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Mr. Michael: The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed--I beg his pardon before I get stuck in--was also self-indulgent. The fact is that the Liberal Democrats did not regard the subject as serious enough to want to participate in the Standing Committee. They are not so good at the hard work.
We did, however, have the company of the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) from a minority party, and he made a significant contribution.
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Mr. Michael:
Of course I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, who did participate constructively in the Committee.
Mr. Llwyd:
I have not entered into any party political knockabout, because I believe the subject is too important. Far be it from me to defend the Liberal Democrats, but my place on the Committee was in effect given to me by them, as I asked for it. It was agreed that I, rather than a Liberal Democrat, should sit on the Committee. I say that to be fair.
Mr. Michael:
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman sat on the Committee, as I was about to comment on the fact that there were serious contributions from members of all parties represented there. My point is that I am not going to accept knockabout comments from the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed; I want to concentrate on the serious debate to which the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy contributed consistently in Committee, as did the hon. and learned Member for Burton.
We may not have agreed all the time, but the Committee was a good one, and the contributions by the hon. Gentleman and the hon. and learned Gentleman were consistent with what they have said today. Those who indulge in a bit of knockabout deserve to be put right. Now let me move on to the amendment.
We all want consistency from the courts, and, indeed, progression, which means that those who commit serious offences more than once receive a tougher penalty as a result. To balance that, we also want a mechanism that avoids the anomalies that can arise from very specific or mandatory sentences. We want Parliament to make its intentions clear, and something to protect against those anomalies.
The Government's method has been to set mandatory sentences. That was their position at the time of the White Paper, but--and they were right to do so--between that time and the publication of the Bill, they have accepted that they needed to shift their position, and came up with the phrase "exceptional circumstances". The problem is that their complete refusal to explain what it means has undermined the credibility of Bill's phrasing--a point made in Committee by members of all parties.
The Government have available to them the resources, parliamentary draftsmen and advisers to ensure that they get legislation right. We have been right--on Second Reading, in Committee and again today--to prompt the Government and make sure that they realise that they have not got it right yet. Of course, there is a way that they could move in the right direction.
The hon. and learned Member for Burton said that the real matter at issue is whether there should be a big or small gate for exceptions. We need to understand
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As the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy said in his introductory remarks, the only example of an exceptional circumstance is that cited by the Home Secretary on Second Reading:
The one example that has been provided creates some difficulties. Co-operation with the police does not amount to what the White Paper described as "quite unforeseeable circumstances". It is neither unusual nor unforeseeable. Have the Government abandoned that definition? What is their definition? The Minister was challenged time and again in Committee at least to give illustrations, if he could not give a definition, to allow us to understand the Government's thinking, but that thinking remains opaque.
That single example also creates problems on the other side of the equation. Chief constables are unhappy with the one example given by the Home Secretary, because, even if giving the police special help were regarded by a court as an exceptional circumstance, the Bill would require the judge to give his reasons for a reduced sentence in open court. That could put the informant at serious risk, thereby destroying any incentive to co-operate.
How would the court get around that problem, except in the devious way suggested in Committee by the Minister? He may have reflected on those remarks, when he seemed to suggest that a court could more or less ignore the problem and dance around it. I hope that we shall have some clarification from the Minister today, because we have had none so far. I shall not labour the point further, because we brought it up time and again in Committee, and it was raised on Second Reading. I am beginning to despair of getting clarification from the Minister.
Amendment No. 1 addresses an important anomaly highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, the shadow Home Secretary, and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) on Second Reading, and by the hon. and learned Member for Burton and me in Committee.
The amendment provides that, in the case of offences under section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, the court should be able on a second conviction to pass a sentence other than life imprisonment if it considers that to be
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On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn said:
The hon. and learned Member concluded:
In an offence under section 18, the wound can be any wound that breaks the skin, even a minor wound. A kick in the leg that draws blood counts as wounding, provided that there is deemed to be intent to cause grievous bodily harm or resist arrest.
Grievous bodily harm has been defined by the Court of Appeal in some cases, notably DPP v. Smith in 1961, as "really serious harm", but in other cases it has been defined as either "really serious harm" or "serious harm." A broken wrist, for example, could be regarded as serious harm. An offence under section 18 therefore need not necessarily involve the intention to cause serious bodily harm, but can involve wounding with intent to resist arrest. As the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy said in that Committee debate, a section 18 offence could be knocking a person's tooth out.
The problem can be illustrated by a series of examples, but I do not intend to delay the House by recounting them. I hope that the Minister has given the matter some thought since the Committee debate, and has something positive to tell us or is willing to accept the amendment. The variety of offences under section 18 are all serious and involve violence, and many are very serious. However, many section 18 offences are at a different level of seriousness from offences such as homicide and rape. Even if the case for automatic life sentences for repeat offenders were accepted for those offences, a wider discretion for section 18 offences would be appropriate.
Only two days ago, the Minister asked us in a debate on a new clause not to devalue the currency when comparing the way in which we deal with violent offenders and sex offenders. We are in danger of devaluing the currency on the less serious section
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When we debated this issue in Committee, the Minister initially refused to acknowledge that section 18 offences could be anything other than very serious. He said:
The Minister responded by arguing that different cases could be dealt with by variations in the length of the tariff that a life sentence prisoner must serve before being considered for release. Hon. Members--particularly the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman), who is more interested in waving and going home than in listening to the debate--should pay particular attention to the Minister's remarks. He said:
I clarified the Minister's remarks during that debate, when I explained:
"Sometimes, someone appearing before a court gives the police exceptional help, which enables them to bring a number of other serious criminals to justice. That would be an important factor, which I would regard as an exceptional circumstance justifying the passing of a sentence shorter than the minimum mandatory length."--[Official Report, 4 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 914-5.]
The trouble is that we have not moved on from there. The hon. and learned Member for Burton made clear the lack of progress in explaining that.
"in the interests of justice".
We are dealing only with that narrow group of offences, but the amendment would give the court wider discretion than the "exceptional circumstances" formulation to pass sentences other than life imprisonment for section 18 offences.
"The law relating to section 18 is wholly unsatisfactory, as the Law Commission has repeatedly pointed out; and the range of conduct covered by this section is extremely wide."--[Official Report, 4 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 930.]
We had an interesting debate in Committee, during which I reiterated our belief that that would lead to anomalies, and that the Minister had not sufficiently taken into account the danger of anomalies. From his experience in the courts, the hon. and learned Member for Burton reinforced my points strongly and constructively. He said that there was merit in the points that I had raised, and that, if the provisions covered all section 18 offences, a number of consequences would follow: first, an offender would be more likely to plead to a section 20 offence; secondly, the offender would be less likely to plead to a section 18 offence--a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig); and thirdly that the inclusion of section 18 in all its width would make it more likely that the Crown Prosecution Service, in its discretion, would decide whether to prosecute under section 20 or section 18. In other words, people would be going round the intention of the law.
"But we must give a little thought to how extensive is the arm with which we enforce the mandatory life sentence if, at the margin, it will do more harm than good to the system to implement it."--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 14 November 1996; c. 64.]
I call in aid the remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Burton in saying that this important issue has still not been resolved.
"grievous bodily harm with intent is not uncommon in a domestic context",
and asked:
"Would the family be prepared to give evidence if life imprisonment were the consequence?"--[Official Report, 4 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 952.]
I have already referred to the greater reluctance to plead guilty to a section 18 offence, and the increased likelihood that the charges will be plea-bargained down to a lesser offence.
"Section 18 is used to prosecute the most appalling assaults committed by dangerous violent criminals. It is exactly these kinds of people from whom the public need protection and against whom the public will be better protected by an automatic life sentence."--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 14 November 1996; c. 65.]
We agree with him about the people he was describing, but not with the width of his description of what is prosecuted under section 18. That point was made strongly by the hon. and learned Member for Burton.
"We should stick with the automatic life sentence for all those convicted of a second offence of grievous bodily harm and let judges reflect in the tariff, as at present they do for life sentences, their view of the person's culpability . . . I am not aware of a minimum or maximum being imposed on judges. I understand that they have complete discretion in imposing the tariff."--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 14 November 1996; c. 66.]
He confirmed in later exchanges that the discretion was so wide that a life sentence could, in the setting of a tariff, turn into a three-month sentence, because there is no limit on the discretion available to the judge.
"The judge can give as light a sentence as he wants and still call it a life sentence. . . . he"--
the Minister--
"tells us that a life sentence leaves the judge with such wide discretion that the words are virtually meaningless."--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 14 November 1996; c. 68.]
That is surely unsatisfactory, as the objective of the Bill is supposed to be honesty in sentencing. It applies exclusively to section 18 offences, which is why amendment No. 1 is so important.
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