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4.40 pm

Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton): I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Crime and Punishment (Scotland) Bill which, without proper review or study, seeks to reverse the key reforms introduced in the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993 passed in this Parliament; proposes to introduce, without any Scottish piloting or examination, electronic tagging for offenders and lays the way open for electronic tagging of offenders under the age of 16, thereby threatening the operation of Scotland's unique Children's Hearings system; provides hopelessly optimistic and unrealistic estimated costs and manpower implications; and miserably fails to address the real problems of crime in Scotland which have so greatly increased in the last seventeen years."

This is a strange day for the Secretary of State for Scotland to allege that the Opposition are out of touch with public opinion, because the Conservatives have gone back down the ladder to 11 per cent. in today's Scottish public opinion polls. I am reminded of the caution that politicians should always bear it in mind that opinion polls are only a snapshot of opinion. However, if this snapshot was a postcard, it might come from Westminster city council saying, "Wish you were here." It marks the beginning of the end.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson): Nobody will understand.

Mr. Robertson: That is an interesting intervention. Perhaps that is correct, because the Secretary of State has been quite clever at covering his tracks. He was one of Lady Porter's solemn lieutenants as a member of Westminster city council. I am glad that the hon.

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Gentleman reminded me to remind the House and the wider public that, in a good year, the Secretary of State might just manage to get back on to that council.

After 17 years of getting crime and punishment all wrong, the Government say that the Bill purports to stem the tide of criminality that affects so much of Scottish life. It does nothing of the sort. It is not designed to protect the public but to protect the wafer-thin majorities of Tory Ministers. It is not about solutions or about why crime is still so bad but about slogans for the election. The Bill does not contain policies to get to the root of criminality and lawlessness. It is about headlines and soundbites to wrong-foot the Opposition parties.

The Government have had 17 years to tackle crime and if they have not got it right by now they will never get it right. I should like to read a quote to the House.

"When parents dare not let their children go out to play; when senior citizens who have given a lifetime of service to the community are forced to spend their sunset years . . . as prisoners in their own homes; then we have reached a point where action must be taken."

Those are not scaremongering words by Opposition Members and they did not come from the Liberal Democrats or from the liberal do-good lobby. They are the words of the Secretary of State for Scotland last year when he came back to Scotland and described it after 16 years of Conservative government. I do not disagree with the Secretary of State's description.

Mr. Bill Walker (North Tayside): If the hon. Gentleman's assessment that the Bill is designed to improve Conservative prospects in Scotland is right, what is it about the Bill that appeals to the people? If it appeals to people and gives us votes, it must be right. If, as he claims from opinion polls, it does not appeal to people why is he opposing it?

Mr. Robertson: The idea that the Conservative party in Scotland has ever done anything that successfully managed to get on the side of public opinion is a myth that only the hon. Gentleman can live with. The Secretary of State said that the poll tax would have people dancing in the streets, but it had Mrs. Thatcher dancing out of Downing street, and it was the rage of Scottish people that made the Government as unpopular as they are today. The hon. Gentleman would be well-advised not to make any more such interventions.

Which Government, supported by the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) in part, have been in power for 17 years and have brought Scotland to the position that was described by the Secretary of State in the magazine "Flourish"? It is the hon. Gentleman's Government, and they have supervised Scotland's criminal justice system and allowed that picture of domineering lawlessness to happen and endure and to cause so much misery to mothers and old people. Which Government have fractured our society, divided our local communities and destroyed the jobs and hopes of young people and have seen the right to peaceful streets and homes for the elderly denied? It is the hon. Gentleman's Government.

The Government have brought in one criminal justice Bill after another, one failed experiment to follow the last one, and every one of them was supposedly the definitive answer to the problems of law and order. But the Government now confess, without any contrition or

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apology or morsel of regret, that they have failed the Scottish people on crime. That is what the Secretary of State's article said, and his words in "Flourish" are a confession of failure.

The Secretary of State and the Government are looking into an electoral abyss and plaintively tell us that the Bill is the magic solution and that the serial bunglers of the past 17 years who have 1,000 offences to be taken into consideration have, at the last second of their government, got it right and that they should be trusted.

Mr. Michael Forsyth: If the measures that were introduced last night were right for England--the Labour party did not vote against them--why does the hon. Gentleman intend to vote against measures that seek to address those problems?

Mr. Robertson: It has taken the Minister a long time to get round to mastering procedure. Ours is a reasoned amendment and I intend to deal with the points in it. We will not oppose the Second Reading. A reasoned amendment is the traditional way to make points about the bad features of a Bill and I shall also be clear about the bits of the Bill that we accept.

Mr. Forsyth rose--

Mr. Robertson: The right hon. Gentleman is bouncing up. He spoke for nearly an hour and 10 minutes, admittedly with interventions, but it was still one of the longest Front-Bench speeches for a long time.

There are clear differences between the Bill that was presented yesterday and the one that we are debating. Those differences are in the reasoned amendment and that is why we shall press that amendment to a vote.

Mr. Forsyth: I am rather puzzled. The hon. Gentleman has said that he will not vote against Second Reading, but the amendment reads:

"That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Crime and Punishment (Scotland) Bill".

May we take it that the hon. Gentleman will not vote for his own amendment?

Mr. Robertson: I know that it has been a bad day for the Secretary of State, but he and every hon. Member knows the purpose of a reasoned amendment. Other parties may take a different view from us and that is quite realistic. In last night's vote fewer than half of Conservative Members voted for Second Reading of the Home Secretary's Crime (Sentences) Bill. [Interruption.] The good boys were there. In addition, 16 fewer than the number who voted against the reasoned amendment voted for Second Reading, and the President of the Board of Trade did not vote on either occasion. What a surprise.

Mr. Forsyth: People outside should be aware of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. He seems to be arguing that, if the House votes for his amendment, which declines to give the Bill a Second Reading, that will be all right. If his amendment were passed, the Bill would fall. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman has moved an amendment whose purpose is to prevent the Bill from going ahead. Not only has he moved the amendment, but he is

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wriggling in trying to pretend to the people of Scotland that he is not doing what he is doing, which is trying to defeat the Bill.

Mr. George Robertson: I notice that the right hon. Gentleman had to send a junior Minister to the Table to get an explanation for this. The point is that, if the reasoned amendment is carried and the Government care to deal with the issues in the amendment, they can redraft the Bill and bring it back, and we would support it. It is sad that the right hon. Gentleman will not have more time in the House of Commons to learn more about procedure. When it was in opposition, his party used the method of a reasoned amendment to get its case over, and I dare say that it will do so again when it goes back into opposition next year.

The Government are trying to say that, at the last minute before the election, they have got the policy right and that they should be trusted. I say, "No chance." The Bill seeks to reverse the major reforms put through this Parliament only four years ago by the previous Secretary of State for Scotland. However the present Secretary of State wriggled around on that, the background notes to the Bill make it clear without any doubt that the Government are abolishing the provisions of the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993.

Hardly had that "complete answer" found its place on the statute book, and long before it could even have been tested or reviewed, or its efficacy assessed--indeed, before a single case had come up for sentencing under the new sentencing guidelines--the Act is to be swept away as if it had been the work of the do-gooding liberals that the Secretary of State so despises, and replaced by yet another magic solution. It simply will not wash.

If the Secretary of State believes that our present sentencing system is a dishonest charade, what does that say about his predecessor, now the President of the Board of Trade? The Bill will sweep away the provisions for parole and early release. Those provisions were not the grand design of the judges. They were not the design of the Law Society, of the Labour party, of Liberal Democrats or of the Scottish Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, but the brainchild of the right hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Lang). [Interruption.]

The provisions were the considered view of Lord Kincraig and his Committee, which sat and considered them in detail. They were then adopted with enthusiasm by the right hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, now the President of the Board of Trade. Perhaps, if he was not in office but had been sacked, like all the other Tory grandees who in the House last night told the Home Secretary how defective his Bill was, he would be saying tonight that the Secretary of State for Scotland has got it wrong as well.

Perhaps we should call this Bill, "The Repeal of Ian Lang Bill". That might have been its proper title. It is noticeable, however, that this Bill's parent--the President of the Board of Trade--is not here. He was here at the birth.

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