Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, it is an unhappy situation to find myself not in total agreement with my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd. I remember as a young barrister being led by my noble and learned friend. I regarded it as a privilege, and sitting behind him, as I do today, my natural instinct is to follow someone whom I regard as my natural leader. However, having thought about the matter with some degree of care, I urge your Lordships to see that there is common sense behind the proposed change. We are, I think, all agreed that there is not a substantial difference between the two rival wordings. I submit that that is the situation because of the critical words that appear at the end of subsection (1): ""unless the court is satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so"." Whoever is sentencing—whether it is a High Court judge or someone at one of the different levels below that, through the magistracy—is concerned about doing justice. It is critical that, when a judge sentences, he should, at the end of the process of reasoning that goes into sentencing, be satisfied that he is doing justice. A very important part of what is proposed in Clause 115 is that that exercise should be a two-stage process. The fact that it is done in a two-stage process is, in my contention, more likely to lead to a just result than if we merely state, "having regard to". There are all sorts of things that a sentencer has to have regard to, but the reason why we now have a Sentencing Guidelines Council is that there should be meaningful guidance given by that council which, in the ordinary way, any sentencer should follow. Consistency of sentencing is very important. The magistracy knows that, alas, in various parts of the country, there is a singular lack of consistency. You cannot deny that. It can be put down to local circumstances, but our view, and the view of the courts, is that sentencing throughout the jurisdiction has to be consistent. We have for that purpose a system of appellate courts. The purpose of the appellate courts is to achieve the necessary degree of consistency. We sit in the Court of Appeal day after day trying to achieve the appropriate degree of consistency. If there is too much variation and there is no reason in justice to justify variation, we interfere with the sentence. However, I am afraid that, today, all too often we find that that process of appeal has little practical effect, because so often the sentence passed and the sentence served differ to an inappropriate degree.