Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister (Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)

The amendments are puzzling. Amendment No. 36 introduces the phrase

“in a case of dishonesty”

into subsection (3)(b), thereby raising the threshold for a judge using prison as an option. Otherwise they will simply impose a fine. We have a problem with our prison population and there may be a feeling that the thresholds that apply to imprisonment when violence against people or property is involved or when it is unsafe for someone to be allowed outside should be enforced, but that other crimes perhaps should not allow that option.

It is interesting that the Conservative party should suggest raising the threshold for which prison is an option when there might be a serious threat to life and health from one of these decommissioning programmes not being properly carried out or when there might be a threat to Government finances from a body corporate as well as an individual acting in a deeply negligent way. It seems better, and I shall be interested to hear any further comments from the hon. Gentleman, to leave cases like this to a judge’s discretion rather than trying to prescribe it too closely in the Bill, lest we be thought to be soft on nuclear crime.

Amendment No. 35, by contrast, seems to go in the other direction and seeks to increase the prison population by sending anyone who is convicted to prison for five years not two years. Perhaps this is proposed for fear  that the Government might not be able to fill all the new prison places that his hon. Friends want to build. I do not know. Again, that seems not to have an obvious justification.

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