Clause 9
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
3:45 pm
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Justice & Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
We have had a debate that was in part constructive and sensible and in part deeply depressing for its unoriginality and preoccupation. I had hoped that we might have had a sensible debate about the purposes of sentencing and a proper consideration of the attitudes that the Government have clearly expressed many times on how to deal with the child. The hon. Members for Leyton and Wanstead and for Northampton, North certainly touched on that.
The hon. Member for Northampton, North did not agree with the terms of my amendment, and I accept that. She said, quite rightly, that the matters that I wanted to ensure were taken into account before the point of going to court and that there is a much greater duty on the agencies that deal with the child before they come into the criminal justice system and on the penal system after sentence than we sometimes understand or recognise. I do not disagree with her at all. I simply say that the court is a convenient point at which stock take can be taken of all the things that should have been done by those agencies. Using the sentencing procedure and bringing it into the same context as the process that occurs in the family courts is an opportunity to see whether the right support is being given to that individual for the purposes of preventing reoffending and protecting the public. That is what the penal system is all about.
After what was quite a sensible debate on that, we had this absurdity of deciding whether the purpose of punishment had to be punishment. What a nonsense of a debate. Labour Members were saying that they wanted the first principle of punishment to be punishment. It was as if the purpose of the Bill was to make a Bill. If that was the way that the short title started I would be right to say that those words should be deleted. The purpose of sentencing is punishment because sentencing is punishment. As we say in amendment No. 135, sentencing is to ensure a proportionate response to offending behaviour. A sentence is not exerted unless it is punishment, but that punishment must have purpose. The present Prime Minister used to say when he was Chancellor, “prudence with a purpose.” Everything must have a purpose. What we are trying to establish is the purpose of punishment and sentencing. That is why I so deplore the way in which we have descended into such a futile debate, simply because some thought that they might be able to secure some petty political advantage. I have not got the slightest intention of prolonging this debate any further. I find it very sad that we cannot have a serious debate about the purposes of sentencing in this Committee without people making utterly futile points. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.