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Coroners and Justice Bill

My name, too, is on the amendment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, has spoken in relation to judges. I should like to say something in relation to magistrates. The chairman of the Magistrates’ Association has taken the trouble to attend this afternoon to demonstrate, through me, the importance to magistrates of the change that they foresee from including the word "follow" instead of "have regard to". As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said, and the noble and learned Lord, Lloyd of Berwick, picked up, consistency is not incompatible with flexibility. However, there is a point at which consistency becomes uniformity and uniformity is when flexibility goes out of the window. Perhaps I might be forgiven if I tell just one anecdote from a north London magistrates’ court, in which I appeared very many years ago. I was representing a company whose employee had deliberately disobeyed the rules and had been caught; there was an absolute liability. I was hoping to say to the magistrates that this was not the company’s fault and that there should be an absolute discharge. I walked in and the warrant officer, who knew me, said, "Morning, Madam. It’s £10 today". My goodness me, it was. I sat there and every single case was £10, including that of my company, which had done absolutely everything to prevent their drivers from doing what this driver did. We have moved on from every case being £10 in the magistrates’ court. Magistrates have very good training on sentencing, among other things. However, like judges, they need to have the opportunity to fit the sentence to the person; they need not only to have the opportunity to recognise the importance of consistency, as magistrates of course do, but also not to be put in a straitjacket. What they feel, and what I want to say on their behalf, is that having the word "follow" instead of "have regard to" will put them, as they see it—and I respectfully agree with them—into a straitjacket. It will not do. I strongly support what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, has said.