Dr Julian Lewis: Would not it deter offenders who had been tagged from removing their tags, if they were informed that the price of removing the tag would be that they would serve the rest of their sentence in prison?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Fiona Mactaggart): That is possible. If someone breaches the conditions of their curfew or monitoring by removing their tag, they have to be sent back to court, which means they can be returned to jail, but the decision for how long they should serve is rightly made by the sentencer and not by a Government Minister.]