Prison Sentences

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I refer to my interest in the register as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust. Does the Minister accept that short-term sentences of imprisonment are in normal times of little use in protecting the public and of no use in reforming the offender, who is frequently a mentally ill drug user? However, now they are positively counter- productive. The impact of Covid-19 means that prisoners are in their cells for 23 hours a day, essentially living in a shared lavatory with no access to purposeful activity, fresh air or rehabilitation courses. Should not all custodial sentences of six months or less be immediately suspended, with strict supervision conditions attached?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The Court of Appeal recently set out in its judgement in the case of Regina v Christopher Manning that

“Judges and magistrates … should keep in mind that the impact of a custodial sentence is likely to be heavier during the current emergency”,


and we acknowledge that to be the case. However, that does not alter our position with regard to the ability of the judiciary to impose short sentences.

Sentencing Bill [HL]

Lord Garnier Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con) [V]]

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Many provisions of these Bills—or Acts of Parliament, as they now are—have been repealed by later legislation before coming into force; some have yet to be implemented, despite being part of a statute for years; some created offences that already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.

Crown Court (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2020

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the implementation of these two orders. It is essential that proceedings in our courts should be as open to the public as possible, subject to any overriding public interests, such as the interests of justice generally and in a particular case before the court. While I bear in mind the more cautious and charmingly self-deprecating contributions of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, the restrictions outlined by my noble and learned friend the Advocate-General are, in my mind, proportionate and sensible.

My noble and learned friend and I have appeared as advocates in the Supreme Court, where, as he said, proceedings are recorded and live-streamed—I hope he will agree, to the public benefit. Although not every case is necessarily interesting to the public and some are, frankly, pretty dry, that they can be seen and heard live, or later by people who cannot get to Parliament Square, helps demystify the Supreme Court’s procedures and the work of those who take part in appeals as justices, advocates or litigants. It also helps the wider understanding of the law and its development through decisions of the court. I am sure that is true of broadcasts of the Court of Appeal, even if they are not routine.

I have some questions about the Crown Court order, which I sent to my noble and learned friend earlier this afternoon. Regarding that order, can he tell us how long the general permission to record sentencing remarks given by the Lord Chancellor lasts? Will there be a list of people or organisations, or only one designated recording organisation, permitted to record by the Lord Chancellor under the order, whereas those who wish to broadcast what has been recorded will need to apply to the sentencing judge on each occasion? Is the judge’s permission to broadcast limited to the particular case in which he or she is the sentencing judge, or can a High Court judge or a resident judge give permission to broadcast the sentencing remarks of another judge sitting at the same Crown Court?

Who may ask for permission to record and broadcast sentencing remarks? Will they have to apply in open court, or can it be done administratively and in writing? Will the broadcaster have to pay either to apply for permission or to broadcast the recorded material? Is broadcasting limited to traditional television or radio broadcasters such as the BBC, ITN or Sky, or may individuals and organisations outside the traditional media—for example, bloggers or people who post on social media—be given permission? Who, if dissatisfied by a decision to give or to refuse permission for a recording to be broadcast, has the right to appeal that decision? Who decides whether a broadcast was fair and accurate, and what is the consequence for the broadcaster if it is not?

Finally, is there a statutory or relevant definition of the phrases “light entertainment” and “satire” in Article 10(2)(c) and (d)? These are terms often easier to recognise than to define, but how will the judge know, when asked for permission to broadcast his or her sentencing remarks, whether they are to be edited in such a way as to invite contempt, ridicule or gentle amusement, or as to encourage academic legal interest or intellectual curiosity?

Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [HL]

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

It comes as no surprise that I view the Bill with some scepticism on the principle of building consent. I therefore ask the Minister to give a copper-bottomed guarantee that full consultation will take place well in advance over any issues that might arise from this legislation that fall within a devolved competence in either Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, explained in Committee on 13 May, the Official Opposition had no objection to the three treaties covered by the Bill being brought into domestic law via primary legislation, but they had very considerable objections to Clause 2. Their primary objection to Clause 2 on 13 May, repeated today, was that it would allow the Government to change the law by delegated legislation.

I have no doubt that other noble Lords who have yet to speak, like noble and learned Lords and noble Lords who have already spoken, will support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, in his arguments while paying due regard to the contribution of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. For my part, I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, on the matter of principle but gently remind your Lordships’ House that none of his arguments based on constitutional impropriety found favour with the Government of which he was a distinguished member between 1997 and 2007.

I spent a fair amount of time, when on the Opposition Benches, arguing with the noble and learned Lord’s colleagues, as he does now with mine, that the misuse of secondary legislation to alter or extend primary legislation is wrong. I thought it was then and I think it is now. If, as he appears to have done, he has changed his mind, I am delighted, but he must know, having been in Governments with majorities of 179, 167 and 157, why Governments with large majorities resort to this device: it is expedient, it is convenient and they can.

There is generally far too much legislation and most of it is inadequately considered in the House of Commons. Bills are closely whipped and programmed and Governments of all stripes—Conservative, Labour and the recent coalition—have used Henry VIII powers allowing Ministers to make law with insufficient parliamentary scrutiny. I make that observation coolly.

I am neither shocked nor surprised that the Bill contains such provisions, nor that the Official Opposition have taken the stance they have on the question, today and in May. I simply point out, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, must know, that this is what happens and will continue to happen until Governments with large majorities do less and do it better.

I think I am right in saying that only two of us speaking to this group of amendments—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and I—were Members of Parliament, and government and shadow Ministers, in the other place before arriving in your Lordships’ House. I am quite sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, will not agree with me when I say that we have brought with us a degree of realism or cynicism, but as Front- and Back-Benchers we served on Bill committees and secondary legislation committees using the affirmative and negative resolution procedures. We know how Governments manage the agenda in the other place.

Therefore, when I see Amendment 20, which would ensure that all regulations made under Clause 2 were subject to a lengthy and protracted super-affirmative resolution procedure, I see a procedure which, if it cannot be killed at birth, will be neutered. I do not wish to be unhelpful, and I readily acknowledge that the noble and learned Lord has said that this is a probing amendment, but I fear that what I see is a cul-de-sac. I confess that I took part in similar debates on Henry VIII powers when in opposition to his Government. His fellow Ministers smiled sweetly and the provision was passed into law exactly as they had drafted it. My noble and learned friend Minister will be less direct than me, but one only has to read the terms of the amendment to realise that, but for the noble and learned Lord’s advertised withdrawal of it, it is heading nowhere but the butcher’s block, if not in your Lordships’ House then when it gets to the other place.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is of course right to highlight the constitutional problem, a problem that he could not see quite so clearly when he was in government. I do not wish to discourage others from arguing against these ministerial powers even if, as I learned when I was in opposition, nothing will come of them today through the Bill. The arguments must be made, but in the context of the Bill I do not want the migration of these conventions into UK law delayed by this bigger constitutional question. I thus urge your Lordships to let it through unamended, not because I agree with the overuse of Henry VIII powers but because it is going to happen anyway and today is not the day to reform their use piecemeal. That said, I hope this very necessary reform will soon come about more widely with the agreement of both Houses and all parties.

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the Bill is highly technical for a person who is not trained as a lawyer and does not have a degree in international law. I am not one of those legal minds. I have gone through the various features of the Bill and its policy background in some previous debates.

My concern is about divorces. Children often suffer most when a divorce takes place. The Advocate-General for Scotland, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, said in a debate in March:

“Private international law is viewed by some as a technical and specialist area of law, but it is an essential one. Without private international law agreements, UK businesses, individuals and families would struggle to resolve the challenges they face when dealing with cross-border legal disputes.”


He went on to say that

“if a family relationship breaks down and one spouse moves abroad, they make it easier to sort out arrangements in the best interests of their children.”—[Official Report, 17/3/20; col. 1439.]

These issues become very important when the marriage has taken place in a religious ceremony in a foreign country and one of the spouses is not British and the other is British by nationality. Often the non-British spouse gets the children and goes back to their country of birth. Here I refer to the sub-continent countries such as India and Pakistan. The spouse who is British and lives in the UK finds it difficult to fight a legal battle over the custody of the children when the other spouse is in India or Pakistan. The issue is further compounded because the cost of litigation is high and the British spouse cannot afford it. The other issue is that the legal processes in these countries can take many years to go before a judge because of the calendar of the courts, which have to deal with many cases each day. In many cases the British Embassy tries to lend assistance, but there is a limit to how much it can help.

I do not wish to raise the issue of forced marriages in this debate. I am just raising this issue because I feel that it will raise its head in future. From 1 February this year the UK has regained full competence to enter into international agreements on PIL in its own right. Such agreements with many countries will take a long time and could cause considerable costs and delays to pending court cases. Can the Minister assure the House that special arrangements will be made for such pending cases, particularly where children are involved?

Royal Commission on Criminal Justice

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we are confident that the chair and members of the Royal Commission will be able to take into account the lessons that we can learn from dealing with this crisis in the context of the prosecution of crime, imprisonment and parole.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I declare my interests as set out in the register. There is plenty that a royal commission on criminal justice could consider but it is likely to take a long time for any of its recommendations to be implemented by the Government. Our criminal justice system is under dreadful strain and its problems have been aggravated by the Covid-19 crisis. Does my noble and learned friend agree that we need to deal with the growing backlog of criminal trials, improve the state of our court buildings and prisons, and ensure that those lawyers who do publicly funded criminal law cases are paid a decent wage?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The criminal justice system faces challenges, which is why this royal commission is so important.

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments because of the change that took place when the challenge to the right of the Home Secretary went through the judicial system and the safeguard that existed was therefore withdrawn. I do not share the view that the Parole Board is full of naive people. It has an incredibly difficult job and needs all the support and guidance it can get. I have my own disagreements with it, including on the case of David McCauliffe, who has been in prison for 32 years and did not commit murder or rape, although he did commit some totally heinous crimes.

I speak to this amendment because, like other Home Secretaries, I had to deal with Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. When Keith Bennett’s aunt, on behalf of the family, made her appeals to me to see if we could get an identification of where the little boy, Keith, was buried, my heart went out to the family. It was one of those distressing moments that Home Secretaries and now Justice Secretaries have to deal with in cases of murder, particularly where the body has not been identified and there is not therefore the opportunity to grieve properly or to lay the remains to rest. Winnie Johnson, Keith’s mother, died in 2012 without ever knowing where he was. No parent should have to put up with that.

As I have spoken about already, like my predecessors I was able to block the release of the Moors murderers because the power then existed with the Home Secretary. For reasons relating to human rights—it was not to do with the incorporation of the ECHR into the Human Rights Act but with the appeal that went through the judicial system—that power was taken away and, as described, now rests with the Parole Board.

In the circumstances, we are asking the impossible of the Parole Board: to make a judgment on a situation in which somebody has knowingly refused to identify the place in which they put the body of the individual they murdered. For the parents of a child, that is so horrendous as to require a much more rigid approach than we would normally take in giving judges and the Parole Board, quite rightly, the discretion they need to deal with cases. That is why I am in support.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s Amendment 1 and the amendments in the next group to be moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and spoken to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, are concerned with the prisoner’s state of mind or mental capacity at the time of his application to the Parole Board for release on licence. The amendments may start from different places but end up in more or less the same place. The difference between them is where the assessment of the prisoner’s state of mind begins.

In short, if one agrees with my noble friend Lord Blencathra, it is essentially for the prisoner to persuade two doctors that he is not pulling the wool over the eyes of the Parole Board about not being able to remember where the victim’s remains are. If I correctly anticipate the argument of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, it is for the Parole Board to be satisfied that the prisoner’s state of mind or mental capacity is of such a quality that he is able to disclose, but has not disclosed, their whereabouts.

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I have read the debates on the Bill in the other place, and I can well understand the alacrity with which it was approved. I can also understand the sense of outrage and distress felt by those close to the victims of killers, be they convicted of murder or manslaughter, when they are denied knowledge of where their loved ones have been abandoned by the criminal. To be denied a funeral because the person responsible for the death will not tell the relevant authorities where the remains are unquestionably adds to the distress and grief of the family.

We know of the cases which have been the catalyst for the Bill. There will be, I have no doubt, examples of the heinous behaviour that predated the Moors murders in the 1960s. More recent cases have been cited and in all of them, the simple recitation of the killer’s name is enough to reawaken the revulsion and hideous sense of loss that these foul people have aggravated by refusing to disclose the whereabouts of their victim’s body. For the parents of children who may have been sexually abused, the horror they have to contend with in not knowing whether the convicted sex offender abused their child is only to some miniscule amount mitigated by their child being alive and with them at home. Imagine the fear these parents must harbour that later, in adolescence or adulthood, their child will be traumatised by remembering or coming to realise what happened either to them or their classmates many years before.

The Bill is designed to mark in public policy the revulsion that right-thinking members of society feel for these serious offenders who, not content with killing or abusing their victims, add to the pain and suffering of their victims’ families and friends by keeping secret information which, if they had a scintilla of remorse or empathy, they would give up to the police. No doubt there will be some killers and sex offenders who take a perverse pleasure in prolonging the agony caused by their crimes by refusing to say where they have abandoned the body of their victim, or withholding the identities of those whom they have abused.

The Bill, as has been explained by my noble and learned friend and by the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Bull, concerns the obligations of the Parole Board when it considers whether an offender merits release from prison. It places a statutory duty on the board to consider circumstances where the offender does not disclose the sort of information I have referred to as part of its assessment of whether they should be released from custody. The board is already subject to non-statutory guidance to the same effect so the Bill, when enacted, will promote that to a statutory duty. Although I understand the welcome the Bill was given in the other place and congratulate the Members of Parliament who have campaigned on behalf of victims and their families to bring it into law, I am not sure that the approach adopted by the Bill goes far enough.

The Parole Board has always had the power to consider the release date of long-term prisoners and, although its decisions are in certain circumstances amenable to judicial review, its procedures are essentially held in private. The public and the media do not attend its hearings and its reasoned decisions are not, as a rule, published. Decisions about the liberty of the subject, especially concerning the future of offenders imprisoned for very serious violent or sex crimes, should be made in public, or at least the reasons for the Parole Board’s decisions, be it to release or not, should be available to the public. I can see that there may be certain facts or details about the victim and the case as a whole that may need to be kept confidential but, by and large, the default position should be for open justice.

I have a further concern about what is proposed by the Bill. I am not convinced that it is right to revise this aspect of the criminal justice system by guidance, even when that guidance is imposed through the medium of a statutory duty. In my judgment, if a prisoner is to be faced with a longer period in custody, it should be through a statutory arrangement, but that arrangement should not be administrative. Rather than telling the Parole Board that it must take into account that an offender has not provided certain details about their offences, it should be a discrete criminal offence, subject to appropriate defences, for a convicted defendant not to inform the police or other proper authority where or how a victim’s remains were disposed of.

The trial of the defendant for this additional offence would take place in open court before the same judge who presided over the murder, manslaughter or sex offence trial or, if the offender had pleaded guilty to the killing but none the less refused to say what had been done with the body, before the same judge sentencing for the original offence. The trial of the offence of non-disclosure could take place immediately after the finding or plea of guilty of the killing or sex crime, or later, depending on the facts of the case. There might, for example, need to be a delay while a co-defendant who had pleaded not guilty to the murder, manslaughter or sex abuse, as the case may be, was tried before dealing with the offence of non-disclosure.

The trial of the allegation of non-disclosure should not just be before the same judge who tried the murder or sex abuse case; the judge should try it without a jury. That would be quicker, of course, but would also avoid any deliberate or unwitting bias against the convicted killer or sex offender in the mind of the jury which had only just reached a guilty verdict, or of a new jury which will know of the first and highly prejudicial conviction. It would also enable the judge to be sure that the facts proved to his satisfaction in the first trial could, where relevant to the issue of non-disclosure, be available without re-proof in the non-disclosure trial. There would be a reasoned and dispassionate judgment which explained what the judge had found and why the facts applied to the relevant law led to the verdict of guilty or not guilty.

If there were a verdict of guilty, the judge could then first sentence the defendant for the original offence and, secondly, impose a consecutive sentence for the crime of non-disclosure. If sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, the defendant would be told that the minimum tariff for the murder would be, for example, 25 years and that the determinate sentence for non-disclosure was five years, to run consecutively from the end of the tariff, making a total of 30 years before release on licence could be considered. If the offence merited an extended determinate sentence, the judge would add the two sentences together, making sure that the overall number of years was neither unduly lenient nor manifestly excessive and that the two sentences would run consecutively and not concurrently.

There is no doubt a good deal of procedural and legal detail that will need to be thought through, but I suggest that the scheme I have advanced, if only in outline, better fits the purpose intended but not achieved by the Bill before us. I ask the Government to see whether what I have proposed might not better deal with the very real concerns of those who have so enthusiastically and rightly supported this Bill.

Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 24th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I remember during the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown Governments making more or less exactly the same speech that the noble Lord has just made, in criticism of the then Labour administrations. There is no perfect answer to the questions of counterterrorism measures and the management and organisation of our prison estate. Governments of both political complexions have made mistakes. I am not sure that the debate is hugely advanced by the remarks of the noble Lord, but he is entirely free to make them. This is, of course, a proper subject of parliamentary, government and public concern. The two events that have most closely touched us—at Fishmongers’ Hall and on Streatham High Road—reinforce the need to deal with these questions as best we can and the pressure on the Government to protect the public from terrorists.

I largely agree with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, whose amendment I support, and indeed with a lot of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said. We are talking about matters of judgment, essentially, and I do not think we need to ascribe ill motive to this or any earlier Government when it comes to dealing with these problems. They are hugely complicated and difficult, and it is very rare to find a right answer.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, put the hugely complicated sentencing system in context. Although his experience as a sentencer is hugely greater than mine, I remember that on the occasions when I used to sentence people as a Crown Court recorder, they were not interested in the explanation behind the sentencing regime—they just wanted to know what the number was. When the number came out, they went downstairs and off they went. If they now find that, retrospectively, that number has been increased from a halfway-point release to a three-quarter point release, that will create understandable tension in the prisons in which these people live. I do not mind whether or not this complies with Article 7. I do not think that the man in the dock, or the prison governor looking after him, is hugely worried about the legal niceties; he is concerned about the practical effect of what we are proposing. If we change the halfway point to the three-quarter point for those already sentenced—whether it is an administrative adjustment or a change in the sentence—we are both misleading ourselves about its effectiveness and being unfair.

You may say that those sentenced for terrorist offences do not deserve fairness, but take Sudesh Amman, who was at the centre of the Streatham High Road event three weeks ago. He was sentenced to three years and four months, essentially for uploading terrorist material. Although he was released early, he was the subject of armed police surveillance. It seems to me—this was a point touched upon by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge—that if such a person is thought suitable for armed police supervision, despite getting a relatively short sentence in the sphere of terrorist law, he might be the sort of person who ought not be released at all. In the context of the timeframe in which this activity took place—he was released just before Christmas and was causing trouble on the streets of Streatham in February—one must think that somebody has some questions to answer about why he was released, despite the usual rule being that you are released at the halfway point. However, as I said a moment ago, sentencing is not an answer in itself. Retrospectivity is a matter which will cause problems, both for the people who manage prisons and for those who look after prisoners once they have been released.

There is another thing we need to warn ourselves about. If there is a Division tonight, I will vote in favour of the Government’s proposals, but with some degree of qualification. We need to be careful that we do not allow ourselves to think that keeping someone in prison for a further period without coming to terms with what is going on inside their head is going to solve the problem, other than by keeping that person off the streets for that limited additional period. The number of people who have gone through deradicalisation treatment or training or education—call it what you like—and who have then come out of prison and never committed another offence must, I suspect, be unknowable. The success rate of deradicalisation is quite low, but that should not discourage us from making sure that those who organise and teach deradicalisation schemes are not demoralised by the events in Streatham and Fishmongers’ Hall. Those terrible events caused great distress to the victims of those two individuals. However, I urge the Government not to allow themselves to tell the public that this measure by itself is the answer to the problems—because it is not.

Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage & Report stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 24th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, though in common with some others of your Lordships, I regret the highly accelerated way in which this Bill has been handled, the compressed timetable has one very considerable advantage: the excellent debate we have just had at Second Reading, much of it touching on the subject matter of these exploratory amendments, is still ringing in our ears. For that reason, there seems little point in trying to repeat the full glories of that debate at this hour of the evening, for the battle lines are pretty clear.

Every speaker who addressed the issue, as the Minister rightly said, sees the need for a degree of retrospective effect to protect the public: the injection of Parole Board review into the sentences of existing prisoners, despite the fact that those prisoners will have been assured by the judge who sentenced them that they would be automatically released by the halfway stage of their sentences. None of us is prepared to see them released before the end of their sentence without the Parole Board’s say-so.

The issue raised by Amendments 1 and 2 which relate to England and Wales, and Amendment 4 which relates to Scotland, is whether we should go further into the dangerous waters of retrospectivity, as the Bill in its unamended form would do, by providing as a universal rule that not even Parole Board scrutiny will be considered until the two-thirds point of the sentence. This—let us not forget—is in relation to prisoners who are at the bottom end of the terrorism scale where seriousness is concerned and who are not assessed as dangerous by the trial judge or they would have been on a different and more onerous type of sentence.

On this issue, the European Court of Human Rights seems to be a sideshow. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said—and I agree with him—it is not likely to be contravened by whatever we do. What we need to ask is whether sufficiently cogent reasons have been advanced to displace, in the interests of public safety, the normal presumption that a prisoner’s sentence will not be changed to his disadvantage after it has been passed.

On that issue, I will not summarise the respective arguments of what the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, described, perhaps optimistically, as two fantasy football teams of lawyers, although I would correct her in one respect by pointing out that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, as I have confirmed with him, is for these purposes a member of the squad supporting these amendments, along with the former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, the former law officers, the noble and learned Lords, Lord Falconer and Lord Garnier, and the others who made such pertinent contributions, including the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and my fellow signatory, the noble Lord, Lord Beith. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, although not a member of the team, expressed his discomfort about the way the Bill has been written.

The Minister advanced two reasons in his all-Peers letter which I dealt with in opening, and then two more came along as he wound up the debate. With great respect to him, they were not obviously more convincing. He spoke first of consistency with sentencing regimes where Parole Board consideration comes at the two-thirds stage, but the point goes nowhere for there are plenty of other regimes at which Parole Board consideration happens at half time. He spoke of a breathing space, but the releases that are due in the next few days and weeks—the ones that we are told make this Bill so urgent—are of prisoners who are well past both the half way and the two-thirds point, so the application of one test rather than the other makes no difference in practice and gives the Parole Board no additional scope to draw breath. He spoke of public confidence, but that is a self-serving argument; it is about appearance, not about a real and objective justification. He also spoke of a further period of incapacitation as being an advantage of the scheme in the Bill, but if these amendments were to be accepted, no one would be released at half time unless the Parole Board considered them to be safe, so the only prisoners who will be further incapacitated by the provisions that we seek to amend are those who, in the assessment of the Parole Board, could safely be released.

That, I suspect, is more than enough from me. I beg to move.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, there was never any possibility of my becoming a member of the Court of Appeal, but had I been a member, the job I would most like to have had is that of the third member of the court who says, “I have read the judgment of my learned friend. I agree and I have nothing further to add.” I have heard what my friend the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has said both at Second Reading and just now and I have nothing further to add save one point.

During the course of the Second Reading debate, instead of saying “two-thirds” I said “three-quarters”. I do not suppose that that made much difference to the way in which the House considered the matter, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has made the points that need to be made. The one thing I have learned in politics is that it is possible to win the argument and to lose the vote, and it is possible to make winning arguments and sensibly to avoid a vote. For my part, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has made and won the arguments, but whether he moves this issue to a vote is another matter. However, he has certainly won the moral victory.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I do not dissent at all from that assessment that a moral victory has been won, but that is only the beginning of the story. I simply want to address the Government’s distinctly lacking arguments against the amendment as advanced so far in a context where there was such widespread agreement on the efficacy of bringing the Parole Board into all cases but no very clear defence by the Government as to why the two-thirds provision has to be imposed on those who would otherwise have been released without the Parole Board’s involvement half way through their sentence.

The arguments produced by the Government have been very strange. One was that it would create greater confusion. It is in the essence—in the nature—of this provision that there will be confusion, because nobody can know what assessment the Parole Board is going to make of their case. The avoidance of confusion is not a primary objective of this: quite the contrary, we invite the Parole Board to make a very serious consideration of each case and only to allow release at either the halfway or two-thirds point if it is satisfied that there is not a danger to the public from doing so. The confusion argument does not really make any sense at all.

Then there is the argument that this will increase public confidence. Of all the things that might increase public confidence, I cannot see someone rushing into the pub saying, “Have you heard? Do you know that some of these offenders might spend up to another year in jail, but then they will be released?” That is not what public confidence is built on, and it is the wrong argument to use for something that involves issues of liberty.

Then I want to challenge the argument about the further period of incapacitation, because terrorists in prison are not incapacitated. They engage in grooming and recruitment activities and, as I said in the Second Reading debate, in some cases might be able to achieve more by their work among other prisoners—including prisoners who are not there for terrorist offences—than they might be able to achieve on the outside. They might recruit a larger number of people, so I do not accept the incapacitation argument.

The only argument that would be persuasive would be that it was impossible, with this amendment as drafted, to avoid the situation in which the Parole Board could not cope in a reasonable period of time with the cases at the half-time stage, but that probably could be overcome by alternative drafting if the drafting presented tonight has that problem. That would be the only argument that would persuade me: that we were letting people out without the Parole Board assessment, when the whole purpose of this is to make sure that they have that assessment.

Therefore, unless the Government produce a better argument, I do not think that they have made the case.

Release of Prisoners (Alteration of Relevant Proportion of Sentence) Order 2019

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, as has already been said, this order implements a commitment made by the Prime Minister in the summer of 2019. That commitment was made as part of a review, conducted not after a public consultation—which might have been expected on an issue with such major implications—but merely as an internal Ministry of Justice exercise.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, in its report of 30 October 2019, drew the House’s attention to the fact that the order represents

“one piece of a large and complicated jigsaw.”

Among the other pieces are: the announced sentencing Bill, to be preceded by a White Paper on sentencing more generally; the programme to build 10,000 additional prison places, announced in 2016 and repeated by the Prime Minister in 2019; the announced recruitment of 20,000 more police officers; and the royal commission on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of criminal justice system processes, announced in the 2019 Queen’s Speech. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee suggested that this House may wish to ask the Minister—which I now do—for more information about how all these pieces fit together.

Last week, the Ministry of Justice released the horrifying statistic that 58% of UK prisons—68 in total —were overcrowded, nine of them by more than 50%. This is not a situation that is likely to be rectified quickly yet, by this order, the Government are knowingly adding another 2,000 prisoners. The Chief Inspector of Prisons is continually drawing attention to the lack of purposeful activity in prison and the number of prisoners who spend all day locked up in their cell doing nothing. One factor leading to this situation is the lack of staff, not least because the Government wilfully dispensed with 80,000 years of operational experience. It is all very well to talk of recruiting additional numbers, but in addition to being inadequately trained, inevitably new recruits are inexperienced and, being frequently subject to horrifying assaults, too many are leaving early.

Frequently in this House I have commented on the poor quality of impact assessments. The one accompanying this order is no exception to that stricture, because only two options are examined: take it or leave it. However, there is what I might describe as a common-sense third option: I urge the Minister to defer until the issue can be properly examined in the context of the “large and complicated jigsaw”.

I have already mentioned the lack of any public consultation about what should be, to quote Erskine May’s definition of the affirmative procedure,

“a substantial and important piece of delegated legislation”.

There has been only an internal review at the Ministry of Justice. The wide implications of the issue, and my suspicion that the proposal results from a confusion about what should be done with terrorist prisoners—highlighted by the tragic events at the Fishmongers’ Hall—reinforce my plea for implementation of the order to be deferred until it has been considered in the context of all related and relevant issues.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, my contribution can be brief. Having heard the speeches of noble Lords who spoke before me, and anticipating who will speak after me, I am not sure that I have a huge amount to add.

I begin by declaring my interest as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust. I thank it for providing me with the same briefing that assisted the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, in his remarks. There is much to be gained from what it has told us, much of which the noble Lord faithfully recited. I also put in a preliminary plea to the Government—with some diffidence, seeing the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, in his place—to bring in swiftly the sentencing consolidation measures of the Joint Committee which the noble and learned Lord chaired at the end of the last Session.

I say that not only because what we achieved in that committee is worth getting on with but because, as a former Crown Court recorder—that is, a part-time judge—I know that sentencing is probably the most complicated thing that a Crown Court judge has to cope with. It is all very well if you are a High Court judge dealing predominantly with life sentences, but if you are a more junior member of the judiciary you deal with far more complicated sentencing arrangements. Therefore, the sooner we get what I call the “Judge Bill” into law, the better.