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1. The lacerating “put down” for Jenrick has to be welcomed because (a) it exposed the threadbare and wrong headed nature of both his team’s research and demonstrated the depth and muscularity of the government’s support and Justice Ministerial team; (b) exposed the heedlessness and/or ignorance of our elected representatives over constitutional and judicial issues. It is only a tad facetious to assert that so very many can neither understand nor care about such vital doctrines as the separation of the powers. As to even so much as being able to SPELL the rule of law and due process, forget it! I add immediately that this no politically partisan point- would that it were. The whole notion of those concepts as irritating, time consuming and over costly optional extras HAS to stop.

2. The more troubling aspect is that I very much fear that if Lord Timpson had been delivering his (on the whole) rehabilitative and “prison as a last resort” messages in the Commons it would have provoked derisory jeers from the opposition Benches and outright insults and- far too much- in respectful silence from the government side. Please, pretty please: may this administration’s commitment to constructive and adult sentencing reform remain steadfast. They are IN POWER NOW and no longer in timorous opposition seeking election. I believe itwas Hillel the Elder in the first Century AD who asked:” If not you then who? If not now when?”

3. As to the Single Justice procedure an urgent and probing review is of the essence of a justice system worth praising and Heidi Alexander’s statement is timely and welcome.Watch this space? Tom Baldwin has it right of course.

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