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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I support the noble and learned Lord. ““Pointless”” is a very good description of Clause 114. It is pure political posturing. That is the trouble in the area of criminal law; there has been too much of this going on in recent years, and to little effect. Why on earth can we not leave the detailed business of sentencing in cases such as this, with the guidelines that already exist, to the people who hear the evidence and see the cases: namely, the judges? We have seen far too much interference with the criminal law. As a practitioner, I go along to courts and am asked by people in the robing room, ““How on earth did you let this happen? Didn’t you speak up and point out that it’s a waste of time or has consequences that are totally adverse to the interests of justice?””. Well, I am speaking up, but without a great deal of hope that my words will fall other than on stony ground. Surely we can avoid, at the very least, complicating the statute book with clauses such as this which do not do anything.