Unduly Lenient Sentences

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend is a member of that Committee and it should take a much tougher line and a much closer look at the issue of fairness or unfairness. I may be wrong—I may be banging my head against a brick wall. Perhaps victims do not want their voices heard. Perhaps they do not want to feel that they are equal in the courts.

In the past few weeks I have taken up the biggest anomaly, which really upsets me. I appealed recently against the sentences given to a group of gentlemen—I use that word advisedly—who were involved in the sex gangs in Newcastle. I can say that because they have been convicted. When I saw the sentence, I was very surprised that the judge had not taken into consideration that the crimes were obviously racially motivated. All the girls but one, I think, were white, and nearly all the perpetrators were of Asian extraction. That is not casting aspersions on the whole community; they are simply the facts.

I wrote to the Attorney General, to ask whether he would kindly look into this, whether he agreed that the sentences were unduly lenient and, if so, whether he could refer the issue to the appeal court. To my astonishment, a very polite letter came back from the Attorney General that said, “I’m really sorry; I cannot look into this, because you are outside the 28-day limit. You have to appeal within 28 days to the Attorney General.” I said, “It was only in the papers the day before yesterday”. “Ah”, said the Attorney General, because the judge had put a restriction on reporting the sentencing. The sentence had actually taken place about two and half months beforehand. The victims did not know that and neither did we. No one knew, so it was not possible to appeal against the leniency.

From conversations that I have had with the Solicitor General, I know that he will come up with some ideas. The situation, however, is an insult to those victims whom we are supposed to represent, not just here but in our courts, so that justice is seen to be done. I ask the Solicitor General: is there an answer? A pretty simple answer would be that, if the judge puts a restriction on court reporting, the Attorney General should be informed of the sentence and be able to look into it. Even though that is a step in the right direction, the problem is that the victims do not know, so their legal representatives are not able to appeal on their behalf, and neither are we. We need to do something about that. I have previously discussed with the Attorney General the issue of how to get justice for victims and I got quite an interesting response. It was very different from that which I received form the Ministry of Justice. The simplest way for victims to get justice would be to make it possible to appeal against unduly lenient sentences in the Crown court. That option is available to the perpetrators—those found guilty of a crime have those rights—so why is it not available for victims?

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Will the right hon Gentleman give way?

[Sir Mike Penning]

I will just say one last thing and then I will give way, as I am conscious of the time. I am absolutely passionate about this issue. I believe that we have the greatest criminal justice system in the world, but it needs to learn from what it is doing wrong. This is one example of that.