Violent Crime Reduction Bill

moved AmendmentNo. 33: Page 30, line 29, leave out subsection (6). The noble Lord said: My Lords, Amendments Nos. 33 and 34 deal with minimum sentences. I do not understand the rationale behind minimum sentence requirements in Home Office Bills. We have a sentencing council, mostly made up of practitioners, that gives recommendations. The Lord Chief Justice gives practice directions. The Court of Appeal deals with sentences and lays down guidelines for particular offences. These are all people who have spent a lifetime—the practitioners, at least—dealing with these problems. If anybody knows the right sentence in a specific case, it is them. But along comes the Home Office, with nil experience of the courts and how they work or of everything that goes into sentencing, and, through various Home Office Ministers and through the Home Secretary, demands that the court should impose minimum sentences, except when we come to Clause 27(6), where there is a proviso, "““unless it is of the opinion that there are exceptional circumstances relating to the offence or to the offender which justify””," the court not giving a minimum sentence of three years. So there is a let-out clause for the judiciary if it thinks that the minimum sentence set out in that clause would be unjust. Then in Clause 28 we come to complicated amendments of the 1968 Act. I find it impossible to trace through the Act to find out what is intended, but minimum sentences for certain firearms offences are again laid down. Why do Home Secretaries interfere with what is essentially a function of the courts in our constitution? One of these days, we will have a written constitution. Indeed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, has called for a written constitution that will clearly set out the responsibilities of the various branches of government and its relationship to the judiciary. But the Government cannot resist meddling. Here is a fine example of meddling, with a proviso—a ““get out of jail free”” card—stuck on to it. It is an excrescence. I hope that the Minister will be persuaded by my mild remarks to remove it from the Bill, not just from Clause 28. I beg to move.