Sentencing Council Guidelines

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)]

My Lords, I used to chair the Sentencing Guidelines Council, which was the predecessor to the present Sentencing Council. As the House has heard, a primary role of the Sentencing Council is to promote consistency in sentencing. At present, there is an apparent inconsistency, in that ethnic minority defendants appear, according to statistics, to be receiving more severe sentences than white defendants. The Sentencing Council guideline that is under attack instructs judges to call for a pre-sentence report before sentencing a defendant from this cohort. Might not this guidance be intended to promote consistency of sentencing rather than the contrary? If there is a question as to whether it achieves this object, could this not better be dealt with by discussion rather than legislation?

[The Lord Bishop of Southwark]

My Lords—