Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, at Third Reading in the House of Commons, much concern was expressed at the lack of adequate time available to debate large parts of the Bill. It therefore falls to this House, despite our being a revising Chamber, to rectify some of those omissions. If the range and number of speakers tonight is anything to go by, that will be the case. It has now become routine that Home Office or Ministry of Justice Bills consist of a mix of myriad elements that have little to do with each other and in which there is a lack of overall consistency or vision in what is trying to be achieved. Despite all the legislation of the past 10 years, we are still living with a criminal justice system that is full of contradictions, resulting inevitably in public uncertainty, a lack of understanding and—ultimately and dangerously—a lack of confidence or trust in what the system is achieving for the public good. Thus, for example, it is stated policy that prison should be used only as a last resort for the most dangerous, violent and prolific offenders—quite rightly. At the same time, we have seen an unprecedented rise in custodial sentences, due in part to legislative changes, with more than half of those prisoners serving short sentences of six months or less, who of course do not fit the "dangerous, prolific or violent" profile. The inevitable result is prison overcrowding at unacceptable levels and an equally unacceptable prison building programme. Simultaneously, the Government’s stated policy is that alternatives to custody should be available for all but that group of offenders for whom prison is appropriate—violent, dangerous or prolific—but they have failed to give the probation service and the voluntary or private sector adequate resources to make that essential policy a properly functioning reality. Instead of creating a system in which offenders are less likely to reoffend and society is safer through the greater use of community penalties, we have one in which more people go to prison, more people reoffend and, unsurprisingly, the citizen does not feel any safer or more confident. The ultimate irony is that, while the prison population has risen by 30 per cent during the past 10 years to an unprecedented 83,000, the number of people found guilty by the courts has remained almost the same, having risen by about 2 per cent. What has changed is that we are sending more people to prison for lesser offences and for longer—we are tougher, at an enormous human, social and financial cost. The aspirations for the Bill, as expressed in the Ministry of Justice Explanatory Notes, are for, ""more effective, transparent and responsive justice"," expressed with, ""clarity, fairness and effectiveness"." Until our system of justice is far more coherent and consistent, and one which the community knows about and understands—for that is the basis of confidence and trust, is it not?—we will continue to suffer from a crisis of confidence and trust in our criminal justice system. At this stage, I must add my wholehearted endorsement and relief at the sensible decision by the Lord Chancellor to remove Clauses 11 and 12, where provision was made for secret inquests, which has been spoken to so eloquently by many noble Lords, including my noble colleagues. The confidence that we all need—not to speak of the needs of the bereaved families—will now not be compromised, as it would have been. I concentrate my few remarks on what is a potentially significant part of the Bill in the opportunities that it offers: that on sentencing and the proposed Sentencing Council. Given the unprecedented explosion in the numbers of the prison population during the past 10 years against a background of almost unchanged numbers of people being found guilty by the courts, it offers the possibility of change. The way in which the Sentencing Advisory Panel and Sentencing Guidelines Council operated turned out to be a rather slow and cumbersome process. We must have a framework in which stability and consistency in sentencing can be achieved, without overly constraining the discretion of sentencers, while also commanding the understanding and confidence of the public. The Bill’s proposals offer a start to achieving this. I emphasise that it is a start because there is a lot of work to be done. We are very glad that the sentencing grid, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, has been rejected and that the current proposal in the Bill broadly reflects, instead, the conclusions of the working group under Lord Justice Gage, who had looked closely at the Carter proposals. The wording of the Bill is that the courts must have regard to the guidelines, but there is also the important caveat, ""unless the court is satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so"." I am well aware that this is causing real concern for sentencers and that it will require careful scrutiny. However, it is a serious attempt to balance the need for consistency with the need for judicial discretion. It will be important to ensure that it never becomes an exercise in predicting prison numbers, or that its emphasis is perceived to be on the punitive, as opposed to the restorative and rehabilitative, element of sentencing. The Bill also includes a duty for the council to monitor both the operation and effect of its guidelines. That could and should show how effective the council is in promoting consistency and the extent to which its guidelines are being followed, which must then inform its practices. The proposed duties on the council to carry out impact assessments on the resource implications of court decisions on the prison, probation and youth justice services on one hand, and the potential impact of policy and legislative proposals on the other, are very important and could have far-reaching implications. That could highlight the crying need for better resourcing for probation and other services if sentencers are to see their decisions realised, as they should expect, instead of the lack of available drug or alcohol treatment services, a domestic violence course or a mental health treatment programme, which is routinely the case today. The publication of the potential impact of policy and legislative proposals will mean that Parliament is in a far better position to make informed decisions before it gives its assent to any further legislative changes. This could, for example, have been the case with the indeterminate sentence for public protection, about which my noble friend Lord Goodhart spoke at impressive length. Indeterminate sentencing has resulted in a surge of over 5,000 prisoners in the population, with the majority left in a penal black hole, unable to earn their release for lack of the necessary courses to do so. This is an absolute lack of justice. The council’s role in informing and educating the sentencing process could serve the interests of better decisions and better justice. It is, indeed, devoutly to be wished. However, there are at least two features that are crucially lacking from this part of the Bill, which seriously undermines the potential for positive change. The first, as was referred to by my noble friend Lord Dholakia, is an overarching and explicit commitment to the prevention of reoffending in the Bill. It is, after all, a key element in the purposes of sentencing and should inform all our thinking, planning and practice. All the evidence shows that the Government’s policy of community sentencing really cuts crime at far lower cost to the taxpayer and with greater benefits to the victims, the community and, of course, the offenders. A key element in its success is that sentencers are regularly given the opportunity to visit and see what is currently available to them at any one time in their particular areas when they are considering their disposals. It will make all the difference to those kinds of decisions. I have seen the effect of this, having chaired the Rethinking Crime and Punishment initiative over the past seven years. We ran demonstration projects in various parts of the country and found that the initiative had an effect on many of the sentencers that was almost an epiphany. The other gap in the Bill is a duty on the Sentencing Guidelines Council to engage with local communities and to inform, educate and consult them about its role and what is happening. This should be a core function of the council: one that underpins its work. The Bill talks about the council "promoting awareness", which is fine but inadequate. A specific public information and consultative role must be included. The public need a trusted authoritative source to counter misinformation about sentencing and to explain how and why the system works. A role of this kind has the potential to put right and close the gap in public confidence and trust. This is at the core of the aims of the Bill. It gives rise to questions such as what the composition of the council should be, but its importance cannot be emphasised enough. I have already spoken for 11 minutes and know that we are probably all desperate to get home. I am now winding up my remarks and I hope noble Lords will agree that it is beyond anyone to do justice to the range and depth of the contributions this evening. This has been an extraordinarily important and wide-ranging debate and I have hopes that the good parts of the Bill will be enhanced and developed by the very long processes of Committee and beyond. We have heard a great deal about the enormous amount of legislative work that we do in this House—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, talked forcefully about the amount of legislation that we have already had—but at the same time there have been calls around the House for separate Bills on a whole range of issues that are already in this Bill. They are unfortunately mutually exclusive. Suicide, genocide and murder are three themes that have come up again and again in incredibly important debates. I hope that these and other important elements of the Bill will now be put in their place and given the sort of scrutiny that will do them all justice. On that note, I thank everyone on behalf of my part of the House for their extraordinarily interesting contributions.