Sentencing Bill [HL]

Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab) [V]]

Like every other speaker I voice my support for the Bill, on behalf of the Opposition. Like so many others, I pay tribute to David Ormerod and the Law Commission. This truly is the product of huge amounts of hard work and should be admired. We should pass the Bill, which is intended to—and does, as far as I am aware—bring all those disparate sentencing provisions spread out over 1,300 pages of different statutes into one place.

When the Bill passes, it could be an important legislative day, or it could go the way of all previous attempts to consolidate sentences. If what David Ormerod and this House want were to happen, the Bill, when it becomes an Act, will be a comprehensive code for what a sentencing court does after October 2020, in respect of anybody convicted after that date. It will need only to look at the Act to know the procedure, limits and powers that it has.

The problems identified previously—the problems that led to that quite small but very telling survey in 2012, which indicated that 36% of sentences were unlawful—mean that judges, quite legitimately, and often assisted by counsel who find the same difficulties as the judge, do not know which sentence has been brought into force, what the maximum for one sentence was or what powers were available, depending on the date when an offence had been committed. That led to the inaccessibility of the sentencing regime, the terrifying lack of accuracy that has occurred in sentencing and—although I do not think it has led to much public awareness of this, wrongly—a reduction in public confidence in whether the sentencing regime works.

The Bill seeks, rightly, to remedy all the problems with that lack of certainty and those difficulties. It will save money over time: the estimate is hundreds of millions of pounds. It will make it easier for judges and defendants to know what the likely sentence will be, and it will increase public confidence. I commend it, for all those reasons.

I note what my noble friend Lord Adonis says: that this is fiddling while Rome burns. Yes, there can be a lot of debate about whether we have the right sentencing framework, but that should not prevent us making whatever legal framework we have accessible and understandable. I also note what my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey says. Yes, there are real problems in how our prisons are currently managed but, again, that is not a reason for leaving the law on sentencing in the state that it is.

I note what the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, said about whether one should abandon juries in certain specified circumstances where they are presently available. I am strongly against the abandonment of the jury system in England because of the emergency. That would lead victims to feel that if there were acquittals, it was because there was emergency justice, and lead those defendants who were convicted to feel that it was because they ended up in a situation where they had emergency justice. The Ministry of Justice should focus on ensuring that there are enough courts to deal with jury trials, rather than amending our basic system. I say in parenthesis how strongly I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, about the merit and wonder of Dick Ferguson as an advocate. He was one of the finest advocates of his generation. The noble Lord described the circumstances in which Dick Ferguson, a former unionist member of Stormont, as it was then called, defended a member of the IRA charged with the Brighton bombing.

Coming back to the Bill, I join all your Lordships in supporting it. I also join those of your Lordships who say that it will work only if future Governments change sentencing only by amending this code, and not by introducing new Acts of Parliament. Home Offices and Home Secretaries can be as incontinent as they like in relation to justice Bills and new sentences. If they make the changes to sentencing by amending this Bill when it becomes an Act of Parliament, the “one code” approach will remain. Only if they do that will the Bill, and its passage into an Act, turn out to be an historic occasion. I very much hope that it will.