Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, there is a famous song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s "The Mikado" about making the punishment fit the crime. That surely should be the target of all sentencing, although not quite in the way suggested by Gilbert and Sullivan. Making the punishment fit the crime is and should be the target of English sentencing in courts, but there is one exception to this and one only, which is the mandatory life sentence for murder. Only murder requires a mandatory life sentence, and that seems to have become a sacred matter. It means that when the Government asked the Law Commission to consider reforms to the law of murder, they excluded any alteration in the mandatory life sentence. The result was a report by the commission which, I believe, has been regarded by many people as rather unsatisfactory. Yet, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said, murder covers an immensely wide spectrum—everything from sadistic serial murder to mercy killing. Why should we not recognise this and allow variable sentences for murder? The main reason seems to be the fear that the media will stir up public opinion by attacking any sentence short of life imprisonment as being soft. The answer to that is to adopt the proposal by Professor Spencer, as this amendment does. The Spencer proposal, on which the amendment is based, provides three safeguards. First, the judge must tell the jury that it would be possible for a reasonable jury, or for a jury reasonably, to decide that there were extenuating circumstances which justified a lesser sentence. Secondly, the jury, or at least 10 of its 12 members, would have to decide that there were extenuating circumstances which justified a sentence short of life imprisonment. Thirdly, if the Attorney-General thought that the sentence was too lenient, she would be able to appeal against it. The involvement of the jury here is critical because, if a jury of ordinary people decides that there are extenuating circumstances, it will be far more difficult for the media or the public to attack the sentence in question. It has been suggested that the expression "extenuating circumstances" needs more detailed definition. I do not agree with that. The facts of each case are likely to be immensely variable and it would be useless to try to put them into a rigid list. The only reasonable definition of extenuating circumstances that I can come to is circumstances that reasonable people would regard as justifying a sentence that was not a life sentence. That is simply a circular definition. No doubt over time a pattern would be built up, but it should be a flexible pattern developed through the courts, not tied to rigid rules set out in legislation. The acceptance of this amendment would greatly simplify the law. The defence of diminished responsibility would be limited to the purposes for which it was originally created—that is, to apply to people who are driven to kill by an abnormal mental condition. It would not need to be extended beyond its real meaning, as happens now, to enable a court to impose a merciful sentence on a mercy killer. The partial defence of provocation, or its proposed replacement—loss of control—could be abolished altogether and the facts taken into account in deciding whether the circumstances were extenuating, and if so, what the sentence should be. This amendment would make the law simpler and fairer. As far as I can see, it has no disadvantages and I invite your Lordships to support it.