaise when the Southwark, Blackfriars and Inner London Crown courts clearly play a big part in the process. That would apply whether it was a permanent Crown court or one of the occasional Crown courts sitting in the area.

The fourth group that should be involved is the police service, which is responsible for enforcing the law. The police are already in the system, because they liaise with the local authority in most areas, including your area, Mr. Cran, I imagine. Of those four groups—the police, the probation service, the courts and the Prison Service—the best known would be the local chief constable, commander or chief superintendent, to whom the public would look. It is normally that person who appears at public meetings or on a public platform, if people want to know about law and order and crime.

The last group—they may not exist in every area, but if they do they should be involved—are those who run the Prison Service institutions. The constituency of the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell) includes Nottingham jail. I am not sure about the boundaries in Leeds, but I guess that Armley prison may be in the Minister's constituency. Wherever there is a big prison, whether it is open or secure, a young offenders institution or whatever, there is a public interest in what happens, whether it is successful, whether people are secure in it, whether they go out for day release and so on. My variation on the theme of the hon. Member for Nottingham, North is that the consultation arrangements ought to be between the five agencies—four law enforcement and criminal justice agencies and the local authorities.

Stephen Hesford (Labour, Wirral West)

No matter how sympathetic the Committee might be, the hon. Gentleman is pointing up one of my concerns. There is no corresponding duty on any of the other bodies to take part. No matter how hard the probation service might try, if there is no duty on the other agencies it

might not work. The other concern is that there is no audit process. There is no duty on the probation service to tell anybody how well it is doing, so we shall never know.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Again, I hope that we can feel our way to consensus. I have only two more substantive points to make, and they are going in the hon. Gentleman's direction. I am concerned about why the intention of the new clause should be for the obligation to be on the probation service. It does not strike me as obvious that the probation service should have the lead responsibility.

If we think widely about the five prospective parties to the consultation, it might be more logical for another to take the lead. I hold no brief against or in favour of the probation service, but it might be better for the local authority, or another body, to do it. The second point is exactly that made by the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford). This is a reasonable probing new clause. It puts a duty on the probation service to establish an arrangement. However, it places a burden on it that it is not resourced to carry—it is terribly overstretched—in asking it to consult the community. A process might already be set up—if there is a process under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, let us not duplicate it; if there is a way in which the police, the local authority and the community work together, let us not add another.

There ought, in any event, to be an obligation on all the parties to participate. It would be unfair to put a duty on the probation service and, possibly, on the magistrates court committee, and to give a nebulous, unspecified role to the local community, but to place no duty on the police or the courts—other than magistrates—or on the Prison Service, if it is involved. I am keen to find something that works without being heavily bureaucratic. We need something that can work easily, not a huge bureaucracy.

To put it visually, twice or three times a year, there should be at the top table at a public meeting, whether it is on the Wirral or in south London, the five people in charge of delivering the service. That way, members of the public would never ask why people are not getting tougher sentences without somebody being there to explain what the sentences are and to give accurate information. That is really important, otherwise—I have seen this, and so, no doubt, has the hon. Member for Wirral, West—there is a danger of terrible buck passing. It already happens too often. I have been at too many meetings at which members of the community meet police representatives who say, ''We cannot answer that—talk to the courts,'' while in fact the courts are not there to talk to.

Joan Humble (Labour, Blackpool North and Fleetwood)

In his interesting comments, the hon. Gentleman has highlighted the groups and organisations that we think should be involved in the consultation process. There are others. There are drug action teams, primary care trusts—because the probation service deals with people with health problems and abuse problems—and youth action teams. Does he agree that, rather than considering the matter from the point of view of which agencies and organisations should be consulted, a key issue is

that ordinary people should know what is going on? Information should get to them, rather than being shared and, essentially, kept secret by well-meaning, interested people from different agencies.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I absolutely agree, but, to be fair, the hon. Member for Nottingham, North has separated the process of getting people together from that of sharing information. I understand why he has done so, and the next new clause is about ensuring that the public are told. However, the hon. Lady is absolutely right that it is no good having a behind-closed-doors consultation in which the public cannot participate. That is why the initial picture that I have painted includes the opportunity for the public to ask questions of those who run the system.

To pick up the hon. Lady's important second point about other agencies, she is absolutely right that without adequate drug services—in her area or mine—questions to the police and courts about why they do not deal more effectively with drug dealers will not be adequately answered. No one will be there to answer them, although there will be second-hand information.

I selected the agencies that I did—the hon. Lady may persuade me that I am wrong and that she is right; I do not have a final view—only because they are responsible for delivering law, order and punishment. However, they need to link up with the people whom she mentioned—those responsible for youth action teams, youth offender programmes and healthcare, including drug services, in particular. Were we able to deliberate further and get the measure right before the end of the Bill's passage through Parliament, we might be able to list those other obvious partners on whom we could agree. The danger is that the list would be as long as your arm; it would be like a monster, and it might be difficult to get all those people together at stage 1. I want us to get things right, and it is no good going off at half-cock and getting things wrong.

I have one last point, and the hon. Lady or others may want to comment. As the hon. Lady suggested, there is a terrible danger nowadays that the many well-intentioned, intelligent and good people who do good and important jobs will spend more and more time in committee meetings with one another. I do not know whether Fleetwood and Blackpool are the same as Southwark and south London, but wherever I go in the country, it appears that specialists are spending more and more time talking to other specialists. That happens in a rather unaccountable, undemocratic way in forums and other partnerships whose work does not feed into local authorities or other elected bodies.

My preference, as always, is that the local authority should act as the umbrella. The public should be encouraged to go to groups of people whom they can elect and remove to make them answer questions. Those people may say, ''We have no responsibility for the courts—they're run by a manager for our borough. Here they are: ask them the questions.'' Councillors and MPs may then say, ''You're not giving us a very good answer; it's inadequate—go away and get more information.'' I am trying to achieve something that is manageable and which includes everyone. The suggestion is that we try—at least in phase 1—to

include the agencies that deal with criminal justice delivery.

I have one final point. If the opinion polls show that law and order is one of the top three concerns among our constituents nationally, it is no good just including the police. We need the people who deal with prisons, probation—punishment in the community—the courts, and law and order. That is why the germ—or the early growth—of an idea before us is a good one, and I hope that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North will be positive about collaborating with our Conservative colleagues and others to achieve something workable that could be included in the Bill before the end of its passage through Parliament.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North has highlighted an important issue. He has given the Committee an opportunity to range across the mechanisms that are in place to achieve his objective, which I share, even if I am not persuaded that the mechanism that he proposes in the new clause would necessarily assist.

First, I know that there was some concern that with the demise of the statutory probation liaison committees following the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 the kind of consultation and communication that my hon. Friend proposes in the new clause would be lost. However, I can assure him that joint working continues to be a priority for the National Probation Service. Indeed, it was made clear in the guidance issued last year by the probation service, the Lord Chancellor's Department, the Magistrates Association, the Justices' Clerks' Society, and the Association of Justices' Chief Executives and entitled, ''Working Together—the National Probation Service and the Courts''. I have a copy of it here.

The guidance sets out extremely clearly the importance that all the parties attach to effective communication and understanding of their respective roles and the importance of their working together to achieve their shared ends. Indeed, it suggests that something like the old probation liaison committees could provide a forum to review working jointly and to plan future events. Clearly the purpose of all that activity should be to achieve improvements in the criminal justice system.

The probation service has itself developed closer links with the local community. Since the establishment of the National Probation Service there have been the new local probation boards, which have a much more diverse membership than was previously the case. They are accountable for delivering the service locally. They have to produce an annual report. They have between five and 15 members, including a Crown court judge, a chief probation officer, four magistrates, two local councillors and others who could be lawyers or representatives of the business community or the wider local community. That is another forum in which the kind of dialogue that my hon. Friend wants could take place. I entirely accept that in general the public do not know enough about the work of the

local probation services and I am keen that they should. They would be greatly reassured by what they would learn.

I acknowledge the point made by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) about the crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which bring in the local dimension in co-operation with others.

I remind the Committee that the new local criminal justice boards bring together the CPS, the courts, the Prison Service, the probation service, the police, the magistrates and the youth offending teams to encourage joint working in the interests of improving the operation of the criminal justice system. They will produce annual reports, and the range of issues that they will deal with covers all the points that the hon. Gentleman rightly raised. I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured that a range of mechanisms is already in place. I am not persuaded that we need to add to those. The underlying thrust of the new clause is that there should be more effective consultation and communication, and we all share that.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I am not sure whether the Minister expressly said this, but I believe that there used to be a statutory duty, to which the hon. Member for Nottingham, North referred, between probation and magistrates. My understanding is that it was intended to be in the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 and somehow it was not included. That may be an unfair representation of the Government's position. I am also aware that a national liaison structure is in place, which picks up pretty well all the agencies that we have talked about.

I am also aware that the new probation boards have come into operation. I guess that, to be fair to the Government, it is too early to assess how they work yet. I presume that no opinion polling has yet been done to see whether anyone in the community knows that they exist. I ask out of neutral ignorance. I presume that it is too early to expect them to be there, but it strikes me that they will be known only by the type of people who apply to sit on such committees. I am not very far away from the concept of a criminal justice board; however, it should be publicly accountable as well. It should be accountable not just by annual report, which is a pretty remote form of accountability, but by a visible presence and visible accountability and by linking up with the local authority. Before the hon. Member for Nottingham, North responds, will the Minister tell me how to persuade Government to turn the criminal justice boards into a body that did not meet just to write a report but which came together with local authorities to be held accountable? That would be a very profitable development and would obviate the need for legislation, which the new clause proposes.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's use of the word ''accountability.'' There are arguments for electing certain judicial officers, as is the practice in the United States. That provides a degree of public accountability. There are arguments for elected sheriffs in this country to be in charge of law

enforcement in some areas. However, that is not what new clause 14 proposes. I wonder what accountability the hon. Gentleman has in mind. It is true that there will be transparency if this works, and that is important, but I am not sure that accountability will be achieved.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but I did not intend to be misleading. The Minister mentioned a form of accountability: an annual report that would be available to the public. A second, and greater, form of accountability would be a personal appearance and an obligation to answer questions. The third, and even better, form, although it would be constitutionally different, would be accountability through election or public collective appointment. I was not arguing for that in this context, although it raises many issues.

We must try to establish, along with public accountability, dialogue that ensures that the sentencers understand, from listening to everyone involved, the context of what they are doing. That is particularly relevant in a week in which figures show by how much the prison population and average sentencing are increasing. We must make sure that the courts, the police and the probation service all make intelligent interlinked decisions that do not place unnecessary pressures on the system; decisions that do not have the opposite effect to what was intended.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

I am almost certain to press this to the vote. The Minister has shown why Sir Andrew Gordon, the chief executive of Ofmin, dubbed him the first beacon Minister of this Government. I am totally persuaded by my hon. Friend, although there were times during the contribution of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey that I lost the will to live—[Laughter.] In view of the eloquence of my hon. Friend, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New clause 15 - Reports to households on the operation of the criminal justice system

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I have raised this subject with my hon. Friend before. It is the point at which the lawyers in the Committee can walk out because it is about reconnecting the public with the legal process. Therefore the tea trolley can get back into full working order outside the Committee Room. I raised this earlier in the proceedings in order to make sentencing more relevant to people and more honest. The Government's proposals for a sentencing council and the Minister's willingness to entertain a further possible extension of a sentencing council to encourage people to think that it and the criminal justice system

are more relevant to their daily lives is part of that process. It is also part of the view, which we all share, that we should recapture the criminal justice system for the people whom it is meant to serve.

The proposal is quite simple; there would be joint arrangements between all those involved in the criminal justice system, be they police services, the Prison Service, the probation service or judges, whether full-time or lay. Those bodies will come together and explain what they are about and how they serve local communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) is a serving magistrate, and she may feel that that is an appropriate use of a minor amount of public funds.

I have used this example before: like many Members of all parties, I give my constituents an annual report, which costs a couple of grand to print and a couple of grand to be delivered by the Post Office. My hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham, East and for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) and I share a city, we know that for £12,000, it is possible to send every house a relatively simple and straightforward explanatory document of perhaps four sides of A4 paper. Such a document could explain to the local user of the criminal justice system what the system delivers; it could give phone numbers and explain how to make contact; it could give an idea of what the system does; and it could state the detection rates and the numbers of people that we have managed to put away or fine for criminal activities.

Such a document would ensure that people feel that the criminal justice system belonged to them because not only do they receive its services and benefit from them; they also fund it. Just about any other service, whether it is a local fitness club or a football team, expects, in return for each subscription or association, to give a report of its activities, however brief, each year. Such a report on the criminal justice system would not involve great expense, but it would be a great service to local people if we were able to reconnect them with the service in that way.

I do not want to make a long-winded speech that will turn off colleagues from an extremely good idea, so I propose the idea for consideration by the Committee.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

This proposal, too, seems to have much to commend it. It is true that in many areas, especially my police area, there is an increasing willingness to put out reports on, for example, the performance of the police and crime statistics. I have certainly fought as hard as I can to persuade the police that they should make local crime statistics available, but they are always a tiny bit cagey about that. They have a tendency to say that the statistics will be misinterpreted or misunderstood. However, the bar chart helpfully provided to me by the chief superintendent of the two main local police stations in my constituency when I meet him every quarter is perfectly easy to interpret and very useful. Obviously I appreciate that a 100 per cent. rise in rape from one case to two is not necessarily statistically significant.

One must be careful about extrapolating a percentage increase from figures.

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman is trying to do and applaud the principle that people are entitled to much more information than they get. The question is how best to achieve a result. One of my anxieties is that the process must be divorced from central Government activity. The Minister will have to forgive me, but I do not think that the Government's annual report has been a model of usefulness.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

It is a model of disappearance.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

Indeed, it has been deemed to be so useless that, as the hon. Gentleman said, it has now apparently disappeared. When it did appear, I found it to be a very poor document. We must be careful that we do not end up simply providing a propaganda excuse for some branch of the legal enforcement agency to put out its report. That tendency can be sometimes be found in the annual reports published by local police forces.

The absolute need is for statistical material to be available. I do not share the belief that such material is misused, because if someone seeks to misuse it, it is possible to put out a correcting statement. The ability to obtain that information and to know what is going on would provide the greatest public reassurance about the way in which law enforcement takes place. We should be working towards that end, and I hope that the Secretary of State will encourage it. Perhaps he needs to be given a power to kick in the pants those bodies that are reluctant to give the public such information. We must be careful, however, not to encourage organisations to put out propaganda documents, because that is the easy way out for them, and it is not, I believe, what the hon. Member for Nottingham, North intends.

Joan Humble (Labour, Blackpool North and Fleetwood)

I have one or two points to make. Further to the hon. Gentleman's comments, I can tell the Committee that in my local area all the agencies are keen on publishing statistics, but they are not always presented in an easily accessible form.

My impression is that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North is interested not only in statistics, but in giving people more information. For example, many members of the public do not really understand the importance and significance of community sentences. They tend to think that they are a soft option, but for many people they are not. When I sat as a magistrate, many people did not want a community sentence but preferred to go to prison for two or three months.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I appreciate the hon. Lady's point. I may have the advantage that my constituency is the lead area in the country on restorative justice, and much has been done by the police to publicise what that involves, so that people know that it is not a soft option. However, I suspect that there are widely differing practices throughout England and Wales, and it may be useful for us to address that issue.

Joan Humble (Labour, Blackpool North and Fleetwood)

I certainly agree. There have been many changes in the criminal justice system over

recent years, and pulling all of that together into an easily understandable form will be useful.

In Blackpool, the new community safety partnerships have been good at giving information on crime statistics because they show a substantial reduction in crime. Our local evening newspaper has also been good at reporting that. There was an article this week on the substantial reduction in youth crime which highlighted the new agencies working together to effect that reduction. However, not everyone reads the local newspaper.

There is work to be done to ensure that members of the public understand the changes that have taken place in the criminal justice system. We need to examine those statistics and consider the best way of delivering to the public the information that they contain.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

My proposal may also combat some of the most obvious prejudices or misunderstandings such as ''They just give them a slap on the wrist'', ''They are out after serving half their sentence'' or ''We never see a policeman; we don't have any round here.'' We should be able to communicate the reality of how sentencing operates without going into great technical detail and in a way that ordinary people can understand.

Joan Humble (Labour, Blackpool North and Fleetwood)

I entirely agree. I will develop that point further and say that such a move could be useful in helping to allay the fear of crime. Many people, especially older people and pensioners, have a fear of crime that is disproportionate to the criminal activity in their area.

I hope that the Minister will seriously consider how best to disseminate information along the lines suggested by my hon. Friend. It could be sent out to pensioners' groups and those who use day centres and luncheon clubs, so that they can see what changes have taken place and how those changes better protect and support them. That will not only educate them about what the police, the probation service and all the other groups are doing, but help to allay any unnecessary fears that they may have about becoming victims of crime.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I support the new clause, but I also have a major concern about it. I hope that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North will bear with me, whether or not he wants to give up the right to live during my contribution. I am going to have a bit of blast at his Government and the Home Office, because the one real failure of the proposition is that the statistics disseminated will be those that the Home Secretary directs. I do not blame the Minister, but the Home Office is increasingly disgraceful on statistics. It is reprimanded more and more, and it is seen to be fiddling the figures, misrepresenting and delaying them, which is completely unacceptable. I shall give evidence for that claim in a moment, in a specific example of a document that the Home Office published only this week.

Like the hon. Member for Nottingham, North, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome and

I seek to make ourselves accountable by producing reports for our constituents, as I know other colleagues do. That is a good starting point. Those statistics should be available, but I share the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood because in my area, like hers, the statistics are not always in an understandable or easily comparable format. Unless one can compare like with like, last year with this year, or the hon. Lady's town with other towns in Lancashire, the statistics do not mean much. They are only today's statistics. They may tell us that there were one or two rapes last year, but they are not useful unless one can see the pattern and make comparisons.

Last week, the Home Office produced a new way of comparing the effectiveness of police forces. If anything was likely to confuse the public, that was it. I refer all colleagues, if they have not seen it, to the extraordinarily confusing way of calculating how well one's police service is doing. That is not the only recent example. There is concern that the delivery of statistics should be taken out of politicians' hands and given to those who have no political axe to grind.

The former Home Secretary, who is now the Foreign Secretary, told me that he had a personal interest in trying to get the statistics right. I recall that he is a lawyer by training, but I do not know if he ever qualified or trained as a statistician, so perhaps his wife's civil service influence persuaded him to that view. He thought that we should try to achieve a co-ordinated view of statistics and, to his credit, he set up a group of representatives from different parties to advise him on how to improve the statistics. Some of the group's work was good, but the record under the current Home Secretary has been worse.

Last year, I had occasion to report to the Home Secretary for the Statistics Commission—an independent body that examined some of the Home Office statistics. As I told him in the House, it has publicly criticised the way in which some of those statistics were produced and represented, and said that it was the fault of Ministers and the Home Office.

My specific complaint relates to the juvenile offending figures, which are simply a distortion of the truth. That is sad: I wish that they were true, but they are not. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Flook) elicited from Ministers the fact that the current Home Office spends over £1 million of taxpayers' money on its press machine. Under this Home Secretary, the number of Home Office press officers and special advisers has doubled compared with the number under the previous Home Secretary, and the original cost of £845,000 a year has trebled.

The number of press officers alone increased from 13 in 1997–98 to 37 this year, so the Home Office spends £1 million a year on the press, while the police, prison, probation and other services are all substantially under-resourced and require more money. That strikes me as fundamentally wrong. The Home Office's defence—not a terribly strong one—is that independent consultants recommended those arrangements. Furthermore, the press office machine in the Lord Chancellor's Department has trebled in

size under the present Lord Chancellor, though at only £200,000 a year it costs much less.

I hope that I can persuade members of the Committee to share my concern that independent people should carry out independently checked actions. The process must not rely only on the Home Office.

On Tuesday the Home Office issued news release 051/2003 headed, ''Juvenile reoffending significantly reduced by new youth justice measures''. I shall read the first paragraph and subsequent short paragraphs:

''Reconviction rates for juveniles have been cut by 22.5 per cent. overall, according to Home Office statistics published today. The new reprimand and final warning scheme in particular has helped the Home Office exceed by a long way its target of a five per cent. reduction in juvenile reconviction rates compared to 1997.''

If that were true, it would be worth applauding.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

It is bogus.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I will show that it is an absolutely bogus claim. The news release continues:

''Reprimands resulted in a 47 per cent. proportionate drop in convictions, and final warnings resulted in a 19.3 per cent. reduction compared to the previous system of repeat cautions for young offenders . . . The statistics also show a dramatic decrease in the reconviction rate for females since 1997, which has fallen proportionately by 35.8 per cent. to 13.1 per cent.''

The statistics sound like an extraordinary and amazing improvement.

Mr. Allen rose—

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make the case, he can intervene later. The news release continues:

''The reconviction rate for males has also fallen proportionately by 20.8 per cent. to 30 per cent . . . Improvements in reconviction rates are better for the younger juveniles. Eleven-year-olds showed the greatest reduction in reconviction rates at 38.7 per cent. for males and 66.1 per cent. for females.''

Let me now explain why all that is, in the words of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, ''bogus''.

It is bogus because the overall reconviction rate for the first quarter of 2001—the last quarter measured for the purpose of comparison—appears as 26.4 per cent. In fact, that is exactly the same reconviction rate as for the previous year. To turn the stagnant performance of no change into an apparent improvement, the Home Office compared the 26.4 per cent. of the previous year with the adjusted predicted rate for the most recent year, which was 34.1 per cent. The reality of one year was therefore compared with the adjusted predicted rate of the other year. Let me get the figures right: the expected rate for 2000–01 was 36.4 per cent.; the true rate was 26.4 per cent. The comparison is therefore completely bogus.

Since the figures appeared on Tuesday, I have had them examined by a statistician who discovered that the supposed decrease was not presented as a fall of 7.7 per cent.—the difference between the adjusted predicted rate and the real rate—but, in order to inflate the degree of improvement, as a percentage of a percentage. Other figures in the report use the same statistical sleight of hand. First, they do not compare two similar sets of statistics, and secondly, they wrongly calculate the percentage.

There are two other significant reasons why the report is flawed. The comparison between the 1997 statistics and these recent ones is entirely misleading because of the way in which the young people are dealt with. Since 1997, the Government have introduced two new options for the least serious offenders: reprimands and final warnings. The young people affected are, by definition, on the lower scale of offending—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Beaconsfield will bear with me, I will give way in a moment. The figures include many individuals who were not included before and are the least likely to reoffend. The inclusion of that new group of offenders in the statistics has had the effect of lowering the reconviction rate without there being any improvement in the effectiveness of all the other things that were there before. Does the hon. Gentleman want to intervene?

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

No, there is no need.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I give way to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

I have forgotten what I was going to say but as you are in a very generous mood, Mr. Cran, I should like to make a short speech on the Galleries of Justice, a popular tourist attraction in Nottingham. It has been open for a number of years, and many people come to Nottingham to see the dungeons underneath the Shire hall in the centre of the town. They see the chains that held the convicts, who were put down a hole in the basement of Shire hall. Before they were transported they were given food lowered down through the same the hole. The entry fee is only £5 or £6 and the chairman of the Bar Council was one of the first people to associate himself with that important legal and penal monument. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke)—

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

On a point of order, Mr. Cran. I gave way to an intervention. This does not sound like an intervention.

James Cran (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

We must clarify this. I had understood, Mr. Hughes, that you had finished your speech, but obviously this is an intervention. Make it very short indeed, Mr. Allen.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

Is this an intervention?

James Cran (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Yes.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe was a leading sponsor of that important breakthrough. Not only is there a full-scale courtroom from the 19th century, but when a visitor enters, he is given a ticket—

James Cran (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

Order. Mr. Allen, you lost me some minutes ago. We must go back to Mr. Hughes.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I am happy to give way to proper interventions. I treat the hon. Gentleman's interventions with courtesy and I hope that he will treat those of other members of the Committee similarly. He cannot expect collaboration one day and disrespect the next.

My last point on the statistics is that not only has disproportionate weight been given in the comparison

to the number of juveniles who have received reprimands, cautions and final warnings—the things that are least likely to produce reoffending or to be relevant to the youngsters who are least likely to reoffend—but that adding the load of disposals completely skews the total. That skewing has masked the significant increases in reconviction rates for more serious offenders.

The worst thing in Tuesday's Home Office press release, which was headed ''Juvenile reoffending significantly reduced by new youth justice measures,'' is the significant increase in reconvictions of serious offenders. Some 55 per cent. of those with between four and nine previous convictions, including reprimands, were reconvicted in 2000, which is the first year for comparison. By 2001, that had gone up to 64.7 per cent. For those with 10 or more convictions in the year in question, the reconviction rate went up from 58 per cent. to 80 per cent.

I have taken just one example. If statistics are to be disseminated and they are to command the confidence of the public, they need to be independently attested; they should not be subject to increasing numbers of spin doctors manipulating them to hide the truth.

Over the last six months the Government should have learned the lesson that the public lose confidence in them when they seek to present something as a given when it turns out to be something else. That has been the outcome of the sad press management of many of the issues concerning Iraq. If the Government have not learned that lesson, it is sad both for them and for democracy.

I am signed up to the idea that we should give the public good, independent information. As the hon. Member for Nottingham, North said, the public might therefore be disabused of illusions; for instance, that very lenient sentencing is passed when it is not, or that community sentences do no good when they apparently do more good than imprisonment. I am not signed up to that being done on the basis of statistics that come from the Home Office, unchecked by anybody else. My example has shown that those are sometimes misleading, sometimes dangerously misleading, and sometimes not true.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

This debate has ranged rather more widely than I had anticipated. I have just written a letter to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey on the subject of reconviction statistics, inviting him to come and meet the head of the Home Office research and statistics branch to raise this matter with him directly. I hope that he will do so; I am sure that he would find the conversation helpful.

Simon Hughes indicated assent.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

The need to improve public understanding of the criminal justice system, and the provision of information about it, is a theme that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North has consistently pursued with dogged determination during the passage of the Bill. It is good to see other hon. Members participating in the debate in his support. I am as one with him in this, as are the Government. My hon.

Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood referred to the need for explanation and reassurance.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

What I cannot understand is why the Minister comes to the Committee without having before him the leaflet called ''Catching up with Crime and Sentencing''. I am amazed that he is so ill prepared.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

That sounds like a prompt for a prop. My hon. Friend must have extremely good eyesight because I do have a copy of that excellent booklet, and I was about refer to it. There is a range of information available and I commend to hon. Members the CJS online website in which the material in the booklet can be found. We take my hon. Friend's point seriously. It is important to make information about how the system works and what it is intended to do as widely available as possible.

That will be one of the tasks for the new local criminal justice boards in producing their annual report and making it available to the public. Another of their tasks is to increase public confidence. We agree that providing timely and appropriate information to the public is a very important way to do that. Obviously, it would be appropriate to make booklets and information available at courts. People who have come into contact with the criminal justice system, including offenders, victims, witnesses and their families would be interested in reading such information.

The hon. Member for Beaconsfield made a most important point about ensuring that information is disseminated at a local level. This is not about the Government putting out standard information, although there is a case for us reviewing the range of information centrally, which we are doing now. We would not want the 42 local criminal justice boards to reinvent the wheel and each try to write their own explanation of how the broad principles of the criminal justice system work. However, there is a case for providing them with information to set in the local context.

I concur with the hon. Gentleman's point about the importance of local information, because it brings these matters to life. It also deals with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North about reassurance and public confidence developing locally through mechanisms such as consultation, channels of communication and places where publications can be placed. Leaving things to be done locally ensures that information can be communicated effectively, as my hon. Friend wants. Although I concur with the spirit of the proposal, I hope that he will ask for leave to withdraw it.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

Before my hon. Friend sits down, will he accept that although it is important that such material is available at community centres, pension clubs and so on, we have all been to such places and seen the racks stuffed with well-meaning leaflets from various bodies, so the key aim should be to get information to individual households. Will the Minister please underline his commitment to encourage people at local level in that respect?

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

I will reflect on that point but it is the job of the local criminal justice boards, with their responsibility for public confidence and communication, to determine the most effective way of getting the information out and about.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I want to correct an error that I made earlier. I referred to answers given to the hon. Member for Taunton, but I meant to say my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws).

On the subject of the interchange between the Minister and his hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North, I make a practical suggestion: although dissemination may technically be the responsibility of the criminal justice board, the best way of getting information out at least cost would be to use the same mechanism as the local authority. Once a year it sends every household an envelope containing details of local authority services along with the council tax bills. The disadvantage of such a suggestion is that sending everything together may be an information overload, but the advantage is that it would include a report on the local authority services.

I understand from Ministers in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that they are considering sending civil defence emergency planning information in the same way to save money and to facilitate access. I am signed up to idea of information being given to every household rather than remaining on the racks in the library or community centre, and my suggestion would ensure consistency, regularity, visibility and comprehensibility. I hope that the Minister will consider the suggestion and talk to his colleagues about it.

I appreciate that it will take another year's cycle before any such proposal is adopted. However, I would support it as the next stage in the process that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North seeks to persuade us to accept, even if it came from the criminal justice boards, provided that there were agreed statistics, verified in a way that would avoid any accusations of party political or Government spin. The worst thing would be if they were seen not to be credible, which would do no one any good.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

I thank the Minister for his helpful response. There is still a little further to go on the matter, which I may raise on Report. The local boards need a nudge from the centre; a model, or examples of best practice from elsewhere, may be just what they need. The cost of delivering a glossy A4 document to every household in my city would be a mere £12,000. That would be a tiny part of the budget but it would have a massive impact in doing as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood said and bringing the perception of crime into alignment with reality. I thank the Minister for his reply. I shall continue to pursue the matter, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New clause 17 - Duty of prison to rehabilitate

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

James Cran (Conservative, Beverley and Holderness)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: New clause 18—Personal plans for prisoners—

'It shall be the duty of the prison service to prepare a personal plan for each offender serving a sentence of over 12 months, setting objectives for his rehabilitation and reform. It shall be the duty of any person making or considering recommendations for the early release of any prisoner to take into account his achievement of the personal plan prepared in pursuance of this section.'.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

It seems peculiar to be discussing a Criminal Justice Bill but not talking about ensuring that people do not commit further serious offences. That is a massive omission and I hope that this brief debate will go some way to making amends. I have written to my hon. Friend the Minister on the subject, and without wishing to embarrass him, I must say that his replies are a credit to him and his officials, because they are thorough and show an understanding of the problems that has not always been evident in previous communications with Ministers. If Armley is in or near his constituency, that may go some way to explaining his knowledge of the issue.

At some stage, we might need to consider producing clearer definitions or a clearer distinction between a rehabilitation service for those who could benefit from one and a containment service for those people on whom we have given up in terms of rehabilitation. I do not know whether that clarity is a long-term prospect, but being the generous people that we are, we try to assume that there is hope for everybody—certainly hope for most people—particularly for those who are sent to prison for shorter sentences or for the first time. We hope that, as a result of our actions, people who leave prison will not reoffend. We are not being soft, because it is a simple case of self-interest. It is important to establish the rehabilitative aspect of a prison regime. The new clauses would emphasise that in the Bill and make it clear that that duty falls on the Prison Service.

There is a slightly broader aspect to the issue. I am sure that the Prison Service is already aware of this, but we want to make patently obvious the importance of the personal development of individuals. I have previously quoted from the little piece of paper that I carry around in my diary and referred to the sort of people who are habitual reoffenders. If we can break that cycle of illiteracy and inadequacy and ensure that people understand how they can progress, we will make a serious impact. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey often compares community and prison sentences, emphasising that community sentences are more effective. I hope that he would agree that both possibilities leave a great deal to be desired and are in need of significant reform to provide the sort of contribution that we all want to see from the Prison Service, because we are far from getting it right. The range of opportunities should be

broadened to include the teaching of behavioural skills and parenting skills for people of the appropriate age, even if they do not have children. Teaching in social and emotional skills would also be extremely valuable. I am not saying that we need to give people an easy ride when they are in prison. That is where new clause 18 comes in: it is extremely clear that there shall be a challenging regime on personal development.

It may be pretty tough to serve time in prison, but I can tell the Committee that one of the toughest aspects of life may be if an illiterate person was to learn to read, often without too much support and in a one-to-one situation. If people can meet such challenges, they are doing extremely well. Offenders who serve a sentence of more than 12 months should have a personal plan, setting clear objectives for rehabilitation and reform.

Without wishing to contradict what I said earlier about honest sentencing, one possible carrot for prisoners in such a situation would be the possibility of early release, provided that they had met the targets in their personal plans. Undertaking to reach such targets and reaching them could be rewarded by some time being taken off their sentence. That in itself would be an incentive, as would the achievement. I am talking not about people studying law in their spare time, as it were, and trying to find ways out of prison, but about their learning basic literacy and numeracy skills or studying for GCSEs or trades, which, in the circumstances, would be extremely challenging for them to accomplish. If they can do that successfully, they deserve a reward, well beyond the personal development that will have been achieved.

I apologise to the Committee for taking a few minutes to put my thoughts on the record, but the slight omission from the broad sweep of matters covered by the Bill is a serious attempt to ensure proper reform and rehabilitation. I accept that the Minister takes such matters extremely seriously. I commend him for the work that he has done already, and I hope that there may be a prison reform Bill in the near future that will help to create the sort of individuals that we would have liked them to be before they went into prison.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

Again, the hon. Gentleman has done us a good service in highlighting and encouraging debate on such an important issue. When considering the two new clauses, in turn, he is aware that the Prison Service already has a mission statement that is on show in the entrance of practically all prisons and in various other places, too. It is general, but it emphasises rehabilitation. I can almost remember the exact words that are used, but I shall not attempt to quote them off the top of my head.

The proposal is a little more prescriptive in highlighting the issues that need to be considered by the Prison Service. I should be surprised if members of the Committee disagreed with the way in which those sentiments are expressed in new clause 17, but it is an interesting subject for debate. While I suspect that the hon. Gentleman has not necessarily tabled it as material for immediate inclusion in the Bill, there is

a need at some point for a new prison Bill. We need to consider that. It is probably more appropriate for that to be done there rather than here. The criminal justice system includes the Prison Service. We have dealt with sentencing and community sentencing in Committee, but the operation of prisons is taking us a little further down the road than the Bill, in its more general approach, is capable of doing. Prison rules should perhaps be re-examined, and there is plenty of material for the Select Committee to consider in that regard.

My experience of visiting prisons is that something close, if not identical, to the personal plan in new clause 18 is already in place for individual prisoners. I do not know whether I have just been lucky in my visits as my party's prisons spokesman and whether, like the visits to the Potemkin villages, I have always succeeded in visiting good prisons. Some prisons may not have such plans, and the Minister may be able to clarify the point. However, I think that personal plans for prisoners are being almost universally applied. Once their anticipated release date has been identified, there is a build-up towards that. The difficulty in my experience is that personal plans for offenders are continually disrupted, and the principal disruption is because of prison overcrowding.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

The problem is not that prisoners do not have something approximate to what I have called a personal prison plan. The problem is the disruption that the hon. Gentleman is about to describe, as well as the fact that the plans are not properly resourced or taken seriously enough by either the offender or the institution. It is not the fact that we do not have them, but the degree of seriousness in applying the criteria.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. As one visits prisons, one is struck immediately by their immense variability. Governors have considerable power, which can be good, but a prison is ultimately the product of the material conditions and physical environment in which the prisoners are detained, in particular with overcrowding, and the governor's dynamism in running the prison. Those are two key determinants. Money is obviously important, but I think that it is a lesser consideration.

I often visit prisons 12 or 18 months after they have received a devastating report from the chief inspector of prisons. I walk in and get the impression that I am seeing a completely new world. Having found out that a new governor has been appointed nine months previously, I notice that many of the problems identified by the inspector have been addressed through purposeful activity. I speak to the inmates, believe that I am getting an honest answer and come out impressed. Nine months later, I read that that prison has been subject to massive overcrowding problems, and the inspector's next report shows that the situation has deteriorated again. Maintaining improvement is immensely difficult, and that is brought home to me each time I visit a prison.

That said, in fairness to the Government, progress is being made. I have seen positive changes in prison officers' ethos and approach to work, but my experience is that the key problem is that a purposeful regime cannot be delivered in an overcrowded environment, for two reasons. First, the

strain on officers in managing the prison means that classes and opportunities for activity go by the way. Secondly, the planned progression of the offender through the prison system is disrupted, and in particular sudden and arbitrary moves to other locations become so common that the offender never completes a full programme. The Minister will again say that steps are being taken to remedy those problems, but I have heard examples of prisoners on educational programmes finding themselves 250 miles away in a new location 48 hours before they are supposed to take the NVQ tests. That is scandalous. We should not be surprised if prisons do not rehabilitate if we do not have planned progression. That is why I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting that point in new clause 18.

However, if we have got the provisions right we do not need new clause 18, because the Prison Service has the issue very much in mind, although it might provide an interesting benchmark to have plans set out in that form because the Prison Service would have to explain why the programmes have not been fulfilled. That would involve not only the unwillingness of the inmate to perform them but the demoralisation attendant on the programme fizzling out. That is probably a greater issue than we can deal with this afternoon. I think that the hon. Gentleman is right, but it would be interesting to hear from the Minister what the Government are doing about it.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

The hon. Member for Nottingham, North has brought us to matters of central importance. We do not have a prison reform Bill here, although I am less persuaded that we need a new Bill; I think it is more a matter of administration than legislation. I support new clause 17; I believe that we could pass it into law because although it has implications it would simply formalise the set of principles in the Prison Service's current statement of purpose, which has been developed and thought through and is likely to stand the test of time.

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

Would it not be odd to pass into law a statement about the purpose of the Prison Service that did not include the duty to keep prisoners in prison?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

That is a good point. I am sure that we could all sign up to an amendment that included it. Interestingly, however, it is not in the Prison Service's statement of purpose as I understand it.

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

I think it is.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I stand to be corrected if other hon. Members know better than I—the Minister may correct me. If I am wrong about the current statement of purpose, an accurate version should be included. If the hon. Gentleman's evidently important point is included, it should be included here, but my recollection from when I was in the Prison Service buildings and my advice is that that was the current statement of purpose. There is also the fact that the Prison Service is partly responsible for some activities of prisoners who are outside on courses and schemes and so on, so the issue may become complicated. No

doubt the Minister will tell us whether this is an accurate reading of the current statement of purpose.

It is perfectly reasonable to put new clause 18 into law, although I accept, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield put it, that this is in practice what the Prison Service aspires to.

Will the Minister confirm that this is a current requirement of the Prison Service, although it is a non-statutory requirement, so the provision would turn a policy requirement into a statutory requirement?

The proposal for sentences of 12 months and above might be a practical place to start, but the same logic should be applied to all prisoners. The implication of custody plus, as I have understood it, is that the whole sentence is a package and the package implies a sentence plan for the individual prisoner. I presume that it might be possible to have a sentence plan for prisoners whatever their length of sentence. It should be easier in the future because there will be fewer variations in the length of short sentences as the Minister has indicated. Sentence plans are a good idea which could be put into law.

I guess sentence plans would be best drawn up under the new regime as a combination of input from the Prison Service and the probation service, because they will be partners in delivering the two parts of the sentence. Like the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, I pay tribute to Martin Narey for his conduct while director general of the Prison Service. I have not seen him since the announcement, but I understand that he has been promoted to become one of the permanent secretaries in the Home Office with a more general responsibility for those matters. I have heard, but not seen, that his deputy has been appointed to take his place but has not yet taken up office.

The Prison Service has made a lot of progress, much good work has been done, and there are many good members of the senior management team and many good prison governors. However, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield pointed out, its failing, shown in the prison statistics, is that overcrowding has caused the most significant deterioration in the services provided for prisoners.

The Prison Service has targets and performance indicators, of which I understand that there are 15. Six of those were not met during the year that was reported on yesterday; one was to do with the level of assaults in prison, but more significant is the failure to meet the target for the time that prisoners spend in purposeful activity. The hon. Member for Nottingham, North was right to remind us that it is purposeful activity and people's response to being given something constructive to do that allows prison officers to judge whether prisoners deserve to be released early, and to make a contribution to the community, but we cannot have purposeful activity if it is not available because of overcrowding, and if it does not happen, it will be to everyone's disbenefit.

I hope that the Minister will pass on my congratulations to Mr. Narey. More important, I hope that he will remember that we all share the same objectives, but it frustratingly looks as if they are getting further away under this Government's

stewardship. If we hold down the prison population and reduce overcrowding, a commensurate increase in purposeful activity will surely follow. Those matters need to be urgently dealt with, and only then will individual prisoner plans be able to deliver the sort of rehabilitation that we all want.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

This has been a short but excellent debate. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North for initiating it. I echo the kind words spoken about Martin Narey by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey. During his time as director general, Martin has made decency the watchword of his stewardship of the service. He is widely admired for that, and he will take that skill and experience to his new post as commissioner of correctional services.

In answer to the hon. Member for Witney, the statement of purpose of the Prison Service is clear. It says:

''Her Majesty's Prison Service serves the public by keeping in custody those committed by the courts. Our duty is to look after them with humanity and help them lead law-abiding and useful lives in custody and after release.''

Those words are to be found at the front of every prison. It is further supplemented—this is why the new clause is not required, although I concur wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend's aim—by the Prison Service objective of

''Providing constructive regimes which address offending behaviour, improve educational and work skills and promote law abiding behaviour in custody and after release.''

That builds on the statement of purpose.

Reform and rehabilitation have a place in the Bill, which we considered when debating the purposes of sentencing in clause 126. The clause, the statement of purpose and the Prison Service objective cover the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North. That is reflected in the work that the Prison Service is doing to reduce reoffending and to rehabilitate. It is reflected in the increased investment in education and drug treatment, resettlement and offending behaviour programmes in prison. It is reflected in the Prison Service's current target of 45,000 key work skills achievements by prisoners. Other targets relate to basic skills at levels 2, 1 and entry level.

In an excellent speech, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield put his finger on the big issue for the Prison Service, which is maintaining improvement. That is something on which I reflect, because the truth is, as he said, that when things are not going terribly well, the Prison Service is effective at making improvements. That may involve a new governor or a new approach, but it is maintaining the improvement that is the real challenge. That simply reflects how difficult it is to run a prison. The hon. Gentleman was right that the impact of population pressures, overcrowding and the sudden movement of prisoners does not assist efforts to achieve the objectives that we all share.

I have sympathy with my hon. Friend's second point about sentence plans, and I am happy to confirm that all prisoners with a sentence of 12 months or more currently have a sentence plan. An expression of the closer working of the prison and probation services involves the new assessment tool, OASys, which we discussed previously. That is being rolled out over 18 months throughout the Prison Service, starting in April. Following implementation, every prisoner serving a custodial sentence of 12 months or more will have an OASys assessment completed for them, which will inform the sentence plan.

There is a difficulty with my hon. Friend's new clause, however. Let us say that early release—depending on the length of sentence, that assessment may fall to the Parole Board to undertake—were made dependent on completion of the objectives. There may be reasons why the prisoner was not able to achieve the objectives set out in the sentence plan. That may not be the offender's failure. They may have had to move somewhere or they may not have been able to undertake the course that they hoped to in the establishment where they found themselves. For that reason, it would not be sensible to create the link that my hon. Friend seeks.

However, the Prison Service shares the general objective of promoting rehabilitation in prisons. The amount of time, attention, effort, professionalism and dedication that goes into rehabilitation in prisons today is unrecognisable compared with what happened a generation ago.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

It is ironic that stability and staying in one place is as much a problem in educating prisoners as it is in maintaining an effective local police force. Movement of people is the bane of both areas. None the less, my hon. Friend the Minister has, as always, made an eloquent and persuasive argument and talked me into begging to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New clause 22 - Adjustment of fines in line with inflation

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

If the hon. Gentleman is talking about individual fines, I think that what he proposes is unnecessary, because within the scope of the fining scales, the court can exercise its discretion to reflect inflation anyway. He may be referring to changing the scales of fines annually, rather than by statutory instrument. They are changed fairly regularly, but there may be intervals of some years, so the hon. Gentleman may have a point. Perhaps we should review the scales more frequently. However, with low inflation rates, such as those that this country has had recently, that is probably not very significant.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

This is about the fourth relevant point that has come up in relation to fines. The

Minister has already talked about such issues, and we all know that the difficulty is not just the tariff and adjusting the tariffs, but getting maximum fines right and ensuring that they are relevant for the corporate sector, so that they affect it and are noticeable. We must also ensure that fines are relevant to the private individual and are paid. We have talked about the reversal of or changes in trends. Above all, we must ensure that we reverse the reduction in the use of fines from, I think, 35 per cent. a decade ago to 24 per cent. now, and pick up the point that the Home Affairs Committee made strongly, and to which we have referred, about the more than 40 per cent. of uncollected fines. There is a package of responses to the under-use of fines, and the provisions might be a way of dealing with one bit of that package. However, it would be helpful if Ministers reflected on how to pick up on the issue and on the Home Affairs Committee recommendations, and on how to make fines more credible, useful and effective.

Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central)

The principal arguments in response to the proposals were made eloquently by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. There would be practical difficulties in an annual review for a number of reasons. One thinks not least of the signs that one sees that warn of penalties for parking or dog-fouling. The proposals might be good for the signwriters, but it would not necessarily be a sensible use of local authority resources to have to change those annually.

Magistrates are currently not fining to the maximum, so that is not the issue. The average fine is £134. In part that is a consequence of the up-tariffing that we have been discussing. Fines are being used less, community sentences and custody are being used more, and there is the rate of inflation, to which the hon. Member for Beaconsfield drew attention. However, the real issue in relation to fines, which we have discussed three or four times, is about greater effectiveness in collecting those that are handed down.

Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)

When the same crushing arguments are put from both Front Benches, I realise that I have probably stumbled on something important. However, provided that the hon. Member for Witney has another look at the amendment that was on the Floor of the House last night, I am happy not to prolong this any further, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New clause 24 - Powers of confiscation

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I was not sure whether we would reach this new clause today. I thought that I would be able to spend all weekend writing a long, detailed oration in support of the new clause, and give a speech that would put even the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey to shame, but I have not had the time to do that. However, the new clause is of such stunning simplicity and clarity that it does not need a long speech. I am sure that the Minister will jump to his feet and say that it is of such stunning simplicity and clarity that it should be immediately written into the law, and that we can all agree to it and go home.

We are dealing with the problem of antisocial behaviour. Every hon. Member is familiar with it in our towns and cities. It is often caused by drink, is sometimes caused by drugs, often involves young people and sometimes involves public drinking. If I had to boil the problem down to a soundbite, it would be, ''The bad behaviour of the few spoiling the quality of life of the many,'' which is almost new Labour-ish in its simplicity.

In my view, the police would like the powers detailed in the new clause in one place. The thinking behind the new clause came from a conversation that I had with a senior police officer in Oxford in the context of the reclassification of cannabis from class B to class C. He said that he did not have a problem with that, but that he wanted clear and specific powers to deal with low-level public order and decency offences related to drink and drugs. I have set those powers out clearly.

Police officers are not lawyers. They have to uphold the law, and it helps them if it is simple and clear. The new clause gives police constables powers to confiscate substances to maintain public order and decency. It refers to cannabis in a public place, the power to confiscate cigarettes from those under 16, and the powers to confiscate alcohol from anyone under 18 and from anyone in a public place causing a public nuisance. The provisions are in plain English and are wholly worthwhile.

I appreciate that we have antisocial behaviour orders, which I support, and greater involvement of local authorities. Tomorrow, as everyone who reads the Witney and West Oxfordshire Gazette knows, I shall attend the launch of the new acceptable behaviour contracts with the chief constable for Thames Valley, which is very worthwhile. I am sure that the Minister will agree that there will be a real impact on antisocial behaviour only if we have both community policing on our streets and absolute clarity about what the police can do to keep public order and deal with antisocial behaviour.

I mentioned what I call the Ronseal test the first time that I spoke in Committee. It is important that legislation does what it says on the tin. The new clause

represents the Ronseal test writ large. I know that many of the powers are set out elsewhere, and indeed the Licensing Bill, which is being discussed in another place, will pass into law the specific power on alcohol. I also know that my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) promoted a private Member's Bill to address several of issues. However, this is the first time that the powers have been set out clearly in one place.

Paul Stinchcombe (Labour, Wellingborough)

I seek two points of clarification from the hon. Gentleman. Did he intend for the new clause to be drafted to apply to every single prescribed drug? It also seems to legitimise taking away the cigarettes of 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20-year-olds who lawfully smoke in public. That is rather illiberal.

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

On the second point, the new clause absolutely does not do that. Subsection (2)(b) gives

''the power to confiscate cigarettes from anyone who is, or appears to be, under the age of 16 who is either smoking or openly carrying them''.

It is as simple as that.

Paul Stinchcombe (Labour, Wellingborough)

What if young-looking 20-year-olds are smoking cigarettes? A person might think that they are under 16 and could take their cigarettes off them.

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

I am relying on the common sense of the police constable, although sadly we do not have sufficient of them. It would be clear that the police would know from one piece of law their power to confiscate alcohol and cannabis. Police constables currently say that those powers are not clearly set out in law. I believe that the hon. Gentleman has a background in the law, and it would be easy for him to help me to redraft the new clause to make it even clearer and more straightforward. However, I am sure that hon. Members would not disagree with the purpose of the new clause—clarity. The Minister has said that measures in the Bill are designed to codify the criminal justice system, and it would be worth while to simplify it at the same time.

Paul Stinchcombe (Labour, Wellingborough)

What about prescribed drugs, which all seem to be controlled drugs?

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

It may be that subsection (2) should be subsidiary to subsection (1). Subsection (1) was an attempt to set out clearly the areas in which the powers would apply, and subsection (2) sets out specific instances. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the point about cannabis in subsection (2)(a). That reflects the specific point made by the police in Oxford when they told me, ''Fine, reclassify cannabis, but make sure that we have the power to confiscate it if people smoke it openly while it is still an illegal drug.'' I am supposed to be a liberal on such matters. I supported the reclassification of cannabis, having listened carefully to the arguments that the Select Committee heard. However, it is important to listen to the worries of the police and people who see antisocial behaviour and minor public disorder despoiling our towns and cities. The new clause would address that.

James Clappison (Conservative, Hertsmere)

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, and we should listen to those who tell

us about problems of antisocial behaviour and do all that we can to help them, as humble Back Benchers and members of the Committee.

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's support. That is exactly what I am trying to do. ASBOs, acceptable behaviour orders, crime and disorder partnerships and new ways in which police and local authorities work together will all help, but at the end of the day, we need police officers on the streets who have a clear knowledge of their powers to deal with minor misdemeanours.

Paul Stinchcombe (Labour, Wellingborough)

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify exactly how young-looking 20-year-olds smoking cigarettes in public could offend against public order and decency?

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

As I said, subsection (1) sets out the overall aim of the new clause and the specific powers are in subsection (2). The hon. Gentleman is over-enthusiastic about the minutiae of the new clause, given the time of day. Of course the Minister will sharpen up some of the drafting, but the idea is simple: the police constable should have in one place in the law a clear explanation of what he or she can do about underage drinking, underage smoking and the taking of reclassified drugs, to help keep public order. Is that really so complicated?

Ian Lucas (Labour, Wrexham)

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that unfortunately his new clause has just failed the Ronseal test?

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

Any Back Bencher who has ever tabled an amendment or a new clause in a Committee knows that every tin of Ronseal is open to a little improvement. We should at least go with the spirit of it, which is to try to draft something clear and easy that police constables, who are not lawyers, will be able to understand and use.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

I do not want to destroy the hon. Gentleman's flow, but does he anticipate the police officer having the power not only to confiscate but to destroy or dispose of the said drink or drugs? I have visions of policemen going around the streets with half-empty cans of Special Brew.

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

Guidance to the police would deal with that. What matters here is the power to do the right thing in the town or city centre where there is antisocial behaviour or minor public disorder. Such behaviour affects towns and cities in all our constituencies. I am sure of that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere supports me. I commend the new clause to the Minister and to the Committee, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

My hon. Friend should not let nit-picking deter him.

Stephen Hesford rose—

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

Hang on; I have hardly said anything yet. This illustrates yet again that a strange madness starts to pervade the Committee the moment that the word ''cannabis'' is mentioned. It manifests itself by hon. Members frequently jumping up and down.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witney makes a good point. There is a problem of low-level disorder, which is often manifested by underage drinking, underage smoking and people openly carrying cannabis around in the streets. Any open flouting of the law in that way is a symptom of disorder. I remember a chief constable telling me that he had been to the United States to study how crime reduction techniques had been applied in New York. He said that what had brought home most forcefully to him the extent of the change in New York was going into an extremely deprived area that at one time had had an appalling reputation for major crime. He saw a policeman cycling down a street and stopping two 13-year-old girls who were walking together around the back of the building, saying, ''Now, girls, you're not going behind the sheds to smoke, are you?'' which was exactly what they were going to do.

I suspect that the power to confiscate cannabis already exists, and that the Minister will make that point. However, it is true that there has been no codification to bring matters together. The criticism made about confiscating cigarettes from someone who appears to be under 16 is valid, as it would be an infringement of their civil rights. However, the ability to confiscate alcohol, tobacco or cannabis from children in the street is a good one, as is the ability to confiscate alcohol from people who are causing a public nuisance.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witney has made a good contribution, and I hope that the Minister will respond in the appropriate spirit. Many contributions have been made by tabling amendments and new clauses. If we had to spend our time in this Committee worrying whether our efforts would pass the immediate scrutiny of the parliamentary draftsman, we would do no work at all. That would be regrettable, so I await the Minister's response to my hon. Friend's ideas with interest.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I shall not be long.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

I do not believe that.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I will show the hon. Gentleman that it is possible to believe.

Let me say to the hon. Member for Witney that I understand where he is coming from, but I side with colleagues on the Labour Back Benches. [Hon. Members: ''Not often.''] I judge things on their merits. I can see that the idea was well conceived, but the hon. Gentleman has not worked out whether what he wanted was deliverable through the new clause, which he said that he was thinking of doing.

I will list the reasons why the new clause would not work. First, the new clause states that there should be specific powers, but it does not set them out in full or give examples, so we do not know what the other powers are at all.

Secondly, the clause seeks to confiscate certain substances, some of which it is illegal to have, namely alcohol, cannabis and other controlled drugs in certain circumstances. However, cigarettes would certainly not fall within the proposed new clause. The thought

that the police would be after kids who were smoking when it may have been illegal for them or others to have purchased cigarettes but not illegal, as far as I am aware, for them to be smoking, also strikes me as going too far.

Thirdly, the clause would provide for a new test that the police should be able to maintain not only public order, which of course they must, but public decency as generally defined. The police have a duty in relation to public decency, but that relates to matters such as those that we discussed the other day, such as whether walking round in the nude is decent. I do not think that they have ever applied decency in this context or that they would wish to do so.

Fourthly, it seems that there are already significant legislative powers to deal with those matters, both in law and byelaw. To my certain knowledge, we have legislated on that issue three times in recent years. I would be very surprised if it were necessary to do that again, although we understand the concerns.

Fifthly, the subjects and object subject to confiscation are not circumscribed, so they could include all sorts of things and more could presumably be added to the list. The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned what that list contains. My view is that it is right to consider how to deal with low-level and antisocial behaviour. Antisocial behaviour orders and acceptable behaviour contacts work in certain ways, and acceptable behaviour contracts work well.

David Cameron (Conservative, Witney)

What does the hon. Gentleman think that a police constable should do if he or she comes across someone who is obviously 11 or 12 years old, smoking on the steps of the war memorial in Witney?

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.