Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 23 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests. I am advised that it is the correct procedure—in view of the hour, it seems a very appropriate procedure—for me to speak only once to introduce my objections to both Clauses 23 and 24. Clause 23 deals with the introduction of a new offence of police corruption and Clause 24 introduces a mandatory whole life term for the murder of a police officer or a prison officer while on duty. I spoke at some length at Second Reading on 30 June and I do not intend to do so again or to rehearse all the arguments I made then. However, it is probably necessary for me to make clear that I regard police corruption as a cancerous evil which is ever present and which I and other noble Lords who were police officers have successfully investigated. Even more directly, I give way to no one in my abhorrence of the murder of a police officer or prison officer while on duty, particularly, but not exclusively, because someone tried to murder me.

Noble Lords speaking in support of removing these clauses from the Bill will make their own points but my first covers them both. Curiously, although they cover significantly different aspects of criminal law, the two clauses are connected by a simple proposition: they are bad law and they are unnecessary law because they are symbolic legislation, which I have heard before in your Lordships’ House is normally a reprehensible idea. The purpose of this proposal is to strike them out. It is, of course, in the nature of a probing amendment which will not be pressed to a Division but it seeks to ask the Minister and, if I may so request, the Front Benches of other parties to explain—I hope, in some detail—why this symbolic legislation should be embraced. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has just spoken of gimmicks; there may be some right here.

As regards Clause 23, I am absolutely certain that there is simply no lacuna. There is simply no gap to be filled between the Bribery Act 2010, some residuary clauses in the Prevention of Corruption Act 1916 and the common law offence of misconduct in public office. The Minister has just mentioned other offences in relation to the amendment just moved by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. That was part of his argument for why that amendment should not pass. Exactly the same position applies in this case. No investigator or prosecutor has ever suggested to me that there is a difficulty in framing a charge in relation to police corruption. Subsection (11) of the clause confirms that by insisting that this legislation does not affect the common law offence of misconduct in public office. If there is no gap in the law, why introduce some new legislation? I think that my noble friend Lord Dear will flesh out a number of other professions to which such a law could equally logically—or perhaps equally illogically—be extended, as I did at Second Reading. However, I should also point out that the offence created by this legislation is exceptionally broadly and loosely drawn and will bring with it pointless investigations and contested trials.

I have heard it said that the clause is being introduced as a response to previously uninvestigated allegations of corruption—there were plenty of previously investigated allegations of corruption—in the case of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, and to the so-called “plebgate” events. I would only point out to noble Lords on all sides that it is normal to allow such investigations and court cases to come to an end before deciding to legislate further. Mr Ellison QC should now be allowed to finish his investigation; and the contested libel cases—I emphasise the plural—concerning who said what to whom outside 10 Downing Street should be allowed to come to court before judgments are made before introducing this sort of legislation.

Clause 24 is worse—much worse. It is not only unnecessary and populist but genuinely dangerous to the lives of police and prison officers—as I alluded to at Second Reading by quoting the case of Harry Roberts, who is still serving a life term 48 years after the murder of three police officers in 1966. There is simply no evidence of judicial complacency when sentencing those convicted of murdering a police or prison officer on duty.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, who has appended his name to this Question on whether Clause 24 should stand part of the Bill, cannot be in his place, but I know that if he were here he would have reflected that, shortly after the abolition of capital punishment in 1965, a number of attempts were made to make an exception by retaining capital punishment for the murder of a police officer. These attempts were always defeated for exactly the same reason that I referred to at Second Reading and shall set out again briefly. If the murderer of a police officer has escaped from the scene, he or she will be aware that if this legislation is passed, he or she, if apprehended, will face life without parole. There is no incentive for him or her to surrender, and no further penalty can be given to him or her for killing more police officers. Why not entrap them? Why not go out in a deluded blaze of glory and take more hated police officers with them? It is “suicide by cop” as it is known. This measure is simply dangerous, unhelpful and totally misguided.

It is interesting only a small number of Back-Benchers are in your Lordships’ House at the moment—all of them former police officers, and all of whom object to this clause for that reason. I should be fascinated to hear why the different political parties support these clauses.

[Lord Dear (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Clause 23, although my comments could equally well apply to Clause 24. I accord entirely with the last remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Blair. I also remind noble Lords of my record in dealing with police corruption and malpractice. I emphasise the fact that I do not in any way diminish the seriousness, importance and reprehensibility of any abuse of office. Any corruption is reprehensible, particularly by those in authority. That of course includes police officers.

As has been said—and I will not go through it in detail—the current law is adequate and all-embracing. It captures all the possible misbehaviour and misconduct of those in public office, including police officers. The proposal does not add one jot to the armoury of offences that prosecutors can deploy. In fact, when reading jurisprudence at university, I well remember it being said that it was a universal truth that repetitious legislation—one offence after another, all dealing with exactly the same principle—was odious. I, too, would be interested if the Minister could tell us why it is such a good idea at the moment.

I notice that Mr Jeremy Wright MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, said:

“The public expect the police to act with honesty and integrity at all times”.

He went on to say that the Government felt that the best way to proceed was,

“to create a new offence of police corruption that applies solely to police officers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/6/14; cols. 1020-1.]

He said that this would be alongside the existing, broader common-law offence of misconduct in public office. The new offence in the Bill carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. Misconduct in public office carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The safety net is there.

--- Later in debate ---

We ask police and prison officers to take on a vital role in keeping us safe by managing difficult and dangerous offenders, which they do every day as part of their routine duties. It is this that sets them apart from others who provide a public service. The Government consider that the unique role that they play should be recognised and that those who murder police and prison officers carrying out their duties should know that they face the severest sentences.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister and to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for their comments. I am afraid that I still feel we are in the world of assertion, as the Minister said, rather than of argument. He may not be able to do this, but I would be most grateful if he could assist me by providing me with some of the advice that he has received in relation to the corruption offences. The scenario that he just described, of a senior police officer misusing his position but where no prosecutor could find a way to suggest that that was an offence under the bribery or whatever Act, or that it was misconduct in a public office, sounds a little unusual to me.

I am most worried, as I think are other noble Lords who have spoken, about what I shall now refer to as the “perhaps” clause. The Minister very much emphasised the word “perhaps”, saying that an offender in these circumstances would perhaps not be familiar with the law and so on. The fact is that as soon as you mention “whole life tariff” to a criminal, he or she—it is almost certainly a he—knows what a whole life tariff is and that it means that you might as well take five cops out as one cop. It is that simple. I would be grateful to speak to the Minister a little further about this, particularly to answer the question that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, raised about the level of consultation with senior police officers and the Police Federation at the moment. I am pretty clear that the objections that I have raised are familiar to them: they have been familiar to generations of police officers since the then leaders of the police service objected to there being capital punishment for the murder only of a police officer or a prison officer.

[Lord Faulks]

I would be happy to talk to the noble Lord before Report.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I rather imagine that not many of your Lordships know that, as a young man, I wanted to be an actor. I must therefore start by acknowledging my gratitude to the Whips’ Office for putting my name in lights on the annunciator for many hours. I also apologise to those of your Lordships who have come to listen to the Statement on Europe, because I have one or two things to say. The first is that I agree with many provisions of the Bill, but the main parts of my speech will deal with two clauses that I do not think should be in it and one matter that I believe should be.

However, I must begin with an apology to the House. On 12 March this year, I asked an Oral Question of the Minister about the ban on jury research contained in Section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. The Minister and I agreed to discuss the issue and, indeed, have done so. I apologise because there is no ban on jury research for academics—there never has been and it was never intended for there to be. There is just a ban on asking individual jurors what happened in the jury room. Anonymised research on the type of case, type of court, ethnicity, gender and much more is not banned. The trouble—and my excuse for misleading the House, as it were—is that although there may not, de jure, be a ban, de facto, almost everyone thinks there is; including not only me but many Members of this House including, perhaps rather quietly, even some noble and learned Lords with whom I have spoken, before and since my Question.

I have since spoken at length with Professor Cheryl Thomas of University College London, who has conducted research in this area and on how juries work, and had it published by the MoJ. The Minister even mentioned her in his reply to my Question. However, the problem is that she seems to be almost the only person in the country who does this sort of research because most people, including most academics, appear to think it is impossible. I apologise for asking a Question that was inaccurate but I do not apologise for raising an important subject. When he replies, can the Minister agree to require the MoJ to issue, as soon as possible, new comprehensive and clear guidance on what is and is not possible in jury research and to put it on the MoJ website? This is important because, as we have seen in the past week, juries in criminal trials, and how they work, are a central and vital part of how most people view and judge the whole judicial system in the UK.

Turning now to what should not be in the Bill, I raise for the consideration of the House Clauses 23 and 24, which deal, respectively, with the corrupt or other improper exercise of police powers and privileges, and the term of imprisonment for the murder of a police or prison officer in the course of their duties. This House complains occasionally about unnecessary legislation. These clauses seem to be not only unnecessary but entirely populist and should be struck out.

I begin with the murder of a police officer or prison officer. The Government propose that such a murder, rather than being in the category of cases where the starting point on conviction is a minimum sentence of 30 years, should instead be considered in the rare category where a whole-life sentence should be the starting point. Particularly having had the experience of someone trying to kill me with a machete, I yield to no one in my view that the murder of a police officer on duty is an outrage. However, the MoJ has forgotten its history, in two ways. There is simply no evidence—no evidence at all—of the judiciary failing to accord a conviction for the murder of a police officer or prison officer on duty the utmost seriousness. In the 1980s, I served in Shepherd’s Bush police station, in whose front hall is a plaque commemorating the murder, which I am sure a number of noble Lords will recall, of three Metropolitan Police officers—Geoffrey Fox, Christopher Head and David Wombwell—in August 1966 in Shepherd’s Bush, by Harry Roberts and his associates. Harry Roberts is still in prison, 48 years after the murder. His associates are dead. What need is there, in the face of this, for a change in the law?

Secondly, the MoJ seems to have forgotten that, following the abolition of capital punishment for murder in 1965, there were continuous attempts in the years that followed to reinstate capital punishment for the murder of a prison officer or a police officer on duty. These attempts were always resisted not only by the precursor of Liberty, the National Council for Civil Liberties, but also by the police service. It was believed that a prisoner on the run after such a killing would reason that if he was to hang, he would have no compunction in killing other people, including other police officers, to escape. I disagree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that some prisoners do not know what the sentence is; you know what the sentence is if it is hanging. The whole-life term is the contemporary version of hanging. This clause is not only unnecessary but capable of risking lives. It is wrong.

I turn now to Clause 23 about police corruption. This legislation is not only loosely drawn but entirely unnecessary. I am sorry to hear that the Opposition will support it. I have led investigations that have led to the conviction of police officers for corruption. Police corruption is an evil; it is a permanent and corroding threat. However, neither I nor the CPS, in my experience, has ever had any difficulty in framing charges under what was then the Prevention of Corruption Act, which would now be the Bribery Act 2010, or the common-law offence of misconduct in public office. The difficulty was not the charge but finding the evidence in a crime where all the participants do not want to tell anyone about it.

That this is unnecessary legislation is shown in subsection (11), which the Minister mentioned, which states:

“Nothing in this section affects what constitutes the offence of misconduct in public office”.

Where is the evidence that existing legislation is inadequate?

When the Milly Dowler case broke in 2011, a leader in the Times—a News International newspaper—declared that what had been revealed was “police corruption on an industrial scale”. I do not think so. Since that time, the phone hacking investigation has led to the conviction of an editor, two subeditors and three journalists or specialist hackers on a News International newspaper, and 101 journalists, some very senior, have been arrested, as opposed to 26 police employees, all very junior. Twelve more trials beckon.

The oddity of the clause is: what if you substituted some other professions for this legislation about police officers? What if we put journalists or parliamentarians instead of police officers in the clause, or even NHS dentists, because they can be convicted of corruption? Would the House support that? The police are far from being without fault and police corruption is an evil thing, but this legislation has no rationale at all and has the feel of a populist reaction to the wrong target.

Lastly, I turn to a different matter. Is the Minister aware that there are roughly 200,000 children in the United Kingdom with one parent currently in prison? That is three times the number of looked-after children, who, in old money, are children in care. During their lifetime, boys who have had a parent imprisoned—I wonder whether the Minister knows this—are three times more likely to be convicted of a crime than their peer group, as well as having many more poor life outcomes. Are the Minister and the House aware that no state agency has a duty to inform those responsible for education or social work that a child’s parent has been imprisoned? There is therefore no reason for a head teacher or any other teacher to know that a child’s parent has been imprisoned and, because the other parent will probably be ashamed to explain it, that position will not change officially. However, the likelihood is that the child’s playmates will find out that the child’s father or mother is in prison, and the effect on that child and the bullying that will follow will be awful.

Is the Minister aware of the campaign entitled “Families Left Behind”, which is backed by Barnardo’s, the Prison Reform Trust and the NSPCC, among many others? The campaign is to introduce a statutory duty on courts to ask whether an individual facing a custodial sentence or being remanded in custody—after, I should emphasise, not before that decision is taken so as not to influence the decision—has a dependant, to ensure that the child’s welfare is considered by statutory agencies. Whether or not he is aware, I would ask for a conversation with the Minister about whether the Bill would be a suitable vehicle for such a statutory duty to be included in Committee. I do not believe that such a proposal has significant resource implications downstream—and downstream it may massively reduce reoffending. I hope he will agree.

Justice: Academic Research on Jury Decision-making

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to reconsider the ban on academic research into the process of decision-making by juries in criminal trials under Section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. At the same time, I should make clear to the House that this Question is not topical, as would be normal for a fourth Question on a Wednesday, and it is not connected to any verdict in any recent trial.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the Government’s general position that juror deliberations should be confidential. The noble Lord will know that the Law Commission’s recent report, published in December last year, Contempt of Court (1): Juror Misconduct and Internet Publications, recommends a limited exception to the general prohibition to allow for academic research. The Government are considering that recommendation and will respond in due course.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I am grateful to the Minister for that considered reply. However, it is a fact that this provision in the Contempt of Court Act 1981 was not aimed at academic research but has had the effect of stifling it. We simply do not know how juries work. We have no objective or academic window into these rooms. Lord Devlin described juries as,

“the lamp that shows that freedom lives”.

If so, it is a lamp which is certainly being kept under a bushel. Is the Minister aware of any other area of public policy and expenditure in relation to which objective and academic-based research is illegal? If he is not, does he agree with me that, more than 30 years on from that Act, it must be possible in the internet age to design research that anonymises individual jurors and verdicts, and that it is now time to reconsider this legislation fully?

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, at the present time, any researcher into this area has to obtain authorisation sponsorship from HM Courts & Tribunals Service and then apply to the data access panel, whereafter various safeguards, including anonymity and safeguards to ensure that the conviction or the innocence of a particular defendant is not called into question, will be made part of that condition. There is research. For example, Professor Cheryl Thomas has provided valuable research on this issue.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven]

My Lords, I spoke on the issue of domestic violence on a number of occasions during the Bill’s passage. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, said, domestic violence is a phenomenon that breeds insecurity, violence and, as we know, sometimes death. Perhaps as bad as any of those, it travels across generations, repeating itself over and over, in worse and worse spirals of crime. In recent years, as noble Lords know, very much progress has been made by people working in social services, by medical professionals, lawyers, judges and others, in recognising and identifying domestic violence, sometimes in prosecuting it—winning convictions more often than we used to—and in dealing appropriately with its victims.

My concern was that, in its original form, the Bill plainly failed to heed some of these lessons. It failed to recognise that victims do not always present themselves in predictable ways, and that the justice system should—indeed must—offer a broad, expansive and empathetic approach to this crime, and to the victims of this crime.

I had two particular concerns. First, the definition of domestic violence within the Bill was far too restrictive, much more restrictive than the definition that is employed by ACPO and the CPS regularly, successfully and happily and to the good understanding of all agencies involved, including the courts. Secondly, I felt strongly that the range of material allowed to evidence domestic violence so that there was a gateway into legal aid for its victims was far too narrow. I am inclined to agree that neither of these defects should ever have been in the Bill in the first place, and I was surprised, to be frank, that they were.

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend, who has been happy—perhaps I do not know how happy he has been—to have many conversations with me on this topic. I am grateful to the Secretary of State, the Lord Chancellor, as well. I believe that the Government’s response has been broad. I have enormous respect for the noble and learned Baroness who, when she was a distinguished Attorney-General, was an inspiration to prosecutors on this topic, as well as on many others. Her distinguished period of office is remembered with great affection in the CPS.

The Government have adopted the ACPO-CPS definition, for which we were asking since before Report stage, and included it in the Bill. I commend them for that. They have also broadened significantly—with respect, more significantly than some noble Lords’ speeches have allowed—the categories of evidence that will trigger legal aid in these cases for the victims of domestic violence, including evidence from social services and medical professionals in addition to the other gateways which existed, and where the court wishes to consider a finding of fact that domestic violence exists so as to grant legal aid, it can consider matters such as police call-outs and referrals to domestic violence centres, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, has called for.

After considering the Government’s response with as much care as I can, I have concluded that this has been a strong example of a Government who were clearly—and who, with respect, had been badly in error, in my view—listening to the concerns of this House and responding. For my part, I shall support the Government on this issue.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I lent my name to the first iteration of the amendment put forward by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. I want to speak again for a moment about this. I accept and, as has the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, I praise the Minister for the movement that the Government have produced. However, in my experience of 35 years of dealing with these kinds of cases, there is something very specific about a certain category of offender, including the offenders of child abuse, domestic violence, stalking and partner rape—namely, their deviousness and the control that they exercise on their victims. Therefore, I strongly support the idea that we should not let down this group of victims by imposing an arbitrary limit on the time in which the evidence can be produced in a way that will provide legal assistance to those victims.

Some of your Lordships will be experienced enough to remember the great Erin Pizzey, who was the first founder of women’s refuges. Her book had the most staggeringly accurate title about the kind of man who would commit these offences. I do not mean to say that there are no women who do this but we are primarily talking about men. The title of that book was Scream Quietly or the Neighbours will Hear. I think that we should say, just one last time, will the Government please look at this time limit again, because this group of offenders works in a completely different way from most other criminals?

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I wish to speak about the time limit as regards the abused children who come under paragraph 1 of Schedule 1. The noble and learned Baroness referred to these children. I have been approached by the Grandparents’ Association and Grandparents Plus, which have expressed their deep concerns about the time limit. For example, in the case of a mother who is a drug addict, child protection proceedings may be started. The mother may enter prison or disappear from the scene for some time and the grandparents step in to care for the child. The mother may return to the scene but is not be happy with the situation and wants to have her child back. The grandparents would need to apply for a special guardianship order or a residence order.

It would be helpful if the Minister would be prepared to go even further as regards paragraph 11 of Schedule 1 and lift the time limit in order that those grandparents who provide such an important role do not risk having to invest their life’s savings in trying to protect their relationship with the grandchild for whom they are caring.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, as has already been said by others, this House should always listen with great respect and interest to the noble and learned Lord. I agree with him to an extent in relation to a number of the issues that he has raised. I agree with him entirely that the sentence for public protection, the IPP, has become extremely undesirable and has resulted in a very large number of people remaining in prison for far longer than is necessary or even proper. I think that he would agree with me in the criticism I have made consistently with others over the years about the mandatory life sentence for murder.

However, I am bound to say that I would urge the Minister of State not to accept this amendment for a number of reasons which I at least regard as cogent and also hope that the House would. The first is that although the noble and learned Lord is absolutely right that sentencing is for the judges, as successive Home Secretaries have emphasised—I am pleased to see a very distinguished former Labour Home Secretary in his place during this short debate—sentencing policy is not for the judges. It is for the Government.

Part of sentencing policy legitimately, I would suggest to your Lordships, is setting the framework in which sentences for murder are imposed. The provision that the noble and learned Lord wishes to have repealed has had two practical effects, apart from setting clear, public and consistent sentencing policy, which is well understood by all the judges who apply it. The first is that in reality, it has diluted, although not completely removed, the offensive consequences of the mandatory life sentence. Those of us who have appeared as counsel for the prosecution and for the defence in many murder cases know that the effect of the provisions that the noble and learned Lord criticises has been to enable those who advise people charged with murder to give a tariff before the judge gives his or her tariff at the end of the case. In reality, people charged with murder are able to be advised as to their likely sentence beyond its being a mandatory life sentence.

The second consequence has been an exponential increase in the number of guilty pleas in murder cases. Lawyers are able to advise the accused person—sometimes with the help of the judge based on these clear statutory guidelines—as to the sentence that he or she is likely to face. With that knowledge—I speak from experience as a criminal barrister—I have seen a number of people charged with murder plead guilty after it has been made clear where on the statutory tariff they lie. Certainly, in my early years in practice, it was almost unheard of for anyone to plead guilty to murder.

An obvious effect of that consequence is that witnesses who may have suffered extremely traumatic events—sometimes the children of the murder victim—do not have to give evidence in court. Surely, that is an advantage. My view is that the current provisions provide for fairness to victims, fairness to defendants and apply a degree of predictability. In my view, they increase, rather than decrease, public confidence in the system.

It is a very nice view, and I wish we could say it with complete confidence, that we should simply leave murder sentencing to the judges, with some guidance from the Sentencing Council. But that does not go far enough. It is the specificity of the statutory provisions that makes the real difference day by day in criminal courts up and down the country, where murder cases are tried these days in most instances not by High Court judges but by circuit judges, with what is rather unhappily called a murder ticket.

In conclusion, my advice to my noble friend—for what little it is worth—would be to leave well alone, albeit with the option, of course, of changing the guidelines from time to time to meet circumstances.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I am probably the only person currently in the House who has actually carried out murder investigations. When you knock on the door and say you are investigating a burglary, nobody takes much interest. When you knock on the door and say you are investigating a murder, the reaction is very different. I am fully in support of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, because murder is different. It is not just any other crime. In my opinion, it is actually the crime by which the public judge the criminal justice system.

I find myself somewhat surprised to be arguing against the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, but I think that the combination he used of sentences for murder and indeterminate sentences does not, in this argument, add up, because this is about murder. I am fully in support of almost everything the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has said. I had expected to speak for longer; I came to the House to speak to this amendment. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has said almost everything that needs to be said—except for this emphasis that I would place before your Lordships’ House that murder is different. I believe that Parliament has a right—indeed, a duty—to set the tariffs from which judges then make their decisions about sentencing.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, lest there should seem to be unanimity on these Benches, I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, in his amendment.

When I started out at the Bar, people did not plead guilty to murder at all. It was a throwback to the time when hanging was the only sentence that could be passed and therefore guilty pleas were sometimes simply not accepted and a person was told to plead not guilty so that the case could be properly proved. We have moved very far from that, to the present situation, which I find mechanistic. The gap between the 15-year starting point and the 30-year starting point is far too great, in my view. It is mechanistic in that once you get your starting point, you start to deduct for this and add for that, and at the end of the day, after this complicated arithmetic, you guess at what might possibly be the sentence and advise your client accordingly.

I do not find that a very helpful way of going about things. Today there are provisions for obtaining some guidance from the judge as to the sort of sentence he would pass in certain circumstances, and that is a better way of going. These artificial starting points of 15 years and 30 years have been laid down by people with no experience of how the courts work or how cases are brought to court, and with no personal contact with clients or anything of that sort, and are not the way we should be conducting our sentencing policy. I agree with everything that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has said.