Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, in her place, and I wish her a very speedy recovery. I also congratulate her on her precision and the brevity of her remarks. I wish I was going to be as brief as she has been.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

So do we.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

So does my noble and learned friend; that is a free drink that he is not going to get.

Unusually for a modern criminal justice Bill, which was ably introduced by the Minister, this is, relatively speaking, a remarkably short one. It has only 18 clauses. It is rather spoiled, however, as there are 53 pages of schedules. I dream of the day when any Government decides to stop producing criminal justice Bills of voluminous length, but there we are.

I understand the political and moral basis for the provisions about defendants who refuse to appear in court to be sentenced. I listened with great care to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, on that. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Sandhurst’s scepticism about whether they will work in practice. We will see how those arguments develop in Committee.

I do, however, welcome the proposals with regard to the ULS scheme. I had to operate it myself as a law officer when the Minister was at the Crown Prosecution Service. I think it is fair to say that we suffered together in that struggle. There will be more to say in Committee about the NDA provisions, which amend the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.

This afternoon, I want to address a point about overseas victims not mentioned in the Bill. I spoke about this on 7 February 2024, on the fourth day in Committee on the then Victims and Prisoners Bill. I make no apology for doing so again, and I will table the same amendment to this Bill that I tabled to that Bill. In introducing these remarks, I refer to my interest as a barrister whose practice includes corporate crime cases.

Multinational companies have been fined more than £1.5 billion over the past 10 years or so after investigations by the Serious Fraud Office into corruption abroad. But only 1.4% of those fines—about £20 million—has been used to compensate victim countries or communities abroad. In my view, this needs to change.

Much of this corruption occurs in African countries that are already suffering terrible economic hardship, food and energy crises, and inflation. They are in dire need of economic support to repair the damage caused by corruption.

United Kingdom Governments have been vocal in their support for compensating foreign state victims of corruption. But the action actually taken to compensate foreign states tells a different story and leaves us open to charges of hypocrisy. Most corruption cases brought before the English courts involve foreign jurisdictions. We step in as the world’s policeman, investigating and prosecuting crimes that take place in other countries, but keep all the fines for ourselves. This is important because corruption causes insidious damage to the poor —and the not so poor—particularly in emerging markets. The United Nations says that it

“impedes international trade and investment; undermines sustainable development; threatens democracy and deprives citizens of vital public resources”.

The African Union estimated in 2015 that 25% of the continent’s gross domestic product was lost to corruption. Every company convicted of overseas corruption in this jurisdiction should be ordered to compensate the communities it has harmed. That would be both just and effective. Compensation should come through investment in programmes targeted at decreasing corruption and benefiting local communities; for example, by building and resourcing more schools and hospitals.

At first glance, English law encourages compensation. It is required to take precedence over all other financial sanctions—so far, so good. But, as with many noble ambitions, problems lurk in the detail. Compensation is ordered in criminal cases only where the loss is straightforward to assess, even though the trial judge is usually of High Court or senior Crown Court level and will deal with complex issues every day.

For example, in 2022, in a case in which I appeared for a victim state, Glencore pleaded guilty to widespread corruption in the oil markets of several African states. Although it was ordered to pay £281 million, not a single penny has gone back to the communities where the corruption happened, largely because it was held that the compensation would be too complicated to quantify. The Airbus deferred prosecution agreement tells a similar story. The company was required to pay €991 million to the United Kingdom in fines, but compensation to the numerous Asian countries where the corruption took place formed no part of the agreement.

The process for compensating overseas state victims—and particularly overseas state victims—needs simplification so that real money can be returned to them. An answer perhaps lies in incentivising the corporations that commit the crimes to pay compensation voluntarily on the understanding that it would not increase the total amount, including penalties and costs, that they would have to pay. The company could be given further incentive by receiving a discount on the fine it would still be required to pay to the United Kingdom Treasury, or an increase in the fine if it refuses or fails to make redress.

The required changes are, I suggest, straightforward and would cost the taxpayer nothing. It could create a standard measure of compensation, which would ensure consistency and transparency, as well as avoiding the difficulty of calculating a specific amount of loss or damage in each case. The compensation figure could equal whichever is the higher of the profit made by the company from its corrupt conduct or the amount of the bribes it paid to obtain the profits. This already happens when companies are sentenced, save that all the money goes to the Treasury. The defendant company would pay nothing more, but at least some of the money would benefit the victim state or the communities harmed within it.

Of course, it would be naive to think that compensation paid to a foreign state could never lead to further corruption. That is clearly a risk. To address this, defendant companies would be encouraged or required to enter into an agreement with the relevant state, which would include obligations to comply with United Nations guidance on the treatment of compensation funds and to identify projects for which the funds would be used, possibly with the involvement of a local non-governmental organisation.

To encourage states to enter into these types of agreements, corporations would be permitted to donate the compensation funds, for example, to the World Bank or International Monetary Fund for projects in the region instead, or to pay down a country’s debt, if an agreement cannot otherwise be reached.

The benefit of this approach is that, unlike at present, where there is no disadvantage in doing nothing, it puts the onus on the defendant companies to take restorative action—something that will appeal to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It also addresses the difficulties in quantifying losses by creating a simple approach that gives companies early sight of the amount that they will have to pay.

The Bill is, I am sure, full of wonderful provisions, but it does lack this wonderful diamond which needs to be added to the ring around the Minister’s finger— I do not know how far I can go with that one. But let us do this. We can then hold our heads high and enhance our national reputation in the fight against international corruption. This is not a matter of party politics. It is a matter of simple justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

That is very rare. If you appeal out of time, you have pretty much had it. You need to have a really good reason to do so. I now turn to—

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My noble friend is very gracious, but I fear there is a new trend which is not the practice of your Lordships’ House: to have an extended back and forth at Second Reading. I know this may be the practice of another place not far from here but, with all due respect to noble Lords and to my noble friend with her good humour and fortitude, I am not sure that that is something that we should innovate this evening.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I was only going to support the Minister. One of the differences between an appeal by a defendant in a criminal matter and the unduly lenient sentencing system is that anybody can write to the law officers to complain that a sentence is unduly lenient. Many of the people that the Minister and I may have dealt with in the past wrote in having read an article in a newspaper saying that a particular defendant had been given what they thought was a lenient sentence. Nobody does that to appeal a criminal sentence as a defendant.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord.

Turning to what is not in the Bill, I of course recall that the Crime and Policing Bill—the Ministry of Justice has some of the clauses in relation to that—has been extensively criticised for being too long. This Bill is now being criticised for being too short—so there is a slight sense of being criticised whichever way we do it.

I will deal with some of the matters that were raised in relation to this. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked whether we intend to bring in the sections in the Victims and Prisoners Act dealing with definitions. I hope that I may write to her in relation to that, because some parts have been implemented and some others are planned to be implemented. I do not want to give her an answer that might turn out not to be entirely accurate.

On the question of homicide abroad, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we are conscious of this being an issue. As I am sure the noble Baroness knows, we are working on a code to give assistance to families abroad. The question of whether the victims’ code is going to apply is difficult, because many of the provisions in the victims’ code deal only with cases that can be prosecuted in this country and therefore would not apply. Again, it is a matter that we are considering and reflecting on and we will be very happy to engage with her and other noble Lords in relation to that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, raised the question of compensation for economic crimes abroad, such as corruption. I entirely agree with him about the importance of not forgetting about the effect of these cases on other countries. In the circumstances, it might be best for me to suggest that we meet to discuss it, because it is an important matter to which I would like to give some serious thought.

Transcripts were raised by many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks. Transparency is really important to the Government. That is one of the reasons we are now going to make the magistrates’ court a court of record: there will be recordings of all proceedings in order to shine a light on what is happening. If you are recording something, obviously your intention is that at some point it may need to be turned into a transcript. I am old enough to remember the days of the shorthand writer in court. The transcript used to be phenomenally expensive, because you had somebody sitting there typing it out and then it had to be ordered and checked. We are hopeful that artificial intelligence is going to help by bringing down the cost of transcripts: we are all familiar with dictating to our computers these days, so the costs may be in checking rather than actually transcribing.

In the meantime, as far as the victims of rape and serious sexual offences are concerned, the transcripts of those sentencing remarks are free to victims in those cases. We conducted a pilot and, following that, those transcripts will be available free of charge to victims.

The noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, raised the question of victim personal statements, and said that there are anxieties about censorship. This is a tricky one, because as the noble Lord will know, sometimes victims misunderstand the purpose of a victim personal statement and do not quite understand why they cannot include a number of things in it. Again, this is important to us. No victim should feel that their words have been censored. They should be able to say what they want to say—we are going to think about that one.

I turn finally to the issue of backlog and delay. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti raised the question of a rumour about what is to happen to the proposals in the review conducted by Sir Brian Leveson. I think that it could be seen from the expression on my face that it was the first time I had heard of that rumour. Our intention is that proper consideration be given to the important matter of how we deal with the backlog and delay. Speaking for myself, I want to persuade people and take them with us where we can do so. These matters are to be discussed, and I hope that people will listen to each other. Nobody thinks that the status quo is acceptable; the question is how we deal with it. The Government are proposing a package of measures, one aspect of which, as noble Lords know, is the suggestion of slightly moving the line, as other Governments have in the past. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I do not engage in this and debate it today. I am absolutely confident that there will be other opportunities to do so.

This Bill will help strengthen our justice system. It used to be, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, that victims were treated as mere witnesses and had very little by way of rights. That is no longer the case. This Bill continues the journey of putting them where they should be, at the heart of the justice system. I beg to move.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I absolutely accept much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said about the awful nature of historic child abuse and the reasons why there is often a delay before bringing forward complaints, but it is important that we do not conflate civil proceedings and criminal proceedings. The earlier group was to do with people claiming damages, where the defendant is not usually the perpetrator. There may be reasons why we have reached a stage where there cannot be a fair trial. I will leave that aside for the moment.

This amendment is concerned with criminal offences. There is not a limitation period for criminal offences generally, subject to the prosecution deciding that so much time has elapsed that it is not appropriate to bring forward a claim. The noble Baroness has experience of occasionally making those decisions in very old cases. The Minister is pointing at me and is going to give a longer and more authoritative answer than I will attempt to do now. I make the point in general terms.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. While I entirely understand the motivation behind the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I am not entirely sure that it is necessary. As the noble Lord said, there is no limitation for the bringing of this particular Section 9 offence.

I do not wish to get into my anecdotage, but I remember that, as a law officer, one very often had to deal with historic offences whereby a mature person, in their 50s, 60s or 70s, was being indicted or prosecuted for an offence they committed many years ago against a minor. Had the problem existed that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, envisages through her amendment, that would have been a matter we would have had to consider. As the Minister will no doubt tell us from her experience as someone who worked at a senior level in the Crown Prosecution Service, you have to consider whether there is an adequacy of evidence and whether it is in the public interest to bring that person to trial. The age of the offence might be considered by the prosecutor, but there is no time bar, as I understand it. While I may well be corrected for being out of date and ignorant, I certainly do not think that there is a need for this amendment, although it is well motivated.

I have a suspicion that I have got this entirely wrong and that the Minister is going to tell me that it would have been better if I had kept to my place, but there we are. There are plenty of things that we could do with the Bill—make it shorter, for example—but I am not sure that this amendment is one that we need to add to it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in strong support of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I do not know whether it is necessary. I declare an interest as a victim. My concern about the historic sex offences is the prison population. We have large numbers of historic sex offenders in prison. It creates great problems for the Prison Service. However, a custodial sentence is the only sensible disposal. We need to work out what to do with historic sex offenders within the prison system.

Accidental Prison Releases

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The Ministry of Justice has a programme called Enable, around how we develop the skills of our fantastic staff. In the short term, we have introduced new checklists that are more robust than ever and asked for duty governor sign-off on releases. We are investing more money in training for our staff. That is not just for staff who are joining the service; it is important that we invest in the staff who have been with us for some time. The offender management unit does complex work. I have spoken to governors who have been in the service for many years. When they look at the release checks that the offender management units must do, they cannot believe how much more complex it has become over the last few years.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I know that the Minister works extremely hard and is very knowledgeable about this subject. He and I have been cantering around this track for more than two decades. When I was last in opposition, in the 2000s, I was shadow Prisons Minister and visited 75 of the prisons, young offender institutions and so forth in England and Wales. Even though there was a Labour Government, nobody ever said that it was the Labour Government’s fault that people escaped. Can we have a little less of it being said that it is the last Government’s fault? In the 2000s, there were people escaping, there were high levels of suicide and high levels of violence against prison officers, and there was sewage flowing from the top floors of prisons into the lower floors. The whole estate was in a shambles and the staff in a state of low morale. Let us solve this problem together. The Minister and I know that this can be done. I ask him not to fall into the trap of reading out the Whip’s notes.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord and I know each other very well. I hope he knows that I have my own view on this, because, like him, I visit lots of prisons all the time. It is clear that our prisons need investment and that we need to build new prisons. Only last week I went to a new prison which will be opening in 2028. These are modern, highly efficient prisons that are there not just to keep the public safe but to rehabilitate people. The problem that we are trying to fix is a long-term problem. It is not just about buildings; it is about people and how we support our staff to deliver an amazing service in rehabilitating people so that when they leave prison they do not come back.

Trials: Timeliness

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this important issue. Palestine Action has conducted an escalating campaign involving alleged criminal damage to Britain’s national security infrastructure, intimidation and violence. This Government unreservedly condemn any crimes of this kind. That said, as the noble Lord will understand, it would be wrong for me to comment on individual cases that are awaiting trial. In relation to when trials take place, in the same way that no Government can tell the Crown Prosecution Service which cases to prosecute, this Government do not tell courts which cases to prioritise when listing trials. These are decisions for independent judges to make, free from political pressure.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister will remember from her time as a Crown Court judge that the time between a case first coming before a Crown Court and being listed for trial has got longer and longer. Now, perhaps in her old court, trials are being listed for 2028 and 2029. This is unacceptable for victims, for witnesses and even for the defendant. It requires some will and leadership to crack this. What are the Government intending to do about it? The 1,250 extra days promised to the system by the Lord Chancellor just the other day could be taken up by her old court alone in one year. Please let us have some action.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I could not agree more with the basic premise of the noble and learned Lord’s question. It is simply unacceptable, and behind every one of those statistics are human beings waiting for justice. Our immediate reactions are that we intend to fund a record high of 111,250 sitting days in the Crown Court, to free up an additional 2,000 days in the Crown Court by extending the sentencing powers of the magistrates’ courts from six to 12 months, and to make some capital investment. But it is obvious to everybody that simply making efficiencies and putting financial help into the system will not deal with the problem. The backlog is now twice what it was before Covid, which is why the Government asked Sir Brian Leveson to look at fundamental reforms of how the system works. We are considering those and will respond in due course.

IPP Sentences

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

We have 233 IPP prisoners in secure mental health hospitals. From having been to the hospitals and met the individuals, I know that the care that they get from our nursing professionals is exceptional. It is also important that when they come back into the prison system, they have a soft landing and not a hard landing. That is an area that I am working on as we speak. Also important is that when people leave prison, they go to an approved premises. We have a trial going on where we are extending them going there from 12 to 16 weeks but also having a dedicated individual psychologist to support them. That is already having gains now.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

Does the Minister accept that the current recall system for IPP offenders is confused, confusing, overly bureaucratic and irrational, and that it creates injustice and just increases the number of mentally ill people and those without any hope in custody? Would he please accelerate his efforts to mend it?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his question, and for the work that he and the noble and learned Lord Thomas have done on this area. It is really important, and the focus has been very helpful. Already, the documents are clearer and more focused. Senior managers now oversee all recall decisions. From 3 November this year, we are extending the post-recall timeframes to improve planning and decision-making. That is thanks to Shirley Debono, who has helped us on that as well. The multidisciplinary progression panels are the way to do this, because we need to make sure that everybody who is in prison on an IPP sentence has hope, engages with the action plan, gets out and stays out.

Imprisonment for Public Protection (Re-sentencing) Bill [HL]

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 4th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Huge benefit can be obtained from using the places that are elsewhere. Those are the points that we ought to think about when looking at these amendments. If all else fails, we should have an expert committee—but we should not have a committee unless it is able to get somewhere, because, otherwise, it will raise false hope.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, for his continued campaign in this area. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and my noble friend Lord Moylan for their remarks in support of the campaign and the general thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, discussed.

It is very tempting in Committee on a short Bill such as this to want to rehearse the Second Reading debate. Unlike the noble and learned Lord, who analysed the problems before us with a forensic stiletto, I tend to come from the blunderbuss school of argument. I would prefer to give this piece of injustice a thorough whacking, but, unfortunately, that would not be helpful; it would be repetitive and would probably not move the Government.

Because I am familiar with the Justice Ministers on the Front Bench, I know that they both find themselves in a position in which they would rather not be. They did not invent the IPP and are not responsible for its progress since 2003. I suspect that they heartily wish they were dealing with something else—but they are not, and they have to deal with this, so here we all are.

I will make one or two brief points. You could not put a cigarette paper between me and the noble and learned Lord in relation to the remarks he just made. The IPP sentence is uncontroversially unjust. It is also uncontroversial to say that, within the sentence as a whole, there are elements that aggravate that injustice. As the noble and learned Lord pointed out, the absurdities of the recall regime—the monstrous consequence of a slight breach in a recall or the terms of a licence—can lead to a recall in relation to something that has nothing whatever to do with the initial offence. In addition, there is the inability of the state properly to police the return of people to imprisonment without a separate and new trial in relation to wholly different allegations.

All those things ought to stick in our craws, and I think they probably do. However, we feel bound up in the bureaucracy and the sheer inability to move things along, because there are so many other moving parts in the world of public policy. One is never able to clear a path through to achieve what we all want to do: to end every consequence of the IPP regime, consequences which were to some extent ameliorated by the 2008 changes and by the abolition of the sentence in 2012. None the less, we are still here having these debates—wringing our hands and having anguished discussions—when we all know what we need to do.

I will do my best to return to the amendments and then I will stop talking. An expert committee is fine, but we have several hundred experts—they are called judges. It seems to me that by sitting either singly or in batches of two or three, they could form lots of expert committees to break the back of this problem.

Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I also have Amendment 6 in this group. As my noble friend said, we spent some time trying to understand what are characteristics and what are circumstances. There is sometimes quite a grey line between the two, and there are of course factors which may be both. My noble friend has referred to pregnancy. I realised after I had tabled the amendment that better than “an assessment which would be beneficial” would be “an assessment which would be suitable”—“suitable” being the word used in the sentencing code—or “appropriate”, which is a very good catch-all term. However, my point is clear enough.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Hailsham, I begin my remarks by apologising for not having been able to attend the earlier stages of the Bill. However, I am happy to say that, like my noble friend, I have read the report and I am reasonably up to date with the way in which the debates have gone.

I am very much attracted by what my noble friend said in support of his Amendment 1, and I speak from a position of some—but not a great deal—of experience as a sentencer. I was a recorder of the Crown Court for 15 years, from 1998 until about 2015, with time off when serving in the Government. One of the things I found most useful in dealing with what I thought was the most difficult task as a judge was the advice and help of the sentencing report.

If you are a High Court judge, you tend, if you are dealing with criminal cases, to deal only with life sentence cases. The job that you have to do when sentencing is to consider the tariff within the life sentence. This is difficult but not, perhaps, as complicated as having to deal with the multiplicity of sentences involved in road traffic cases, drug cases, dishonest acquisition cases, and so on, and obviously cases to do with assault and other forms of violence.

As a recorder, as a Crown Court judge and as a magistrate—I see the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, is in his place—one is dealing with, in a sense, a much more complicated sentencing picture. The assistance of sentencing reports is huge and valuable. Anything that the Bill can do to make the life of the sentencer easier and to enable him or her to produce a juster sentence is to be welcomed, and the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Hailsham through his Amendment 1 provides the sort of assistance that I would very much have wished to have had as a low-level sentencer. It is perhaps more neatly encompassed in the suggestion through Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Marks.

Either way, both amendments appear to me to be trying to undo the political mess that has caused the arrival of the Bill. I understand the politics of all this; I am sure we all do. It is a thoroughly unnecessary Bill, one that the Government allowed themselves to be backed into a corner about. It may well be that they regret it. However, given that we have got the Bill, I invite the Government to pay close attention to the speech of my noble friend and to listen very carefully to my chambers colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Marks, when he comes to speak to Amendment 2.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I have not spoken before on the Bill, and frankly, like others, I was rather astonished that this was a topic requiring legislation at all. Like the noble and learned Lord, I have been what you would probably call a low-level sentencer for a number of years.

I will make two points. First, in recent years, in my experience, the quality of pre-sentence reports has greatly improved: from what were sometimes formulaic and feeble reports to nowadays, in my more recent experience, really providing an insight into the defendant’s background, life and attitudes, and conveying realistic recommendations. To that extent, they must always be regarded as helpful, greatly improving on, as the noble Viscount described, representations made by the legal representatives after a few moments in the cells or in the court corridor before coming into court.

Secondly, this experience has led me to adopt the attitude that, whenever in doubt, a report should be directed. I, for one, never regretted directing a report. For that reason, I certainly support Amendments 5 and 6. In other words, pre-sentence reports should, wherever possible and sensible, be the norm.

Criminal Cases Review Commission

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The Government are actively looking into the concerns raised about the compensation cap and will provide an update on that matter in due course. We would encourage Mr Sullivan to make an application to the miscarriage of justice application service, and we will prioritise his application because of the length of his prison sentence.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, since we discussed the CCRC last week, it has become apparent that Mr Chris Henley KC, who wrote a review of the CCRC in relation to the Malkinson case, thinks that the chief executive gave inaccurate evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee. Nobody places any blame on the Secretary of State or on the Minister in this place for the current state of the CCRC, but has the time not come for the decision on who should be the next chair of the CCRC to be made not in the near future but today? It is unravelling quickly, and there will be more Malkinsons and more cases of that hideous nature unless the Government really grab hold of it and take charge.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord raised those points a couple of weeks ago and, since then, we have had the letters in the Sunday Times about the appearance of the chief executive in front of the Justice Select Committee. I shall not comment on that, because the CCRC is an independent body, but it has already begun to implement a number of the Henley recommendations—and, of course, we intend to go further on that. On the appointment of the interim chair, as the noble and learned Lord will know the objective is to have an interim chair for 18 months to review the CCRC’s operations. An individual has been identified and is going through the approvals process, so the announcement will be made imminently.

Criminal Cases Review Commission

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Garnier]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede) (Lab)]

My Lords, it is essential that the public have confidence in the CCRC and its ability to investigate potential miscarriages of justice fairly and impartially. An interim chair is being appointed and the Lord Chancellor will ask them to conduct a review of the operation of the organisation. As part of its current review of criminal appeals, the Law Commission will be reporting on the role and function of the CCRC. The Government will carefully consider any recommendations put forward.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister share the view of the chief executive of the CCRC, given to the House of Commons Justice Select Committee last week, that she thought it appropriate to come into the office only one or two days every couple of months? Does he agree that the CCRC needs real leadership? It needs an executive chairman with legal standing, full-time salaried commissioners, and higher quality and better paid caseworkers, and it needs to get rid of the predictive test for referring cases to the Court of Appeal. The CCRC is vital to the justice system of this country. It is in a state of complete collapse and it needs gripping by this Government.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

As I said in my first Answer to the noble and learned Lord, the intention is to appoint an interim chair who will conduct a review of the way the CCRC is working, and that will be done in collaboration with the ongoing review by the Law Commission. I listened to the evidence that was given to the Select Committee last week. Clearly, how it chooses to conduct its affairs is a matter for the CCRC itself. A new interim chair is to be appointed, probably for a period of about 18 months; that, together with the Law Commission review, may result in changes at the CCRC.

Sentencing Council Guidelines

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark for those questions. Regarding the lack of sophisticated data, that is a fair point, and we are continuing to work on building up that database, but it is an ongoing project to properly understand the nature of the differential treatment. The second point the right reverend Prelate makes is about the propensity of certain groups not to plead guilty, which means that they do not get the discount. That is certainly true in my experience of sitting in youth courts and adult magistrates’ courts. However, I do not think it accounts for all the disparity in sentencing, and I think there is more to the story. That needs to be gone into, and a better database would help the Government do that.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, having worked in justice for nearly 50 years and in Westminster for nearly 40 years, I am not so naive or squeamish as to be shocked by this political squabble over the recent sentencing guidelines. That said, will the Minister accept that the most difficult job for any sentencer—as he and I know from experience—is to sentence the defendant in a way that does justice to the victim, the public and the defendant? Will he also accept that the failure to ensure the provision of far more pre-sentence reports, which are, as he said, an invaluable tool to assist the sentencer, is not confined to this or the previous Government but is of long standing? Will he also agree that although we all have the right to criticise a sentence, even from a position of ignorance of the facts before the judge, parliamentarians should not resort to ugly personal attacks on members of the judiciary, who cannot respond?

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I agree with all the points the noble and learned Lord has made. It is for sentencers to sentence in a way that can be understood by the offender, the victim and the public. All our adult courts are open to the public and the press. It is also true in youth courts, which are not open to the public, but the same principle obtains. It is worth adding that, in my experience, pre-sentence reports compiled for the youth court are far more extensive than those compiled for the adult court. When it comes to the extent of pre-sentence reports, the Probation Service, which compiles them for the adult courts, has something to learn from YOTs that compile reports for youths who are sentenced. I realise that that is a resource issue, but nevertheless when one sentences, as I used to do very regularly, the difference in those reports was quite stark.