My Lords, I begin by referring to my registered interest as a practising member of the Bar and a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust. I also note that over the last few decades, criminal justice Bills have become more frequent, more complex and longer. Sadly, their frequency and greater length have not always been helpful in clarifying the law. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, offered a stark example from his long experience as a senior judge, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was refreshingly candid about his time as Home Secretary. All these statutes have neither helped to reduce crime nor made the work of the police, prosecutors, defence lawyers or judges any easier.
Many provisions of these Bills—or Acts of Parliament, as they now are—have been repealed by later legislation before coming into force; some have yet to be implemented, despite being part of a statute for years; some created offences that already existed; and, as far as sentencing
statutes are concerned, most of them achieved little except to make the work of sentencing judges and magistrates far more difficult than it needs to be—I speak from bitter experience as a former Crown Court recorder.
It is shocking but true that some sentences passed by magistrates and judges have been unlawful and that even the Court of Appeal has on occasion got the law on sentencing wrong because it is more difficult to unravel than a tangled ball of thread. As I have often pointed out with impertinent glee, in 2012, an analysis of 262 randomly selected cases in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division found that, in 36% of them, unlawful sentences were handed down. The Law Commission attributed this to the level of complexity in the existing legislation—I heard the question just now from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on this.
Now we have this new Sentencing Bill. It was preceded by the Sentencing (Pre-consolidation Amendments) Act, which a number of us debated both before and after the December 2019 general election. In line with modern practice, the Sentencing Bill is vast. The table of contents alone is 24 pages long. The Bill itself contains 420 clauses, 29 schedules and covers 569 pages in two volumes. But, rather than causing me despair, this Bill is to be welcomed. It is the result of years of hard work by Professor David Ormerod and his colleagues at the Law Commission, who deserve our heartfelt congratulations and thanks—and a holiday.
Through this Bill, we are at last to have a sentencing code: one place in which the law on sentencing procedure and types of custodial and community sentence is brought together. It makes sense. It is comprehensive and comprehendable. Once this Bill is in force, everyone will be able to see clearly what Parliament means and what sentencing is for and, in particular, will have a better understanding of that most complicated area of sentencing: non-custodial sentencing.
Let us get this Bill enacted as quickly as possible, before anyone in No. 10 Downing Street or the Home Office notices and tries to fiddle with it.
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