Garnier accuses Government of making panic decision
Published 06 May 2008 - 17:27
By David Hughes and Ben Padley, PA Political Staff
The Government today vowed to press ahead with plans to strip magistrates of the power to impose suspended sentences for minor offences.
Justice Minister David Hanson said removing the option would save 400 places in jails at a time of record prison populations.
Mr Hanson was seeking to overturn an earlier Government defeat in the House of Lords, where peers voted to allow magistrates to retain the option of imposing suspended sentences for summary offences.
As the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill returned to the Commons, Mr Hanson said he believed magistrates were using the suspended sentence orders (SSOs) as an alternative to community-based penalties rather than custodial terms.
He told MPs in 2005 there were 4,007 SSOs imposed for summary offences but by 2006 there were 12,397.
Arguing for a repeal of the power, created by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, Mr Hanson said: "I consider that introducing a freely available suspended sentence, which was intended to be a useful tool for the courts as an alternative to custody, has had the effect of blurring the level of the custodial threshold."
He added: "Perhaps with hindsight I and my colleagues in Government could have foreseen that, maybe should have foreseen that and maybe should have considered that at the time of the previous legislation."
But in a concession he said the Government would allow for the power to be given back to JPs by an order of Parliament if the system was not working.
Mr Hanson conceded that The Magistrates Association had said JPs may well "up tariff rather than down tariff" if the Government goes ahead with the plan.
The wide-ranging Bill also contains measures on police and prison staff pay - which saw Government defeats in the Lords - and the abolition of blasphemy laws.
Shadow Justice Minister Edward Garnier, himself a part-time judge, said the Government had made a "panic decision" and should have more confidence in the ability of magistrates to use their discretion.
The Government was trying "to look tough" without actually improving the situation. Even if the measure was passed into law, the prison population would not decrease. "Those 400 prison places will soon be filled by somebody else."
He went on: "The Government has been hoisted on its own petard, they wish to look tough in the eyes of the public that they are capable of dealing in a hard way with those that commit crimes but they are not.
"All they have done is fill the prisons up and the offending rates and the reoffending rates continue in the high 70% and 80% - whether they are custodial sentences or whether they are community sentences.
"There is no point in dismantling one part of the system if at the same time they are not replacing it with something better in the community sentence system."
He added: "The Government needs to be more confident in the ability of magistrates to use their discretion properly to deliver the appropriate sentence in relation to the facts of the case..."
"Simply disposing of the power of magistrates to award suspended sentences in summary only cases is not the answer.
"It is the result of a panic decision and having made a bad decision the Government doesn't have the self confidence to recognise it has made a mistake and to stop it."
Liberal Democrat spokesman David Howarth said there was a problem with the way in which the courts were thinking about suspended sentences.
"To have a coherent approach to the whole problem, which has arisen I think because of the success of the new suspended sentence order, the only way to deal with it is through training and through guidance," he argued.
The Government overturned the Lords defeat by 282 votes to 216, majority 66.
