Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)

My Lords, I oppose Clause 18 and Clause 19, and my preference is, quite definitely, for both clauses to be removed from the Bill. I have not signed the opposition by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, to Clause 18 standing part, because his reasoning is rather different from mine, but Clause 18 is, frankly, very strange. It is certainly pointless, just as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, said, but it is also, with the greatest of respect to the Government and the drafters of the clause, legislatively illiterate. I can see no reason in practice for the Sentencing Council to submit a business plan to the Lord Chancellor for approval as soon as possible after the beginning of the year—one wonders when that is supposed to be. But if there is to be a business plan, it is a strange imposition of a new duty on the Sentencing Council that it must declare in advance what it proposes to study, research and support during the course of the coming year without knowing what is coming down the track during the course of the coming year. In any event, a business plan is pre-eminently a document for the body that is responsible for it and producing it itself to decide in its own discretion and to determine what it puts into it. Clause 18 demonstrates a serious lack of trust in the Sentencing Council to manage its business. Why should the Sentencing Council submit any business plan for approval by the Lord Chancellor, a member of the Government—with, certainly, an input into the Sentencing Council, but not a decisive or determining input? Is it suggested that the Sentencing Council would not be entitled to consider other matters in the year, unforeseen at the beginning of the year, if they were not in the business plan? If that is not so suggested, what is the point of the business plan? It does not delineate the responsibilities that the Sentencing Council will carry out. The clause represents an attack on the independence of the Sentencing Council. We have heard from both noble and learned Lords that it was set up by statute to be an independent body tasked with advising sentencing judges on the principles they should apply to sentencing—within the terms of the law as provided by Parliament in statute and the common law, of course, but independent in its advice to judges.