Queen’s Speech

Lord Woolf Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolf (CB)]

My Lords, before I retired as a judge—as has been said by others and as I am fond of saying, I became statutorily senile with regard to court proceedings—I had the privilege of hearing the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, in court. He was one of those advocates who was so persuasive that one had to be very cautious not to give a judgment too quickly, because you might find afterwards that there was something that you had overlooked.

I was going to talk on two subjects today, the first being the question that the noble Lord has just addressed. I am bound to say that I cannot do better than to say that if I was in court I would agree with his arguments in their entirety, because they are overwhelming. This is relevant to the other point that I wish to address, and noble Lords may not be surprised to hear that it concerns prisons. It is a huge pleasure to me and an enormous credit to the present Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State that so many reforms are contemplated for our prison system. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said about the present Lord Chancellor.

However, there can be occasions—perhaps both the topics that I want to address are the same—where it is possible that political necessity causes a course to be taken that might not otherwise be taken. In politics, there is always the danger of announcing a U-turn or of saying that you are going to interfere with sentencing, not to obtain the plaudits of the popular press by increasing sentences but by changing sentences. There may be a real element of truth in both these matters, and that may be why the Government are where they are.

However, that does not mean that one should not welcome what is being offered because it has something that one finds unattractive. In my case, on prison reform, it is the fact that the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice has made it clear that he feels that he can implement those reforms without interfering with the overcrowding in prisons. On 1 March, the Guardian reported that:

“The justice secretary said there was no need to ‘manage down the prison population’ or to introduce an ‘artificial target’ to reduce the number of prisoners”,

and that he revealed that the Treasury had promised to provide the funds we have heard about today.

I have to say to the Lord Chancellor that in the period I have been involved in the prison situation, the evidence has been entirely to the contrary. The biggest problem in the prison system has been caused continuously by overcrowding. It is as a result of overcrowding that, again and again, attempts to introduce reforms have been unsuccessful. I therefore urge him as earnestly as I can to think again about that policy. It is very important that he uses his position and his powers in that position to ensure that sentences are reduced and that, as a result of the sentences being reduced, there is less of a problem of overcrowding.

With one eye on the clock, I suggest that he could, perhaps without standing on the toes of those who would otherwise protest at his policies, put a clause into the Bill, which I hope would become law, saying that there should be an overriding principle with regard to sentencing that would make it clear that no court should sentence an offender to imprisonment unless to do so would, in the opinion of the court, be in the interests of justice or be necessary to protect the public. If that were done, it would give confidence to the judiciary to sentence within the framework provided by the Government.