Coroners and Justice Bill

I admit to having had an interest in the law on homicide ever since serving as a psychiatrist on Lord Lane’s committee back in 1993 to consider the penalty for homicide. That report, like many others, recommended the abolition of the mandatory life sentence. It was binned immediately by the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, said, the law is in urgent need of reform, if only to prevent what I as a psychiatrist might call the unseemly Lobster Quadrille danced in the courts by expert forensic psychiatrists who are obliged to consider these various partial defences and the way they are involved in the verdict, in order to prevent the mandatory life sentence being implemented. I was a perennial optimist and had hoped that the Government would have the courage to make progress. I regret very much that the Executive appear so set against what would be by far the most sensible and important reform—the abolition of the mandatory life sentence. That militates against achieving "individualised justice", both generally and specifically in relation to mental health and many other factors relevant to proper sentencing. It is sad that the Government have failed to accept the Law Commission’s recommendations this time round. Those do not go as far as we would like, but a variant would at least devolve from the Executive to the judiciary sentencing powers for a large percentage of cases. That of course is the sticking point: the power that the mandatory sentence gives to the Executive. It seems that that is just too much to be readily given up. As I am not a lawyer, perhaps I may be permitted to offer some praise for the judiciary in the matter of appropriate sentencing. We have a system of checks and balances on sentencing that I do not believe require this executive control. We also have an excellent parole board system that enables the date of release to be reviewed at an appropriate time. After all, people are going to be released. I find it extraordinary that the Secretary of State would wish to retain the decision-making powers in this matter when a whole panoply of executive systems is available to enable the decision to be made by proper experts without political interference. The amendment is an attempt to move away from that in a way that—thinking of debates that the House has had in previous years—many of us would feel sympathetic towards. I do not want to comment on the specific wording of the amendment, because this may not be the right one. I listened carefully to what was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. The wording of this amendment may not achieve what we want to achieve. Nevertheless, a review of the law on homicide is sadly missing from this Bill. We will be spending the rest of this evening debating matters that would be far better addressed at sentencing rather than at the point of verdict. It is a terrible shame that we have got to this point and not been able to address this major issue.