I welcome this Bill, which has my support on its Third Reading today. The Bill makes important steps to simplify criminal sentencing
guidelines and, crucially, it improves the clarity of sentencing law to my constituents and the public at large. Currently, the sentencing law is over 1,300 pages long and even the most experienced judges and lawyers often find it complex to understand. In practice, this often leads to sentencing taking longer, dragging out the process of justice. This is not just significant in terms of limiting the efficiency of our courts and delivering justice: we also must remember that the longer the justice process is protracted, the more difficult and painful it is for victims, their families and their communities.
On top of this, the complex nature of our sentencing law leads to more errors being made in sentencing and more unlawful sentences being imposed. This in turn leads to more sentence appeals, further increasing the anguish of victims who must relive the ordeal. This Bill will certainly go some way to building public confidence in our justice system, but we still have great strides we need to take to fully win the public’s trust on the issue of sentencing. And we must build on this Bill today by making sentencing more honest, clearer and tougher.
As I have said, the Bill will make sentencing law more understandable, but more broadly, we currently have a sentencing regime that all too often does not do what it says on the tin. In many cases, when prison sentences are handed down by the courts, the full length of the sentence will never be served. These sentences are not honest either to the victims or to the public, who demand justice. The moves that the Government have made on this so far are to be welcomed, particularly the end of automatic halfway release for the most serious offenders, like those found guilty of rape and manslaughter. However, many other prisoners convicted of less serious crimes are still being let out at the halfway point. This is the case for those serving sentences of less than a year, but nearly two thirds of these petty offenders go on to reoffend.
Such is the expectation now that prisoners will be let out early that some judges have reportedly resorted to factoring this in when sentencing, awarding longer sentences than would otherwise be the case just to ensure that criminals spend the appropriate amount of time in jail. While this Bill will bring more transparency, we will not have full transparency until we have an honest sentencing regime where two years in prison means two years in prison, four years in prison means four years in prison and so on and so forth. The early release of prisoners underpins a sense among a large part of the public that the current law does not stand fully behind victims and the law-abiding people of this country.
Madam Deputy Speaker, when we are talking about making justice quicker and sparing the anguish of victims from drawn-out proceedings, as we are today, a discussion about the lenient tendencies of some judges and the often opaque sentencing appeals process also cannot be avoided. In April, the Court of Appeal overturned the sentence of Kyreis Davies, one of the men convicted of the brutal murder of Tavis Spencer-Aitkens in Ipswich in 2018. This act of evil shook the foundations of our town. And it has been a tragedy that has been extremely difficult to move on from, not least for Tavis’s family, who have been through hell. This has only been made harder by the Court of Appeal’s decision to reduce Davies’s sentence from a minimum of 21 years to just 16 years on the basis of his age at the time of this crime. Tavis’s family were not able to participate in this appeal,
and Davies is now set to be let out in his early 30s, when he took the life of a 17-year-old who had his whole life ahead of him and lay on the ground bleeding outside his father’s house.
The leniency being displayed by some judges through legal processes that are often confusing and inaccessible to victims is completely out of touch with what the vast majority of the public consider to be appropriate and constitute justice. While, of course, we must respect the independence of the judiciary, it is fundamentally the public confidence in the judiciary which is at stake here and as representatives of the public, we must consider the ways we can ensure that the sentencing decisions of our courts reflect the values of the people we all serve here.
I had correspondence with the Ministry of Justice about the Davies case, and I have been over it with Tavis’s family. While I understand that Ministers may not be able to pass comment on the specific case, the family and I are still confused about why the sentence was reduced. I would be very grateful if Ministers could re-examine what has taken place in this case and provide further information, to shed more light on the appeals process.
So, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do very much welcome this Bill. It is a step in the right direction, but for the public and for our constituents to have complete confidence in the sentencing regime, three things need to be ticked. First, it needs to be easy to understand; and that is why the Bill is to be welcomed. But also it needs to be honest—honest to the values of the people of our country. And I would also say, it needs to be tough, firm and fair. For those reasons, I welcome the Bill, but it is just the start of delivering on the promises that we stood on a manifesto to deliver.
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