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Coroners and Justice Bill

It will be expected that the guidelines are followed unless it is not in the interests of justice as far as the individual judge who is sentencing is concerned. The noble Lord asked for examples; I will give one. It comes from the Gage report and I do not make great claims for it, but the noble Lord asked me and I give it to him. I do not claim that it is systematic or that it proves anything in itself. The Gage working group surveyed sentencing decisions in 10 Crown Courts. In that survey, in 46 per cent of cases, sentencers sentencing for the offence of burglary passed a sentence that was outside the guideline range. That may well have been justified in the circumstances of those 46 per cent; on the other hand, it may have been a rather high percentage that was outside the range. It must have been—I was going to say anecdotes—evidence, whatever you want to call it, like that that made the majority of the working group, a distinguished working group, under a very distinguished judge, argue, on a majority: ""The application of guidelines should be sufficiently robust to provide the necessary consistency"—" the noble and learned Lord knows what is coming next— ""transparency and predictability"." This argues for a presumption that the guidelines have to be applied, following the New Zealand model in the New Zealand Sentencing Act 2002. I will just read what that Act says: ""A court must impose a sentence that is consistent with any sentencing guidelines that are relevant to the offender’s case, unless the court is satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so."" That is what we are attempting to do in the Bill, following the majority view of the Gage working group.