Sentencing Council Guidelines

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if she will make a statement on the Sentencing Council’s publication of community and custodial sentences guidelines.

The Sentencing Council is independent of Parliament and Government. The council decides on its own priorities and workplan for producing guidelines.

The Sentencing Council consulted the previous Government on a revised version of the imposition guideline, which included new guidance on pre-sentence reports. That consultation ran from November 2023 to February 2024. The previous Government responded to the consultation on the guideline on 19 February 2024. The former sentencing Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who is now the shadow Transport Secretary, wrote to the chair of the Sentencing Council thanking him for the revisions to the guideline. In particular, he thanked the council for fuller guidance on the circumstances in which courts should request a pre-sentence report.

The Lord Chancellor was clear about her discontent with the guideline when it was published. It is our view that there should not be differential treatment before the law. The House will be pleased to hear that the Lord Chancellor met the chair of the Sentencing Council last week, and the discussion was constructive. It was agreed that the Lord Chancellor will set out her position more fully in writing, which the Sentencing Council will consider before the guideline is due to come into effect.

In just 14 days, new two-tier sentencing rules will come into force. These sentencing rules will infect our ancient justice system with the virus of identity politics, dividing fellow citizens on the basis of their skin colour and religion. The rules will ride roughshod over the rule of law and destroy confidence in our criminal justice system. The stakes are high, but the Justice Secretary seems clueless—in fact, she is not even here. Has the Department conducted an assessment of the additional pre-sentence reports that will be required and the impact of that on the Probation Service, given that it is already working above capacity? Is it considering providing the Probation Service with additional resources to cope with the extra demand? Does it expect the additional pre-sentence reports to lead to further delays in our courts?

I ask these questions because not only do these new rules violate the most foundational principle of equality before the law, but they also create immense pressure on the criminal justice system. If the Justice Secretary wanted to stop two-tier justice, she would have supported my Bill on Friday. She would have used her powers of appointment to sack the individuals who drafted the rules. Time is running out, and so is confidence in the Sentencing Council. Frankly, the public are losing confidence in the Justice Secretary and her Ministers, too.

I cannot escape the conclusion that the Justice Secretary actually supports these two-tier sentencing rules. Why? Because she supported a group that called the criminal system institutionally racist. Her representatives walked through the two-tier guidance and approved it, and she refuses to legislate to block the guidance coming into force or to take any sanction against the members of the Sentencing Council that drafted it. If there is one thing we know about Labour Governments, it is that they always end in tears. This time, it is a second-tier Justice Secretary pursuing two-tier justice, all to suck up to her boss, two-tier Keir.

There is one thing that we know about Labour Governments: they always have to clear up the mess left by Conservative Governments. That is what the Lord Chancellor is doing at the moment. She is clearing up the mess left by the previous Government: the clogged-up the courts, the overflowing prisons and the overworked Probation Service.

Getting back to the facts of the case, the Lord Chancellor met the Sentencing Council last Thursday and had a constructive discussion. It was agreed that she will set out her position more fully in writing, which the Sentencing Council will then consider before the guidance is due to come into effect. This is serious government, not auditioning for government. The Conservatives were not only consulted; they welcomed these guidelines when they were in office. The former Minister for sentencing wrote a letter of welcome to the Sentencing Council setting this out on 19 February 2024. There is a process in place now that needs to be allowed to play out. We will not pre-empt that process.

I call the Chair of the Justice Committee.

The Sentencing Council is—it should not need saying—a non-political body whose guidelines are carefully drafted and widely consulted on. These guidelines received positive responses from the Justice Committee under its previous Chair and from the previous Government. They do not require that a pre-sentence report is ordered, they do not limit who should be the subject of such a report and they do not tie the hands of the sentencer. Does my hon. Friend agree that by dragging the Sentencing Council into the political arena without good cause, the shadow Justice Secretary degrades both the Sentencing Council and himself?

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee makes a good point about the way in which the shadow Justice Secretary conducts himself. The important thing is that the Lord Chancellor had a constructive meeting with the chair of the Sentencing Council and there is now a process in place to address this issue.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

I would like to think that all in this House believe in equality under the law, in sentencing matters and otherwise, but it is clear that two-tier justice has existed in our country, having been governed by two-tier Tories who thought they could get away with illegal No. 10 parties while the rest of us were told to stay at home; two-tier Tories such as the shadow Justice Secretary, who unlawfully approved a development for his donor; and two-tier Tories who have pummelled our prisons and crashed our courts, leaving victims to pay the price. Can the Minister tell us how he will reform sentencing in England and Wales to protect the victims and survivors so let down by the Conservatives?

The hon. Member is perfectly right to underline the importance of equality before the law. He gives me the opportunity to give a plug to the independent review of sentencing being conducted by David Gauke with an independent panel, which will address the issues that he has raised.

Does my hon. Friend agree that if there is a two-tier justice system, it is not the one claimed by the Conservatives, but it is certainly one that was created by them—one where victims of crime are let down by delays, where working-class communities see justice delayed and denied, and where the reality remains that black and ethnic minority defendants are disproportionately sentenced? Does he agree that instead of playing political games with sentencing, we should focus on delivering real justice, ensuring that every decision made in our courts is based on evidence, not culture wars or headlines in right-wing rags?

My hon. Friend is right to contrast the approach of the soundbites from the shadow Justice Secretary with the Justice Secretary’s approach of rolling up her sleeves and getting on with the job of sorting out the mess left in our prisons, Probation Service and courts.

Just to be constructive for a moment and to try to get a bit of consensus, surely no one is suggesting that anybody in Parliament wants to restrict the power of judges and their traditional right to sentence people according to their own lights. All we are questioning is whether a quango like the Sentencing Council should try to stack the deck against certain groups. All we are saying is that judges should impose sentences irrespective of people’s race, colour or whatever.

The Father of the House and my constituency neighbour brings a constructive note, and I agree with exactly what he says. We have an independent judiciary that we should let get on with the job.

As a former magistrate, I have been personally involved in sentencing decisions and have relied on and can attest to the importance of pre-sentencing reports giving as much information about an offender as possible before deciding an appropriate sentence. Used properly, they can cut reoffending rates. Does the Minister agree that pre-sentencing reports should therefore be available for all offenders and that access should not be determined by an offender’s ethnicity, culture or faith?

My hon. Friend is exactly right that pre-sentence reports play an important role, and we ought to applaud the work that the Probation Service and others do in preparing those reports. She is exactly right to point to how effective they are in helping with sentencing.

The Minister is right to stress the independence of the Sentencing Council, but would he accept that he cannot criticise the shadow Secretary of State for having a view on these draft guidelines when the Secretary of State herself did exactly that? I also ask him to consider in this debate the real purpose of a pre-sentence report. It is there to give more information about an offender, but it also enables a judge to impose a non-custodial sentence if they believe that is the appropriate course. It is hard for a sentencer to do that, unless someone has been assessed as suitable for a community penalty. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this debate, is it not important that the Sentencing Council makes clear that what is important in deciding whether to ask for a pre-sentence report is whether that extra information is needed and not anything else, including protected characteristics?