Draft Sentencing Act 2020 (Amendment of Schedule 21) Regulations 2025

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 General Committees

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison, and to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. This delegated legislation follows on from legislation laid by the previous Government as part of their response to the independent domestic homicide sentencing review undertaken by Clare Wade KC.

As the Minister outlined, the regulations amend schedule 21 to add aggravating factors for when the murder is connected with the end of an intimate personal relationship, and when the murder involves strangulation, suffocation or asphyxiation. The previous Government, of course, gave consideration to introducing these measures, as they were determined to identify approaches to reduce the rate and nature of violence perpetrated against women and girls.

Our earlier legislative changes introduced statutory aggravating factors for repeated controlling or coercive behaviour by the offender, and sustained and excessive violence towards the victim, but, as the Minister will know, the Government chose not to take forward these specific measures at that time. I am sure that he has been privy to the full range of official advice on these amendments, even if he has ultimately decided to move forward with them now. The Sentencing Council articulated the counter-argument to their introduction in its consultation response, focusing on the challenges of an approach that distinguishes through method rather than the impact of violence of one type or another. The Sentencing Council also expressed concerns that trials might face complex evidential questions about what constitutes an intimate personal relationship. It was not unreasonable to pause and give consideration to those concerns, but we recognise why the Government have now chosen to proceed with these measures.

As the Minister explained, in over a third of the murder cases studied in the Wade review,

“the murder occurred at the end, or perceived end, of the relationship.”

The use of strangulation was also frequently involved, a method of killing that is disproportionately used by men against women, and which has long been recognised as a marker of escalating abuse and lethal violence.

The Law Commission is currently reviewing the law on homicide and sentencing more generally. So if there is a residual concern about how all the different aggravating and mitigating factors interact, that review will present an opportunity for the Government to consider the matter in the round in a way that might assuage concerns about these individual measures.

In conclusion, for now, we respect the Government’s settled view that they believe these measures may on balance bring benefit, and we will not oppose them this evening. But I say to the Minister that the Government do need to make up their mind. The benefit of introducing measures such as these is somewhat muted, because at the same time, the Government are introducing a whole raft of other measures that make the efforts to tackle violence against women and girls and particularly the fight for justice for them harder.

The Government have committed to letting out offenders after serving a third of their sentences simply for not breaking the rules while in prison. They voted against our measures to allow victims to appeal unduly lenient sentences and to protect victims from having their impact statements unduly interfered with. They have introduced automatic release in relation to parole breaches, rather than keeping people in prison until it is safe to let them out. And last week, they welcomed a report that recommended even greater discount for guilty pleas, which, when combined with the Gauke recommendations, could see a domestic abuser serve just one fifth of their sentence.

Measures like these this evening are not going to change the situation, and victims will notice. They will know when they are being given something with one hand only to have twice as much taken away with the other, and we will hold the Government to account for that every step of the way.