Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Nicholas Dakin

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

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

My hon. Friend echoes much of what the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) picked up on earlier. Probation is a significant part of the landscape. That is why we are onboarding 1,300 more probation officers over the next year.

The Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), raised issues about the impact of the guidelines on existing guidelines. We expect that other guidelines will be affected by the Bill, including offence-specific guidelines related to mitigating and aggravating factors, which set out guidance about pre-sentence reports for specific cohorts. We will continue working with the Sentencing Council on the implementation of the Bill. We have had constructive discussions and will continue to do so.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick referenced, the Bill’s explanatory notes point out, existing precedent is not changed where the courts have determined that pre-sentence reports are necessary or desirable. Such cases include: Thompson, where the Court of Appeal recently emphasised the importance of reports in sentencing pregnant women or women who have recently given birth; Meanley, in which the court referenced the value of pre-sentence reports for young defendants; and Kurmekaj, where the defendant had a traumatic upbringing, a vulnerability and was a victim of modern slavery. The Bill narrowly focuses on the issue at hand, putting beyond doubt the principle that we all stand equal before the law of the land.

Clause 2 is concerned with details about how the Bill will be enacted. The Bill will apply to England and Wales only, and its measures will come into force on the day after it passes. The Bill may be cited as the Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025 once enacted.

I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for tabling his amendments and for the very thoughtful and comprehensive way in which he dealt with them. Amendments 1 and 2 would replace the term “personal characteristics” with “demographic cohort” to describe the type of provision about pre-sentence reports in sentencing guidelines that the Bill will prohibit. The Government have considered the proposed change to the wording very carefully and would like to take the opportunity to briefly explain the Government’s approach.

The Government’s objective is to help ensure equality before the law so that offenders are treated according to their own particular circumstances and not by virtue of their membership of a particular group. To ensure that the Bill prevents sentencing guidelines about pre-sentence reports including provision framed by reference to any specific personal characteristics of an offender, we have used the term “personal characteristics”. The Bill sets out that personal characteristics include race, religion or belief, or cultural background. However, this is not an exhaustive list. We accept that personal characteristics and personal circumstances have, over the years, been elided in different court judgments, and we are clear that it is intended to cover a wider range of characteristics including sex, gender identity, physical disabilities and pregnancy status.

The right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam has rightly noted that the term “demographic cohort” is used in the Bill’s explanatory notes. However, the use of the term was not intended to narrow the definition of personal characteristics, and I believe it does not, though I note that he believes that it might do. Rather, it is a different term used to describe individuals who share certain personal characteristics.

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I accept that the Minister is trying to give us clarity, so for the purposes of clarity is it the Government’s view that all personal characteristics can also be described as personal circumstances?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

No, that is not the Government’s view. “Personal characteristics” is a term that is understood and applied in other contexts, whereas “demographic cohort” is a term that, on balance, the Government feel is more imprecise and would ultimately need to be defined with reference to a group with shared personal characteristics. Therefore, I understand where the right hon. and learned Gentleman is coming from, but from the Government’s point of view, the amendments do not add anything to the drafting of the Bill and risk causing further confusion. As he pointed out in his helpful contribution, there is a danger of getting into detailed semantics, which probably does not help any of us.

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I take on board the Minister’s warning, and I am not sure whether this will make it any better. I think he is saying that the term demographic cohort is a subset of personal characteristics, but personal characteristics are not the same as personal circumstances. Is that right?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

If we had used the phrase demographic cohort, we would have to define what that means, whereas personal characteristics is a phrase that already has a level of definition and is therefore preferred by the Government.

I turn to the similar issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick. We carefully considered whether the Bill should be narrower than referring to personal characteristics—for example, an offender being from a cultural minority—but in the end we felt that was not helpful.

As such, while I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam for suggesting alternative wording, the Government remain of the view that, having considered it carefully, the term personal characteristics is the most appropriate way of capturing the issues raised by the guideline.

Sentencing Council Guidelines

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Nicholas Dakin

Monday 17th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

The Minister is right to stress the independence of the Sentencing Council, but would he accept that he cannot criticise the shadow Secretary of State for having a view on these draft guidelines when the Secretary of State herself did exactly that? I also ask him to consider in this debate the real purpose of a pre-sentence report. It is there to give more information about an offender, but it also enables a judge to impose a non-custodial sentence if they believe that is the appropriate course. It is hard for a sentencer to do that, unless someone has been assessed as suitable for a community penalty. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this debate, is it not important that the Sentencing Council makes clear that what is important in deciding whether to ask for a pre-sentence report is whether that extra information is needed and not anything else, including protected characteristics?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

That is exactly what the Lord Chancellor is saying.

Free TV Licences: Over-75s

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Nicholas Dakin

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

What I can say to the hon. Lady is that when the BBC decided to take on this responsibility, one would have thought that the bare minimum of what it expected to have to outlay would have been what it is currently intending to outlay, so it should have made any calculation about how affordable that might be in 2015—and I am sure it did. She and I will both continue to expect the BBC to provide a good service, employing excellent people in her constituency and elsewhere to offer the best possible television product to the nation.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

About 4,400 pensioners in the Scunthorpe area will lose their free TV licences based on this announcement today. Is the Secretary of State saying that the Government are happy to break the election promise that those people voted on in 2017?

[Jeremy Wright]

I do not think it is possible to say I am happy. I think my disappointment has been made very clear, but it is, I am afraid, now for the Government to work with the BBC to see what more can be done. I hope that if the hon. Gentleman’s party continues to say that this responsibility should be taken back by the taxpayer, we will at some stage get a little detail about how that might be paid for.

Leaving the EU: Mobile Roaming Charges

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Nicholas Dakin

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Again, I should set out what I think the position is. Were we to say to mobile network operators in this country, “You may not impose roaming charges on your customers who travel to the European Union,” that could not prevent European mobile network operating companies from charging UK mobile network operating companies money, and that money would have to be paid by somebody. If we say to the mobile network operators in this country that they may not pass that charge on to their roaming customers, they will undoubtedly pass it on to all their other customers instead. The problem is that, when we are outside the European Union, as we will be, we are no longer beneficiaries of the European Union regulation. We are taking as many elements of the regulation as we can and transferring them into domestic law. That is sensible planning and I hope that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will support it.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State just said that we are no longer beneficiaries of EU regulation. It was not until the EU acted that the mobile companies got rid of the dreaded mobile roaming charges. How many mobile companies have come to the Secretary of State and said that they will voluntarily not put these charges on to consumers?

[Jeremy Wright]

On the hon. Gentleman’s last point, I said that 85% of consumers are covered by mobile network operators that have said they have no intention of reintroducing charges. What he says is undoubtedly and self-evidently true: if a country is not a member of the European Union, it does not benefit from provisions that cover members of the European Union. The hon. Gentleman will recall that there was a debate in 2016 that took us some time, and these arguments were deployed on both sides. The UK electorate made a decision and we are enacting that decision. In the process, if there are consumer protections that we can and should continue, that is what we intend to do. That is what the measure is about.

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Nicholas Dakin

Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I have huge respect for my hon. Friend’s passion on this subject, and for the approach that she takes to issues such as this. I hope she will accept that there is no lack of enthusiasm on my part for countering the harms that she has described. The reason that we are making this decision is not because we believe it is important to pacify the betting lobby. Had that been the case, we would not have made this change at all. We have made this change because we believe that it is necessary to make it, but it is also necessary to make this decision in the most rational way that we can and to balance out a number of factors that we have no choice but to properly consider in order to achieve the objective that she and I share.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

What will the Secretary of State say to those families who further suffer as a result of this delay?

[Jeremy Wright]

I will not repeat what I have said on delay, but perhaps I should say this. Before we have too many more contributions from the Labour Benches arguing that this Government are bringing about misery that could be avoided, may I gently remind the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues that these machines were conceived when the Labour party was in government? That Government passed legislation in 2005 to allow for £100 stake levels, and in the last three years of the Labour Government, the numbers of these machines increased by 37%. The Labour party in government did not do anything about any of that, so before we have very much more of this conversation, I think it would be appropriate to accept that that was wrong—as, to be fair, the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for West Bromwich East has had the grace to do—and that the mistake we are now correcting was a mistake made by the Labour Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Nicholas Dakin

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, and the two points she makes are entirely right. First, people are coming to expect good-quality broadband connections, and they have a right to expect them, because many areas of activity now need to be carried out online.

Secondly, it is important that we do not build new houses without decent-quality broadband connections, or the capacity to make those connections. The right hon. Lady will understand that I want to look carefully at what measures the Government might be able to take, up to and including legislative measures if necessary.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The people of Cleatham, Manton and Greetwell keep being promised superfast broadband by North Lincolnshire Council and BT Openreach, and the date keeps moving away. What can be done to make sure these things are delivered, rather than continuing to go further and further away?

[Jeremy Wright]

It seems there are a number of different ways of approaching the broadband challenge. The Government support a number of different programmes, perhaps not all of which are known about in every corner of the country. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with further details of those programmes to make sure they are all canvassed in his area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Nicholas Dakin

Thursday 25th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

Will the Attorney General list which of the convention rights currently enshrined in the Human Rights Act he plans to repeal?

[The Attorney General]

I have no plans to repeal any of them. As the hon. Gentleman may have heard me say in this place before, I do not think any of us has any serious argument with the content of the European convention on human rights, which is an admirable document. The difficulty we have is with the interpretation of that document by the European Court of Human Rights. This is not a matter of repealing rights; it is a matter of bringing some common sense back into the ambit of human rights law, and the Government are committed to doing that.