Sentencing Bill

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

The safeguards now in the clauses are certainly sufficient to dissuade us from attempting to remove the clauses altogether at this stage. But I will say just that, if it were to turn out that the independence and functioning of the Sentencing Council were to be seriously compromised by the fetters now put on its power, that would be extremely worrying. I repeat what I have said before: the Sentencing Council does extremely important work. It performs its functions with creditable independence and is a very significant body indeed. I hope nothing will happen as a result of these clauses to curb that independence or the effectiveness of the Sentencing Council.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a very short intervention before my Front Bench replies. I believe we should remember that Farage, in more or less a chance remark, said he thought that the council should be abolished. So, the issues raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, are very important, and I very much admire the detailed presentation he made to your Lordships’ House on these clauses.

I am grateful for what I would regard as the rescue mission on which the Government have gone to make the best of a bad job. Certainly, the hare that was run in March last year, to which the Government made their reply, was a very unfortunate hare. It was something to do with two-tier justice. It would have been better to let that hare run. Hares run in circuits: they come back to where they started and, very often, everything settles down. Instead of that, we have had to have some very careful work done to get us to where we are.

All over the House, we will be grateful that the Sentencing Council has in effect received a vote of confidence. We were looking for that and we are very grateful that it has happened. But we should not forget the rather troubled way in which the two parties that have the greatest experience of government and the implementation of policy got themselves into a tangle quite unnecessarily.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, I am obliged to the Ministers for their engagement on this issue. However, we should bear in mind that our statutory provisions are designed to address powers and not intentions. It is certainly questionable whether we should be enacting provisions which we consider will never be used. They are on the statute book and they are available for use.

I am obliged to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, for outlining the issues here. The language he used was indicative of the reservations we all have with regard to this course of action: “unfortunate”, “inconsistent” and “a slight improvement”. It is not a ringing endorsement of anyone’s legislation.

The Government’s stance on the relationship between the Executive and the judiciary remains demonstrably unclear and uncertain. On the one hand, they repeat that sentencing is a matter for our independent judiciary—I quote the Ministers. We did not support the original Clauses 18 and 19 as drafted, but nor do we support these amendments, as they appear to simply illustrate the Government’s internal inconsistency with regard to the Sentencing Council. These amendments simply add more confusion to the puzzled stance the Government have towards the Sentencing Council.

On Report, the Government have now implemented amendments to reduce the degree to which their own Bill reduces the Sentencing Council’s independence. But do the Government retain any idea of how independent they would like the Sentencing Council to be?