Homicide Law Reform

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, and it is a pleasure to follow two fellow members of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis). I did not intend to speak in this debate, and I am sure many people would rather I did not, but I have been prompted to speak briefly.

If I am well known for anything—I am probably not well known for anything at all—it is for being a hard-liner when it comes to dealing with crime and sentencing. I despair at the shocking sentences that are given out by judges and at some of the sentencing guidelines, which do not do justice to the crimes that have been committed. It may well be that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham thinks that I am instinctively opposed to his plans. I thought it worth saying that, as it happens, I am not instinctively opposed to his plans. He made a very compelling case, as anybody who knows him would expect. I would not say that I am wholly persuaded, but I still have an open mind on this particular issue. I hope that the Government will have an open mind on this issue, because it is worthy of further debate.

One of the attractions, it seems to me, of what my hon. Friend is proposing is that it may lead to some more honesty in sentencing. One of the things that really irritates people about the criminal justice system is that we have sentences that sound tough, and make politicians sound tough when they say they are going to extend life sentences for this and that, but in reality are not tough at all. Dishonesty in sentencing is one of the worst parts of our criminal justice system and brings it into disrepute. If my hon. Friend’s plans were to lead to more honesty in sentencing, that in itself would be a good thing.

[John Howell]

I appreciate what my hon. Friend is saying about sentencing. Of course, we now have the Sentencing Council and, without wishing to create a bit of a love-in for members of the Justice Committee here, we do have the power to review sentences and comment on them. Is he suggesting that we should take a harder line on those in order to get the sentencing right? I get the feeling that the judiciary are simply following our guidelines.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is another member of the Justice Committee who is more talented than me. Yes, we should concentrate more on sentencing guidelines as a Committee and as a Parliament, because these matters are of great importance to our constituents. They are the ones, at the end of the day, who feel that the law comes into disrepute with some of the sentences that are handed down. I do not think we should leave it to unelected people to determine sentencing guidelines. We should be taking a greater role in those guidelines, absolutely.

I have an open mind about what my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham proposes, and I hope that the Government will look at it, because I think there are some merits in what he said. I would certainly not rule out supporting some of the changes that he articulated. We should not rush into this either. There are other things that we should think about. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury mentioned the fact that the average minimum tariff for murder had increased from 13 years to 17 years. I was not entirely sure, if she was making a point about that, whether that was a good a thing or a bad thing. Most of my constituents would say that the increase in that tariff is a good thing.

[Victoria Prentis]

Just to clarify, I was making the point that that was the reality of the situation; that sentences for murder were getting longer and that it was important for judges to have the full range of sentences open to them so that they could match the sentence to the offence.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I think most of my constituents will be pleased to know that the average length of the minimum tariff given for murder has gone up. I suspect that if I were to do a straw poll of my constituents, most of them would be shocked that the average minimum tariff for the crime of murder was so low. I suspect most people in the country would be shocked that the average minimum tariff for murder was as little as 13 years in the first place. This is one of the great disconnects that we have with the general public at large; they expect murder sentences to be much tougher than that.

One of my notes of caution, therefore, for my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham is that his proposal might be used as a mechanism to try to weaken sentences for murder. That would fly in the face, I suspect, of what the public want to see. If somebody’s agenda is that penalties for murder at the moment are too harsh and this is a way of weakening them, that would be a terrible development. One of my notes of caution is that this does not get hijacked for all the wrong reasons by some of the penal reform groups that seem to have a view that nobody should be sent to prison at all. That is my first note of caution.

My second note of caution, and the reason why we need to tread carefully, is that in the cases that my hon. Friend alluded to, most people would accept that somebody’s life had been taken with some form of malice aforethought. At no point should we belittle the fact that somebody has had their life taken away with malice aforethought.

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend is making some very helpful and important contributions. What he says is absolutely right, but whether it is the retired colonel who goes round to his noisy neighbour or the pub thug, under my proposals they would both be convicted of second-degree murder. That would mark society’s condemnation and give the judge power to sentence.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with that point; as I said at the start, I do not necessarily disagree with my hon. Friend. It is just worth making the point that in all the cases he referred to—hypothetical or not—somebody’s life had been taken, with some degree of malice aforethought associated with that. It would be dangerous if we did not give at least some recognition to that fact when considering these things. I certainly would not ever want to get into a situation where we seem to belittle one form of murder in order to form a distinction. We need to make it clear that both are terrible offences in their own particular ways.

If what my hon. Friend envisages is, perhaps, tougher sentences for first-degree murders in order to draw a distinction, I would welcome that. I think that there are many people in the country who, as it happens, think that life should mean life when it comes to murder, as it so often does in the United States of America, but very seldom does in the United Kingdom. If that was what he had in mind, I think he will get a great deal of support. If he was trying to use this as a Trojan horse to reduce sentences for murder, I suspect he would get very little support from the public. Knowing him as I do, I do not think he has that kind of agenda; he genuinely wants to make sure that the law is fit for purpose and is not brought into disrepute. He does a fantastic job in Parliament in pursuing that agenda, both in the House and on the Justice Committee.

This is something we need to debate further; there is not a clear-cut case one way or the other. I will retain an open mind—people who know me well know that that does not happen very often. All I ask of the Government and of the official Opposition is that they also keep an open mind and discuss all the implications of any such change in the law. My hon. Friend’s case is a very good one and is certainly something that I can envisage happening at some point in the future.