Kevin Foster
Main Page: Kevin Foster (Conservative - Torbay)Department Debates - View all Kevin Foster's debates with the Attorney General
(1 year, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberThat pleasure falls to me, Mr Speaker. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words, as I know the Attorney General is. He is right to highlight the words of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and he will know that the Attorney General and I work closely with the director and listen carefully to what he says.
In the vast majority of cases, judges get sentencing right. The Court of Appeal grants permission to refer a sentence only in exceptional circumstances, and over the last five years the Court of Appeal has increased the sentence in around 70% of cases.
My hon. Friend will be aware that the recent publication of statistics regarding the operation of the unduly lenient sentencing scheme during 2021 indicated 151 referrals to the Court of Appeal. How many of those referrals under the scheme followed representations from the victim of a crime to the Attorney General’s Office about the sentence given, and what is being done to ensure that victims are aware of their ability to do that?
My hon. Friend knows a lot about the scheme and has long-term interest in it. Of those 151 cases, only eight were referred by victims and a further nine by a member of a victim’s family, and that is not just an aberration for that year; it is a consistent trend. We regularly publish updates on the outcome of these sentences, and the revised victims code includes details of the ULS scheme.