HC Deb 18 July 1974 vol 877 cc652-3
15. Mr. Hardy

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state the number of offenders who, in the last two years, have been sentenced to carry out work of value to the community as an alternative or an addition to other punishments; if he will state the areas in which such penalties have been awarded; and whether he will encourage proposed extensions to the arrangements for such sentences.

Mr. Roy Jenkins

The relevant statutory provisions came into force on 1st January 1973. Up to 30th June 1974, 1,190 offenders had been made subject to community service orders in the six experimental schemes in Durham, inner London, Kent, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire and South-West Lancashire. I am anxious that this form of treatment should be extended to other areas as and when they are able to make the necessary arrangements, and my Department has recently opened discussions with interested organisations with this aim in view.

Mr. Hardy

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I am sure that there will be a general interest in that answer, if it can ever be read. Will he urge that officials of the courts in other areas of the country shall engage in early consultation with local authorities so that effort-demanding projects can be identified and work can proceed?

Mr. Jenkins

I shall indeed. I am most anxious—as I took the opportunity to say in a speech that I made about six weeks ago—to stress the importance that I attach to developments along these lines. I should like to see an extension of the scheme in the way that my hon. Friend suggests.

Mr. Michael Marshall

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that we welcome what he has said? Will he further consider whether it would be in the interests of this scheme in particular to give emphasis to long-term prisoners in this kind of remedial treatment? Does he further accept that there is a strong case for seeing whether life imprisonment should not be life imprisonment, as an alternative to capital punishment?

Mr. Jenkins

I shall certainly study, without commitment, the extent to which long-term prisoners can be used in this way. I understood the motive of the hon. Gentleman's last question to be that life sentences should always last for life. I do not think that I would accept that view, although, as any Home Secretary would, I would naturally proceed very cautiously in letting out people where I thought that there was danger to the public. But to say in advance that life sentences should always last for life would impose a difficult burden on the prison service, apart from everything else. Hope, I think, is an essential ingredient in human life.