Unduly Lenient Sentences

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing this debate. He makes a powerful and persuasive case.

To cut to the chase, clearly the point the right hon. Gentleman makes about unreported sentences and the strict application of the 28-day rule is unanswerable. That definitely needs fixing. However, the main question he has asked us today is: why should the category of case in which a prosecution can appeal against unduly lenient sentences be limited? As hon. Members have set out, the Attorney General can refer unduly lenient sentences to the Court of Appeal, but only where offences are triable on indictment or are one of a restricted number of specified “either way” offences. The right hon. Gentleman made a powerful case as to why that should change. There seems little logic in such restrictions, so could they be lifted?

I know there are always dangers in comparing the two legal systems, but let me briefly mention the position in Scotland, which I think is relevant and may assist the right hon. Gentleman’s case. The right to appeal against sentences in Scotland is contained in the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.

[Sir Mike Penning]

I am a great advocate of devolution—I was a Minister involved in devolution. This is a devolved matter; this is about English courts and Welsh courts. I do not really understand why, in the limited time we have for this debate, the hon. Gentleman is going to talk about what is going on in the Scottish courts. We can have a debate on that another day. This is about English and Welsh courts.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a matter for the Chair. The Scottish National party is entitled to respond to the debate. I invite Mr McDonald to continue.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Thank you, Mr Davies. If the right hon. Gentleman is patient, he will hear that I am trying to support his case by saying that there are no restrictions in Scotland, and the system works. I will also explain changes made there that may provide some ideas for how it could be made to work in England.

As I said, the right to appeal against unduly lenient sentences in Scotland is contained in the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. On the face of that legislation, there are no limits to the class of cases on indictment where the prosecutor can appeal sentences on the grounds of undue leniency. However, in summary cases, the right applies only to a class of case specified by order made by the Secretary of State.

On the face of it, exactly the same situation applies in England and Wales. However, for whatever reason—I do not know what the reasons were at the time—when the order was made in 1996, the class of case specified was effectively “any case”. In short, all sentences, whether on indictment or summary proceedings, can be appealed by the prosecutor. In fairness, that has not clogged up the courts there or indeed the prisons, so I think that is a separate issue. As far as I am aware, it has never been suggested since that limits be applied to such rights to appeal unduly lenient sentences. Some more recent reforms may also be relevant to the current debate; they were designed to make the court processes more sustainable, with significant changes taking place after wide-ranging reviews of both civil and criminal court processes.

In fact, it was a review of civil procedure that prompted the introduction of a new appeal tier, a Sheriff Appeal Court. To assist in ensuring that the High Court and Court of Session focused on the work it truly needed to focus on, the new Sheriff Appeal Court established in 2015 was given the task not only of taking on civil appeals work, but of hearing summary criminal appeals, including appeals against sentence, from both sheriff and justice of the peace courts. Whereas, in the past, sentencing appeals from summary cases would go to the High Court of Appeal, they now go to the new national Sheriff Appeal Court. In short, to answer the right hon. Gentleman’s point, what the Government should consider is whether, at the same time as extending the prosecutor’s right of appeal in “either way” cases, one way to make it work more effectively and efficiently without clogging up the Court of Appeal is to look for an alternative forum for such appeals against unduly lenient sentences.