Taking Account of Convictions (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Lord Morris of Aberavon Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation of these modest proposals. I come to them as one who was a sentencer for many years. When I was a sentencer, I would have had even greater interest in them. I first sat as a sentencer in 1973 in Cardiff and continued to do so until I became a law officer in 1997. Sentencing is not an easy process. At the end of a week’s sitting, you may have half a dozen cases to sentence, and each one has to be considered carefully and—for lack of a better word—judiciously. The basic requirement has remained unchanged over the years: that the sentencer should have full knowledge of the track record of the person to be sentenced if justice is to be done. That is the paramount consideration.

The Minister has explained that what we are doing here is filling a gap, or at least a potential gap. We are dealing with criminal proceedings instituted but not concluded before the end of the transition period, which are the subject matter of these regulations. It is important that there is no gap in the knowledge available about a person to be sentenced. The requirement is that the circumstances are known to the sentencer, so far as they are required by national law. The Minister used the words “domestic law”. My question is simple. These regulations obviously apply to the law of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, but do they apply equally to Scotland, given that the Minister used the words “domestic law”? With these few words, I very much welcome these regulations.