Coroners and Justice Bill

I rise to follow my noble friend Lord Dholakia and also make some suggestions on the composition of the sentencing council. Some of these suggestions may be modest but the membership of the council will to a large extent determine not only what sort of council it will be but also whether the purposes of the council, which we discussed earlier on sentencing, are likely to be fully realised. We fully support the Government’s recommendations for the Lord Chief Justice to have a sort of hands-off role as president. It seems right and proper for the head of the judiciary to be in this position without being expected to be fully involved at all times. He will be a presence to be called on if it anyone ever judges it necessary. Yet we also support a balance between judicial and non-judicial members. Sentencing councils in other parts of the world have a range of ways of being constituted, including those which are entirely non-judicial. The voices of non-judicial members who are clearly extremely expert and well informed in their particular fields are equally important in developing the sort of guidance sentencers should have. Their knowledge and direct contact with what is going on in the community and the wider fields of criminal justice will be essential in forming the sort of guidance that is likely to lead to effective sentencing that reduces reoffending. I must declare that I am not a lawyer in any form. My experience as a sentencer was a few years as a magistrate in the Thames court in the 1980s and a further nine years in Scotland as a children’s panel member until I came to your Lordships’ House. Having worked in various fields within criminal justice, I believe that those skills and experiences relating to the criminal justice world are extremely important in informing the guidance that sentencers need. We have moved a long way from the exclusivity of sentencers and the monopoly of wisdom on the subject. Admittedly, it may feel uncomfortable to some of them to be consulting with other such non-experts. I well remember in the mid-80s when I arranged for a distinguished judge, Peter Pain—some noble Lords presents may remember him—to give a public lecture in the central area of Winchester Crown Court on sentencing. This caused a real frisson among some of his colleagues because in those days judges did not do things like coming out and talking to the great British public so publicly. Now it is relatively commonplace. For example, early on in his tenure as Lord Chief Justice, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, gave a significant lecture at Oxford University on the importance of alternatives to custody and the relative pointlessness of short custodies—one, I regret, that was not organised by myself. It was memorable both symbolically and in what he had to say. As sentencers move out into the wider world—when they can, busy men and women that they are—they are advised not only within their courts but from outside. We hope that, for example, the problem-solving courts will become a model for the future when judges are involved there and then when decisions on a particular judgment are put in place on the spot. Additionally, increasing work is being done to divert people in trouble away from the courts at all, particularly the most vulnerable, such as women, children and the mentally ill, because it is recognised that it is outwith court that their offending, and their needs underpinning their offending, will be better met, for the public to be freed from their reoffending. People who work at that interface and beyond, with other particular skill sets, have voices that must be heard within the council and in equal measure. For that reason, I warmly support my noble friend’s amendment for the inclusion of someone with experience in the rehabilitation of offenders, which is not merely theoretical but practical. There is no substitute for first-hand knowledge of the realities and their relevance and usefulness to particular situations. Of course, the reality sometimes does not tally with what the theory might initially have suggested. It is extremely important that someone with experience of children and young people from the youth justice world is included. We have a terrible record in this country on how we deal with children and young people. It is a source of continuing shame that we, alone in the rest of Europe and many other parts of the world, actually lock up children as young as 12 in that part of the prison estate called secure training centres. Most of these children have a range of the most desperate situations and problems and are the most vulnerable in society; they also commit some shocking offences, but it is vital that their needs are met, first and foremost, as in Scotland through the children’s panels, rather than through the punitive ethos of the STCs, whose effectiveness with regard to reoffending and public safety is the worst in the whole estate. I sincerely hope that no one in this House does not agree that how we deal with children, starting with our own, is simply not the same as it is for adults. In the world of offending, it needs real expertise and understanding, which goes far beyond those of us uninvolved in that world. We currently have more than 6,000 children and young people in prison, including the YOIs, whose offending may on occasions be awful, but whose circumstances are equally and desperately awful. I like to think that, with someone with the right knowledge and expertise on this council, we might have a chance to get things a little more right than we do at the moment. Lastly, my other amendment in this group may seem inappropriate to some, but it contains a serious suggestion, and I hope and expect that we will get some serious discussion on it from the Government. I suggest that a representative of the media should also be included in the non-judicial part of the council. The role of the media in the public perception of law and order, the state of our criminal justice system and the understanding of the work and effectiveness, or otherwise, of our judiciary, is a huge topic, which has consumed endless man and woman hours of discussion and miles of column inches—too much for this part of our debate to really do justice to today, if noble Lords will excuse the pun. It is a given that neither people in the media nor the public at large have much confidence in our criminal justice system, and even less understanding, yet it is the one that informs the other more than any other means of communication. Confidence is rooted in understanding, which can only grow with knowledge. At the moment, the principal source of knowledge that most people have is through the press, radio and TV. I illustrate that with headlines such as "Soft lives and crimes of the lenient judges" in the Sunday Times, "Shocking figures show judges are jailing fewer criminals" in the Daily Mail, or "Top cop gunning for ‘soft’ judges" in the Sun. Is it any wonder that there is not much informed confidence in what is happening in our courts? Perhaps I should also declare an interest as the wife of a journalist so that I can vouch for the fact that many journalists, including those on the Sunday Times, for which my husband worked for many years, are responsible and well informed people. Many in the Chamber may say, "Some of my best friends are journalists". Many studies have shown that the public’s perception of crime is that it is rising, so who, for example, would believe that levels of knife crime across the country have remained stable? They show the prevalence of the belief that sentences are too lenient, while at the same time substantially underestimating the proportion of convicted offenders who are sentenced to prison. Indeed, research on attitudes has shown that when the public are given the facts on specific cases with a range of sentencing options, including custody and alternatives, they invariably favour the more lenient ones. Politicians and policy-makers, who also read the Daily Mail as well as the Sunday Times, remain convinced that what the public require of them is to be tough. The current Lord Chancellor has declared himself proud of the fact that this Administration have increased the number of people sent to prison. He hopes that that will act as reassurance and help keep his seat, but does not go on to show how ineffective this is in terms of how many will then go on to reoffend, at what cost, and how much safer we actually are. I suggest that one media person on the council will not change all that overnight, but could make a seriously needed start in shifting some of these perceptions. It would also offer the opportunity of developing a greater openness and trust between the media and sentencers that could help with the community education role of the council, which I will come to when we discuss Clause 115. I believe that the amendment offers the much needed possibility for change, and I hope the Government will take it seriously.