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Coroners and Justice Bill

The hon. Gentleman has at least gone part of the way with me in recognising the problem, but having recognised it, he must at some stage will the means to resolve the problem. If he does not think that the proposals are the means, he needs to come up with something that will address that very real problem. I did not intend to go off on that diversion. I intended to begin by commenting briefly on the Bill's provisions for reform of the coroner system. I come to this subject from the perspective of having a number of constituents who tragically lost loved ones in the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989. Together with several bereaved constituents, I attended one day of the coroner's mini-inquests. In total, the proceedings lasted for 90 days. In March 1991 a verdict of accidental death was returned for the 96 people who had died attending a football match. The individual mini-inquests were held on the revolving door principle, with approximately eight cases being heard a day. That was a horrendous experience for the families involved. The gross insensitivity of focusing on the blood alcohol readings created the wholly false impression that that was a significant contributory factor in the disaster, when it had already been established by the Taylor inquiry that"““the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control””." I mention this not to rake over the coals of the tragedy, but to highlight why the coroner's procedure adopted caused such distress and offence to the bereaved families. For this reason I welcome the reforms proposed in the Bill, at least in principle. However, I ask Ministers to reflect on my comments on the Hillsborough mini-inquests and see whether the Bill can be improved to ensure that that situation is never allowed to occur again. I hope there will never be another disaster on that scale, but I also hope that if there ever is, the bereaved families will not be put through the wringer as the Hillsborough families were. I turn to the sentencing provisions in part 4. I had the privilege of serving on the sentencing working group which, following the Carter report, was charged with examining the merits and feasibility of a structured sentencing framework and establishing a sentencing commission. The group, which was expertly chaired by Lord Justice Gage, made a number of recommendations, many of which, I am pleased to say, have found their way into the Bill. Because sentencing has such an immediate and real effect, it is one of those areas where there should be a clear link between the detail of the policy, the underlying principles and the practical consequences that follow. We have a duty to ensure that sentencing policy is fair to the victims of crime, that society as a whole has confidence in our justice system, and that offenders recognise that the sentences that they receive are proportionate to their crimes and are consistently applied. Regrettably, a lack of consistency is a significant contributory factor to the alarming decline in public confidence in the criminal justice system in recent years, and we must recognise that. We should also recognise that sentencing has a direct impact on offending in three ways. First, the most direct impact, surprisingly, is the most overlooked. It is difficult for most offenders to commit further crimes while they are serving a custodial sentence. As the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) put it when he was Home Secretary, prison does work—in that context, at least. Secondly, sentences should, wherever possible, include the potential for practical and effective rehabilitation. I use the words ““practical”” and ““effective”” advisedly. We must be honest. Not all rehabilitation, and not all community sentences, are effective. We should not believe that in every case they are a panacea. In some cases they are not. Thirdly, sentences act as a deterrent that reduces reoffending and discourages potential offending in the first place. All three impacts are too often overlooked. On the practicalities of sentencing, the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) seemed to get himself in a muddle. I say that with regret. When I listen to him in the House, he is usually fluent, tolerant and logical, but in his speech he created a muddle between the idea of balancing correctional resources and the sentences that are passed. He railed, rightly, against early release schemes. I agree with him. There is nothing worse than an early release scheme for undermining the whole sentencing system. By definition, releasing anyone early without good reason undermines the sentence that the court passed on them. However, the hon. and learned Gentleman ruled out any predictability in the need for correctional resources. He said that it was up to the courts to decide what those should be, but if we do not predict with more accuracy than in the past how many prison places are needed, or how many places are needed on community sentences, the inevitable consequence is that sometimes we will get it wrong. If we under-provide, there is only one way to deal with that—by means of early release schemes. That is what has happened repeatedly in the post-war history of sentencing. At some point, there is no alternative. The hon. and learned Gentleman cannot have it both ways. Either there is predictability in the system so that we have a reasonable idea what correctional facilities are necessary, or there is no predictability, and at some point in the cycle, early release schemes will have to be introduced. While serving on the sentencing working group, I was surprised and disappointed to discover—this is another point that the hon. and learned Gentleman failed to take into account—how little we know about, and how little we are able to measure, the variations in sentencing. We commissioned a limited survey of our own, which I do not claim was the last word on the subject. It revealed a number of interesting facts, the most notable of which was that almost half the sentences passed by the courts in England fell outside the guideline ranges. Courts need to have some flexibility and to exercise some judgment, but do we really think that 50 per cent. of their sentences falling outside the guideline ranges is a good thing? Does any hon. Member want to interrupt me and say, ““Surely we should celebrate that””? If nobody is prepared to do that, there must be a general acceptance that it is not a good thing. Whether courts are over-sentencing or under-sentencing, that cannot be right. We need far more information and a clearer picture of what is going on throughout the country. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and other Ministers have accepted that we need more data so that we can be clearer about how the sentencing system is working. I welcome the fact that the Bill provides for that. Four key issues are pertinent to the Bill. The first is the challenge of balancing consistency with judicial flexibility in individual cases. The second is the challenge of ensuring that there are adequate correctional resources available to meet demand without compromising justice in individual cases. The third is the role of the Lord Chief Justice in the new sentencing council, and the fourth is the role of Parliament in setting guidelines. On the challenge of balancing consistency and flexibility, the group on which I served was extremely clear that there needs to be improved consistency in sentencing, while still allowing for judicial flexibility in individual cases. We recommended, for example, that there should be definitive guidelines for all major high-volume offences, and further narrative guidance on the treatment of previous convictions and aggravating and mitigating factors. To be fair, we were less clear about how to deal with cases where the intended sentence departed from the normal range. At present, the court is required to have regard to any guidelines relevant to the offender's case. Discretion to stray from those guidelines can be granted only if the court can give reasons for such a departure. There is an alternative approach, which gives the courts more flexibility and simply requires guidelines to be followed unless the court is satisfied that that would be contrary to the interests of justice. Although the majority of the sentencing working group supported that approach, my own view, as indicated in the report, is that the existing requirements should be retained because they provide more consistency while still allowing flexibility in individual cases. Clause 103 sets specific requirements on how sentencing guidelines should be laid out by the sentencing council. In my view, the clause contains little, if anything, that is not already covered in at least some of the sentencing guidelines. However, specifying the requirements in the Bill will help to achieve the aim of greater predictability and assist attempts to collect relevant data on actual sentencing practice across the whole country. Having a greater understanding of that practice will help the planning of correctional resources to be more effective, and give us the opportunity to revisit the issue of consistency in sentencing in a more informed way in future. That leads to my second point, which is about the challenge of ensuring that adequate correctional resources are available to meet the demands of the criminal justice system, while also ensuring that individual circumstances are taken into account. The sentencing working group recognised that it is important to match the supply of correctional services to the demand for them. We considered the practicality of giving the sentencing council a duty to design guidelines that would match capacity. However, given the lack of systematic information available on sentences passed, we concluded that that would be impractical. Instead, we recommended that Parliament should express its intentions with regard to correctional resources at regular intervals. Personally, I believe that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and his Select Committee could have a role in that, although to make that case in this debate would probably stretch the point too far; perhaps it would be better to debate the issue in Committee. Our view was that the effect of such an obligation on Parliament, combined with an assessment by the sentencing council of the effects of guidelines on correctional resources, would allow for more rational planning. As I outlined earlier, the ability of the correctional system to cope with demand is an essential element in achieving justice. The third issue that I wish to cover is the role of the Lord Chief Justice in the new sentencing council. There has been some debate about that. Our working group studied the matter carefully, and we were clear that the workload of the chair of the sentencing council would be too substantial for the Lord Chief Justice to be appropriate; it would require a commensurate time commitment. However, we did recommend that the chair should be a member of the senior judiciary, appointed by both the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor. It is clear to me, however, that the Lord Chief Justice should have a transparent and formal mechanism so that he can have some input into the work of the council. Perhaps that could be achieved through an appointed representative empowered to speak on his behalf during any deliberations in the council. My final point is about the role of Parliament in setting sentencing guidelines. The working group did not come to a unanimous view on the role of Parliament. The majority believed that it would be inappropriate for there to be a duty requiring the sentencing council to consider Parliament's intentions on resources when formulating guidelines, and that Parliament should have no role in approving any guidelines before they are implemented. The minority view of the group—a view that I share—supported a more active role for Parliament, perhaps including the Justice Committee, in relation to both those points. That would mean that the sentencing council would have a statutory duty to consider Parliament's intention in relation to resources, and that Parliament would be able to approve guidelines before they came into practice. The obvious rationale for that approach is that, ultimately, Parliament is the only mechanism available for public accountability in relation to sentencing and its implementation. Manifestly, an independent judiciary cannot be held accountable in the same way. We need to recognise that a fair sentencing system requires the application of clear principles. In turn, a more consistent approach, flexible enough to take individual circumstances into account, will reduce unexplained variation and reoffending, and could increase public confidence. I welcome and support the Bill, but I give notice that at a later stage—and subject to further consideration of the issues to which I have referred—I might well table my own amendments.