Oral Answers to Questions

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

This is a good time of the year for patience and I urge the right hon. Gentleman to be patient. It will be important in what we do, first, to recognise the key role of the probation service, as he says, and secondly, to do better than we have done on reoffending. When, as now, 50% of those released from prison reoffend within 12 months and a third of those on community orders do the same, we must look at ways of doing better.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

5. If he will make it his policy that courts will continue to have the power to impose whole-life tariffs for the most serious offences.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

10. If he will make it his policy that courts will continue to have the power to impose whole-life tariffs for the most serious offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

There is settled policy in England and Wales that some offences are so grave that they are deserving of imprisonment for the rest of the offender’s life for the purposes of punishment and deterrence. The Secretary of State and I take the view that whole-life tariffs should remain an option for sentences in appropriate cases.

[Henry Smith]

What other measures has my hon. Friend taken to ensure that appropriately long sentences can be given by the courts, particularly for violent and serious sexual offences?

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend is right to be concerned, particularly about those types of offences; they give the public a good deal of concern, too. That is why this month we have implemented new sentences, which will allow for a mandatory life sentence for a second serious violent or sexual offence, and for extended determinate sentences for the first or the second offence which is a serious offence and merits it. Those are new sentencing proposals produced by this Government to reflect exactly what my hon. Friend has identified.