Coroners and Justice Bill
6:15 pm
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, Justice; Harborough, Conservative)
I can see that. Are you therefore suggesting that there could be circumstances in which in year X, because of resource constraints, for example, defendants who might have been sent to prison the year before would not be, not because the justice of the case does not require it, but because there is simply no room in the prison estate? The following year, by which time another few hundred places might have been provided to the Prison Service or there was better provision of community punishment systems, a defendant who committed the same offence on broadly the same factual basis could go to prison, because the estate was in a better position to receive that prisoner. Are we not in danger of creating a form of inconsistency in sentencing?