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Lord Carr of Hadley: My Lords, I have no objection to the Motion moved by my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal. I shall not vote against it. It seems inevitable in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. But this is perhaps the only opportunity to express my grave concern about the use that is being made of the powers granted by this Motion in respect of the Crime (Sentences) Bill.

When he introduced his Business Statement yesterday my noble friend the Chief Whip ended the exchange of views with the hope that your Lordships would deal with the issue as sympathetically as possible so that the reputation of the House might be maintained. The reputation of our House depends above all on giving a digested consideration to a very major Bill.

It is well known that I am not in favour of some of the provisions in the Bill, but that is not the point that I seek to press at the moment. This is a major Bill with substantial effects on the judicial system, and the basis of justice in this country should not be changed in this or in any other substantial way until Parliament, including this House, has properly digested it. It has not been properly digested.

It is not just a question of mandatory sentences and their extension, which at Committee stage was a major issue and which remains a major issue. There are also issues relating to the Parole Board. Following Committee stage, the Government have tabled amendments which I believe will make improvements in that regard. But that very important aspect of the Bill requires further consideration and digestion. For

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example, there is the question of the way in which prisoners on release do or do not comply with their conditions of parole and how they should be brought back and dealt with if they break them or threaten to do so. That needs much greater consideration. I do not believe that it is consistent with the reputation of this House to allow this Bill to go forward in its present form. It is much more than the much-contested amendments about mandatory sentences.

I believe that, of the options open to us, the only proper course is for this Bill to be dropped. While I shall support the Motion--this is necessary in order to complete our business before the general election--I urge the Government to think hard about the way that they propose to deal with this Bill. The matter cannot be dealt with on the basis of some unspoken compromise between the Front Benches and another place.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will permit me to express, quite briefly, the dismay that I feel at the course which it is proposed to adopt in relation to the Crime (Sentences) Bill. This Bill is not put forward as a short-term measure--a quick, overnight panacea, an instant fix. It is put forward as a measure intended to have profound and long-term effects on the lives of our fellow citizens and on the penal arrangements made for those in custody. It is a measure which, if implemented, will affect the lives of our fellow citizens for very many years to come. Surely this is a measure which, in the debt that we owe to them, if not to ourselves, requires us to give its provisions mature deliberation.

The need for such deliberation is greater because the Bill's provisions do not represent the considered conclusions of a Royal Commission or a wide-ranging committee of inquiry. They are not founded upon any independent research. They are not supported by most of those with responsibility for operating the system, and they have been widely condemned by most academic commentators. It is difficult to imagine measures more obviously calling for searching and thoughtful scrutiny in this House. I have a deep fear that if we legislate in haste, we shall repent at leisure.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, would not the reputation of your Lordships' House be vastly enhanced if the Crime (Sentences) Bill were excluded from this Motion, which is otherwise wholly acceptable? One of the purposes of this Motion is to restore mandatory sentencing and to defeat your Lordships' amendments.

It is well understood that the Bill will now pass, as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, has said, with Labour support. I am told--I may have got it wrong, but my information differs from that of the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers--that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will divide another place on these amendments, and that unless another place rejects the amendments, he will withdraw the Bill. That in effect all but ensures that it is virtually certain that another place will reject your Lordships' amendments. I, too, am a realist.

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As to the merits of the Motion as affecting the Crime (Sentences) Bill, if Standing Orders have to be suspended to save the Bill, well and good, so be it, but--there is a but--surely the Government should accept the Bill in the form in which it passes your Lordships' House and should not divide against Lords amendments on mandatory sentencing in another place.

The Bill, if it is withdrawn, will be returned to us before the Dissolution in a day or two--probably in the dinner hour, I expect--rejecting the Lords amendments. We have the right to insist, of course, but to do so would in fact kill the Bill owing to shortage of time. It is a decision which could be described as neither reasonable nor wise in those circumstances. But to reject the Motion, if it includes the Crime (Sentences) Bill, and to decline to barter entitlement for this potage could be--your Lordships may well think--an honourable solution, even if it were to kill the Bill, to return another day, under either this or another government.

For those reasons, speaking personally, I shall be unable to support the Motion unless the Crime (Sentences) Bill were to be excluded. The merit of the Motion, as it stands, could only be to avoid disparity on either side of the Border on mandatory sentencing with the Crime and Punishment (Scotland) Bill, which I gather is due to receive similar treatment under a Motion tomorrow.

3.45 p.m.

Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, has just said. I shall speak as "a usual channel" that did not go along with the Statement made last night by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Indeed, at the meeting we had last evening I made it clear that my noble friends would not be able to agree to the Motion which we are now debating. The reason we took that view was the one expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle of Bucklow, and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice. There is no urgency about this Bill at all. That is the one issue which I believe is common ground with anyone who knows anything about that measure.

I waited with some interest to find out how the noble Viscount the Leader of the House was going to justify the Motion, but in fact, with great respect, he made no effort to do so. He just moved the Motion formally. I very much hope that he will now address the issues which have been raised, as I am sure that he will, by a number of his noble friends and others in this House. As my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank said a few moments ago, there is no absolutely no requirement to have Prorogation of this Parliament on Friday of this week--none whatsoever. It meets the convenience of Ministers. It has no purpose other than that. That is the reality, as all of us know perfectly well. If Prorogation took place next week there would have been a serious prospect of some of the issues being debated properly, both on this Bill and its Scottish equivalent.

We of course recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Carr, did a few moments ago, that Motions of this kind are perfectly understandable at the end of a Parliament, but

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I must say, having been in this House for a substantial number of years, that I can remember no such Motion being moved in respect of a Bill which is as controversial as this is. There is in my view no precedent whatever. The only precedent I can recall--it is not much of a precedent but, nevertheless, let me mention it--was the Criminal Justice Bill 1987. That had not been carried through this House at the time the general election was announced.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who was a Minister of State at the Home Office, asked my noble friend Lord Hutchinson of Lullington and myself whether we could reach some form of agreement on that Bill: whether there was some parts of the Bill which would be acceptable to us. The view he expressed on that occasion was that matters which were, in our view, controversial would await the new Parliament. We agreed with the clauses in the Bill which dealt with the creation of the Serious Fraud Office, but the rest of the Bill was reintroduced after the general election.

On that occasion, as on this, everyone recognised that there was no urgency with the Bill. The government of the day--the Home Secretary was Mr. Douglas Hurd--handled the matter in a most sensitive fashion. That, unhappily, has not been true on this occasion.

We are either a serious revising Chamber or we are nothing. There is no purpose in this House sitting and discussing matters of great public importance if we do not do our duty properly in scrutinising legislation. Yet the Motion in relation to the application of this Bill which we have been debating this afternoon means that we are in fact surrendering totally to the Executive our rights as regards that Bill. We are surrendering our rights as a revising Chamber. I would say only this to noble Lords opposite who may find the Government's arguments more attractive than I do: remember one thing, precedents are dangerous things. A government may surprisingly quickly become an opposition and they may find precedents of this sort peculiarly uncomfortable in the future.

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