Coroners and Justice Bill

I can deal with this very shortly, mainly because I have left my notes behind. The amendment may seem unnecessary, but it may be more necessary than at first appears. The reason for this is the experience that the United States has had in relation to sentencing guidelines of this kind. The United States has had sentencing guidelines for many years—since 1984, I think—but not long ago, in about 2002, the Prospect Act, I think it was called, was passed, under which it was possible for Congress to monitor the performance of certain courts in the United States to see whether they were consistently sentencing within the guidelines or whether some courts were sentencing consistently below the guidelines. That is very similar to what is proposed in the clause that we are now discussing. Certain remarks were made by a great United States judge, Chief Justice Rehnquist, drawing attention to the inherent danger in this approach to sentencing. I shall read two or three passages from the remarks that he made on 5 May 2003, which he repeated in his last end-of-year report to Congress in 2004. He said: ""The second topic I would like to address is the recent efforts by some in Congress to look into downward departures in sentencing by federal judges, in particular our colleague Judge James Rosenbaum. We can all recognise that Congress has a legitimate interest in obtaining information which will assist in the legislative process"." We all agree with that. He continued: ""But the efforts to obtain information may not threaten judicial independence or the established principle that a judge’s judicial acts cannot serve as a basis for his removal from office"." Later he said: ""The new law"—" the Prospect Act, although I cannot remember its exact name— ""also provides for the collection of information about sentencing practices employed by federal judges throughout the country. This, too, is a legitimate sphere of congressional inquiry, in aid of its legislative authority. But one portion of the law provides for the collection of such information on an individualized, judge-by-judge basis. This, it seems to me, is more troubling"." Finally, he said: ""There can be no doubt that collecting information about how the sentencing guidelines, including downward departures, are applied in practice could aid Congress in making decisions about whether to legislate on these issues. There can also be no doubt ""that the subject matter of the questions, and whether they target the judicial decisions of individual federal judges, could amount to an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties"." In an age when one can obtain information about almost anything either under the Freedom of Information Act or through other means, it worries me that it might become possible for statistics to be created about how individual judges have performed—whether above or, normally, below the guidelines. If that became possible, it would be a serious interference with the independence of judges. It would intimidate them from performing the function that they are there to perform. That is the danger. The purpose of this amendment is, so far as it is possible, to obviate that. I beg to move.