Coroners and Justice Bill

Having not yet spoken on this Bill and not having been present earlier due to my flight being delayed, I hope that the Committee will bear with my saying for the record how desperately sad and sorry we are at the loss of Lord Kingsland. He is a huge loss to this House. I admired him hugely for his expertise, knowledge and skill. I will also miss him very much as a friend. We have reached Part 4, a small but none the less very important part of the Bill concerning the sentencing council. I will speak to the four amendments in this group collectively. Amendment 187A states what the overarching purposes of the sentencing council should be. This is a very important and necessary part of the process of defining and giving a framework and context to the role of the new sentencing council proposed in the Bill. The aim of the amendment is to clarify what the council is for, what it is meant to achieve and how this will be arrived at. I welcome these proposals, albeit with some important amendments which I hope will commend themselves to the Government. I see them as representing an opportunity to take forward through the council the delivery of criminal justice in this country in an improved and perhaps more creative way. No body or organisation takes decisions in a vacuum. This is as true for sentencers as for anyone else. Their job is extraordinarily difficult, hugely important as their decisions can change lives, and is often a lonely one. Knowledge of the law, skill and experience are the tools, but it is now generally accepted that it is necessary for there to be a broad framework within which sentencers of all descriptions interpret the law as laid down by Parliament before making their decisions according to the facts of the cases before them. As the Explanatory Notes claim, the framework should therefore provide for, ""a more consistent and transparent sentencing framework"." The exponential rise in the use of custody to unacceptable levels over the past 10 years or so against a background of falling crime rates and virtually unchanged numbers of people being sentenced by the courts has led to the need for a strategy to address the problems of prison overuse and sentencing disparity. Almost most important of all, it is the issue of public perceptions of and lack of confidence in our criminal justice system, as represented by the sentencing decisions being made, that must be addressed. I suggest that the council should have three distinct functions. They follow a model drawn up originally in New Zealand but which never left the drawing board as a new Government came in. Now it has been developed in a report for the Prison Reform Trust by Mike Hough and Jessica Jacobson, on which this amendment is based. The three functions of the council are set out in the amendment and would achieve two key objectives. The first is greater consistency and stability in sentencing practice, thereby ideally preventing any further upward drift in sentencing severity. The second is to reduce the politicisation of sentencing policy and practice. These objectives are interdependent because the stability of sentencing practice depends on the reduction in the temperature of political and public debate on sentencing, which would in turn relieve pressure on the courts. The first function, in proposed new paragraph (a), is, ""to issue guidance … having particular regard to the effectiveness of each form of sentencing in reducing re-offending"." In my Second Reading speech, I indicated that I would come back to the reduction of reoffending being one of the key performance indicators, if you like, of the way sentencing as a whole works. Thus the overarching purpose should be that sentencing reduces offending or reoffending, which is the ultimate test of both its effectiveness—another key element—and the extent to which our criminal justice system is getting it right. This really should be on the face of the Bill. There is much in the Bill about guidelines but not enough emphasis on effectiveness. Indeed, there is a plethora of evidence of what is effective in reducing reoffending, most obviously community sentences as opposed to custody, restorative justice, residential drug and alcohol treatment, specialist mental health provision, and small localised units around the country, to name but a few—and all well known to criminal justice practitioners in the community. Effectiveness in reducing reoffending means a better protected public; victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, because there will be fewer; and the best possible use of public resources. Instead, the reality is the deeply serious problem of our use—more our overuse—of prison and the less effective response whereby we outstrip any other European country with all the damage caused by overcrowding, and the cost, both economic and social. Today figures show that sentencers are more likely to pass custodial sentences than ever before, and that when they do they sentence for longer, in the Crown Court in particular, although that is no longer so true in the magistrates’ courts. The steady flood of new legislation in the last 10 years or so has contributed significantly to the current situation, including most obviously the increase in mandatory sentencing and specific new sentences such as IPPs—they will be discussed later in the Bill—and the suspended sentence, both of which have been far more frequently than was ever predicted. That is coupled with a more risk-averse Parole Board, the rise in recalls following breach and prison being more likely to be used for breach of community orders. Everyone has become more risk averse, as they see it, and all that despite the relative ineffectiveness because reoffending rates following custody average about 50 per cent but can get as high as 80 per cent for very young prisoners, while with community penalties reoffending rates are around the 37 per cent mark and in many cases are much lower. Furthermore, the general public have shown from countless polls and studies that they do not favour the so-called tough approach, namely the use of custody, when they have the facts. If the stated purpose of reducing reoffending through effective sentencing was implemented, custody would remain—as it should be and as government policy states—the sanction of last resort for those dangerous, violent and prolific offenders from whom we need to protect the public, and for whom there really is a chance that prison, over a longer period, could achieve positive outcomes. That is what prison is for. Paragraph (b) of my amendment on the purpose of the council is, ""to gather and provide information and statistics"," whereby monitoring and compliance with the guidelines can be tracked. Despite the significant amount of information in the annual Ministry of Justice sentencing statistics publication for England and Wales, showing sentencing patterns, there is no information at all on the degree of judicial compliance with the guidelines. No one has any idea to what extent they are being followed, or with what outcomes. Indeed, the Prison Reform Trust points out that most sentencing commissions have a duty to collect analysed and published statistical information. Therefore, our lack of knowledge of judicial compliance is a weakness, and there is no way of knowing what impact any given guideline has on prison capacity. The practical implication of this part of the amendment is that judges will have an added chore at the end of the case, or the day, to fill in a form giving this information. However, this can be designed to be minimally tiresome and is very important in terms of the information that it can give. Its justification is that the information is hugely important if the attitudes of sentencers and the public are to be better understood. If these basic statistics were available, they would also make it possible to obtain an idea of the extent to which disposals were indeed achieving the goal of reducing reoffending. It would identify guidelines which secure high levels of compliance and those which do not. Where compliance is low, this might indicate either a need to adjust the guidance or the practice, which, in turn, would feed into the guidance issued by the council. The ultimate aim would be to bring guidance and practice into alignment by a process of mutual accommodation. Essentially, it would be a flexible and responsive process that was adaptable to the needs of all concerned. Ever since the SPA and the SGC were established, sentencers—the people who actually do the business—have not been canvassed systematically on the use and impact of the guidance. It would be extremely helpful if the council was able to conduct original research and periodically survey the opinions of the judiciary for the future. Therefore, it is proposed in the amendment that the council should have the capacity to commission research into other aspects of the sentencing process. This, in turn, would feed into the developments of sentencing guidelines, as is suggested by our Amendment 188B. It is intended that statistics could not only be compiled, but provide a core of knowledge to inform policy and future development, whereby the system could become much more responsive and transparent over time, as it is intended. Finally, the most innovative element of the amendment is paragraph (c), which states that the council’s purpose will be, ""to inform, consult and engage with the public"," on its role. I shall return to this issue later in the Bill, but I refer to it now, as it is part of the amendment. There is so much lack of information, or so much misinformation, given to the public through the media. A sentencing council that was a source of authoritative, trusted and accessible information could do so much to redress the balance and, in so doing, create a more constructive climate of public debate on penal issues. In the mean time, until I come to it again, I simply re-emphasise the importance of all three elements of guidance, research and engagement being spelt out as the core purposes of the council. I beg to move.