Well, I'm sorry, David, I'm very au fait with the sentencing guidelines and I can assure you they are there not to send people to prison.

I will say here that I have a great deal of sympathy with the views expressed in items 1(b) and 2(b). I believe that there should be a substantial expansion in secure mental facilities as an alternative to normal prisons and that some, but by no means all, of our prisons lack the facilities needed to rehabilitate prisoners. I will just note here, David, and I declare no bias one way or another, that there are many in this Chamber who opposed a prison at Margam, which would be able to offer many of the facilities to Welsh prisoners. 

I wish now to turn to item 1(d) and item 2(a) listed in this debate. The first item again suggests that women in this instance are sent to prison for minor offences. This is patently not the case, unless there are multiple minor offences involved. And, again, I reiterate that all other interventions would have been comprehensively explored. Only when the person convicted of a crime refuses to engage or accept the alternatives is the option of prison even considered. 

Item 2(a) suggests that alternative methods of punishment are either not available or are not being used. Again, this is an utter fallacy. Fines, probation, community orders, including work in the community, curfews and electronic tagging are all considered and used extensively before anyone is committed to prison. One extremely worrying consequence of these two clauses is the inference that if the perpetrator of a crime is a mother she should be treated differently to any other person who commits similar crimes, whether they be petty or otherwise. What signal does that send to all the hundreds of thousands of mothers in our society who do not commit crime, even though their circumstances may well make them vulnerable to turning to this alternative?

I will add that non payment of fines is not a minor or petty offence: it means that it is left to the good, honest, hard working and often poorer members of society—[Interruption.] no, David, I have to finish now, I'm sorry—to pick up the bill. 

Finally, although I believe the proposals contained in this debate are well intentioned and those proposing its contents are well meaning in presenting it, I contend that it is ill conceived, naive and does not accurately reflect the British judicial system. I will go on to say that I will agree with all the comments made in this Chamber by all those who have contributed to this debate to say that, post sentencing, we have a diabolical situation within all our prisons and interventions post sentencing ought to be our first and total priority.