Sentencing

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House opposes changing the maximum discount for custodial sentences to up to 50% for those who plead guilty.

Should an offender who commits any offence—grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, attempted murder, burglary, mugging, downloading child porn, rape—be given a discount in his or her sentence of up to 50% if they plead guilty at the earliest opportunity? I will deal with the issue in three parts: first, the background to the policy; then I shall move on to its real motivation; thirdly, and finally, I will put my case for why the House should reject that policy.

Sentencing represents the climax of the court process at the point when a defendant is found guilty or pleads guilty. Judges or magistrates decide within set guidelines on the most appropriate sentence to hand down, basing their decision on a range of factors, including the severity of the offence. Punishment is a key purpose of sentencing—punishing offenders for the crime they have committed—but it is also about deterrence both for society as a whole and to the individual in question, aiming to prevent the offender from committing another offence.

A key factor not to be underestimated is the protection of the public and the respite provided to communities, but we must also emphasise the importance of rehabilitating offenders. Sentencing provides the opportunity to work with offenders to reduce the chances of their reoffending in the future. It is about focusing on what works to ensure that there is no drift back into a life of crime, but it also provides the opportunity to work with those who have debilitating mental health issues and dependencies on drugs and alcohol.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is suffering from political amnesia, given that his Government presided over the debacle of failing to deport a huge number of foreign prisoners and were also responsible for the deeply unpopular and failed policy of the early release scheme.

[Sadiq Khan]

I will deal with both those points. Last week, the Justice Front-Bench team were asked how many of these foreign prisoners they had deported during the 12 months that they had been in power, and the answer was—quote of quotes—“about 60”. As to the end-of-custody licence, on four occasions between 1979 and 1997, the previous Conservative Government released prisoners early—without the checks and balances that we had, whereby no serious or violent offenders were let out on our watch.

How to balance these different purposes of sentencing is in the judges’ discretion, and plea bargaining is also a key part of our sentencing system. Part of plea bargaining is when an offender’s sentence is reduced on submission of a guilty plea. This is an aspect of our sentencing system that has evolved over many decades, becoming more formalised in recent years.