The right hon. Gentleman seems to be confirming that he does not believe that there is a problem, but that view is not shared on the Government Benches. In our view, the increase in the extent of judicial review does not just impose a cost—which is a serious matter in itself—but also means, dangerously, that decisions by the courts are increasingly substituting for decisions that should be made by Ministers, which was not the original purpose or intention of judicial review.
In his closing remarks, the right hon. Gentleman railed similarly against previous measures introduced by this Government to deal with legal aid and said there
had been restrictions on access to justice. The Opposition’s problem is that they are very quick to criticise every proposal in the area of justice and criminal justice that is designed to ensure a sensible use of public funds and necessary savings. They are not able to explain how they would deal with the very real budgetary challenges that confront every Government Department, not least the Ministry of Justice, which has been required to make substantial savings. If, along the way, the Opposition oppose every measure and criticise sensible provisions such as that under discussion without saying how they would make the savings required, they simply have a credibility problem.
I welcome the Government’s proposals to deal with the problem of automatic early release and, in particular, the scale of the Justice Secretary’s ambition to go further in doing so. There is no doubt that automatic early release undermines public confidence in sentencing. When victims in particular, but also members of the public more widely, hear a sentence handed down in a court but later learn that offenders are, without question, automatically released much earlier—halfway, or earlier in the case of home detention curfew, which is described as early release—it undermines confidence in the system.
It would be much better to move to a system of honesty in sentencing, in which the sentence handed down bears a proper relation to the one actually served, whether that is a system of minimum and maximum sentences, as proposed by the Conservative party in its last manifesto, or sensible measures to curtail automatic early release of the kind that my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary has just introduced for more serious offences. We should not accept the principle of automatic early release; it would be much better if release were earned and bore some relation to the prisoner’s conduct, progress in rehabilitation and suitability for release.
Even Members of the House of Commons find it difficult to understand or accept the early release of offenders. Many of us noted with surprise that when the courts handed down to a former Member a determinate sentence of eight months, we had no sooner said the words “Liberal Democrat” than that offender was released early, in that case to serve a period on home detention curfew and, subsequently, to enjoy a new career writing articles for The Guardian. All that undermines confidence in the criminal justice system.