Sentencing Council Guidelines

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

Our independent judiciary is best placed to decide whether a community or a custodial sentence is required. From my experience, pre-sentence reports can be very useful in supporting the judiciary in their decision-making. They are even more helpful when the pre-sentence report is written by someone who knows the offender well and has a lot of training and background information on that person.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that, contrary to the confected outrage from across the House, sentencing is not a matter for politicians and should be independent of government? Does he also agree that it would be a jolly good thing if all offenders, whoever they are, had the benefit of a pre-sentence report?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. It is up to the independent judiciary to decide whether to request a pre-sentence report. What we do know is that in a number of cases they are very appropriate. We also know that our judiciary—in which many noble, and noble and learned, Lords in this House have taken an important role—is respected around the world. We need to ensure that that is maintained.