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Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I shook my head simply because the noble Lord will hear--I invite him to discuss the amendments later--that behaviour will be taken into account by the Parole Board when considering release arrangements. The primary function is to consider the safety of the public.

Lord Carlisle of Bucklow: My Lords, that is exactly what I said, with respect. While I concede that behaviour may be one of the matters taken into account in deciding whether a person should be released, certainly under the provisions for early release which the Government have now tabled it will not be the only condition; and there will not be the deliberate encouragement of good behaviour for those who are sentenced under Clause 2 that exists under the other provisions.

Finally, as has been said, for example, by bodies such as Women Against Rape, a mandatory life sentence will inevitably lead to a considerable reduction in pleas of guilty and a considerable increase, therefore, in the number of cases tried in which the victims will be required to give evidence. In addition, although I know that my noble friend the Minister disputed this at Committee stage, I have absolutely no doubt that it will lead to an enhanced degree of plea bargaining in a way which we have not had in this country. I believe that there are strong arguments against the mandatory provisions for a life sentence for a second offence as set out in Clause 2.

The purpose of my amendment is much smaller in range. It accepts the principle that there should be mandatory life sentences for those with a second conviction of a serious or sexual nature but that the earlier conviction should not count if it is a conviction that is spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The purpose of that Act, passed in 1974 at a time when

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the climate was perhaps different, with the support of the then Conservative Party and the recently retired Home Office Ministers, was that those who commit a crime, particularly at an early stage in their lives, should have the opportunity to live down that crime and to be rehabilitated. If they keep out of trouble in the future a stage would be reached when that conviction would be treated as spent and as if it no longer existed.

What are the periods involved? For anyone sentenced on the first offence to a term of imprisonment of longer than 30 months, the conviction never becomes spent. My noble friend the Minister says that she is concerned about the man or the woman committing serious offences. Under my amendment, if that first conviction produced a sentence of over 30 months it is never spent and the provisions of Clause 2 of the Bill apply. On the other hand, if the sentence was of between six months and two and a half years, that conviction becomes spent once the person has kept out of any form of trouble for 10 years. If a person who has committed one of the offences to which Clause 1 applies has been given a sentence of imprisonment of less than two and a half years but more than six months and commits another offence of the nature set out in Clause 2 within 10 years, Clause 2 will apply as it stands. If, on the other hand, he or she has "gone straight" for over 10 years, that conviction will not be of effect for the purpose of this clause.

Perhaps I may take an example given by the Lord Chief Justice on an earlier occasion. If a youth of, let us say, 16 or 17 is convicted of having sexual intercourse with a girl of 12, for which he receives a custodial sentence of some nature, at the age of 40 becomes involved in a fight in which as a result of one blow struck by him the person he is fighting falls, hits his head on a pillar and is killed, and is charged with manslaughter, the earlier conviction would not be taken into account.

If the period of imprisonment is of up to six months, the conviction becomes spent after seven years. If the sentence is a fine, it becomes spent after five years. If the sentence is of conditional discharge or probation, it becomes spent at the end of that period of probation or conditional discharge. The whole purpose of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is to grade the periods during which the offence will be held against the person on the basis of the severity of the sentence, which itself will be based on the nature and severity of the offence. If we are to have a system whereby the commission of a second offence of a wide variety of natures--here one is talking not only of rape but also of manslaughter and wounding with intent, among other offences (Section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act)--surely it is right that we should have a provision in the Bill similar to that in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act so that a conviction which is spent for all other purposes should be spent also for the purposes of the Bill.

Noble Lords may say that this is irrelevant and of little importance because, as the Government always tell us, this clause is aimed at the person who commits repeated dangerous offences. Therefore anyone who comes before the court for a second time save on a charge of rape, having originally been charged with one

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of the other offences on the list, is almost bound to have received a sentence of over two and a half years' imprisonment and therefore would not be affected by my amendment. But that is not so. The figures given by the Home Office in the White Paper published last year show that in 1994--I am open to correction as to the year--35 per cent. of those convicted of one of the offences mentioned in Clause 2 received no custodial sentence at all, whereas for those who went to prison the average term of imprisonment was 4.1 years. That means that in 35 per cent. of cases coming before the courts where people are convicted for a first time of an offence among those listed the court which tries the case does not consider any form of imprisonment to be appropriate.

If that is so, can it really be right when after 10, 20 or 30 years a person commits one of the other offences referred to in the list, having many years ago committed an offence for which it was not thought appropriate that he should go to prison, he should receive an automatic life sentence? I cannot believe that the Government intend that to be so and I cannot believe that they have thought it through.

With great respect to my noble friend the Minister, from what she or others outside have said--and I mean this in no personal way against my noble friend--the implication has been that those who oppose the Bill are in some way soft on crime. It is not a question of being soft on crime. For a person convicted of any of the offences listed in Clause 2, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. If the court feels that life imprisonment is the appropriate sentence, it may give it; and it may give it whether the person appears for a first occasion or for a second occasion with a spent conviction. This amendment simply seeks no mandatory requirement to impose a second conviction where the first conviction by the very nature of the sentence imposed was shown not to be of the greatest gravity.

This comes back to the fact that the offences under Clause 2 are extremely wide. I take the example of manslaughter. If in the course of a fight someone strikes a blow which tragically kills another and he then pleads guilty to manslaughter, is it to be said that he has to go to prison for life because at some stage in the past he had one previous conviction among that list? There are the examples that Women Against Rape has given. Suppose a woman who has suffered years of aggravated violence, eventually in desperation strikes out and wounds the person who has been violent towards her and is convicted of wounding with intent. If on a previous occasion several years ago in a similar situation she committed an act which led to such a conviction and the court felt that in all the circumstances due to the provocation and the life that she has lived it would be inappropriate to send her to prison, is it seriously to be said that she must go to prison for life on the second occasion?

I do not want to repeat the speeches made at Committee stage of the Bill. I merely make the point that one looks at the offences and says, "But this person is charged with rape"--or attempted rape or manslaughter and those offences sound and normally are

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extremely grave. Within the degrees particularly of the manslaughter charge and the Section 18 charge there is such a wide degree of seriousness that there should be some recognition of that. I take what I believe to be the least recognition of all by saying that, when looking at the previous offence, if it is found to be one which has already been spent and the person has been rehabilitated for all other purposes, it should not count as a conviction for the purposes of Section 1.

I apologise to the House if my speech has been somewhat disjointed. I started it without knowing where my notes were and picked them up about half way through. I am not quite sure whether I have covered fully my intentions. But I believe very strongly that if this clause is to be carried with the mandatory sentence, the very least that we can do is ensure that spent convictions do not count. I beg to move.

Lord Ackner: My Lords, I should like to support the amendment. It seems to me that there is an element of retrospection operating. After the person has been of good behaviour for a sufficiently long time, he having had a sentence of less than 30 months, it seems to me that he has achieved a status--the status of a rehabilitated offender. The Bill removes that status, because if he commits any of the so-called serious offences, even though the particular offence that he has committed is of a very minor kind on the facts, he has lost his rehabilitated status. On the face of it, that would seem to be quite contrary to the appropriate principle that the criminal law should not be retrospective or retroactive.

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