PEERS BACK KNIFE CRIME JAIL PLANS
Peers have backed plans to impose mandatory jail terms on those twice convicted for knife offences.
The House of Lords voted down a Liberal Democrat move to strike out the clause championed by Conservative MP Nick de Bois in the Commons by 228 votes to 159, majority 69.
The new law won wide support among Conservative and Labour MPs but was opposed by Lib Dems.
The measure aims to ensure that adults receive a minimum six-month jail term on their second conviction for carrying a knife, while 16-year-olds would be given at least a four-month detaining and training order.
The vote in favour of the clause came despite strong opposition from peers across the House including Tory former cabinet minister John Gummer, who sits in the Lords as Lord Deben, Labour former attorney general Baroness Scotland of Asthal and former lord chief justice Lord Woolf.
Lord Deben branded the move "intolerable" and said he did not like the way the clause had been added to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill in the Commons after a campaign going on for years to "be tougher and lock up more people".
In committee stage debate on the Bill, Liberal Democrat QC Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, leading the move to strike out the proposed change, dubbed them an "entirely unwarranted restriction on judicial discretion".
He said mandatory minimum sentences were wrong in principle because they failed to allow for individual circumstances.
Lord Marks said the move risked doing "real harm" to those affected because many who should not be in prison would be imprisoned and he warned it would be "discriminatory" with a disproportionate impact on young black people who were more likely to be stopped and searched by the police - risking community tensions.
"We aren't persuaded that there is any justification for this approach beyond a desire to appeal to a populist press with an eye-catching message that we are tough on knife crime.
"Don't yield to the temptation to look tough on crime by passing a measure which would do nothing whatever to reduce crime," he urged peers.
But former Met commissioner and independent crossbencher Lord Blair of Boughton backed the change saying it sent out a simple message that an offender would go to jail for a second offence.
He said a custodial sentence for a second offence made much more sense than for a first offence because it gave people a chance.
"I don't think we have heard enough about the victims of knife crime," Lord Blair said. "Knife crime can change lives catastrophically."
