Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 7th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, add my heartfelt congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Nichols, on her wonderful maiden speech. I know her from back in North Yorkshire. She was always a wonderful woman—a wonderful lady. If you went to some of her meetings, she was very like a mother hen gathering her chicks around her. She was always looking out for somebody who was on the margin and excluded, and she tried to draw them in. What noble Lords have heard is what I experienced when she was a politician. She is still loved in Selby, and people still remember her. I remember the grand opening of the organ in that wonderful place. She was there helping with tea and coffee, serving and being involved. She did it from the heart. It was never a show. With her smile and her welcome, you always knew you had come home. I look forward to hearing what she is going to say. Her maiden speech was one of those things that reminded me of North Yorkshire.

Some of your Lordships may be surprised, but I welcome this Bill for the reasons clearly set out in the Explanatory Notes and the House of Lords Library briefing by Claire Brader. They give the reasons why this is happening: in the meeting with the Sentencing Council, it did not want to change things within its guidance, so the Government thought it was right to change it by legislation—and that is the only way you could change it; there is no other way, because the body is independent.

I agree with His Majesty’s Government that the Bill will ensure equality—I would rather use that word than “fairness”—for all in our courts. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said exactly the same. If we go for “equality” and not “fairness”, then everybody will be clearly included within it.

This law will prevent the Sentencing Council publishing guidelines that stipulate the use of a pre-sentence report —PSR—based on the offender’s personal characteristics. The Government have created this, and I think they should have been much wiser to pick out those characteristics that are prohibited to be used as a basis for exclusion from the Human Rights Act. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said the same thing: race, religion and belief are protected characteristics. Why not put in those protected characteristics or simply refer to Article 9 as set out in the Human Rights Act? That would be much clearer. Of course, they have done a bit about race, belief, and a thing I do not understand: “cultural background”? What does it mean? Does it mean that both of us grew up on the same estate and that, if you did not, you have no background? That is the bit in the Bill that I think is not worth retaining —the Government have to find something better.

I turn to that four-letter word, race. I was chair of the General Synod’s Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns, which came out of the Faith in the City report. We carried out a survey of the ways of combating racism in the dioceses of the Church of England in 1991, and we called it Seeds of Hope. We said this about the nature of humanity: men and women, boys and girls, of every hue and ethnic group belong to the one race, the human race, all made in the image of God, and all are of unique worth in his sight.

The word “race” has had a troubled history. Racism is born out of ignorance. Sadly, ignorance is not in short supply, and that is why we get racism. Apartheid in South Africa, for example, believed that colour defined the race of a person. Laws were passed, from marriage to where you lived and where you were buried, because you belonged to a very different race from those who were governing at the time. Next door in Zimbabwe, the seizure of white farms led to the turning of a food basket for the whole region into a basket case. White farmers and their workers belong to the one human race and deserved to be treated thus. Humanity belongs to the one human race—even, I want to say, in Zimbabwe.

Margaret and I have three grandchildren. Two are from a white father and a black mother, while the third is from a white mother and a black father. All three, by the way, are not from mixed parentage or different races; they are blessed to be what we call “double ethnic”—that is, with a white parent and a black parent. It is not that they are “coloured” or this, that or the other stuff. I wish His Majesty’s Government had used a better word, which for me is “ethnicity”, not “race”. The word “race” has an unfortunate history. When most people talk about race they are talking about me, because I happen to be black and Ugandan; when you are talking about a white person, the word “race” does not appear. We all belong to an ethnic group, but equally we belong to the one human race.

I hope we will find a way of talking about this so that we bury the word “racism”, because it often does not describe what you want to describe. During the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, we talked to people in Birmingham who held the view that every white policeman in the Met was a racist simply because they happened to be white and they happened to be in the police. That was a difficult gathering. Then you get some black people to whom you may suggest that their views are racist but they deny that: “Me, a black person? Of course I can’t be racist”. But look at Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

I ask the Government to listen to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and table an amendment that is easier to understand and describes the very thing they want to do. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, thinks that is unnecessary. If tonight, by a miracle, the Sentencing Council could take out the words that have made the Government create this Bill, then of course there would be no need for it because they would not be in the guidance. But, while that is still the case, I support the Government in making sure that those sections in the guidance are prevented by law. However, I ask the Government to make the law clearer in what it is doing and to drop the question of cultural background. I do not know what it means, and I am not sure whether they know what it means, but it is in the Bill.