Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Blair of Boughton

Thursday 9th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[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.