Sentencing Council Guidelines

Debate between Graham Stringer and Shabana Mahmood

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

The proper role of a pre-sentence report is to give a judge who is about to pass down a sentence vital information about the context of that offender—for example, whether there has been domestic abuse, their age and other vital factors relevant to the offending behaviour—so that the judge can make a decision about the best sentence to pass. The pre-sentence report is not about setting right any other wrongs that exist, however legitimate they are—that is not the point of the pre-sentence report—but about giving the sentencer in every single individual case the information that they need, such as whether a woman is pregnant or has recently given birth, as the Court of Appeal upheld recently. Those circumstances should be properly understood by judges. The position in law is that a pre-sentence report should be sought by judges in all cases, unless the court considers it unnecessary to do so. That covers the majority of cases where a pre-sentence report should be sought, but we should not confuse the proper role of what the pre-sentence report is there to do.

To the extent that there are over-representations, I see them too. Over 70% of my constituents are non-white and, as the right hon. Lady can see, I am from an ethnic minority background myself, and I am also from a faith minority. I see those disparities—they are a lived reality of my own life—but I am not prepared to sacrifice the principle of equality before the law to put those disparities right. I wish to be more curious than anybody else has been in previous years about what lies behind those disparities, and about what are the proper levers that have to be pulled to put them right. We often discuss judicial diversity, but I am not sure that increases in diversity have necessarily led to a change in what the underlying data shows. Clearly, there is more going on. Any solutions that politicians come up with have to be tested in the House, because they are properly the domain of policy and Parliament.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on a victory over the Sentencing Council on the fundamental principle of equality before the law? The independence of the Sentencing Council does not entitle its members to go over its boundaries, into the area of policy and politics into which they have strayed. That is such a fundamental issue that having made those fundamental errors of judgment, those members of the Sentencing Council should no longer be able to carry on in the job, whether it is by their own decision or that of the Secretary of State.

[Shabana Mahmood]

In fairness to the Sentencing Council, it sought views from the previous Government and was told that the Government welcomed its findings, both in the consultation and the guideline. The Sentencing Council did not do anything wrong in the process that it followed. I invited it to consider that there had been a change of Government and a change of policy since it began work on the guideline, and asked it to consider reopening the consultation. I was disappointed that it chose not to do so, but I am not interested in making this a personal debate about individuals. I am grateful to the Sentencing Council for pausing the guideline, which has not come into effect. All our previous arrangements in relation to pre-sentence reports remain in place. As I say, I am considering the wider role and powers of the Sentencing Council, and I will return to the House with further proposals in due course.