Criminal Law

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Victims who feel that a sentence is unduly lenient currently have a 28-day period following sentencing to apply under the unduly lenient sentencing scheme to the Attorney General, who can then make a reference to the Court of Appeal. On a review of sentencing more generally, which may well include the tragic case to which my hon. Friend referred, the sentencing White Paper that will come forward a little later this year, followed by a sentencing Bill, will provide my hon. Friend and other colleagues with an opportunity to raise issues that go beyond the matters we are considering today. I will of course listen carefully to this debate, in which colleagues from all parties may raise issues that can feed into the sentencing White Paper.

One topic that the sentencing White Paper will certainly deal with, although we are not dealing with it today, is short custodial sentences, which are not particularly effective at stopping reoffending. The White Paper will address that, and in particular it will make proposals to do more to treat the causes of offending behaviour, particularly drug and alcohol addiction and mental health problems, which are often the cause of high-volume repeat offending. Short custodial sentences do not deal effectively with that cohort of offenders, but that is not the topic of the regulations; it is a matter we will come to in the forthcoming White Paper and sentencing Bill.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. May I offer a refinement on the suggestion made by my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne)? We understand why one wants to give prisoners who are serving a sentence an incentive to behave well in jail, but that could be achieved without this upset of the public perception that someone is getting a longer sentence than they are really getting. Prisoners could be given the sentence that they are going to serve, with the expectation that if they misbehave, it can be extended by a certain amount, rather than their being given a sentence that they can reduce by a certain amount if they behave themselves in prison. That would avoid the perception among the public that the Government are trying to con them into believing that the sentences being imposed are more severe than we all know them to be in reality.

[Chris Philp]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I should make it clear—I will explain this in a bit more detail in a moment—that the standard determinate sentences under discussion today have an automatic release point. The current release point, at 50% of the sentence, is not contingent on good behaviour; it is automatic. We are proposing to remove that automatic release point to two thirds as a first step, but, of course, there are other things that we could do in the area that he has just mentioned. Examining and investigating the clarity of sentencing decisions and how the public understand them are certainly matters that the sentencing White Paper and sentencing Bill can properly look at, and I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising that.

What today’s regulations do is to take a very specific area where we can act quickly and immediately, rather than waiting for the larger and wider piece of work to be done later in the year. Of course, as part of that piece of work, we might well choose to go further than is the case today, but here is an area where we can act quickly and decisively and deliver on a critical manifesto commitment just 47 days after the general election.