![]() House of Commons |
Session 2008 - 09 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Coroners and Justice Bill |
Coroners and Justice Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Alan Sandall, Committee
Clerk attended the
Committee WitnessesJohn
Thornhill, Chairman, Magistrates
Association John Fassenfelt, Deputy
Chairman, Magistrates Association Paul
Cavadino, Chief Executive, Nacro Gillian
Guy, Chief Executive, Victim
Support Juliet Lyon, Director, Prison
Reform Trust Professor Michael Hough,
Research Associate, Prison Reform Trust Public Bill CommitteeThursday 5 February 2009(Morning)[Frank Cook in the Chair]Coroners and Justice BillWritten evidence to be reported to the HouseCJ
08 Prison Reform
Trust CJ
09 Justice for
Women CJ
10 British Medical
Association 9
am The
Committee deliberated in
private. 9.8
am On
resuming
The
Chairman: Good morning one and all, and welcome to the
third evidence session of the Committee. I remind hon. Members and
witnesses that the sitting must end at 10.25 at the latest. I hope that
I do not have to interrupt hon. Members or witnesses in the middle of
sentences, but I will do so if need be. I ask the witnesses to
introduce themselves
individually. Professor
Hough: I am Professor Mike Hough from Kings
college London and a research associate of the Prison Reform
Trust. Juliet
Lyon: I am Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform
Trust. Gillian
Guy: I am Gillian Guy, chief executive of Victim
Support. Paul
Cavadino: I am Paul Cavadino, chief executive of
Nacro.
John
Fassenfelt: Good morning. I am John Fassenfelt,
deputy chairman of the Magistrates Association. I sit as a
magistrate in
Kent. John
Thornhill: Good morning. I am John Thornhill,
chairman of the Magistrates Association, and I sit in the busy court of
Liverpool.
Q185Mr.
Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): I begin by asking some
questions about the aspects of the Bill that refer to the sentencing
council for England and Wales, which are in part 4 of the Bill,
beginning at clause 100. Traditionally, it has been the duty of the
Governmentthe Executiveto provide resources, and it has
been the duty of the court independently of Government to sentence
appropriately, given the facts of the case. The impression could be
gained from the design of this Bill that resource is to influence
sentence. Is that your impression? Perhaps I can start with the
magistrates and then ask others to comment.
John
Thornhill: I think that magistrates share your grave
concerns. What is important is that magistrates and other members of
the judiciary are free to sentence in an appropriate way the offender
in front of them, taking into account the circumstances of the offence
and the offender. Clearly, there must not be any impression or attempt
to fetter that discretion. Our concerns are that if we look at
something like clause 107, we are moving from have regard
to sentencing guidelines, which is the current position, to
must follow, where that is mandatory. Coupling that
with a number of other clauses suggests that that might be the case. We
have been given an assurance that it is not the intention to fetter
discretion, but clearly those words might suggest that that is the case
and that therefore there is an attempt perhaps to blur the distinction
between the Executive and the judiciary. That is our
concern.
Q
186Mr.
Garnier: Mr. Fassenfelt, from your position as
an officer of the association but also as a sentencer in a court in
Kent, do you share Mr. Thornhills
concerns? John
Fassenfelt: Yes, I can sum this up in very few words.
Magistrates feel that the current guidelines are in fact guidelines. We
feel in the association that the proposals in the Bill will in fact
become tram
lines.
Q
187Mr.
Garnier: Mr. Cavadino, I do not know whether
this is relevant to your area of work and experience, but if you have
something that might help us, I would be pleased to hear
it. Paul
Cavadino: First, the Bill does not require sentencing
guidelines to take account of resources. I would be sympathetic to a
case for its doing so, but it does not. In clause 102, a range of
factors are set out that the guidelines have to take account of. They
have to have regard to, for example, current sentencing practice, the
need to promote consistency, the need to promote public confidence and
the cost and effectiveness of different sentences. That is a
replication of the statutory requirements that currently apply to the
Sentencing Guidelines Council. It does not say in that clause that the
guidelines must have regard to penal resources. Clause 109 says that
the sentencing council should publish assessments of the impact on
resources in relation both to the number of prison places and to the
probation and youth justice
services.
Q
188Mr.
Garnier: Do you understand that clause 109 is
directed at the Executive, rather than at the
sentencer? Paul
Cavadino: I believe that it is directed at trying to
ensure that everyone involvedthe sentencers at the sentencing
council, the Executive and Parliament, if the guidelines will still go
before a Select Committee for scrutinywill see the impact that
any change in the guidelines or in new guidelines would have on penal
resources. That seems completely sensible. The notion of producing
guidelines without taking any notice of the impact on resources does
not seem a sensible course. If we had more rigorous, more effective
assessments of the impact on the penal system, the Executive could see
what they needed to do by means of planning for penal resources. Also,
the public and others involved, including Parliament, would be able to
see whether the proposal would be counter-productive and frustrate the
effectiveness of sentencing. The effectiveness of sentencing can
clearly
be reduced, if guidelines are passed without any regard being had to
whether the resources are there to put them in
place.
Q
189Mr.
Garnier: Are you therefore sayingI will come on to
the other witnessesthat had resource assessments been in place
over the past 10 years, we might have had fewer criminal justice Bills
and we would not have had 3,500 new offences being created with many of
those offences sending people to
prison? Paul
Cavadino: The combination of the requirement on the
council to publish impact assessments of its guidelines, and the
provision in the Bill enabling the Lord Chancellor to refer major
proposed changes in legislation or penal policy to the council for an
assessment, could have been a deterrent to some of the legislation
brought forward and proliferated over the
years.
Gillian
Guy: From our perspective of victims and witnesses,
we welcome anything that adds credibility to the system and confidence
in having comprehensible guidelines that make sentencing make some
sense to victims and witnesses. I agree with Paul about needing to pay
some cognisance to the impact on resources for planning and capacity
purposes. I would not welcome guidelines saying, If this is
difficult to manage, you should change your sentencing
accordingly. We are concerned that offence legislation might
not get implemented, because of those resource constraints and that the
Bill creates 308 new prison places. We are concerned about whether
previously enacted legislation that we would like implemented will see
the light of day, because of the pressure on prison
places.
Q
191Mr.
Garnier: We knowthe witnesses from the Prison
Reform Trust might tell us more about thisthat the prison
population has risen by approximately 15,000 to 20,000 since this
Government came into office. We also knowthis is not a
controversial pointthat about a quarter of the prison
population is accommodated in cells that are too small. That is to say
that about 18,000 people are doubled up in single cells and that about
3,000 or 4,000 people are trebled up in double cells. Do you think that
a resource assessment of the nature set out in clause 109 would help us
to deal with prison
overcrowding? Gillian
Guy: It should help us to plan for prison capacity in
terms of what legislation we are bringing in and what offences we are
seeing. It also prompts us to look at community sentencing and other
alternatives to prison and to really think about what are appropriate
sentences. Victims and witnesses are not clamouring for people to be
banged up at all costs. This is about having appropriate justice and a
system that is separate from them, so that it is not their
responsibility to ensureif incarceration is the right
thingthat prisons have appropriate capacity and are properly
managed.
Q
192Mr.
Garnier: Juliet Lyon and Professor Mike Hough, do you
think that clause 109, which deals with the resource implications of
the guidelines, confuses the purpose of the other clauses dealing with
the guidelines to the courts? Are there not two separate functions:
first, calculating the available resources, given the state of the
economy and Government finances, and how
they should be deployed within the criminal justice system and,
secondly, what a court should do in any given case? Would it be easier
and clearer if those two functions were expressly separated rather than
dealt with entirely by the Sentencing Guidelines
Council? Professor
Hough: I think that they are separate functions, but
there is absolutely no reason why they should not be discharged by a
single body. The sentencing council is the obvious one to do
it.
Q
193Mr.
Garnier: Are you suggesting, therefore, that magistrates,
sentencers and the Crown court should be informed of and required to
take into account the resource implications following the assessments,
or are you saying that that should be a matter for the
Executivethe Government and the Ministry of Justice? Is it for
them to learn the lessons of the assessment and to provide, or not to
provide as their political policies may conclude, the answers to the
questions posed by the assessment, and to leave the courts free, under
statute and common law, to apply the relevant
sentences? Professor
Hough: My view is that the council should take on the
technical task of assessing the cost implications of any proposal.
Others should decide what to do with that technical assessment. I do
not think that it is for the council to actually have a handle on
resources. Juliet
Lyon: In the broader context of rising prison
numbers, I do not think that anyone is suggesting that introducing the
new measures under the Bill would lead to a failure to provide the
number of places that we might need for serious and violent offenders.
However, there is the danger of seeing the system as infinite, when it
is finite. Certainly, the Prison Reform Trust welcomes the proposals in
so far as we like the idea of a council or commission that would look
in three directionsguiding sentencers and advising prospective
legislators and the public. The council or commission could serve a
function in building public confidenceGillian Guy mentioned
thatbut that is not altogether fleshed out as it is described
currently.
Q
194Mr.
Garnier: On Tuesday, Mr. Martin Nareyas
you all know, he is the chief executive of Barnardos, but he
previously worked for the Prison Servicesaid that just as we
ration health provision, so we should ration criminal justice
provision. In so far as I understood his argument, he appeared to think
that there is no difference between the one public service and the
other. Do you think, from the point of view of a magistrate or someone
who has to look after and influence policy on prisoners and
non-custodial defendants, that we can, by using these resource
assessments, ration access to the criminal justice
system? Professor
Hough: I have a little more to add, but if one asked
the public how resource sensitive sentencing should be, they would
probably answer that for grave offences, resources should not play a
part, but for less serious offences, people would probably happy to see
resource-sensitive
justice.
|
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() | |
©Parliamentary copyright 2009 | Prepared 6 February 2009 |