Member

Much of the difficulty may arise out of the rush with which this Bill was introduced. The history of the disagreement between the Sentencing Council and the Lord Chancellor is well known. We still believe that this disagreement ought to have been sorted out without resort to emergency legislation. We say that, once the council had agreed to pause the guidelines for parliamentary consideration, this Bill was a misuse of the fast-track procedure. This was an issue rightly picked up by the Constitution Committee in its report, to which my noble friend Lady Hamwee referred. The Bill also pre-empts the careful independent sentencing review led by David Gauke, which would have had more of a free hand to consider proposals for the Sentencing Council had the Bill not intervened.