Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Sandhurst Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I appreciate that the noble Baroness who moved the lead amendment in this group is concerned primarily with Amendment 78B, but perhaps I might be forgiven if I focus exclusively on Amendment 78A. This relates to the new clause, which would apply a minimum mandatory sentence of seven years to the offence of rape.

I am against this proposed new clause and think it profoundly wrong. I am against it for essentially two reasons. First, as one who has practised in the criminal courts for many years, I know that the offence of rape carries within it a very broad spectrum of culpability, from the most serious kinds of offence to ones significantly less serious. That should be reflected in the ability of the judge to impose the appropriate sentences.

Already a life sentence is the maximum that can be imposed. This takes me to my second point—that I really think the amendment is unnecessary. Anybody who goes to have a careful look at the guidelines published by the Sentencing Council as to how courts should approach sentencing for rape will come to the conclusion that public protection is already appropriately safeguarded. In fact, the spectrum of custodial sentences set out in the Sentencing Council guidelines is between four and 19 years. There is a whole host of considerations set out to assist the judge in determining what level of sentence should be imposed.

That takes me to the last point that I want to make. If you go to the Sentencing Council’s guidelines, as I am sure many of your Lordships have done, you will see a whole range of mitigating circumstances—as well, of course, as aggravating circumstances. Those mitigating circumstances are circumstances that a trial judge could take into account when imposing a determinate sentence of less than seven years. In the new clause proposed in Amendment 78A, nothing is said, for example, about what the consequences would be of remorse or contrition, nor about the making of an early plea, although that of course now attracts a mandatory reduction as a general proposition. Nothing is said about what happens if the defendant has been assisting the prosecution, nor about the time spent on bail. All those things are built into the sentencing guidelines of the council, but they do not appear in the proposed new clause.

If the amendment was to be accepted by your Lordships’ House, very considerable injustice would be done. I also happen to think that it is wholly unnecessary.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 78B, on the maximum sentence for disclosing the identity of sexual offences complainants. I understand the motivation for this amendment and agree with the sentiment underlying it. The current level is obviously inaccurate and inappropriate, but it should not be addressed in isolation. It is correct that the present provisions for dealing with disclosure need revision, as they were passed in 1992 and plainly directed at conventional print, radio and TV media, antedating the internet. For newspapers and TV stations, a fine is generally appropriate. Since 2015, a level 5 fine has meant an unlimited one, which could run to hundreds of thousands of pounds for a newspaper that does this either deliberately or inadvertently. But we all know that today a malicious individual can cause similar damage with a post on the internet, and imprisonment may well be appropriate.

These are serious sexual offences—I do not deny that at all—but there are other matters of great sensitivity that will not be covered by this; it could well cause offence and upset if they are not dealt with at the same time, and they should all be looked at as a whole. The ones that I pull out in particular are, for example, to be found in Section 71 of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. There is still only a fine if you disclose identity, when really it is a very sensitive matter—but, for historical reasons, it remains just a fine. So too if you disclose the name of someone involved in slavery—it is also only a fine—and so too with witnesses in the context of youth justice, which also results in only a fine. All those cases are dealt with in a magistrates’ court. Those things, which are all sensitive and difficult, would be better dealt with in the round. It might be that, for one category of offences, it was thought that the maximum sentence ought to be more than two years, and for others two years, but you want to look at them as a package and reach a considered decision.

This is a worthy amendment, in one sense, but it should not be pursued. Instead, I urge the Government to bring on the review with the Attorney-General that has been promised, really get cracking on it, and look at all offences of the unlawful disclosure of witnesses’ names. I am sure that, if the Government’s officials have time after Christmas, they could draw up a list of all those categories pretty swiftly and get on with it, so they are all dealt with as a whole. I call on the Minister to give appropriate assurances in that respect.

--- Later in debate ---

My amendment selects 10 years rather than two in order to make the point that sexual penetration of a corpse is a much more serious offence than a two-year term implies. I claim no expertise in criminal law or sentencing, and wiser heads than mine will know how best to calibrate this offence. The purpose of tabling my amendment is to hear from the Government what they intend to do about the offence, and when they will do it. I am aware that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care informed the other place that the Government would review the offence, but he did not put a timetable on it. It is a fairly simple issue, and I hope my noble friend the Minister can be clear with the House about what the Government will do. I beg to move.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I am conscious that the Bill is on Report. This is a probing amendment, but it raises an important and pressing point. I hope I shall be short. I make four points.

If this offence is taken on its own, I think we would all agree that two years is plainly an insufficient maximum. Let us assume for these purposes that an offender comes before the court, is not a murderer and has not been a party to the death of any victim, but has had access to the bodies and has done what Mr Fuller did. It appears that he committed many offences of sexual penetration of corpses to which he had access by virtue of his employment. It may not be common, but we simply do not know what someone may do in the future. It is an appalling prospect, but we simply cannot exclude the possibility that a non-murderous necrophiliac might offend in a similar way. I suggest that we must do all we can both to deter and to punish in that event. If there is no murder but a large number of offences, is 10 years really too long a maximum sentence for someone such as Mr Fuller?

I talk about punishment because it is impossible to contemplate the horror of a relative who learns that their deceased loved one was defiled in this way. We as society owe it to such a relative, who is truly a victim, to show that we respect the dead and will mark such behaviour in a way that demonstrates that respect.

When I was approached by the noble Baroness to help her on this matter, I asked the Library to do some research. It very helpfully uncovered materials relating to the debate that took place in 2003. There was the Home Office’s consultation paper of July 2000, and section 8.6 addressed this issue. It disclosed that at that time, somewhat to the authors’ surprise, there was no offence that made necrophilia illegal. The consultation disclosed that there was

“no firm evidence of the nature or the extent of the problem”,

but agreed that

“human remains should be shown respect”

and noted that

“relatives and friends would be deeply distressed”.

In section 9.2, that consultation addressed sentences for a range of offences. From my reading of the Government’s response in November 2002—I do not criticise anyone for this—it appears that the authors at that point may have proceeded on the assumption that the offence would follow and be additional to a charge of murder or manslaughter. In other words, it was not looked at on the basis of a stand-alone sexual deviant.

If we are looking for a comparator, brief research has disclosed what happens in Canada, where the offence carries a maximum sentence of five years. I question whether even that is sufficient in the worst case, but I leave it to others to consider.

To conclude, this is a most unpleasant criminal offence. It must be reconsidered as a matter of priority. The current sentence for the stand-alone offence is simply too low. I urge the Government to address this with dispatch and not to delay once the immediate clamour over the Fuller case has died down. It is not difficult. It simply needs a suitably steep maximum sentence to mark its gravity.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 78DA, moved by my noble friend Lady Noakes, is in regard to the maximum penalty for the sexual penetration of a corpse. I first place on record my shock and horror at David Fuller’s horrifying offending; my thoughts are with the victims and their families. I assure the House that the Government are committed to looking in detail at what happened in this appalling circumstance to ensure that it simply never happens again.

As we have heard, just this afternoon Mr Fuller has been sentenced to a whole-life term of imprisonment. An investigation into other aspects of his offending is ongoing. The House will understand why I will not comment on the sentence passed in this case, but I thank all those in the police, the CPS and the wider criminal justice system for bringing him to justice.

The Government have announced an inquiry into the events that occurred in hospitals in Tunbridge Wells. This will help us understand how the offences took place without detection in the trust, identify any areas where early action by the trust was necessary and consider wider national issues, including for the NHS as a whole. The Government have already made good progress in establishing the independent inquiry. I understand from colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care that the inquiry’s chair, Sir Jonathan Michael, has developed draft terms of reference already and will engage with the families on them in the new year before they are published.

As well as that inquiry, I assure the House that the Ministry of Justice is reviewing the existing penalties available for the offence of sexual penetration of a corpse. The statutory maximum penalty for that offence is, as my noble friend indicated, two years’ imprisonment.

I reassure your Lordships, however, that that is the statutory maximum penalty for one offence. Where the offence is sentenced alongside other offences, each offence will be sentenced individually. The overall sentence passed will therefore reflect the totality of the offending behaviour.

I also pay tribute to my noble friend’s work in supporting the inclusion of this offence when it was debated during the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. It was created primarily to deal with a different circumstance—different circumstances were in mind at the time. The focus was on the situation where a murderer abuses the corpse of their victim after death, and it was therefore perhaps thought likely that those sentenced for this offence would, for the most part, be sentenced at the same time for another offence, such as murder—which of course carries a mandatory penalty of life imprisonment. As we have seen in the Fuller case, that is sometimes the case but may not always be so.

It is therefore right that, in view of this depraved—which is not a word I use often, but I think is appropriate in this context—and horrifying offending where we have seen an individual commit this offence independently of other offending in relation to that victim, we review the current statutory maximum penalty for the Section 70 offence. It may also be that this review, and the public inquiry into the offending in hospitals in Kent, will highlight other issues that need to be considered relating to the existing offences that deal with sexual abuse of corpses.

To be clear, I am not saying—I cannot this afternoon —that the Government will adopt the specific approach taken in this amendment, but neither do I rule out future changes to the maximum penalty. Rather, we are reviewing the maximum penalty in its context, and speaking with DHSC officials to ensure that learning from the inquiry into events in hospitals can be taken into account into our review of the penalty. That is the best way to reach a considered conclusion about how to amend Section 70 appropriately.

As to timing, the inquiry into the events at hospitals in Kent is due to publish interim findings in the new year, with the full report at a later stage. I will write to my noble friend, and place a copy in the Library, with any further information on the inquiry’s timescales as soon as that is available. Our review of the available maximum penalties is likely to follow a similar timescale, to ensure that findings from the inquiry can be taken into account in our conclusions. It is therefore important that we await the findings of the inquiry before amending the current legislation. I listened carefully to how my noble friend opened this short debate, and I therefore ask her formally to withdraw this amendment.