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Coroners and Justice Bill

I shall speak to Amendments 187AB and 187BC. Following on from the Minister’s amendments, they are probing amendments relating to the composition of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales as set out in Schedule 13. I understand that there are other amendments in the group in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, to which we shall come later. As I said, ours are purely probing amendments. The first is consequential on the second and suggests that four rather than two lay justices should sit on the council, therefore boosting the total number of judicial numbers to 10 compared with six non-judicial members. We have tabled these amendments after listening, with some sympathy, to representations from the Magistrates’ Association. It pointed out that as 95 per cent of all criminal matters appear in magistrates’ courts, inevitably any new sentencing guidelines will have the most widespread effect in those courts. The Magistrates’ Association has thus suggested, perhaps not unreasonably, that its representation should be boosted to recognise the special responsibility it will have in setting out any new guidelines. An added benefit would be to increase the majority of judicial members, who, after all, will be the people with the most direct experience of applying advice on sentencing. It is possible that the Government have arrived at the perfect combination—it is possible that they have not; we do not know—and have put careful thought into selecting the appropriate proportion of judicial and non-judicial members of the council, but I hope that our amendments will at least provide an opportunity for the Government to explain the reasoning behind their numbering and the proportions that are before us.