Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Shabana Mahmood

2nd reading
Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

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

The Lord Chancellor has just given us, very helpfully, the list of matters that might be relevantly considered in a pre-sentence report. As she has said, however, one of the items on that list is “personal circumstances”, and that is what the Bill will remove from the Sentencing Council’s discretion. May I ask her why she has not used in the Bill the language that is included in the explanatory notes? Paragraph 8 states that the Bill will

“prevent differential treatment… It does this by preventing the creation of a presumption regarding whether a pre-sentence report should be obtained based on an offender’s membership of a particular demographic cohort”.

That strikes me as a much narrower exclusion, and perhaps one better targeted at the problem that the Lord Chancellor has, in my view, rightly identified.

[Shabana Mahmood]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right. That is why we have offered the additional context in the explanatory notes. Personal characteristics and personal circumstances have, over the years, been elided in different court judgments, and the different definitions of the two have sometimes slipped. I wanted to make it clear in the Bill that we are constraining the Sentencing Council’s ability to create guidance for PSRs in relation to personal characteristics. We refer in the Bill to race, religion, culture and belief, specifically to ensure that the Sentencing Council understands that we are targeting this part of the offending section of the imposition guideline. It will then have its own interpretation of how personal circumstances and personal characteristics should apply. I would expect this to be analogous to protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010, in terms of the way in which the courts are likely to approach the question of what a personal characteristic is for the purpose of the Bill.

However, I wanted to make the intention behind the Bill very clear to the Sentencing Council, and to everyone else. It is tightly focused on the offending section of the imposition guideline and leaves the wider question of personal circumstances untouched. As I will explain later in my speech, there is helpful Court of Appeal guidance on circumstances and on other occasions on which a PSR should normally be required, and nothing in the Bill will affect the Court of Appeal precedents that have already been set.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Shabana Mahmood

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important point. We need to make sure that the whole justice system, including what happens in our criminal courts, is as efficient as it can be. That is why I have commissioned Sir Brian Leveson to conduct an independent review of the criminal courts. He will consider how to improve the courts’ efficiency, and we will report on that later in the year. There will be, I believe, a wider role for technology to play in tagging and monitoring of exclusion zones and curfews. I want to make sure that the justice system is in the best possible position to make use of emerging technology, so that we can keep our country safe.

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

The Lord Chancellor will accept that the effective use of electronic tags will not only make the criminal justice system more efficient, but mitigate the need for expensive prison places. Does she agree that two things are necessary for that effective use? First, the tags must be technically reliable; secondly, officials in her Department must have the commercial capacity to manage the contracts efficiently. If she agrees, what can be done to improve both those things?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman raises two incredibly important points. There will be a bigger role for current, new and emerging technologies in the future of our justice system, particularly in expanding the range of punishment available to us outside of prison. I want to make sure that we are at the forefront of getting the best use of our current technology and emerging tech. He is absolutely right about making sure that any commercial contracts are value for money and maintain public confidence. I am ensuring that, across the Department, we have expertise available to us, which is why the new unit that I have set up, Justice AI, will be so crucial to our efforts.