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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 467-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

TOWARDS EFFECTIVE SENTENCING

 

 

 

Tuesday 17 APRIL 2007

RT HON LORD WOOLF

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 59

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 17 April 2007

Members present

Mr John Denham, in the Chair

Mr Jeremy Browne

Ms Karen Buck

Mrs Ann Cryer

Mrs Janet Dean

Margaret Moran

Bob Russell

Martin Salter

Mr Gary Streeter

Mr David Winnick

________________

Witness: Rt Hon Lord Woolf, a Member of the House of Lords, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Good morning, Lord Woolf. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence to us today on sentencing policy. I believe you want to say something.

Lord Woolf: I want to apologise for not being able because of an illness to come on a previous occasion.

Q2 Chairman: That is totally understood. We are grateful to you for coming to start off our new session because of your very important and recent experience as Lord Chief Justice. We hope that you will be able to share with us some reflections that you might have had when holding that office which you were not able to say at the time. Obviously, we want to concentrate on the key issues of sentencing, prison population and so on, but perhaps we can begin by touching briefly on the Government's very recent proposals to create a ministry of justice and transfer both the Prison and Probation Services to the new ministry but, more fundamentally, the great bulk of criminal justice policy itself which will be driven by the new department. Can you let us have your views in general, first, as to the reorganisation that will take place and, second, about whether or not you believe it has particular implications for the development of sentencing policy.

Lord Woolf: Obviously, there is logic in having a ministry of justice. As the Committee will know, at one time consideration was given to a proposal to transfer parts of what is now the Department for Constitutional Affairs to the Home Office. At the time the judiciary was very unhappy about that and the matter was reconsidered. In the eyes of the judiciary the main problem that arose in relation to the courts being handed over to the Home Office was that in the civil courts the department was often in the position of a defendant - probably of necessity a principal defendant these days when less civil litigation comes to trial - because of the type of responsibilities it had. Some of those problems will now come to the new ministry of justice and possibly the same tension can be said to exist. To the constitutional lawyer the division may be apparent, but it may not be so apparent to the public when they bring proceedings in the civil courts against the department that will now be responsible for prisons. To see as you do outside Her Majesty's Court Service the Department for Constitutional Affairs as defendants may look a little odd. Perhaps some thought need to be given to that, and it is certainly a decision that needs to be explained. But I believe that the primary concern of my erstwhile colleagues, not this Committee, is that for many years the civil justice side has been the poor relation. Resources have constantly gone from civil justice to the criminal justice system because of the demands particularly of criminal legal aid and complex prosecutions. If I were still chief justice I would be concerned with the prisons' amazing capacity to absorb money as the population increases more than expected. As far as I know, no steps are being taken to ring fence the resources available for the justice system as a whole and the courts in particular. I believe that care needs to be taken in that regard. I hope that if there is a new ministry of justice a committee such as this will continue to take interest in matters involving in particular prison and probation policy and matters of that sort, because at the moment there could be a gap there. I know that because of the Sentencing Guidelines Council. I thought that the council should have a relationship with this Committee was very positive because it was important that an authoritative body should look objectively at its recommendations.

Q3 Chairman: That is a very helpful reply with regard to the scrutiny role of Select Committees. All I can say this morning is that at the moment how that might work is a subject of some discussion. It is perhaps a question the answer to which may not be as clear as I would like. To pick up matters that arise from what you said, it may be possible to ring fence, for example, court funding; perhaps it is feasible to put structures in place that will protect against the potential conflict of interest, or its perception, about which you have spoken. Are you concerned that the change in structure is taking place in a very short period of time before that structure and those safeguards can have been put in place, certainly by legislation?

Lord Woolf: During the period that I have been a judge I have had considerable dealings with both departments. There is much more interplay between the departments and courts than is sometimes appreciated. I believe that that interplay is very healthy. One must say one is very worried as to whether the scale of transfer in one direction will put huge burdens onto the existing department. What will be its resources to handle those changes? Great expertise has been developed within the Home Office in various areas which does not now exist. It can be transferred lock, stock and barrel as we have seen from the department to the judiciary when the chief justice became head of the judiciary, but it takes time to settle down. I hope that the planning of these changes will be very carefully worked out because they are not straightforward. There will be substantial managerial problems to deal with it. The Department for Constitutional Affairs already has plenty of headaches and will have many more to cope with. If it is geared merely to reproduce some of the problems that have been highlighted recently in the Home Office it will not achieve any positive purpose.

Q4 Chairman: I suspect that the Committee would like to keep you on this subject all morning, but we have asked you to talk about sentencing. I will ask just one other question about another potential tension in the reorganisation. Some of the advocates of the split from within government have given the impression that they see an advantage in having the judiciary and sentencing function within the same department as prisons because it may help to encourage a sense of awareness of the impact of sentencing policy on the effective use of resources and, therefore, the implications of the different choices made about sentencing. On the other hand, your successor has recently said he is concerned that judges may be placed under pressure to impose sentences that they do not believe are appropriate. That is almost the other side of the coin. Do you have concerns that by bringing the prison, probation and community sentencing budget within the same department as the sentencing function judges may feel under pressure to impose sentences for reasons other than the independent exercise of justice?

Lord Woolf: It has always been my hope and belief that judges' shoulders are broad enough to resist inappropriate pressures, and I am fairly confident that if that very inappropriate behaviour occurred they would withstand it. I do not particularly see that as a great problem. But I have already drawn attention to the fact that the department running the prisons will now be the same as that which runs the courts and I am happy to leave it in that way.

Chairman: I am grateful to you for your openness on that.

Q5 Ms Buck: To move to the broader issue of sentencing policy, I start with an easy question. Why do you think it has been so difficult to establish an effective sentencing policy?

Lord Woolf: To be absolutely frank, I think it is because of the highly political nature of sentencing. It is a matter about which the public are highly and rightly concerned. As the public are very concerned about it so are politicians. I believe that sometimes we lose sight of what would be a really effective sentencing policy and the results show it. This is not a party matter. My experience of one administration or another was that the responses were the same under both. They were not prepared to grasp the very prickly nettle that our present sentencing policy was out of accord with the resources available to deal with those who were sent to prison. To me, I do not believe we will achieve a sentencing policy that makes sense until that is recognised. When I made my Strangeways report about 15 years ago the evidence of the Prison Service was that overcrowding was a cancer eating at the heart of that service. I have taken a close interest since that time in the Prison Service. I believe that it does a very good job, but that cancer has persisted and it is reflected in reconviction rates and our failure to stop reoffending. We can house prisoners; we can build more prisons, but we do it after they are needed, not before, and during the substantial period I have been a judge there has never been a situation when the prison accommodation has satisfactorily dealt with the number of people being sent to prison. It is now clear that that must be taken into account. I could suggest - I have thought about it for a long time - the courses that might be taken to improve the situation in that regard, but it first requires the political will to do it and so far there is very little evidence that it exists.

Q6 Ms Buck: I know that others want to discuss the issue of overcrowding, so I will not pursue it. You said that an effective sentencing policy was difficult to pursue given the conflicting pressures. First, is it possible for you to define what you regard as an effective sentencing policy? Second, is it ever possible realistically to develop a policy that is not subject to that kind of buffeting of political, public and other pressures?

Lord Woolf: As to the first part, I go back to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 which set out the purpose of sentencing. It seems to me that there you have a very satisfactory statement by Parliament of what sentencing should do. First, it is punishment, and we do punish. There is no doubt about it. Some people would say that we punish more than necessary, but we certainly punish. The second matter is the reduction of crime. I do not think we achieve that by our sentencing policy, certainly not to the extent we should. The reason for it arises because of the next matter: reform and rehabilitation of offending. This comes back to my point about prison overcrowding. At the moment, we are not achieving the reforms and rehabilitation of offenders. The fourth is the protection of the public. I do not think we protect the public to the extent we should because we do not prevent reoffending. I believe that is a very important aspect of it. There is also the making of reparation by offenders to persons affected by their offences. We make attempts to do that but I should like to see much more of that. Perhaps we achieve the punishment of offenders, but when we look at the other four our record is very poor.

Q7 Ms Buck: In policy terms you are happy with that set of definitions, but do you think that the 2003 Act has been a success? Have the aims set out in that Act translated into practice and, if not, why not?

Lord Woolf: The Act contained a whole selection of different punishments and I think the variety was very good. The Act was very well intentioned, but again I connect it with the state and cost of our imprisonment policy. We did not have the resources to make the punishments in the community work well, and we did not have the resources to do the other things intended by that Act. The Government does not have unlimited resources. I accept that there are other matters on which money must also be spent. We have to think about hospitals and education. Education is in my view of critical importance because that is where you start to tackle the things that could produce criminals of the future. I would much prefer to see the money being spent on schools and hospitals than on building prisons.

Q8 Ms Buck: Why do you think that the sentencing guidelines issued since the implementation of the Act do not make reference to the aims that you have just outlined?

Lord Woolf: The Sentencing Guidelines Council pays great attention to the aims that I have indicated, but one of the problems of the council is that it is seen very much in its primary role to produce consistent sentencing. Consistent sentencing is important so that one does not have one person punished in one way and another punished differently, but it has been given no mandate to do anything particular in regard to sentencing. Again, this is probably because of an unwillingness to grasp the nettle. I would like it to receive from government a clear mandate that it should, for example, do something about the overcrowded state of our prisons. If it had that mandate I believe that it could fulfil it.

Q9 Ms Buck: Does that in any way lead to the conclusion that judges should be given specific guidance on how to balance those different aims, because in a sense the aims already encapsulate that objective but they are not being given guidance to enable them to do that? Is one of aims being given much more priority than another?

Lord Woolf: You are quite right that the aims that I have been through reveal a high degree of generality. When it comes to producing guidelines they are more specific, but while those aims should be fed in the extent to which they do so is a matter of judgment. In this period of the life of the Sentencing Guidelines Council - it is a relatively new body - when it has suggested in some of the guidelines produced what may be seen as a reduction of sentencing, although it may not be so, there is a howl primarily from sections of the media that the council is going soft on crime. It is significant that when that happens criticisms are very robustly directed towards the Sentencing Guidelines Council and it is asked what mandate it has to interfere with what is the going rate, so to speak. Indeed, there is pressure on it to increase the going rate and a lot of things have happened which have had that effect, not least the tariff for those who will be sentenced to life imprisonment which legislation increased very substantially for no apparent reason.

Q10 Ms Buck: Should the sentencing decisions of judges and magistrates be subject to monitoring and review to test their effectiveness? What information additional to that which we currently hold would be required to make that operable?

Lord Woolf: I have no problem with monitoring and reviewing. I think that more research into those matters to make that available is very beneficial. In doing that I should also want the cost to be taken into account because that is very significant. If one is producing sentences which are not effective - I think that is happening because there are not the resources properly to fund them - one is suffering a double whammy: first, one is producing an ineffective and very expensive sentence; second, one has to count the money.

Q11 Chairman: Is there any way of measuring the effectiveness of individual judges? If one goes for a heart operation it is possible at least in principle to find out the success rate of cardiac surgeons and, provided one understands the data, it may be of interest, but I am not aware there is any way of assessing the sentence that a particular judge passes judged, for example, by the criteria under the Act of 2003. Is there any way that could be done?

Lord Woolf: First, I think that more information could be available to the judges as to the effectiveness of their sentences. I have long encouraged the idea that there should be feedback to judges so they are told. What happens now with the majority of sentencing is that the sentence is passed and that is the last the judge hears of it. You do not know. When I was a young man, which was a long time ago, the population was much more static than it is now. Certainly, if one was a judge sitting regularly in a particular area outside London one knew about the quality of sentences. There was great feedback in informal ways via the Probation Service to the judge to show how sentences were working. I have to confess that I was responsible for encouraging the Home Office to take that initiative and it was David Blunkett who took it. We have gone back to it to the extent we can afford in the new community prison in Liverpool and also the drug prisons. If one has continuous interest in what is happening it is good for the prisoner and the judge. You soon know whether or not it was right in a particular case to try an order addressing the person's drug or drink habit, but I am afraid that in a system that has grown much more complex and bigger it does not happen. With computers today there is no reason why a judge should not get regular feedback, and I think that would be very helpful. I should like to see a judge having more responsibility towards continuity of the sentence.

Q12 Mr Winnick: I do not know how one of your predecessors, Lord Goddard, would have been rated in the league table at the time. Be that as it may, I want to ask you some questions about prison overcrowding. You have already said today that the present overcrowding is a cancer eating away at the system. The latest figures show there are some 80,000 people in prison. You wrote an article in The Times saying it is beyond dispute that there is now a crisis. It appears to be the case that the prison population continues to rise. There has been a 41% increase in the past 10 years. Other figures go back further. For example, in 1965 the average prison population was just over 30,000; in 1975 it was nearly 40,000, and it went up in 1985 to 46,000 in round figures. Can you give any explanation for the huge increase in prison population over both the past 10 years and, going on the figures I have just quoted, the past 40 years?

Lord Woolf: I can only go back to Strangeways. At the time of my report the prison population was 44,000 and falling. It was the first time one had seen that happening. I believe that that was a reaction to the public's consciousness - I include the judiciary - as to the state of our prisons and what overcrowding did. One of the things we did as a result of Strangeways was to improve security to a very great extent and reduce, rightly, the risk of riots in prisons. I am glad to say there has been no explosion of the same sort in prisons since Strangeways. That was a positive sign. But there is no doubt that the fact you will get prisons exploding causes those who are responsible for running them to concentrate on the state of the prisons and take steps, not necessarily long-term steps, to deal with the situation. You have prisoners being released. Therefore, you have courts pushing prisoners in the front door and their release out the back door. You ask me why the population has increased. I think that two things have had a particular effect on this. First, I believe that society's attitude has become more punitive as reflected in the media and, I emphasise, both administrations; there has been competition as to which political party can have the reputation of being tougher on crime. I think that the rhetoric has an effect on sentencing. The second reason is that the way we look after those who are punished in the community has deteriorated. This has led to a loss of confidence on the part of both the public and the courts in the quality of community punishment. They are not seen as punishments in the way they should be. It is part of the more complex nature of society. I suppose another factor - it is very difficult to find hard evidence of this - is that parts of society are becoming more brutal and it is clear that violent crime has to be dealt with severely.

Q13 Mr Winnick: To take up the point you have just made, you do not dispute that society has become more brutal and violent than in the 1960s?

Lord Woolf: I think that is right. There are probably many explanations for it and I should not like to hazard a guess as to the main one.

Q14 Mr Winnick: As far as concerns the present situation in prisons, can you see any way in which the problem can be resolved as the population is at the moment, or are you saying that until there is a decrease in the number of people in prisons the system will not work? Rehabilitation and protection of the community when people come out is such that there is no solution except a reduction in the prison population.

Lord Woolf: I would say that no solution will be really effective apart from reducing the prison population. The other alternative is to increase the capacity of the prisons to hold the population. Only one or two of those possibilities would help. I say as firmly as I can that building more prisons is not the solution, not least because it means that more and more resources are being sucked into the hugely expensive process of building prisons and keeping prisoners within it. What we really should be doing is to put greater focus on making effective non‑prison sentences. As the recent thoughtful and sensible report of the Citizens Advice Bureau suggested, the minute a prisoner goes to prison one should be working on methods to ensure that he or she is returned to the community in circumstances most likely to mean that there will be no reoffending. The CAB thought that it could help on that. There are a number of things that can be done if only the resources are available, but when we are always trying to catch up and accommodation to house the number of prisoners is behind and overcrowding continues it is an unconstructive situation.

Q15 Mr Winnick: To play devil's advocate, if you like, how would you respond to the tabloids and others who claim that you and some of your colleagues who say much the same as you live in a different sort of world from ordinary people who are deeply concerned about violence and law-breaking and you do not really appreciate in your own sheltered sort of life what it is like on the streets day to day? Therefore, when you say there should be a reduction in the prison population the response would be: what do you do with people who have been found guilty by the courts of committing serious offences?

Lord Woolf: I have had those accusations levelled at me.

Q16 Mr Winnick: I am not surprised, Lord Woolf.

Lord Woolf: This is not the first time, and I am well aware of them. I think they are misguided, not least because, like a large proportion of the population, my home has been broken into and things have been taken from it. I am aware of friends who have been mugged, not in this jurisdiction. My wife and I were mugged in a different jurisdiction that we visited. We are aware of it. For a very short period when I was chief justice I was entitled to a government car. It is fair to say that I abandoned my bicycle; I was tempted to do so by the government car, but I am back on it now and I cycle up and down the streets. I travel by Underground, enjoying my free pass.

Q17 Mr Winnick: So do I.

Lord Woolf: I find that public transport during the period when I had a government car has improved very considerably. The real answer to the point you make is that if you are constantly engaged, as I was for 25 years, in criminal courts and have before you cases of violence and know the harm has been done to the victims of those crimes you cannot be other than deeply aware of what happens as a result of crime. Contrary to the image you are trying to create, I would say that nobody knows better just how destructive crime is than a person who sits in the courts daily, especially in the criminal courts. One has a rich and unfortunate experience of just what horror can be caused to families.

Q18 Mr Winnick: In my previous question I was being the devil's advocate. When you advocate a reduction in the prison population and an effective alternative to prison - something that this Committee will be looking at - do you accept that in the case of those who have been convicted of violence there is really a very good case for a custodial sentence?

Lord Woolf: I entirely agree with you, and always have. I believe that violent offenders should be treated heavily. The one area where I was criticised by the media for being too tough was in regard to muggings in the street. That is the view I take. The ordinary member of the public must be able to go up and down the streets of this country confident that except in exceptional circumstances he or she will not be attacked. My contention is that the best way to achieve that is not to create a situation where there are overcrowded prisons, because they do not protect the public; they are expensive and drain resources but do not protect the public. Of course, whilst the person is in prison the public are protected, but even the great majority of people who commit offences of violence are back on the streets in a very short time. What we should do is ensure that whilst they are in prison everything is done to make them less likely to go back to their old ways. We know that there are things that succeed.

Q19 Martin Salter: In your piece in The Times on 29 January you wrote that the Home Office really needed a long-term plan to bring the prison population into line with the resources available in a way that would reduce reoffending. You also commented on the hoo‑ha around the Home Secretary's letter; you said that not to send it would be a dereliction of duty. A couple of points flow from what you wrote. Some of your colleagues in the judiciary cited the Home Secretary's letter as a reason or excuse for what might on the face of it seem like a lenient sentence or two that had been passed. Do you have any concerns that that whole episode might have smacked of political interference, or do you stand by your comments that perhaps some of your fellow members of the judiciary were unduly sensitive to the approach of the Home Secretary in putting pen to paper to address a particular matter?

Lord Woolf: I adhere to my view. I think that the Home Secretary was quite in order doing what he did. It was done with the approval of the chief justice.

Q20 Martin Salter: In terms of the argument about sentencing and taking cognizance of the prison population, it begs the question about the impact on justice itself. Surely, if the punishment for a murder committed at a time when the prison population is slightly lower than it is now is reflected in a shorter or longer prison sentence it does not give one any confidence that a crime is being treated with equal severity. Should one not be taking the argument to the next level which says that a crime is a crime, punishment is punishment, an offence is an offence and a sentence is a sentence? There should be consistency across the board and it is the Government's responsibility to ensure that there are sufficient places available and we should not have this artificial cap on the limits of our system of justice.

Lord Woolf: I do not think it is a good way to deal with it. I think we should have a much more strategic approach, and that was why I talked about a long-term solution. Since I wrote that short article in The Times I have thought considerably more about the subject. What I would like to see happen now is for the Sentencing Guidelines Council to be put into the same position as the Bank of England. It should be told, "Look, over a five-year period this is the amount of money that the Government has decided can be provided for the prison population, and you must see that your sentencing guidelines achieve a prison population within those resources where the commodity of prison space is used in the most appropriate way without prisons being overcrowded so they can do constructive things." I then come back to Mr Winnick's approach. Of course, one says that the primary use of imprisonment should be for violent offences. As far as concern offences of dishonesty, they must also be punished but they must be at an appropriate level to justify imprisonment, and what we should be doing is using our other available resources which would become available if the prison population was not increasing all the time to make really effective sentences in the community for offences that are appropriately punished in the community. If that was the situation we would not be working from hand to mouth and there would not be any danger that because a prisoner came up for sentence at a time of gross overcrowding he or she would be dealt with in a different way from what would happen if the matter had occurred at a time, which unfortunately is very rare, when the prisons were not overcrowded, for example because recently two or three prisons had come on stream or something of that sort.
What I do not believe meets justice is a situation where the judge tries to find the appropriate sentence and, if necessary, the matter goes to the Court of Appeal and that court tries to determine the appropriate sentence but that sentence passed bears no relation to the actual sentence served by the prisoner. What then happens is not that the court passes the wrong sentence but that the offender is released because of the overcrowded state of the prisons, or a particular prison, at that particular time.

Q21 Martin Salter: I do not disagree with your analysis in that regard, but how do you justify the statement that building more prisons is not the answer when you are already telling us it cannot it right that there is a disparity in sentencing determined by the levels of prison population and as you quite rightly say, as made perfectly clear by every piece of evidence before this Committee in this inquiry, that there are atrocious reoffending rates? For example, young offenders reoffend at the rate of 70%. I saw myself at a recent visit to Reading prison that there cannot be effective rehabilitative work at chronically overcrowded prisons. Even if no further people were sentenced to imprisonment over the next 10 years surely there would be a case for increasing the capacity of the prison system to ensure that proper rehabilitation work could take place and offenders left prison with less than a 70% chance of going back through the revolving door in a couple of months. Is that not predicated by the need to build more prisons and create more prison places?

Lord Woolf: If we are to be realistic what we know is that the more money we spend on building prisons the less money there will be to focus on education and rehabilitating and reforming prisoners. What you are saying means that one can house the prisoners perhaps in more comfortable circumstances than would otherwise be the case; they would not be doubled up and go into prison cells instead of prison; there would be room in prisons and they would not be going into cells in the courts which are wholly inappropriate for keeping prisoners for any length of time. If in the States you announce that you are to build five more prisons there is huge competition between different localities to have them built there because they provide employment which people want and so it is an industry that is seen as attractive to the community. I am glad to say that that is not the position in this country. People do not want to have more prisons in their back yards. Therefore, getting the space where you can build the prisons is not at all easy, so we must resort to hulks in which to keep prisoners when the pressure gets great enough for that to be required. What I have learned over the period in which I have been involved is that if more prisons are built they will be filled and the policies that result in the overcrowding now will continue that overcrowding. What we have to do is make a proper assessment as to the fair proportion of the economy of this country which it is right to devote to imprisoning individuals. If you say that that fair proportion is unlimited you can make it work; you build more prisons and ensure that they have very effective regimes, but in practice we find that that does not happen. One may have another 800 places available over a relatively short period of time but they will not be sufficient to deal with the problem. But even if it was sufficient to deal with the problem it would be only a very short-term solution. I just do not think that it would work. That is why I would like a brave government to say that it will not have an open door policy as far as concerns prisons, that this is a sensible number for the community and sentences must be produced which will use them in the most effective way. The fact is that now there are many people in prison who do not need to be there. If we approached the matter logically and sensibly we would ensure that the very expensive commodity of prison places was retained for those who really deserved it and needed it. We then ensure that from the very first day they arrive the programme starts to ensure that when they return to the community they will not, as far as it is possible to achieve it, reoffend.

Q22 Mr Streeter: In a second I want to ask a couple of questions on indeterminate sentences, but I cannot resist just asking you one question on what you have just been telling the Committee. What evidence is there based on any of your experience in this country or any other part of the world that if we spent an awful lot more on rehabilitation, whether inside or outside prison, reoffending rates would go down?

Lord Woolf: What is clear on information known to the Home Office, because it wants to pursue these policies, is that in particular if a young man who has employment and somewhere to live is returned to society the probability of his committing a crime is significantly reduced. It depends on the individual, but if you are able to make sure that he goes back equipped then in those circumstances it works. There was an excellent initiative at Canterbury prison where the prisoners, the police and prison officers worked together to achieve that situation and reoffending rates fell. The evidence is there, and that is accepted. You will not reduce crime or prevent reoffending by 100% but you will reduce it. Above all, if a person is not capable of work because his standard of education is minimal you do what the Army did when I did my national service: you provide a very good education to bring the individual up to the minimum standard that is needed for employment. That is the sort of thing that we are not doing.

Q23 Mr Streeter: As you know, indeterminate sentences were designed for the most dangerous offenders. There is a minimum tariff and the Parole Board makes a decision to release under licence. We learn that 22% of indeterminate sentences since the 2003 Act involve an average tariff of less than 18 months. Does that surprise you? Why do you think that is happening?

Lord Woolf: I am afraid that that is because of provisions in the Act in relation to dangerousness that require the courts in particular circumstances to make indeterminate sentences. It seems to me that it is not good sentencing policy to create a situation where a court at the same time imposes an indeterminate sentence and says that the tariff should be 18 months. There has always been a very small number of cases that are very worrying to the courts where you just do not know how dangerous the individual is. In that case an indeterminate sentence if available could be useful; it could be a merciful sentence. That is particularly true in cases of arson. If one can avoid it one cannot have somebody going back into the community who will burn people's homes and kill people in that way. One therefore wants to give someone the responsibility to decide when the person is fit to return to the community. But that is a small range of offences. The life sentences in those cases were used with great discrimination by the judiciary, but the message from legislation since that time is that there are situations where one is required to impose indeterminate sentences. The indeterminate sentences to which you refer are a great problem for the system.

Q24 Mr Streeter: Moving to recent comments by Lord Phillips about the length of the minimum term for murder, you said that the 2003 Act introduced greater terms for murder without any apparent reason.

Lord Woolf: Was that the 2003 Act? It may have been a subsequent Act. I am not sure which Act it was.

Q25 Mr Streeter: Whichever Act it was, is not the apparent reason public concern about the levels of violence in our society and the kind of murders that we now experience? Is it not right that politicians should respond to that?

Lord Woolf: First, it is very important that the sentencing policies adopted are ones in which the public has confidence. They must have confidence in the justice system. Second, it is right that politicians should respond, but this was a huge and dramatic hike. I am not sure there was any particular outcry by the public at the time. The precedent for this was the fact that the powers of the Home Secretary because of the impact of the European Convention on Human Rights had to be removed. I hope I am not being unfair in saying that there was a bit of a reaction by the Government to the effect that if they were to give it up they would ensure that the sentences were substantially higher than they had been. That linkage explained that hike, and it was not a good reason.

Q26 Mr Streeter: If you had the power would you reduce minimum terms?

Lord Woolf: I believe that if there is a good parole board minimum terms should be at the appropriate level. What has happened is that the statutory minimum terms are often not at the appropriate level. In many cases they are. If there is a bad case the appropriate level is very high, but why tie the judiciary when there is no evidence to suggest that it was not identifying the serious cases and the Parole Board was doing an excellent job and was largely successful in ensuring that people were released from parole only when it was safe to do so?

Q27 Chairman: I want to ask a couple of questions about short sentences. By implication you have referred to it already. It is widely recognised that short sentences of a few months almost always do more harm than good in terms of reoffending, and yet both magistrates and crown courts continue to pass very short sentences. Given the drive for effective sentences, why has it proved so difficult to persuade sentencers that short sentences are ineffective, give rise to very high rates of reoffending and are a poor use of public money?

Lord Woolf: I think that the situation is linked to the methods to which I have referred. There comes a stage when the court feels it has tried everything and nothing has worked and so it must be a short sentence. It recognises that it is not the sort of offence that deserves anything other than a short sentence and so one is imposed. I understand the feeling of frustration which causes those sentences to be imposed, and I believe that there are too many of them imposed. The message that I tried to give was that if it was felt that because of the pattern of offending one had to have a short sentence one should not impose three months but one month or two weeks; keep it as short as possible. One must have some regard for the position of the magistrates who have a young tearaway before them time after time after time. They feel eventually totally frustrated and say that they cannot go on like this; it is just making a mockery of the situation, but they can impose a very short sentence. Often, the most effective thing about a short sentence - indeed, the only effective thing about it - is for you hear the clang of the prison door and to spend just a few nights knowing what it is like to be shut up for most of the day.

Q28 Chairman: How damaging was it to the 2003 Act that custody-plus has never been implemented, and perhaps may never be implemented now?

Lord Woolf: It is unfortunate that the resources were not available; it comes back to that.

Q29 Chairman: In terms of the frustrated magistrate who can see nothing else to do, how much does that stem from lack of confidence in the alternatives to prison?

Lord Woolf: I think it comes directly from that because their experience is that they are not effective.

Q30 Mr Browne: I should like to ask three separate questions on community orders and alternatives to the situation that you have been describing over the past three-quarters of an hour. First, in the Home Office's recent consultation document Making Sentencing Clearer it is said that "the courts are not using community orders as fully as they might". Is that a view you share? Is part of the reason perhaps a general public sense that non‑custodial sentences are a soft option? If that is the case, do you think that somehow they need to be hardened, for example - I do not know whether you think it is getting a bit close to the concept of chain gangs - by requiring offenders to wear uniforms to make them more identifiable to the wider public as those who are serving a community non-custodial sentence? How do you think there can be greater confidence in it?

Lord Woolf: My answer is that it is not a case of dressing them up in orange glow overalls for the purpose of the sentence. I do not believe it helps to reduce the very limited self-confidence of some of these people to treat them as though they were in the stocks. I think that the punishment must be supervised very much more effectively than it has been because of lack of resources. I have a huge regard for the Probation Service, but I think that it is stretched so excessively and if there is a need to devote resources in general it is not always appreciated how important it is to make community punishments really effective.

Q31 Mr Browne: People's concern is that these young tearaways, as you described them in an earlier answer, are meant to be picking up litter, or whatever it is, but they are spending most of their time smoking and talking to each other; they are not applying themselves to the task with as much vigour as the public may wish them to.

Lord Woolf: If that is happening it is damaging, and if the judge or magistrate sees that happening that is also damaging, but the punishment can be made vigorous. Sometimes it continues much longer than the protection provided by their incarceration. I believe that those are the matters on which we should really focus as well as having a sensible policy for the use of long-term imprisonment.

Q32 Mr Browne: Another option used as an alternative to prison is the fining of people. I see from some statistics I have been given that in 2004/05 only 52% - just over half - of fines imposed by courts were paid within six months. There is an issue about fairly wealthy people not regarding a fine as a huge punishment and those who default. What is your view on the use of fines as a method of punishing people?

Lord Woolf: Again, enforcement is very important. I believe that more recently available figures show that enforcement is at a much higher level than previously and it has improved. If that is so it is a very good thing. I believe that one of the matters in the 2003 Act which was a very useful punishment was the requirement to do work in the community instead of paying a fine. Quite frankly, a lot of the people who receive fines are not really in a position to pay them. If they can work off a fine that is true. The aspect of inequality to which you refer is, I am afraid, a reality. Sometimes the world is an unfair place. If somebody has large resources obviously a fine does not bite to the same extent as on someone who is poor, but I do not believe that a man who drives a Rolls-Royce is very happy when he finds on returning to his vehicle that he has a parking fine to pay even though he has lots of resources.

Q33 Mr Browne: But overall do you say that effective non-custodial community sentences are more effective than fines, and possibly more effective than short prison sentences?

Lord Woolf: They are certainly more effective than short prison sentences, but I believe there is scope for fines. Although the cost of monitoring punishments in the community is much less than imprisonment there is still a cost, the cost being the time of valuable people.

Q34 Mr Browne: The final area that I want to cover is a debate that has not been started but has been given extra impetus by a report published recently by Jean Corston, a former Bristol MP, which concentrates particularly on women's prisons. Her report recommended that there should be smaller local custodial sentences instead of prisons for women as they currently exist. Following that up, I tabled a couple of Written Questions to which I have just received responses. I am told that on average women prisoners are kept 58 miles from their home and almost one in five are kept more than 100 miles from where they live, with a possible consequential impact on their ability to resettle in the community once released. I cannot remember the precise figure, but of the prison population of 80,000 about 3,500 to 4,000 are women. I was interested in your specific observations about how prisons fail to serve women who are currently being incarcerated and whether reforms need to be made.

Lord Woolf: I certainly think there is a need and that makes too wide a point which is applicable to the whole population. First, wherever possible if imprisonment is to lead to the right results it should be local. One of the problems of overcrowding is that one is constantly moving prisoners. This is especially important in the case of women. Second, in my view on the whole small prisons are better than large ones, but economies of scale must be taken into account with the male population. We really need to make special arrangements for women in prison which are different from those that are now made. Because the numbers are so much smaller than the male population they often must go a long way away. Often, one is separating mothers from their children and families. That is very destructive of the possibility of the mother being reformed and it also has a damaging effect on the children. That can store up problems for the future.

Q35 Mrs Dean: To carry on that line of questioning, how credible are community options for vulnerable women and also for drug and alcohol-abusers? What changes could we make so that sentencers have more confidence?

Lord Woolf: It may be that what we have to do is go back to what I said earlier about providing sentencers with more information about how people get on. If one perceives that the punishment is having the desired effect it may well be it will produce statistics that give confidence. We are at the moment in the unfortunate situation that we are not providing effective community sentences in many cases. We do our best with the resources available, but we are not doing it in a sufficient number of cases and so the feedback is not as positive as it would otherwise be, but certainly there is no information that prison is more effective than community sentences. The only reason that prison should be regarded as the alternative if there is a community sentence available is because of the seriousness of the offence. We should be using community sentences wherever possible because they are the more economical option which means it has advantages for the resources available to the system as a whole.

Q36 Mrs Dean: What do you think should be the role of restorative justice in the criminal justice system?

Lord Woolf: I am glad you ask that because I have not mentioned it and it is something to which I believe great importance should be attached. There should be more resources. I am repeating myself and sound like a cracked record. That is an example where right across the range of punishment restorative justice can be of benefit not only to the offender but, more importantly, to the victim as well. The fact that victims find it constructive in so many cases is not given enough attention. It is right that we should be focusing more than we did in the past on meeting the needs of victims, and in the right cases restorative justice does that. I saw that in my previous job. Sometimes restorative justice is now used after a person has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Until the law was changed for every person sentenced to life imprisonment I had the task of writing to the Home Secretary giving my view as to what the tariff should be. Where appropriate, although I could pay only limited attention to it I tried to get a statement from the victims about the effect upon them. There were quite striking cases, even involving murder, where a victim's family had the opportunity to be engaged in a restorative process, recognising that a young offender had good in him and could have potential. They wrote letters asking me to put the tariff as low as I felt I could. This is vivid proof. With small offences it is so important that the young offender should know what damage he is causing. It is so easy for a criminal to dehumanise the victim. Restorative justice makes criminals face up to the damage they have done, and that is often the most salutary thing one can do. I am a great enthusiast for it, but not in all cases. One must not force victims to engage in it if they do not want to, but if they are willing it can be very constructive.

Q37 Mrs Dean: Can conditional caution play a greater role in the criminal justice system? Can it make a contribution to reducing the burden on courts' lists, for example?

Lord Woolf: I think it can and does. It must be used properly and there must be objective criteria set out to control its use, but I believe that it is a positive factor.

Q38 Margaret Moran: You have referred to the nub of the issue, that is, the political hot potato where successive governments have not grasped the nettle of resources versus punishment or the approach to prevention. How far do you feel that is the result of media pressure, and, if so, what do you think can be done about it?

Lord Woolf: If I may say so, I think you are in a much better position to judge than I am. I think that politicians react as one would expect. I do not think anybody wants to be painted as not protective of the public. That is as true of judges as politicians. I believe that the media do cause judges to be tougher than they might otherwise be and to be much more cautious about taking a chance. When I was a High Court judge and people came before me with real signs that they repented what they had done it was often in the interests of the public, or the greater good, to take a chance, but it gets more and more difficult in present circumstances to do that. These are the consequences of the various matters that we have built into the system, such as appeals against lenient sentences. I do not think any judge likes to be labelled as a soft touch.

Q39 Margaret Moran: Therefore, there is pressure on the judiciary. I have been told by someone who currently works as a consultant but who was formerly an FBI officers that for example in reality someone who is guilty of violence against a child, perhaps by internet pornography, will serve a sentence of between three and six months. How does that help to deal with both public confidence and media pressure, and how do we break out of what we are describing as the vicious circle of media, public pressure and political pressure?

Lord Woolf: The first thing we must do but is to try to get over the message of just how expensive incarceration is. I do not believe that that message has got through. Every time the Government feels it necessary to take action to produce a minimum sentence which will put up the going rate I would like to see the costs of it set out in clear and realistic terms. Parliament must now say whether legislation complies with the European convention. I would like it to specify precisely the cost. In my view if the public could appreciate that if it is desired to have more people in prison that could be done but it would mean one less hospital, one less new school and so many fewer teachers then some of the absurdities that now take place in the prison system might be avoided.

Q40 Margaret Moran: To play devil's advocate, assume that I am the editor of the Sun and you argue about giving the cost of prisons and that we should do more of the Canterbury model, so my headline is "Prisoners get free job and free home". How do you balance that in terms of the argument about resources?

Lord Woolf: I do not know whether I would persuade the editor of the Sun. From the correspondence I have had with the editor of the Sun from time to time I do not believe that I will make much progress and the same may be true of other editors whom I could identify. But my answer to that person would be that what I wanted to do was to prevent him or her reoffending. When as chief justice I addressed many bodies of those who had been the victims of crimes and explained the problems of the offender and the need for sustained attention to be given to that offender if one were to get him off drugs, or whatever led to his offending, they understood. They are not foolish. I believe we have the impression that the public are much more punitive than they are. As long as it is explained fully why one is doing it and preferably can point to what can be achieved then the public do understand. That is my view, which may not be shared by others.

Q41 Margaret Moran: Obviously, you can very eloquently express that to the editor of the Sun or to whomsoever you like, but do you think that the courts are generally very good at explaining their decisions and that kind of dilemma? You also referred to feedback. Do you think there is sufficient data or evidence base on which to be able to do that?

Lord Woolf: I think it is very difficult to do more than happens now. In regard to most cases that are sensationalised when the matter is looked at carefully it is not revealed to be anything like it has been portrayed at the time. That is because we now spend in court quite a considerable time explaining exactly why a particular sentence is imposed and how it is calculated, but, not unnaturally, it is very difficult for a reporter who must understand what is happening and then reduce what he or she hears in that case to a manageable size for the editor to get over the full flavour of the case. Therefore, the public are often misled. It is true that some sentences are too lenient. Judges can make a mistake as well as anybody else. That is why we now have a process whereby if a judge makes a really significant mistake the matter is taken to a higher court and it is put right, but the number of cases in that category is not large. As chief justice the number of occasions when I saw sentences that were absurdly low were very few, but when that happened it was increased. There was usually some good reason why what might at first sight have appeared to be a low sentence was not a low sentence.

Q42 Margaret Moran: One of the objectives of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 in relation to the sentencing framework was that the public should have confidence in the system. How do we measure that objective?

Lord Woolf: It is very difficult to do but I think we should try by surveys and other means to see whether or not we are achieving that objective. One of the ways we can know whether or not on the whole the public have confidence is the tables which show the standing of the professions in which the public have most confidence. Doctors and teachers are very high up; politicians are very low, if I may say so; and judges are in a pretty good position, and that is going up. We are getting over this very important message. I want children to come to courts to see what happens there and I want judges to go to schools to talk about what they do, but what has particularly impressed me in the statistics I have seen is that those who have sat on juries and been involved in cases have the greatest respect for what the courts are doing and are impressed by the judges. When the public are told of the actual sentence imposed in a particular case they are often surprised and say that they would have been more lenient. Of course there are cases in which no punishment would be serious enough for the particular defendant to receive in the eyes of the victim. I do not criticise the victim for that, but I think that is the position when talking about the public in general.

Q43 Chairman: Recently, the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, gave evidence to the Constitution Committee of the House of Lords.

Lord Woolf: I am a member of that Committee and he particularly addressed his remarks to me.

Q44 Chairman: Were you there on 7 March when he said of judges that, "If they are making more and more lenient sentences, they are going to have to explain their position more vocally and lucidly"? That is simply factually wrong. As you and all the evidence says, judges in general have been passing harsher and harsher sentences. Surely, it must be possible at least to ensure that the editors of our great national newspapers know what the facts are. How can we do that?

Lord Woolf: I used to say you can lead a horse to water but you cannot force it to drink.

Q45 Bob Russell: I should preface my comments by saying that in a previous existence, more than 40 years ago, I used to be a court reporter when perhaps journalistic standards and newspaper coverage were somewhat better than today. While most of our questions today have revolved around major court matters, you will be aware that the vast majority of court cases are heard in magistrates courts. That was the level at which I did my reporting. Nowadays, very few magistrates court cases are reported in the local media. While it is not possible, I assume, to have a fixture list published via the magistrates court service, with modern electronic means of communication is it possible to have a results service? My view is that in local communities the public perception is that nobody is interested or bothered in low-level crime, yet I know, and you will be aware, that the police prosecute and people are being dealt with before the courts and sentences are being handed down. Is there any way that the criminal justice system can ensure that local communities are aware of what is going on in their communities so that low-level criminal activity is made public?

Lord Woolf: If I may say so, when you told me your previous occupation I immediately wondered in which court you appeared as a reporter. I think that is a very valid point. There is a tremendous deterrent effect in the fact that the local paper will say what you have done and what punishment has been imposed upon you. If people have committed crimes they do not want that to appear. Until you raised the question I had not thought whether the courts should do more. As a somewhat instinctive reaction - because I have not thought it through - it does not seem to me that it is the sort of thing that courts should be doing. You can make the information available, but I do not think that people would be comfortable with courts taking positive action to name and shame. I think it is regrettable that there is not greater coverage in local papers. We have a vast number of local papers now. I think the hope that by having a reporter in a local court you will deter a case which is of real interest is not considered sufficient to justify the expense involved in somebody attending. I think it is true of all courts that reporting is not what it was.

Q46 Bob Russell: I have raised that issue and hope that perhaps the National Union of Journalists will pursue it. We can forget about the Guild of Editors because they certainly will not do so. The Home Office's consultation document Making Sentences Clear includes questions about explaining sentences more clearly to the public. My view is that it should be made clearer to the media, following Margaret Moran's question. What else would you recommend should be done to ensure that the public and thus journalists have a better understanding of the sentences handed down by the courts? I have particularly in mind the indeterminate sentence and the role of the licence period.

Lord Woolf: Courts can do things to try to improve the situation. If I had a case in which I thought the public and therefore the media would be interested sometimes I would produce a very long judgment and then have a short executive summary, so to speak, for the media. I found that the press were grateful for that and it helped them and that the reporting which followed was clearer because the main features would be identified.

Q47 Bob Russell: In the main you have answered my final question, but I just put it to see whether or not you want to expand further. Although the purposes of sentencing articulated in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 are not new, do you think it would be helpful for judges to explain their decisions by reference to the relevant aims?

Lord Woolf: I think that they should do as much as is possible bearing in mind that obviously they must use their time in a sensible way. To go into too much detail will not really help. They must decide the best way to explain what they are doing. That is the whole purpose of the sentencing judgment. The problem is that the judgments given with sentences are getting longer and longer. That does not necessarily add to intelligibility but causes more confusion. Judges now have about 20 things that they are required to say and they repeat them again and again.

Q48 Bob Russell: For whose benefit are those decisions explained? Is it for the benefit of the legal profession, the person being sentenced, the media or public?

Lord Woolf: First, it is to make sure, so far as they are imposed by Parliament, that the judge addresses the things that he should address. Second, it is done as a protection against the Court of Appeal.

Q49 Ms Buck: We have talked quite a lot about public perceptions of the system and how often information can possibly influence public attitudes towards sentencing. Earlier you said that if people realised how expensive incarceration was it might itself have an impact. Do you believe that sentencing itself should in some way be influenced by cost?

Lord Woolf: Yes. One should be realistic. The judge should know how much the sentences that he is imposing will cost the public. That is a very relevant matter. If there is a suitable, cheaper option he should choose it.

Q50 Ms Buck: There are two levels to that. One is whether magistrates and judges should be informed about the costs of alternatives and perhaps how one can pursue that. The second level is how one uses that fund of information to influence public and media perceptions.

Lord Woolf: Yes.

Q51 Ms Buck: Do you have views about what the mechanics of getting that information to people might be and ensuring it is properly used?

Lord Woolf: As far as concerns information to the public that is the task of the media; as far as concern judges they are provided with the information regularly. The Home Office takes great care to make information available.

Q52 Ms Buck: If that information is very much available to people as a tool to what extent does that have an influence? If not, why not and what can be done?

Lord Woolf: I am sure that it does play a part and that the judge does take it into account, but for many years the belief prevalent among the judiciary, which perhaps reflected the attitudes of those times when there was not such a big prison population as today, was exactly that. I believe that it was the Chairman or another Member of the Committee who put to me that it is the task of the judge to pass the sentence that he or she thinks appropriate and then it is for the Government to pick up the tab regardless of what it is and there is no limit on how much it can be expected to expend. I would hope that we can be a bit more sophisticated these days and take into account the other pressures placed on those who are responsible for managing our affairs, namely the Government, and recognise the conflicting interests.

Q53 Ms Buck: Why are there such striking variations in the use of custodial sentences between different parts of the country?

Lord Woolf: You presuppose that there are. Within magistrates courts there tend to be regional variations which are well chronicled. I believe that it is part of local justice, especially at magistrates court level, that there should be some difference, but the difference must be modest; otherwise, the appeal system is not achieving the objective of ensuring consistency. Magistrates now throughout the country have very detailed guidelines and there should not be the inconsistencies that occur in unfortunate cases because all the material is available.

Q54 Ms Buck: Is it your view that, allowing for variations in the profile of offenders, there is not a significant variation?

Lord Woolf: There is evidence of significant differences in certain areas of the country, but the magistrates in those areas will be aware of that and seek to justify them. They will say that a particular form of offending is prevalent or that a country area subject to this sort of behaviour is particularly vulnerable because there is no policeman within so many miles and they are justified. They know their local situation better than I do. While I think there should be consistency in sentences it is not surprising that there is some variation. If there is too much variation it should not happen and the training systems now in existence should prevent that.

Q55 Ms Buck: Some of the emerging thinking about the development of things about which you have been talking - the balance between custodial, restorative and community sentencing - suggests that having a much more neighbourhood-based facility allows greater transparency at local level so sentencing can be observed and options developed within a much more local context. What is your view about that kind of operation? Is that something that can go some way towards reassuring the public about the effectiveness of community sentencing? Is it something that can perhaps be more integrated into local government and funded through local taxation?

Lord Woolf: These ideas may well be worth exploring and have merit. It is very difficult to make broad generalisations about the qualities of any particular initiative. I think that we have such a difficult situation that we should not ignore anything that might help.

Q56 Chairman: Perhaps we may end with a few brief questions about the sentencing guidelines and the council. I begin by picking up your earlier interesting suggestion about the Bank of England model for the Sentencing Guidelines Council. Would it not be more publicly acceptable if, for example, the statutory aim of the Sentencing Guidelines Council was to reduce reoffending rather than balance the prison population with the available resources?

Lord Woolf: That would probably be much more acceptable and easier to do, but I think that something more drastic is needed.

Q57 Chairman: As a politician I am bound to ask the following: if one has a policy to set up an independent body which then leads to judges up and down the country saying when they come to give sentence, "I would have sent you to prison but now I cannot because there is not enough money", will it not undermine public confidence in a serious way?

Lord Woolf: Judges would follow the sentencing guidelines in the way they do. Of course there will be rough water, but it is becoming more and more apparent that our present way of doing things is really unconstructive. If politicians were able to be really forceful it should not lead to situations where people who should be in prison will not be. At the time I was writing my report judges in Germany came together and said collectively that they would cut sentences across the board by 10%. Who is to say whether a sentence which is 10% higher is better than a sentence that is 10% lower? Looking at matters in a holistic way, at the present time a 10% reduction in our prison population would be manna from heaven to the Prison Service and Home Office. I do not think it means that judges would say - if they did say it they should not - that that was an inappropriate sentence. If the guidelines were that that should happen that would be the right sentence. They would have no reason to impose the wrong sentence and therefore would have no right to say that they would otherwise have passed a higher sentence. If it is a relevant matter they must take it into account.

Q58 Chairman: If you have a more powerful council is there a case for broadening its membership? You have referred to this Committee's role in commenting on guidance, but the process for the Sentencing Advisory Panel and the Sentencing Guidelines Council looks very much a closed shop of professional sentencers and a relatively small number of interest groups working directly in the criminal justice field. Is there not a case for broadening its membership so it has wider representation of the public: community organisations, ethnic minority groups and so on?

Lord Woolf: I think that we should look again at the membership of the Sentencing Guidelines Council. It is my belief that the chairman should not be the chief justice of the day. The Law Commission's full-time chairman is a judge. I think that the Sentencing Guidelines Council is a very big job. Whereas whoever is chairman should work very closely with the chief justice of the day, the latter has so many commitments that it is more sensible for some other judge to perform that role. I believe the reason it was decided in the first instance that it would be desirable to have the chief justice on that body and why I never made any attempt to delegate my duties to somebody else was that it was felt so important that the judges should feel that the message they got was one they could accept and follow. Therefore, the symbolic presence of the chief justice was important. I think that initially it was a good thing. Interestingly, in the States there are many similar bodies in different parts of the country, not least because each state has its own approach and membership differs. We can learn quite a lot from examining that situation. Learning from the States suggests that the person who is chairman needs to be very politically acute.

Q59 Chairman: With that in mind, it is acknowledged that when this Committee considered the guidelines it did not anticipate some of the consequences of the reductions in sentence for a guilty plea. That is now under revision. Therefore, the process of setting guidelines has proved to be very complex and challenging and it is quite possible to make some errors of judgment along the way. That is probably part of the learning process. But the flow of draft guidelines now seems to have become very slow. We were expecting a comprehensive set of guidelines over a reasonable period of time covering most of the main areas of sentencing, but fewer rather than more appear to be coming through to the Committee. Do you think that is because of the challenges that the council has faced in getting this right first time round? Now that you are no longer in that role you may have a view.

Lord Woolf: I do not believe that it is anybody's fault, but in setting it up we probably made it too bureaucratic. The Sentencing Advisory Panel predated the Sentencing Guidelines Council. The advisory panel had been very effective and so, not unreasonably, it was thought that we should not get rid of that panel but should have a guidelines council as well. What I believe is holding things up is stage after stage of consultation. That takes up a considerable amount of time. The people you want to consult need time to respond, and if you have too many steps in the process it draws it out. From that point of view it is a long drawn-out process, but if that is looked at it may help.

Chairman: Lord Woolf, you have been extremely generous with your time. Thank you very much for opening this inquiry and also for being so frank, open and constructive with us.