I beg to move amendment No. 908, in

clause 218, page 120, line 17, leave out 'particular' and insert 'reasonable'.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 724, in

clause 218, page 120, line 19, at end insert

'and shall tell the offender when passing sentence what conditions are to be recommended and shall give the defendant an opportunity to make representations.'.

No. 907, in

clause 218, page 120, line 21, leave out 'have regard to' and insert 'consider in full'.

Under the amendment, when passing sentence, a court may recommend to the Secretary of State reasonable conditions that could be included in any licence that is granted. However, that does not

exclude the possibility of particularity. I hope that the conditions imposed would not be general but specific to the prisoner. It is important, however, that the conditions can reasonably be complied with by the offender. Otherwise, they would presage an automatic return to custody. I would be entirely satisfied if the Minister were to tell me that the condition of reasonableness could be applied in another way. I am not sure that it is, and the amendment therefore seems reasonable. It makes clear the context in which the conditions would be set.

Amendment No. 907 is self-explanatory. It would apply when the Secretary of State was exercising his powers under section 229(3)(b), as it would allow him to introduce other conditions from time to time. It cannot be right that the Executive consider it in a vacuum, outwith what is already the sober consideration of the court. It is self-evident that the Secretary of State, in applying those conditions, must properly have regard for the conditions originally applied by the court. It is a matter of emphasis and degree rather than a change in meaning of the terms of the clause, in that it would be made explicit that the Secretary of State must consider as a matter of overriding importance the views of the court in the first place, rather than any discretion that he might accrue to himself. That brings us back to the central issues of the Executive's role in sentencing, and its tendency to overreach itself in that respect. We shall come back to that argument later, and we have touched on it already. The amendment is the very smallest of nudges in the direction of the discretion of Secretary of State in taking fully into account the views of the court at the first point of sentencing.

It tells you something about me, Mr. Illsley, that in my diary I carry not only a picture of my wife and daughter, but a dog-eared piece of The Guardian that I ripped out about two years ago, because the facts it described stunned me and I felt that I could not be without it. It says that

''the 100,000 hard cases share identifiable problems which can be tackled. These problems include the fact that half are under 21; nearly two-thirds are hard drug users; more than a third were in care as children and half have no school qualifications at all.''

The quotation ends rather cryptically:

''Mr. Blair has told colleagues that the figures are 'shocking'.''

I shall not delay the Committee unduly on the matter, except to say that when we are considering conditions that should be attached to licences we should surely examine some of those root causes of crime and what the courts can do to tackle them. That is why I tabled amendments Nos. 109 and 110, which were not called, but which ask the court to take into account factors such as

''the attainment of emotional maturity, social skills, and in the case of parents, parenting skills'',

and

''the attainment of educational and employment qualifications.''

If the court does not bear such matters in mind as part of the conditions that are attached to a licence it is, in my view, being negligent, because it is just recycling

offenders through the courts system, rather than tackling the root causes.

The hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) probably has more experience of daily dealings with such people than any of us, and must have come to the same conclusion as I have. Many of these people are poorly qualified, inadequate, unsuccessful and lacking in emotional intelligence, if not basic intelligence. One way to crack the recycling of offenders is to break that circle and give those offenders something that they can grasp. That is why I raise with the Minister the issue of ensuring that the courts, in deciding on licensing conditions, pay more attention than is currently provided for in the Bill to what they can get offenders to aspire to and get better at, so that they can be more adequate people, make more of a contribution and come out with qualifications.

Let me say how much I agree with the hon. Gentleman in relation to his comments about the problems that some defendants awaiting sentence face. He is right to paint the picture he did—it is extremely accurate.

Amendment No. 724 would require the court to

''tell the offender when passing sentence what conditions are to be recommended and . . . give the defendant an opportunity to make representations'',

and is no more than a probing amendment. It has not hitherto been the practice of the judiciary to talk much about licences, which have been an afterthought. Perhaps that has been a mistake, inasmuch as hitherto the judiciary has simply said, ''Bloggs, you will serve 18 months. Half of that will be served and after that you will be released on licence, but if you muck around under licence you will go back again. End of story; bring me the next case.''

That might not be good enough. I understand what the Government are saying. However, will the judge not require much extra information about the defendant before passing comment about licence conditions? Will he require separate reports? Will there be any cost implications about which we should be concerned, and would it not be a good thing for the judge to explain to the defendant in simple language what conditions he is going to recommend, just in case the defence or its legal team has anything to say about the conditions? That is the only reason for my probing amendment. I also note that the clause refers to the fact that the judge ''may'' as opposed to ''must''. Am I right in thinking that that gives the judge an option that might or might not be exercised depending on the mood of the judge and the suitability of that position for that judge on that day?

I, too, concur with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North about the importance of addressing the circumstances that give rise to offending. In many of the prisons that I have visited in my present capacity, I have seen good programmes at work. I think of one in particular—talking of parenting—that I saw recently in Wandsworth prison. It had had a remarkable impact on the offenders in getting them to think about their relationships with their families in a way that, they

hoped, would change the way in which they lived their lives when they came out of prison. The hon. Member for Woking is right in divining the purpose of the clause. Some courts do pass comment on what they think would be appropriate licence conditions. There is no formal mechanism for that to be communicated. He is also right that it is a permissive power. That is why the clause says ''may''—the judge decides whether it is appropriate to pass comment depending on the circumstances of the case. I share the objective of the amendment, which is to ensure that there is communication with the offender and to allow for representations to be made, but I think that we can achieve it administratively.

We anticipate that any court recommendation as to licence would form part of the court's reasons for sentence, and would therefore be heard by the offender in open court. That would be the most effective way of ensuring communication with the offender. However, it would not be appropriate for the offender to make representations to the court against such a recommendation at that point, because it would be only a recommendation, which the Secretary of State must have regard to, but it might not, in the end, form part of the offender's release package. By the time the offender was released—that could be years down the line, depending on the length of the custodial sentence—the risks and needs might have changed sufficiently to render the original court recommendation irrelevant. For example, the judge might have recommended as a licence condition that the offender should keep away from person X. That person might, sadly, have passed on.

Many circumstances could change, which would mean that it was not sensible to make representations at that point. Nevertheless, the offender would be perfectly entitled to speak or write to his probation officer to pass comment as to whether the court's recommendations were as acceptable, and to give reasons. For a determinate sentence of more than 12 months, that could form part of the probation service's consideration of appropriate licence conditions, which must be sent to a prison governor four weeks before the offender's release.

For an offender serving any part of a sentence requiring the Parole Board's decision on release—an extended sentence, imprisonment for public protection, which we were debating this morning, and life sentence—there will be formal opportunities for the offender to make representations as to the licence conditions, because the probation service prepares and sends the parole dossier, which includes any prior representations made by the prisoner against the court's recommendations to the Parole Board. The recommendations must be disclosed to the offender and the Parole Board will hold an oral hearing that the offender will attend, so there is an opportunity before and at the oral hearing to make representations. I hope that that meets the objective of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome.

Amendment No. 908 would

''leave out 'particular' and insert 'reasonable'.''

I am not attracted to it for two reasons. One, the insertion of ''reasonable'' could be taken to suggest that somehow courts might be inclined to impose unreasonable conditions, whereas courts have a duty always to act reasonably. Secondly, it would lose particularity; it would take away the sense that courts should be specific in their recommendations. That is what the clause tries to capture.

Amendment No. 907 suggests that we

''leave out 'have regard to' and insert 'consider in full'.''

However, subsection (3) makes it clear that the court's recommendation is not part of the sentence passed on an offender. In one sense, changing ''have regard to'' to ''consider in full'' is not enormously significant, and considerable time may have elapsed before the Secretary of State considers a court's recommendations when making his decision on the appropriate licence conditions. In such circumstances, requiring the Secretary of State to ''have regard to'' the court's recommendation—time might have altered circumstances considerably—is reasonable.

I am most grateful to the Minister for his response. I intimated in my earlier remarks that I felt that amendment No. 907 did not make a huge difference to the meaning of the clause. With regard to amendment No. 908, I did not want to lose the notion of particularity that the Minister took pains to explain, and I accept that the amendment could lead to such an interpretation. A court could make conditions that are entirely reasonable in every respect apart from the fact that an offender will be unable to keep to them for reasons beyond his control. That concerns me. However, it is not a major difference between us because, as the Minister says, one expects courts to behave reasonably when imposing sentence, and I am sure that they would take such a view not when setting conditions but when making recommendations about conditions. That is in any case tempered by the judgment when the conditions are applied.

I thank the Minister for his warm words about being tough on the causes of crime while an offender is in custody or on licence. I look forward to those warm words being translated into cold print, perhaps in the other place.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 218 ordered to stand part of the Bill.