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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I, like the House, am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for putting forward again his submission that there is no need to retain Section 229—the assessment of dangerousness section—of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 in what is, of course, its truncated form following our reforms, about which he has just been generous. We are grateful to the noble and learned Lord for bringing the issue to the attention of the House. As he has said, he has been in correspondence with my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor, and I believe that they have also spoken. At the noble and learned Lord’s instigation, we have undertaken further consultation with senior Court of Appeal judges, who deal with criminal cases day after day. They have indicated informally to the Secretary of State that they favour the retention of Section 229 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, in the truncated form proposed by the Bill. I will explain, as briefly as possible, why the Government want to keep this part of the Bill as it is. Our changes in this Bill will, as we have already agreed, remove the statutory presumption of risk, which greatly limited judicial discretion in assessing risk, while leaving in place the remainder of Section 229, which sets out what matters the court may consider when assessing risk. Those, as the noble and learned Lord said, are set out in Section 229(2), which refers to previous offences and says that the court must take into account as well, "““all such information as is available to it about the nature and circumstances of the””" instant "““offence … may take into account any information which is before it about any pattern of behaviour of which””" any of the offences mentioned in its paragraph (a) or new paragraph (aa) form part, and, lastly, "““may take into account any information about the offender which is before it””." We believe it is important to retain that statutory basis for the assessment of risk because it clarifies that the courts may look not just at the circumstances of the trigger offence, but take into account all such information as is available about the pattern of behaviour of which the offence formed part. That matter is of particular relevance to a court with a special responsibility for assessing an offender’s prospective dangerousness, and a hallmark of public protection sentencing.