Baroness Mattinson (Lab)

My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble friend Lady Nichols on her absolutely brilliant and very moving maiden speech. It is great to be sitting here with her today. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his excellent work on this very difficult issue. I believe he was absolutely right to respond as he has. I think this is a question of how we preserve the public’s trust in our legal system. As we all know, unfortunately, we generally trust institutions much less nowadays, especially government and politics. That said, the British legal system enjoys a relatively high rating with the public, at 62%, versus the OECD average of 54%. This is something we must work hard to preserve and should feel very proud of. There is, rightly, some concern that ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the prison system, as the Lammy review, for instance, found recently. However, the majority of the public does not see the sort of sentencing guidelines that are being discussed today—taking into account religious or ethnic background—as the solution. The polling on this is pretty clear: 72% of the public oppose these moves and 52% strongly oppose them. This clarity extends across the whole population. There are some differences between gender, age and so on, but, basically, that majority view—and particularly that strength of feeling—is held across all groups. Essentially, it seems that the public believe that sentencing guidelines of this type risk being unfair and disregarding the complexity of causes that need to be taken into account. It might be that the public could, and perhaps should, know more about how sentences are set, but it certainly seems to me that simply saying that they are wrong is not the answer. I therefore agree that introducing such sentencing guidelines is more likely to create resentment, and risks causing more problems than it solves and breaking that vital bond of trust between the public and the legal system that matters so much. I support the Bill very strongly.