My Lords, today I feel the beginning of the relief of the Victorian poet who reminded us:
“That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
For many years now—certainly since the start of the millennium—criminal justice has from time to time provoked periods of political and consequently legislative frenzy. Indeed, we can shortly anticipate a new manifestation, telegraphed for us in the Conservative Party election manifesto. But this is an apolitical Bill that has nothing to do with party politics and simply addresses the chaos created by endless legislation, both primary and secondary, that has directly or indirectly impacted on the sentencing decision.
It will not make the sentencing decision for the judge or magistrate any easier, but what it does—and we are indebted to the brilliant imagination of Professor Ormerod and his team at the Law Commission and to the parliamentary counsel, who identified pinch points—is to enable the court to get exceptionally convoluted technicalities right. It does so by clean-sweeping the technicalities into a code.
Strikingly, the Bill ensures that no one will be at risk of being sentenced to a heavier penalty than could have been imposed at the date of the commission of the offence; this is obviously fundamental. Retrospectivity is prevented. Equally strikingly, the code is drafted in such a way that any future legislation relating to sentencing and procedure can be pitted into the code. This is a living document, capable of flexible amendment, so a gauntlet is thrown down to us parliamentarians to make sure we adopt it.
Any judge trying criminal cases will appreciate how typical this single example from my own experience is. The defendant was sentenced to imprisonment 12 years ago. The issue for him is: how long? When will I be out? Naturally, he asked his lawyers how long it would be. When he arrived in prison, calculations were made on the basis of the then legislation and he was told that his release date would be such and such. That is told to every prisoner on arrival, because it matters to him and the prison authorities, so he knew. As his release date approached, some bright individual within the prison or the Home Office wondered whether that release date was right. It was checked by the prison authorities, the Home Office and eventually a judge; it came to the Court of Appeal. From among the various options, we made a decision. We decided that he had been kept in custody too long, wrongly imprisoned.
I am sure your Lordships will forgive me if I quote what I said then. I do so because I would not change a word of it now. I said that
“elementary principles of justice have come … to be buried in the legislative morass. … It is outrageous that so much intellectual effort, as well as public time and resources, have had to be expended … to discover a route … to what should be … the simplest and most certain of questions”.
This Bill will clear up that morass.
4.39 pm