Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Debate between Diane Abbott and Dan Tomlinson

Committee of the whole House & Report stage
Wednesday 30th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson (Chipping Barnet) (Lab)]

First, I acknowledge that disparities in outcomes in our judicial system are a real issue and merit serious attention. I recognise the work of the Lammy review in 2017, as well as the conclusions of the Ministry of Justice’s 2020 report, “Tackling Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System”, which found disparities in how people from minority ethnic groups are treated in the judicial system. It is important that these issues continue to have the focus that they merit.

However, I am glad that the Bill has passed its Second Reading and that we are progressing through its remaining stages today. I am firmly of the view that it is not for the Sentencing Council to make policy decisions on this matter, for those are the domain of politicians and must remain so. The Government should be able to make political decisions and implement them, and the ballot box is the right place for us to be held to account.

What I find refreshing about the continued passage of this Bill is that we are showing that politicians do not have to be jelly-like in the face of blockages to their desire to make political decisions. At the same time, I support the unamended passage of the Bill, because it finds a way to thread the needle with a targeted intervention. Amendment 3, tabled by the shadow Secretary of State for Justice, goes too far and would undermine the independence of the Sentencing Council.

[Ms Diane Abbott]

My hon. Friend refers to blockages. How can he describe Members of this House, and people in the community who are trying to stand up for a fair and just criminal justice system, as blockages?

[Dan Tomlinson]

I do not think that anyone in this House is a blockage—far from it. The point I am making is that I believe that this House should be the place where political decisions are made, and that politicians should make decisions about important things that matter to people in this country.

It is my view that the Sentencing Council is an important body. Crucially, however, it is not political, and I think that if the guidelines had gone through, it would have undermined the important principle of equality before the law. That is a political decision, and Members of this House hold different opinions, but it is for us to contest them in this place. I am glad the Government are making sure that we can make progress on the things that we believe need to be pushed forward for the British people, and I hope that the Bill will pass unamended today, because the precise changes that it proposes would prevent sentencing guidelines from being changed in ways that undermine equality before the law. I do not think that the amendments tabled by the Opposition are necessary, because they take things too far.

With this Bill and much else besides, it is time for us to show that moderate politics, which is the politics of this Government, does not have to be like soup—weak and watery, and impossible to hold on to—but can instead be the politics of action and delivery. I welcome the continued passage of this Bill and urge Members to vote for it today.