Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

3. What plans he has for the future of community service sentences.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Our plans are to ensure that community sentences are tough, effective and rigorously enforced, and that they punish offenders, but steer them off drugs and alcohol and into employment. We are conducting a full assessment of sentencing policy, including asking judges and magistrates for their views on which community sentences are the most effective.

[Angie Bray]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Many of my constituents hold to the old-fashioned notion that justice should not just be done, but be seen to be done, and they do not have much faith that community service sentences will deliver on that. How can he reassure my constituents that community service sentences will be robust and not a soft option?

[Mr Blunt]

We believe that making community sentences tougher in delivering punishment—especially looking at the operation of community payback—and more effective in delivering rehabilitation, restoration and the protection of the public, will help to show that people can have increasing confidence in such sentences. Achieving those objectives will be an important element of our assessment of sentencing policy.