Lord Sandhurst (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, and many of them have supported the sentiment underlying this amendment. It has clearly shown our shared recognition that, if suspended sentences are to become more prevalent, as the Government intend, they must be made fit for that purpose. We on these Benches continue to oppose the presumption that custodial terms of 12 months or under should routinely be suspended. The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, helpfully has supported the thrust of this amendment, while also highlighting the issues with resources facing the Probation Service. Our duty today is also a practical one. The Government are introducing a major shift in sentencing practice. If they are to do so, they must build into the legislation the safeguards necessary to preserve public confidence and deliver genuine rehabilitation. My noble friend Lady Porter of Fulwood, in a powerful speech, has explained the difficulties in delivering support for offenders in the community and has explained why support is necessary for offenders. So too, my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, after his excursion to Chile, made an important point: if we propose to go down this line, we must give practical help to recidivists, or they will simply come back and reoffend. That leads me to say this: if we do not deal with this, and if offenders who have been given a suspended sentence—even if it is only suspended for 12 months—reoffend within that period, they will have to be brought back to court. This is an important point. It is not simply that they may end up in prison, but having been brought back to court, they will occupy court time. That will not help the backlog in the courts. I speak with the experience of someone who, until some 10 or 12 years ago, sat as a recorder for 20-odd years in the courts, so I have some practical experience of this. People breach suspended sentences. That is why judges in the past have often been cautious about imposing suspended sentences, particularly on people who offend time and time again. If there are too many of them, this will be impractical. What will happen is that, in about two years’ time, we will have the courts overwhelmed with people coming back for resentencing and then having to be put into prison because, otherwise, as the courts will say, it will show that a suspended sentence is not a suspended sentence in any meaningful sense. I put that before the Government in a spirit of constructive criticism, not to try to make difficulties. That is what lies down the road if we are not very careful indeed. If suspended sentences are to be used more widely, they cannot be hollow or simply be deferrals of punishment; they must require offenders to confront the issues that led them to offend in the first place, and they must offer the public some hope that these offenders will cease offending. I hope the Minister and those behind him, so to speak, will carefully consider this proposal, but for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.