Lord Sandhurst (Con)

My Lords, I shall be a bit longer on this amendment than I have been hitherto. I shall speak to Amendments 10 and 17 while moving Amendment 9, which are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar. The draft guidelines produced by the Sentencing Council could have led to an unacceptable two-tier justice system in which defendants were treated differently on the basis not of their crimes but of their racial, cultural or religious identity. Undoubtedly, this state of affairs has been damaging to public confidence in the justice system. Unfortunately, this Bill does little to address the underlying issues. It only partly addresses the problem, leaving many concerns unresolved, and it risks creating new problems down the line. This Bill would prevent sentencing guidelines referring to personal characteristics when a court is considering whether a pre-sentence report should be requested. However, it only resolves the issue presented by these particular guidelines and does not provide Parliament with the power by regulations to amend or reject guidelines more generally, failing to prevent this or a similar situation occurring again. The Bill is a necessary but not sufficient or adequate step in ensuring equality before the law. While a step in the right direction, it does not offer a comprehensive solution, and the amendments that we advance look to rectify this flaw. These amendments would ensure that in future sentencing guidelines on pre-sentence reports cannot simply be issued by the Sentencing Council without democratic oversight. They would require that guidelines on pre-sentence reports drafted by the council must be subject to an affirmative resolution in both Houses before they come into force as definitive guidelines. We submit that that is a basic safeguard of democratic accountability, ensuring parliamentary oversight on sensitive sentencing matters. Without these amendments, history may repeat itself. The same council will be free to bring forward, as it wishes, ideological frameworks that Ministers will be powerless to stop before the damage is done. Had these guidelines gone unchallenged, we would now have sentencing based on identity politics, undermining public confidence in the system. Taken together, Amendments 9,10 and 17 would create an important safeguard, ensuring that no future set of guidelines in this field, at least, could bypass sufficient parliamentary scrutiny and oversight. We commend them to the House.