 House of Commons |
Session 2008 - 09 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Coroners and Justice Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Alan Sandall, Committee
Clerk † attended the
Committee Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 10 March 2009(Afternoon)[Frank Cook in the Chair]Coroners and Justice BillClause 100Sentencing
Council for England and
Wales Amendment
moved (this day): 150, in clause 100, page 60, line 17, at end
insert— ‘(1A) The purpose of
the Council shall be to issue guidance to sentencers, having particular
regard to the effectiveness of each form of sentence in reducing
re-offending.’.—(Alun
Michael.) 4
pm
The
Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this it will be
convenient to discuss the following: clause stand
part. Amendment
160, in
schedule 13, page 148, line 20, at
end insert— ‘(c) 6 members
appointed by resolution of the House of
Commons.’. Amendment
161, in
schedule 13, page 148, line 20, at
end insert— ‘(c) 6 members
appointed by the Prime Minister (“independent
members”).’. Amendment
158, in
schedule 13, page 149, line 2, after
‘to’, insert
‘their experience and capacity for
evaluating evidence on the effectiveness of different sentences, and
to’. Amendment
162, in
schedule 13, page 149, line 7, at
end insert— ‘(5) When
appointing independent members, the Prime Minister shall have regard to
their experience of and capacity for assessing evidence especially in
relation to the effectiveness of sentences in terms of reducing
re-offending.’. That
schedule 13 be the Thirteenth schedule to the
Bill. Clause
101 stand
part. Amendment
153, in
clause 102, page 60, line 33, at
end insert— ‘(1A) In
proposing sentencing guidelines the Sentencing Council must have
specific regard to the comparative effectiveness of different sentence
options and indicate the data, research findings or other evidence on
which the Council has relied in preparing its
guidance.’. Amendment
151, in
clause 102, page 61, line 25, at
end insert— ‘(aa) The
relative effectiveness of different sentences in preventing
re-offending;’. Amendment
152, in
clause 102, page 61, line 28, leave
out ‘and their relative effectiveness in preventing
re-offending.’. Clauses
102 to 118 stand part.
Alun
Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op): I am
grateful for the chance to make a few final points in support of my
argument that the Bill needs to be clear about the purposes of the
sentencing council and about who should be on it and why. My main
concern about a judge-dominated council is that the appeals process
already allows judges to clarify the law. In considering whether to
change or amend a specific sentence, senior judges comment on that
sentence, which is what drives the lower courts.
It is worth
remembering that judges can get it wrong. The number of appeals by the
Attorney-General against unduly lenient sentences is one half of that
equation; the other half is the appeals granted in the opposite
direction. It seems to me that the driver for the sentencing council
must be different—namely, what works. Earlier, I undertook to
give an example. I pray in aid the work funded by the EsmÃ(c)e
Fairbairn Foundation, whereby judges went to see what actually happens
with community sentences. That produced significant evidence that many
judges were unaware of what such sentences mean in practice and what
happens to the offenders given them. The work demonstrated the benefits
of such knowledge. I also pray in aid remarks made by the hon. and
learned Member for Harborough about the value of a degree of oversight
of what happens after the sentencing
decision. Courts
are still slow to use restorative justice, but there is considerable
evidence that the experience of facing up to the damage done to victims
is salutary in triggering reform in offenders. It is life-changing in a
way that reduces reoffending, and thus the likelihood of new victims
being created. However, the impact on victims is also massive: quite
apart from the effect of having been able to give the offender a piece
of their mind, some 73 per cent. of victims felt safer as a result of a
restorative justice event. That is significant. We heard evidence from
victim support groups and asked what victims wanted from the criminal
justice system. Apart from the ideal situation of the offence not
happening in the first place, they wanted to be certain that it would
never happen again. That certainty is what good sentencing, the reform
of offenders and the prevention of reoffending is all about.
The Justice
Committee’s report on the Bill built on the recent consideration
that it had given to sentencing. As a member of that Committee, I found
its hearings extremely productive. In commenting on the sentencing part
of the Bill, the Committee expressed a number of concerns. I say gently
to the Minister that I fear that the Bill follows too closely the
findings of the review undertaken by Lord Carter—not the Lord
Carter who is currently doing an excellent job in developing broadband
Britain, but Lord Carter of Coles, who undertook a review of the impact
of sentencing on prisons. I am sure that it was not intentional, but
unfortunately his review was very poor and the evidence that he gave to
the Justice Committee was probably the poorest that we received. We
ended up with the impression that the report was rushed and not
evidence-based. The concern is that the piece about the sentencing
council as drafted follows the brief that he was given and the
conclusions that he reached—that is, phrasing about reducing the
number of people in prisons. That is of benefit because if there are
fewer people in prison they can be dealt with properly and
rehabilitation can be more effective. I have no difficulty with that.
However, it is the effectiveness of
the sentencing that ought to be the driver, and the reduction in prison
numbers ought to be a consequence of a better and more focused
sentencing
process. The
Select Committee respected the fact
that “at
the very heart of the debate is a consensus that the prison population
is growing too fast and that custody, especially short sentences, is
not an effective approach for many offenders in terms of achieving
rehabilitation or reform; with prison often characterised as ‘an
expensive way of making bad people
worse.’.” The
Committee argued that the study to which I have referred was undertaken
at high speed and perhaps that left flaws in it. Finally, the Committee
expressed a
concern “that
an over-ambitious timetable had been set for the working group on a
sentencing commission and recommended that ‘the Government
should not seek to implement major changes in this area without
effective evaluation of the potential consequences and the resources
required to make such changes effective.’ We remain of this
opinion. Accordingly, we recommend the most careful consideration of
those provisions of the Coroners and Justice Bill relating to the remit
of the new Sentencing Council
for...Wales.” I
took that seriously and have listened to the evidence that we had in
advance of the line-by-line scrutiny, which is why I have come up with
these suggestions.
Marrying the
focus on what works and is effective in reducing offending with the
experience of the judges is a way of getting the right conclusion and a
sentencing council that will improve the outcomes from sentencing and
not just the logic of sentencing itself. It means a change to the Bill
and I hope that Ministers, if they cannot accept my amendments today,
will take away these thoughts and consider amending the Bill so as to
deliver the objectives in a way that is more practical, more focused,
and based on clear principles. I will not delay the Committee further,
but I very much hope that by making these suggestions I have not sought
to roll back what Ministers are doing but sought to make the sentencing
council more focused, more effective and more successful in ensuring
that the guidance given to courts is based on what will reduce
reoffending, rather than on the particulars which, although important
themselves, are not what the criminal justice system should be
about. Mr.
Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): The right hon.
Gentleman has done us a service in setting out, as a critical friend of
the Government, the issues that need to be considered when talking
about the Sentencing Guidelines Council. I know that the right hon.
Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East has served on the Gage
committee, so he brings with him—albeit that he was not able to
hear this morning’s opening of the debate—a considerable
detailed knowledge of the workings of a sentencing council. He very
kindly invited me to a meeting with Lord Justice Gage to look at his
findings last summer, so he will know that what Lord Justice Gage and
the right hon. Gentlemen and their colleagues are proposing—what
the Government are not proposing—is an American grid system, so
let us put that aside and concentrate on what we are doing.
In clauses 100
to 118, I can see that the Government are proposing evolution of the
current state of play rather than a hugely revolutionary system, but
there are pinchpoints that will divide the Committee in the way that
evolution is taking place. I will describe them briefly.
First,
from the official Opposition’s point of view—I will leave
the hon. Member for Cambridge to set out his stall—we do not
accept that the new sentencing council should have the power to require
sentences to follow its guidelines, as opposed to taking them into
account. As the Committee will know, the current Sentencing Guidelines
Council sets out its stall and guidelines and the courts are required
to take those into account and explain themselves if they do not follow
them. The Government propose that as a matter of compulsion, the
sentences in the courts—be they in the summary jurisdiction or
the Crown court—must follow them, unless there is an overriding
reason for not doing
so. Secondly,
the difference between us and the Government—I think that the
Liberal Democrats are closer to the Government’s position on
this than we are—relates to the influence of resources on the
sentencing process. We see the assessment of resources—the way
in which the available space in the prison estate and capacity in the
non-custodial criminal justice system are deployed in terms of how they
are provided and paid for—as essentially a matter for the
Executive: the Ministry of Justice and those who advise Parliament.
However, those factors should not impinge on the sentencing in any
given
case. It
may be true that legislation may follow an assessment made by the
Sentencing Guidelines Council. Let us say, for example, that putting
every burglar into custody would require 100,000 prison places. That is
information the Government must digest, and which, if they agree with
it, they must supply to Parliament, so that Parliament, advised by the
Government, can reach a conclusion about what to spend on prisons; but
when it comes to sentencing in particular cases, or in generic types of
case, the sentencer must be free to give the sentence that he or she
finds appropriate as a matter of justice, bearing in mind all the usual
factors, such as the facts of the particular offence, the impact on the
victim or society in general and the circumstances of the defendant.
However, it should not, in our view, influence the sentence in a
particular case, that a magistrate in, say, Exeter should be told that
there is a shortage of prison places in a particular area of the
country or across the country. That is a matter for the Government to
sort out, rather than individual sentencers. It is simply not possible
for a sentencer to have regard to the available resources across the
whole country—or even across the
region. Bearing
in mind the guillotine that we are under, it will not be possible for
us to express our concerns about clauses 100 to 118 individually. I
therefore propose, subject to your advice and direction, Mr.
Cook, to call three symbolic votes. I make no secret of that, and I am
giving the hon. Member for Wrexham notice so that he can deploy his
resources, having assessed whom he has available. I do not expect to
win any of the votes, but it is important that we mark the difference
between the Opposition and the Government sides of the Committee, so
that nobody can be under any misapprehension. I will ask the
Committee’s opinion on one clause stand part. The most sensible
way to do that is to pick the first clause from the 18 clauses that we
have to deal with in relation to the clause stand part debates. I shall
then ask your permission, Mr. Cook, for a Division under
clause 102 on amendment 244, which I shall move formally at
the appropriate time. That will enable the Conservative party to
express its concern about what I headline
“resource assessment”. After that, I
shall then ask the
Committee, with your permission, to divide on
amendment 248 under clause 107, which deals with the
“follow/have regard to” point that I have
outlined. 4.15
pm I
appreciate that the Divisions on amendments 244 and 248 may not happen
until later in our proceedings, but it is important that I set out my
stall now because I am not in the business of making clever-clever
points about catching the Government by surprise. That would be
unproductive and have no huge value. It is important that we put our
concern on the record and, it is fair to say, that we explain those
points on which we share the concerns of not only the right hon. Member
for Cardiff, South and Penarth, but other members of the
Committee. I
am beginning to sound like a retired colonel from somewhere or other,
but in my experience, sentencing is the most difficult part of the
criminal justice process. Those who have been a magistrate and thus a
sentencer, as the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth has,
and those who have been an advocate in front of the Crown court as well
as the magistrates court and have had to mitigate on behalf of their
clients who are up for sentencing, as has my hon. Friend the Member for
Rugby and Kenilworth, will agree that it is not easy. When we read some
of the intemperate criticism of judges and magistrates in the tabloid
press, I am sure that we in Committee all agree as reasonable people
that, in large part, that criticism is unfair. Clearly, from time to
time, things go wrong, but the unduly lenient sentence appeal system
that the Attorney-General can operate, which the right hon. Gentleman
mentioned—although he would be the first to admit that such
sentences are a tiny proportion of the number handed out during a given
year—provides a correctional device. It also enables the Court
of Appeal criminal division to gather up either individual cases or
groups of cases so that it can give thematic judgments on particular
types of
sentence.
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