The government will undoubtedly get away with this destruction of our common law network of Court of Appeal and House of Lords precedents. Few people care about what happens to criminals. But the public will eventually realize that the Council must take into account questions of cost and that therefore if prisons are overcrowded more offenders must escape custody.

Also in the Bill are the proposed changes to the law on Murder. Provocation, a concept which everyone understood, is abolished as a partial defence which reduced Murder to Manslaughter. Instead we are to have "loss of self-control" which will require a "qualifying trigger". Sexual infidelity cannot count as a factor: juries are no longer to be trusted but will be told what they can and cannot take into account. The man who comes home and finds his wife in bed with his best friend is supposed to react with saintly forbearance. (Lest anyone think that I am suggesting that such a person should be absolved of any blame, I should point out that provocation reduces Murder, with its fixed life sentence, to Manslaughter and is not a complete defence.)

There are, to be fair, some sensible provisions tucked away in this Bill. I have long thought that a disqualification from driving should start from the date a person is released from a prison sentence, or that convictions from other jurisdictions, properly evidenced by court documents, should be capable of being used in our courts. But this Bill is typical of the government's enthusiasm for constant change. When you find a section that amends a section of another Act which is not even yet in force, it is time to go home.

Thanks to the internet we can all now read government Bills, and perhaps the days of burying obscure and damaging legislation are over.