Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I cannot speak as eloquently as the speakers we have just heard, but I want to say that this feels so much like law made by press release, and law made to virtue-signal, that I feel incredibly uncomfortable about it.

We want to say to emergency workers that we will protect them if they are at risk, but we know that the emergency worker in this instance, PC Harper, was not the target of the crime; it was not intentional to kill an emergency worker. So I do not see even how this operates as a deterrent, because it is not aimed at people who have put those emergency workers at risk, even though those workers have accidentally been killed in the pursuit of a criminal act that is, I accept, dangerous.

There is an exception, which is that the trial judge can make an alternative sentence in “exceptional circumstances”. But, as has been pointed out, the trial judge can already make an alternative sentence—a full life sentence in some circumstances—so why emphasise it, unless it is a political policy statement? It is not a matter of law; it is a question of saying, “We will be hard”, and it will inevitably lead to great injustice. The fact that 16 and 17 year-olds have been included means that very young people could now have mandatory life sentences for manslaughter, with no discretion, and no discretion encouraged. It is so wrong and brought in for all the wrong reasons.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I share many of the reservations expressed already and the analysis given on both the provision and the circumstances which have led to it. I ask the Minister, in his response to the debate, to deal with one of the points raised by the noble Viscount, which is the discretion that might be available to the judge in deciding what tariff accompanies the sentence, as opposed to the provisions of proposed new subsection (2), which give slightly more power—I refrain from defining it as a wider power—in exceptional circumstances to the judge to impose a different sentence altogether.

One thing the Minister did not cover in his helpful introduction was the extent to which the tariff provisions interact with this. I would be grateful if he could explain that, in case he can give us any reassurance about what seems to be the danger of making general law out of a particular case.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, if I may, I will add a point that follows on from what the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said. To require a life sentence is pure deception because we all know that life sentences are not life sentences, and there is a strong feeling that the life sentence for murder is a deception. Other than in the most exceptional circumstances, the person concerned will be released, and the judge pronounces, in open court, a tariff. I entirely understand why the Government wish to give comfort to the unfortunate relatives and friends of those heroic emergency workers who suffer this appalling treatment and die in service of the country, but it is a gesture—a misleading gesture. We really should not be perpetuating more and more life sentences when the reality is that people receive a term of years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I am not quite sure what I am being asked to accept, but I do not have any uncertainty as to what “exceptional circumstances” is. It is a phrase used in this legislation; it is used in other legislation; it is a phrase that is well known to the courts. It is a phrase that they are perfectly able to deal with.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

The relevance of IPP sentences to this debate is that, when IPP sentences were introduced, rather similar speeches were made from the Front Bench to the one that the Minister is making tonight. I know his style his different, but the fact remains that it was a disaster and a scandal. It developed in ways in which all those who introduced it did not anticipate, and now concede was wrong, but they had not fully understood at the time what the consequences were. This has all those hallmarks about it.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

As I said, I am very alive to the IPP issues, as the noble Lord knows; but the IPP issue and the IPP sentence was a novel sentence which did things that other sentences did not do. Indeed, that is why it was brought in. The shape of this sentence, however, is not novel. It is the application to this particular offence that is new. With the greatest of respect, therefore, I disagree with the comparison to IPP sentences, which were themselves novel.

I hope that I have set out the government position clearly and fairly—