Sentencing Bill [HL]

Lord Morris of Aberavon Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Minister for his careful explanation of the Bill. When I sent for it, I was overwhelmed by its sheer volume. I join in its universal welcome. I do so as a criminal law practitioner over a period of 40 to 50 years, and I am humbled by the speeches from distinguished ex-judges.

I remember sitting as a young assistant recorder, dragooned by my former pupil master, Sir Alun Davies QC, to sit as his deputy as a recorder of Cardiff in about 1972. I shall never forget the first case I tried, involving a novel defence in a breathalyser case, having just helped as a junior Minister to pilot the Bill in question through the House of Commons. Breathalyser legislation turned out to be a cottage industry. When I ruled against the defence counsel, I thought it would end my judicial career. It did, but not for that reason: rather, because of my lack of judicial aspiration when set against the delights of politics. Some of the difficulties one had to negotiate when sitting as a judge involved complex sentencing on traffic cases, for example, and changes from time to time in suspended sentences. Frequently, the clerk and even the jailer were more up to speed than the judge himself.

My thanks go to the Law Commission, created by Lord Gardiner under a Labour Government in which I also served very happily as a junior Minister. The striking feature of the briefing for this debate, already mentioned, is the complexity of statutory provisions. The Law Commission, having analysed 260 randomly selected cases before the Court of Appeal Criminal Division, found that 36% of cases had received unlawful sentences. Sir Brian Leveson has underlined the difficulties and struggles of judges in sentencing. I hope the judiciary will be able to navigate sentencing easier when the Bill receives Royal Assent. Equally important, the public and the sentenced will have more confidence in the judicial system.

I particularly welcome the clean-sweep provisions. They are very modest and adhere to and endorse the human rights convention. I hope they will be manageable against that background. They deal only with offences committed in the past, so they will apply only for a period. With those few remarks, I welcome the Bill.