Amendment moved [this day]: No.518, in

clause 151, page 84, line 22, at end insert

'which shall include as deputy chairman the Secretary of State for Home Department, or a person whom he nominates in his stead, and the chairman of the appropriate committee of the House of Commons, or a person whom he nominates in his stead, who, together with the Lord Chief Justice, shall comprise the Executive Committee of the Council'.—[Mr. Allen.]

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following amendments:

No. 519, in

clause 151, page 84, line 24, at end insert

'and the chairman of the appropriate committee of the House of Commons.'.

No. 520, in

clause 151, page 84, line 25, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

'(4) The other members of the council will include at least one of each of the following—

(a) a Lord Chief Justice of Appeal;

(b) a judge of the High Court;

(c) a Circuit judge;

(d) a District judge;

(e) a District judge (Magistrates' Courts);

(f) a lay justice;

(g) a Police Officer;

(h) a Probation Officer;

(i) a Prison Governor;

(j) a representative of a Victims' Organisation;

(k) a representative of the Business Community;

(l) a teachers' representative;

(m) three lay members of the public one of whom shall be over the age of 60 and one of whom shall be under 18;

(n) a representative of exoffenders' institutions;

(o) a local government/crime and disorder partnership representative;

(p) a legal professional, alternately a barrister or solicitor;

(q) a social services representative.'.

No. 521, in

clause 151, page 84, line 31, leave out subsection (5).

No. 541, in

clause 153, page 85, line 21, leave out line 21 and insert—

'(2) The Secretary of State, Lord Chancellor or Chairman of the appropriate committee of the House of Commons must first propose to the Sentencing Advisory Panel that it prepares a report and recommendation prior to any consideration of the Council—'.

No. 638, in

clause 153, page 86, line 17, at end add—

'(ii) the appropriate committee of the House of Commons.'.

No. 687, in

clause 252, page 138, line 8, at end insert

' ''the appropriate committee of the House of Commons'' means any select committee of the House of Commons which the House of Commons may from time to time designate by resolution to be the appropriate committee for the purposes of this Act;'.

I welcome you to this afternoon's sitting, Mr. Cran. I was getting on to amendment No. 520 and talking about the need to broaden the sentencing council so that it commands more widespread support, which all the various people involved in sentencing want. However, they are all mistrustful of the others involved in sentencing, and not prepared to give a little bit of their sovereignty in order to be stronger in the sentencing council.

As is often the case in Committees, a lot of discussion goes on outside Committee. One or two colleagues have expressed strong support for the concepts contained in the amendments, but have said, ''I wonder what the judiciary will make of this.'' That is why I have attempted to reassure the Lord Chief Justice by proxy through the amendments—there are other amendments later that seek to reassure the judiciary. It is incumbent on us all here, including the Minister, when he is in a position to discuss such matters with the judiciary, to give them the reassurance about their role that they require. No one that I have spoken to on the matter intends to undermine the judiciary or rob them of the final power.

The very first amendment that I moved to kick off this part of the Bill—it was probably over a week ago and seems a long time now—sought to ensure that the judges would continue to have discretion in individual cases. I was pleased to hear the reassurances that the Minister gave on that. I hope that that will help the judiciary to come to terms with the fact that we are all trying to feel our way towards something that will unite the various people involved in sentencing, and who will therefore all be a lot stronger when the sentencing proposals are finally put into the public domain. The public will feel more trust in the criminal justice system because of that process.

On amendment No. 520, I was talking about one or two of the ideas that members of the Committee have put forward about who might be on the council. It has been suggested that it include a representative of the business community or a teacher's representative. That could be important, because we have all had the same experience of talking to teachers and head teachers in our constituencies who say, ''Yes, we can spot, within three or four weeks of their going to primary school, the children who will be difficult for us, who will be underachievers at secondary school and who might eventually go into a life of crime.'' It could be extremely valuable to feed their pre-emptive views, taken well before any child comes before the courts, into the broader process.

The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) suggested to me the possibility of having an older person and a younger person on the council, and I have put that idea into

amendment No. 520. The perceptions of our society of the person over 60 will be different from those of the young person who is under 18. It was interesting how, almost without noticing it, hon. Members took cognisance of the fact that earlier in the morning we had a Gallery full of young people. The mere fact that they were here made us think about how they might respond on drug questions and whether there should be testing at 10, 14 or 18. The Home Secretary, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs and the Lord Chief Justice might experience a similar, beneficial effect if a young person from a group associated with drug misuse was seated at the table when sentencing was discussed—it certainly would not do any harm for such people to take part.

A representative of an ex-offenders institution is another obvious suggestion. I bow to the expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) in this regard, but many of us have talked to ex-offenders and ex-drug users about the best way to tackle the problem of sentencing, and some have very interesting and innovative ideas. It may be a matter not simply of a harder sentence, but of a more difficult sentence. Often, that could be prescribed by someone who had been through a similar horrendous experience and come out the other side. That would leaven the view of the professionals and experts, among whom we would probably number ourselves and certainly the judiciary. Ministers would also fall into that category.

The amendment also suggests that we include someone from the local government area or the crime and disorder partnership—I hope that Labour Members are very proud of that innovation and its beneficial impact. Partnerships have pulled agencies together and promoted multi-agency, group working. That is proving incredibly effective—certainly in my area. Perhaps sentencing is not simply a matter of deciding between a custodial and a community sentence, and such individuals might bring a mix of social service intervention, probation intervention and health intervention to the party. They might be able to bring such things to bear in terms of more effective sentencing.

The list goes on to propose a legally qualified professional and someone from social services. Each of us would have our own list, and I hope that the Minister will ponder this particular list to help him figure out whether we could do the job better.

The objective in tabling all the amendments is simple. As a nation, we have lost faith in the criminal justice system, particularly sentencing. The Committee has a tremendous opportunity to give my hon. Friend the Minister some background and some ideas that he can discuss with colleagues in the Government and with the judiciary. We could then have a credible, broad-based Sentencing Guidelines Council that reassured everyone involved in sentencing. Its decision-making process would be protracted, and I shall explain in later amendments why that should be. We should never again introduce poorly presented sentencing guidelines a few days before Christmas on the back of a single case or issue an edict about

sentencing on the back of a murder that took place only a couple of days before. We should have a protracted process that involves, networks and reassures everyone who has an interest. We need such a process above all because we must reconnect the public with sentencing. In that respect, the Committee has a fantastic opportunity, and I hope that we will seize it this afternoon.

The hon. Gentleman has done the Committee a particularly good turn by drafting his amendments and initiating the debate. When he first sought my views on his amendments, I said that they were not without difficulty. I shall return to those difficulties in a minute, but they do not mean that we should not discuss the amendments.

Of one thing I am certain: the current sentencing framework and the way in which we set out guidelines or deal with principles is deeply unsatisfactory. The hon. Gentleman is right; it does not command public respect. In particular, although the judiciary are supposed to be independent in fixing the guidelines within the parameters laid down by Parliament on maximum and sometimes minimum sentences—usually maximum—the public perception is that they are not. First, it often appears that they allow events, whether a particularly notorious case or the simple fact of prison overcrowding, to dictate sentencing policy. The concern that was expressed at the recent pronouncement of the Lord Chief Justice on burglary was that it was perceived by the public—rightly, I fear—to be entirely dictated by the crisis in prison numbers and not by any other analysis as to what was appropriate in order to reduce burglary or deter burglars.

Although judges are not supposed to be subject to political interference, it is abundantly clear that lines of communication run between Ministers and the judiciary that can be, and are, used to indicate areas of concern. That is not necessarily illegitimate, because judges would not be doing their job properly if they were not receptive to what they heard from those around them as to what was appropriate with regard to sentencing. However, there is an absence of transparency in that process. In particular, people gain the impression that the judges have dreamed something up out of thin air, albeit that is the impression that is sought to be given to them, whereas the reality is totally different.

If I say this now, I hope that it will avoid debate later. The Government's broad brush proposal for setting up the Sentencing Guidelines Council in the form that is proposed in the clause is a step forward in clarity. One only has to look in ''Archbold'' at sentencing guidelines under the broad heading of sentences of imprisonment, to see how arcane and complicated it is to cross-reference between the various dicta of judges in individual cases and the incremental development of standards that should be applied. They are sometimes mutually contradictory, always difficult to understand and frequently not properly applied by the judges themselves—probably because, in many cases, they do not understand them.

It is also noteworthy that it is clearly established that judges are not completely free and independent to disregard parameters. I shall come back to the matter later in respect of a further group of amendments, but I hope that it is appropriate to mention it here in relation to my amendments that concern Parliament. I refer again to ''Archbold'', which says, at paragraph 5–91, on the most serious example of the offence:

''The fact that the sentencer considers that Parliament has set the maximum sentence for a particular offence too low is not a ground for imposing the maximum sentence when there are relevant mitigating factors such as a plea of guilty (see R v Carroll, 16 Criminal Appeal reports 488 CA)''.

Therefore, as an issue of principle, it is clearly wrong to say that the judges are not fettered by what other people—particularly Parliament—are saying. The argument that judges must be left in their ivory towers in order to be seen to be entirely free from any pressure or interference is not tenable, even in respect of the existing state of affairs. However, I accept that it is important that the judiciary should not feel that they are being pressured into impossible positions within the ambit of their discretion.

One of the areas about which we shall need to hear from the Minister is how the Lord Chief Justice views the amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen). Some indication of how the judiciary are reacting to the proposals is needed.

I now turn to the specifics. I found myself attracted by the proposal, so I signed the amendment. We should consider whether the Sentencing Guidelines Council should be widened to include individuals other than judges. There is always a slight danger of tokenism if we go down such a route. Nevertheless, it seems perfectly practical to put together a council to come up with sentencing guidelines that consists of those who are interested in the workings of the criminal justice system. It may be thought that judges object to having to sit with others in determining those guidelines. However, at present the judiciary are fettered by the guidelines that other judges have drawn up. That is effectively what is happening, and not necessarily happening on the basis of an individual case decision. Therefore, as I have said, I am attracted by the hon. Gentleman's proposal.

We can discuss in detail—other members may wish to do so—exactly who should sit on the council. Broadly speaking, however, the hon. Gentleman identified the sorts of people who should be on it. How will those guidelines in practice, once they are issued, tie down the judiciary? That is where the issue will become more difficult. That is the area in which I foresee scope for conflict. To what extent will the judge, who wishes to recommend a sentence that may depart from the guidelines, be constrained by public pressure from within the guidelines council? We shall need explanation and guidance from the Minister about how the judiciary views that issue. The judiciary must be listened to carefully, but it should not have an overriding veto.

I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument closely and I welcome his

general support for the amendment. Why does he feel that the guidelines that the new body will issue would be any different in their effect from the sentencing guidelines that the courts regularly follow?

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point but, if I have interpreted correctly the direction in which we are going, sentencing guidelines, under the Government's proposals, should become a much more regular tool for providing a structure within which sentencing should take place. However, the judiciary must use the guidelines properly, and the Lord Chief Justice and the council must operate properly. That is my interpretation of the new sentencing council. I accept that the judiciary might fail to do what is intended.

I must say that, in my slight experience, there are huge areas of criminal law within the scope of sentencing guidelines that remain extremely woolly. If current sentencing guidelines were the determining factor on sentences, ''Archbold'' would not be worded as it is. ''Archbold'' refers people round the houses to determine what the correct sentence should be. Some of the cases used are 30 or 40 years old. The new guidelines should all be much more apparent and clear.

However, the hon. Gentleman is quite right—it may turn out not to be the case, and the Minister will doubtless enlighten us on this in due course. However, I had assumed that, in putting the guidelines council in this form in this statute, it was the Government's intention that the guidelines council would in future be a much more high-profile and prominent body for laying down sentencing guidelines. If I am wrong, the Minister can either interrupt me or deal with the matter later.

Obviously, no one can speak for the Minister, but the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) may like to consider that the guidelines are part of a wider process, and that part of the Government's intention is to involve the public. That would take us to a qualitatively different dimension, the intention being that the public understand sentencing—probably for the first time.

I agree. I return to the point that I was making, which might technically be possible if the models that the Minister or the hon. Member for Nottingham, North are proposing are adopted, although I am bound to say that I find that the latter's model gives me greater reassurance that that will happen. That is one of the reasons why I was attracted to it.

I do not intend to say more at this stage, but I shall have the opportunity to speak, on a later group of amendments, about the level of parliamentary involvement. The amendments could be hitched to what the hon. Gentleman proposes; they could equally well be hitched to what the Minister now proposes. They raise a discrete issue, so I shall not develop the argument now.

One of the public's complaints is that they have a sense of powerlessness when trying to make their views known on sentence tariffs or guidelines with which they disagree. They are right to make their views

known, because the judiciary are effectively isolated—deliberately so—from such pressure. The pressure lands instead on the Minister, who says that there is nothing that he can do about it—unless the tariff for the offence is changed. That is how we got into the business of mandatory five-year sentences for gun possession—a sentence that had to be watered down in the light of reality, once it was appreciated that exceptions have to be made. That is a classic example of how Ministers have had to respond, while passing the buck to the judges.

If there was a level of parliamentary involvement, as I shall propose at a later stage, there would be an immediate channel to enable people to say that they did not like things as they stood. Politicians will not be able to duck that issue. However, I shall return to that point in due course. In the meantime, I thank the hon. Member for Nottingham, North for raising the issue, and I look forward to hearing the views of other members of the Committee.

I rise briefly to support the principle that we are discussing, assisted by the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North. Should any journalist be present, I should point out that I was recently mistaken for him by a newspaper and that many of his proposals were attributed to me. I did not, of course, deny it.

I want to speak about the principle rather than specifics, because it is clearly a probing amendment. We rightly heard from the hon. Member for Beaconsfield about the public's perceptions and complaints. Another interesting perspective is shared in my area by the police—and by criminals. It is about the absurdity of some of the sentences that are passed on drug offenders. Indeed, I pointed out to the Minister that such absurdities had crept into the Bill in a number of places; for instance, fines are proposed as a sanction for not fulfilling the criteria of community sentences. The absurdity is that addicted heroin offenders, who are responsible for 95 per cent. of all crime in the western part of my constituency, will, when fined, go out and steal more to fund their addiction. They tend not to have reserves of cash.

Criminals point to that absurdity. Some did so vocally in my public inquiry, and the police accorded and made exactly the same point at every level, from local constable to chief constable. Therefore it is crucial that we have a sentencing system that is thoughtful and responsive and listens to the community.

I would also observe that the Home Office and the legal profession have a long obsession for determining what is appropriate. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North goes some way to add to that by incorporating the probation service into the clause. The amendment proposes involving the probation service in making judgments on what sentence is appropriate for a drugs offender. The probation service does have expertise, training and experience in these matters, but in a general, not a specialist way. How will whoever is appointed to the

guidelines council go about consulting the wider community? I doubt that putting a drug-addicted repeat offender from my area on such a body would contribute greatly to the debate.

However, if we discuss the issues with such people we may find that they are in accord with the police that there is a need for stricter sentencing. I reached that surprising conclusion after discussions with many of my constituents: often drugs offenders want to be sentenced and sent to prison because it gives them a structured form of treatment and detoxing, albeit one that is expensive for the state. Some will admit offences that they did not commit in the hope of receiving a prison sentence rather than a fine. Consultation of that kind is critical.

My final point is that there is a very good case for introducing drugs courts to deal with such offences. They would be dealt with by experts rather than be thrown into the general legal process. We will leave that to the consideration of the Minister and the Department.

I support the thrust of the amendments. We are not discussing their details; we are discussing the principles enshrined in them. The hon. Member for Nottingham, North is right in two respects: first, many people feel a disconnection between what they consider to be right and effective and the sentencing that they see reported in the press. We must deal with that sense of disconnection. The second principle in which the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right is that a Sentencing Guidelines Council, however it may be constituted, must take a long-term and reasoned view of what is appropriate. It should, as far as possible, resist the day-to-day fashion of the screaming headlines.

It would be easy to slate the tabloid editors as being the problem. However, although it is true that they partly lead public opinion, they also reflect it. We must understand that. The difficulty comes when the Executive find themselves interfering with the judiciary, as they undoubtedly do directly and indirectly, as a result of screaming headlines that may or may not be based on a reasoned approach.

At the moment, we have both a Prime Minister and a Home Secretary who make ex cathedra statements about such matters. That has an effect. I could go into one of my regular diatribes about the position of the Lord Chancellor, but I am sure that you, Mr. Cran, would not wish me to do so. However, we have the anomalous position of an individual who is a member of the Executive, the legislature and the judiciary simultaneously. Of course that means that the Executive have an effect on the judiciary, irrespective of claims of independence—the head of our judicial processes sits in the Cabinet, takes judicial decisions there, and assumes Cabinet responsibility.

I thought for a moment, when the hon. Member for Nottingham, North was introducing his comments, that he had finally found a situation in which that anomaly made sense; he seemed to have the Lord Chancellor chairing the council—one person embodying the three branches: legislature, Executive

and judiciary—but he corrected himself and restored the position, quite properly, to the Lord Chief Justice.

I was conscious, when the remarks of the Lord Chief Justice were announced at Christmas, that one of the first people in my constituency to write to me on the subject was a serving police officer, a chief superintendent. He wanted me to know how much he disagreed with what he believed had been said. He had gathered what had been said via the newspapers and it had not been accurately reported. Nevertheless, he had real concerns. We often ignore the views of the police on such issues, and we are unwise to do so; they are part of the process. However, so are a lot of other people. The benefit of what the hon. Gentleman has proposed is that it extends membership beyond the very narrow field of the judiciary to a wider circle.

I appreciate the arguments in the other direction. I understand why the judiciary feel that their independence might be sullied by contact with the outside world, but I do not accept that that is the case. For one moment, I misinterpreted the hon. Member for Beaconsfield and thought that he was saying that the guidelines issued by a Sentencing Guidelines Council would be less acceptable to judges if they were contaminated with the views of lay people. I do not think, having heard his further comments, that he did say that. That would be an unacceptable position. Of course, we accept and respect the expertise of such people. They have a leading role to play and we must not fetter the discretion of the judiciary in dealing with individual cases. In terms of the broad guidelines, as the hon. Member for Nottingham, North said, the community has a role to play.

There is a danger of tokenism—people might be appointed as ''the community'', ''the outside world'' or ''the public''. We have all witnessed situations in which that has happened—the people's peers were an example of how not to produce representatives of the people. It happens in users councils and in quangos; people are appointed to positions in order to represent a community of which they have scant knowledge, and with which they have little connection. We must be careful how we appoint people.

The hon. Gentleman's suggestion as to the approximate spread is right. There are interest groups and individuals who have an informed opinion to bring to the table. One such group is Members of this House; we are representatives of Everyman. We may do our job imperfectly because, as we all know, the House is not fully representative in many ways. However, it is the best that is on offer. It is important for Parliament to be involved, and the hon. Gentleman was right to say that we should not take such issues from the Floor of the House, where parliamentarians are subject to the same pressures as those that I described for the Executive.

It is right that Parliament should, in a considered way, have a voice. Like other members of the Committee, I find it frustrating when people write to me about judicial matters and they simply cannot understand why I can do nothing to affect outcomes that they see as grossly unjust. Of course, it is not for

us to interfere with judicial discretion, but this is one area in which we can set the parameters within which the judicial professions work, in a way that helps everyone.

To return to my original point, the amendments are very valuable, and I hope that the Minister will give them due consideration. I do not expect him to accept them in the way that he did the previous group, but I hope that they will give him a basis on which to talk to members of the judiciary. They may have serious qualms about such proposals, but they may find that there is a formula that is acceptable to them and which reassures the public and improves the system.

I am very struck by the fact that we have concentrated exclusively on the composition of the Sentencing Guidelines Council, particularly given that clause 152 deals with the Sentencing Advisory Panel. The council and the panel will have to work in conjunction, so it would be useful and informative to know the panel's membership before we reach conclusions about the council.

The hon. Lady is right: the two will obviously need to work in conjunction. I have an innate suspicion of anything that is constituted by the Lord Chancellor—that is just a problem that I have, although the Minister will no doubt allay my suspicions. However, the hon. Lady is right. We shall come to clause 152 later, but the Minister might help us at this stage by explaining what the connections between the two bodies will be and how the panel is and will be constituted. However, that is probably enough from me, and hon. Members will want to hear the Minister.

I have signed amendment No. 518 and I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North on raising the important issue of reconnecting the public with the sentencing process. However, I do not think that the amendment hits the nail on the head.

About 90 per cent. of sentences are given out by the magistrates court, a large proportion of whose members are drawn from the public, although there are some professionals, such as the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins). Therefore the public and, indeed, the local public, who have a great understanding of local issues and of what constitutes a local menace, already have a significant input into sentencing.

Of course, magistrates courts operate within guidelines, but those are not solely or, indeed, predominantly, laid down by the Court of Appeal. Nor does the Court of Appeal get that much opportunity to review what happens in the magistrates courts, because sentencing appeals go to the Crown court. Furthermore, there are Magistrates Association and magistrates court committee guidelines to assist the courts, so there is already an element of public involvement.

My second point—I am simply airing a few thoughts, and there are just a few, because I agree with the principle, although I am not sure about the mechanism—is that the public's experience of

sentencing is quite fragmentary and episodic. The hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) referred a day or two ago to a case in which a dangerous driver killed someone. The sentence was perhaps too short in the first place, and the hon. Gentleman's argument was that it was certainly too short by the time that the Court of Appeal had dealt with it. Deaths are, of course, extremely emotive and people comment that one person's death is worth more than another's because of the gravity of the sentence that followed, whereas the criminality of the perpetrator should determine the sentence. The issue of valuing a life inevitably comes into it and that life is just as lost as if the person had been murdered. That sort of episodic view of sentencing gives the public a false impression.

A survey into public attitudes was recently carried out, in which people were asked about rape, a subject in which I take a strong interest. Some 70 per cent. of them thought that, in the main, rapists did not receive custodial sentences. Of course, 90 per cent. of rapists or more actually receive custodial sentences, and the public's view was totally wrong. The thrust of the rest of the survey was that the public systematically underestimate the gravity of sentencing.

There are wider misunderstandings. A while ago, I asked my hon. Friend the Minister a written question, to which he sent me a perfect reply. There was a great mystery because some Home Office research had indicated that, in the public's view, crime was going up, when it was in fact going down. I asked what the Home Office could do to redress the balance. There is no doubt that that lack of communication breeds distrust. It is essential that the public should trust in the criminal justice system because if they suffer from crime, they must believe that the state is dealing with it properly and looking after them. The Sentencing Advisory Panel, which has been established for three or four years now, consists mainly of academics and practitioners. I know two people on the panel, and they do the most interesting things. For example, they recently considered the issue of rape sentencing.

The panel came across the conundrum that sentencing for rape by a stranger is higher than sentencing for rape by someone who is known to the complainant. They considered why that was and whether it should be the case. They carried out some research using a questionnaire to ascertain what the public thought about the relative gravity and relative damage done by rape by a stranger and rape by someone known to the complainant. That was an interesting piece of work, which obtained not only the public's views but the public's reasons for holding those views, in a systematic way that goes way beyond the input of public views that would result from having an assortment of figures on the Sentencing Guidelines Council. The conclusions of the panel were fed through to the Court of Appeal, which accepted them and concluded that it was possible that rape by someone known to a woman could be more harmful than rape by a stranger because it might call into question not only male behaviour but the woman's judgment for knowing the man in the first place.

That issue was bottomed out because the panel consulted the public widely. That is an important job, which clause 152 says that the panel will carry on doing. As I understand the system, whenever the guidelines council considers guidelines, it must first refer the issue to the panel, which will do its work after which the guidelines council will consider its proposals with great care. The process will be undertaken carefully, even if it is confined to judges.

I agree that we must reconnect the public, but my fear about widening the process beyond judges is that judges are not merely dipping episodically into sentencing; they do it day in, day out. Although a person may have a view about a particular crime, their view is removed from the context of many other similar crimes. Judges will sentence for, perhaps, 200 rapes in the course of their career and will have seen the relative gravity of cases. They will have watched the trial, assessed the defendant during the trial and got the measure of him because that is part of their job. They will have assessed the complainant, the evidence and the impact of the crime on society, so they will be in pole position—closely involved and very experienced—to evaluate the sentence. I fear that if we too readily disregard or discard that expertise as the thrust of how sentencing should be done, two things will follow. First, we shall miss it out and sentence by some sort of popular acclaim, however careful we try to be. Secondly, the guidelines will not have the credibility that they should have with the judiciary, because the judiciary will regard them as having come from a mixed source that is not pure, through and through, with the training that they have had.

If the concern of the judges is that they would not regard the guidelines as credible if the public were involved with them, that is not sufficient; the public are part of society, and the judges must change. However, I am sure that they express such reservations because they fear that their highly-trained skills will be too readily cast aside in the interests of pleasing the public.

My tendency would be to suggest some sort of parliamentary route for sanctioning the guidelines of the council, given that the public are assured involvement through their input to the Sentencing Advisory Panel. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North for raising the issue.

Is it not the case that the public representatives on the sentencing panel should be contributing by expressing the views of the public as to the correct general parameters for a sentence for a particular type of offence? No one is suggesting that, within the parameters, individual judges should be at all restricted in respect of individual cases. In order to retain the confidence of the public, which has been undermined in the past, it is necessary for public representatives to be involved in setting the parameters.

I appreciate what my hon. Friend says. My only fear is that the judiciary, who are heavily outnumbered in the dramatis personae that has been set out, will fear that their expertise is being too readily

discarded in the rush to please the public, and that the guidelines will not, therefore, have the credibility that they ought to have. That is my concern, and I will repeat my point that a much more systematic way of involving the public's views in sentencing is already in place through the Sentencing Advisory Panel. It is going to continue and it will have to be consulted.

I want to say a few words about why I support the amendment, even though I do not disregard the expertise of the judiciary in sentencing. I have in mind the fact that three former colleagues, who were members of my chambers, are now High Court judges. Two are Lord Justices of Appeal and the other was pupil master to the Lord Chief's son. They have massive expertise in sentencing, for all of the reasons stated by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar. However, that expertise would not be diminished if there were a broader constituency of minds in the development of sentencing guidelines. Not only would the judiciary be well informed by the consultation and participation of a broader constituency of minds, but those with whom they were consulting—such as members of the probation service and prison governors—would be better informed and would have greater confidence in the sentencing if they listened to the reasoning and the experience of the judiciary.

If the public are to have confidence in sentencing, they have to be involved somehow. Although this might not be the perfect device for it, it is a device. In progressing the matter, we need not disregard the expertise of the judges; we should simply ensure that they are switched in to the wider concerns of the public while the guidelines are being developed.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Some of the people included in the list in the amendment are not really members of the public; as the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) said, they could be experts in the field of sentencing without being members of the judiciary. The objection to the presence of judges does not strike me as being particularly tenable. The other statement about the public is that unless they have decided to make themselves experts, it could be said that they do not have the expertise to make the decision, but could contribute to the discussion. That is something that perhaps we could take further.

Indeed; the hon. Gentleman has made some important points. Paragraph (m) of amendment No. 520 includes refers to

''three lay members of the public''.

They would be qualitatively different from the others, most of whom have a role in the criminal justice system. It is not a perfect solution, but it would make a valuable contribution. I hope that the ideas that the amendment has generated will give the Home Office reason to look at a mechanism that may be better than this, but that will certainly be an improvement on the existing suggestion, which is far too exclusive in that it restricts the entirety of sentencing policy to the judiciary.

It may be helpful if I pick up on a couple of the points that have been made before the Minister winds up.

I omitted to speak to amendment No. 541, which is pertinent to the debate. It would reassure people about the process. Nothing could be worse than people arriving one morning at the sentencing council and having a show of hands on sentencing burglars. It would be disastrous. The amendment would show it to be a carefully considered and protracted process. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) referred to the Sentencing Advisory Panel. I have no intention of changing that—it does an excellent job. The reports of academics and various other people at the technical or boffin end of sentencing are carefully considered.

Amendment No. 541 makes a point that I hope the Minister will consider. It proposes that the Secretary of State, the Lord Chief Justice or the relevant Select Committee Chairman

''must first propose to the Sentencing Advisory Panel that it prepares a report''.

It would mean that no one could kick-start the system by jumping the council into a new debate about a particular sentencing problem, rush it through and use a majority to force his opinion on an unwilling sentencing council.

May I also point out an error in my drafting of amendment No. 541. Yet again, I refer to the Lord Chief Justice as the Lord Chancellor. I do not know whether they would be flattered or insulted. I meant the amendment to refer to the Lord Chief Justice.

Once the panel has considered a report, it would go to the council. The council must proceed by consent. It must have an open, long-term debate, hear all the voices, and come to a conclusion. I cannot imagine that the council would ever vote or try to create a faction or majority. It must proceed by appropriate consensus and debate. To reassure my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar, I absolutely do not wish this to be seen in any way as disregarding judicial expertise. On the contrary, I hope that it will be complementary and help the judiciary in their difficult job. If it is not, we need to draft it in such a way that the intention is clear.

I am not sure whether I am allowed to use props in Committee, but one of Friday's tabloid headlines reads ''Blunkett and Woolf at war over sentencing''. That does no one anywhere in the criminal justice system any good—whether they are an offender, a victim, the Lord Chief Justice or the Home Secretary. I have dealt with the Lord Chief Justice and the Home Secretary, and I have the greatest respect for them. I know that they and the Select Committee Chairman simply want to do the best for the criminal justice system and those involved in it. It is absolute nonsense to have people pitted against one another, although there will, of course, be disagreements, and we need a framework in which to overcome them. No one is helped by the continual personalisation and trivialisation of genuine debates that need to be had, and I am sure that all those involved, including members of the Committee, are people of good will.

We are feeling our way forward in search of a way of reconciling different views so that we can all work together and create a sentencing framework that works for everyone. I thank the Minister—and you, Mr. Cran, for your forbearance.

Good afternoon, Mr. Cran.

This has been an excellent debate, and like other hon. Members, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North for initiating it. We have laid bare all the considerations that will need—I say ''will need'' deliberately, for reasons to which I shall come later—to be borne in mind as we try to get the new arrangements and the role and composition of Sentencing Guidelines Council right.

I was struck by a phrase that my hon. Friend used in his opening remarks. He said that we needed a steady, careful and rational way of dealing with the issues, and I wholeheartedly concur. It is clear from our discussion that we are trying to create a process that is clear, workable and widely understood, particularly so that public confidence, which many hon. Members have stressed, is enhanced and assured. We are trying to create a process that assists sentencers in applying guidelines to the offenders before them, and—this has been the most important aspect of the debate—provides for consistency of purpose and application, while avoiding excessive prescription.

A system that does all that would certainly guard against the risks that have been mentioned. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield, for example, referred to people being swayed by events, while my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar mentioned the rush to please the public. It would also help to address the issue of complexity, to which the hon. Gentleman referred when he quoted from ''Archbold''. That would assist sentencers with their job.

In essence, that is what we are grappling with. We are trying to find the right balance, the right safeguards, the time and opportunity to contemplate what the guidelines should look like, and the right mechanisms for consulting the broader public. In that respect, my hon. and learned Friend helpfully drew our attention to the Sentencing Advisory Panel, which carries out a lot of research, including public consultation, as part of its responsibilities. As will be made clear in the clauses to which we shall come shortly, the panel will continue to play an important part in relation to the arrangements in the Bill.

The Sentencing Guidelines Council—everyone agrees that it is a good thing and that this is the right time to create it—will clearly be the linchpin of the mechanism that we must construct together. It is clear that Parliament must set the policy, but it is equally clear that the court must hand down the sentence in individual cases. Of course, we must safeguard proper judicial independence. In saying that the Sentencing Guidelines Council will be the linchpin of the system, we should recognise that such guidelines as it is proposed that the council produce

will be close to the decision-making process in individual cases. We should reflect on that and bear such matters in mind when deciding on the checks and balances, and on the opportunities to be given to everyone who has a legitimate role to play in the process to understand where that balance should finally be held.

It was for that reason that John Halliday originally proposed in his report that the council should consist of sentencers from all tiers of the criminal courts, including, of course, lay justices. That was the point that the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) made in talking about the gender balance within the group listed. I think that about 50 per cent. of magistrates are now women, but I accept her argument in relation to the other people listed in subsection (4) as it is currently drafted.

Setting guidelines to ensure that sentences are consistent in approach is currently done by the Court of Appeal and the Magistrates Association, working with the district judges and the Justices' Clerks Society. The aim is for the council to continue and develop that work. In so doing it will undoubtedly acquire a higher profile. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield asked a question about that. At the same time, we believe, as has been evident from the debate, that Parliament has a legitimate role in considering how the laws that it has passed are implemented. That is why the Government are committed to involving Parliament more formally in the process of creating sentencing guidelines than in the past. Under the clauses, Parliament will have an opportunity to contribute to the development of those guidelines. Our thinking thus far has been that that should be through a Committee such as the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which has extensive powers to examine and influence the decisions of the council in an open way, while leaving final decisions to the council itself. The council will also report annually to Parliament. If a parliamentary Committee wanted to consider the issues raised by the report, it would be able to invite attendance from the council.

There are also issues of practicality to consider. There are more than 2,000 offences for which guidelines need to be considered. In practice Parliament is likely to have a significant interest in relatively few of those. We do not wish to introduce a mechanism that creates an expectation that Parliament wishes to pore over all the guidelines in great detail, when we know that it will not. We must also bear in mind that issue of practicality.

Having said all that and having recognised that the final decision on the content of the guidelines should be left to the Sentencing Guidelines Council, I tell the Committee, in response to today's excellent debate, to the points raised by the amendments and to the discussion in the last few weeks, that we continue to reflect on the composition of the council because we need to address that issue. I have heard all the arguments about the need to get the balance right. We need to reflect further on issues to do with the composition of the council, and the means of

parliamentary scrutiny. We should therefore like to return to those issues on Report.

While the Minister is reflecting on the views that have been expressed, would he also consider again the example and the lesson from Northern Ireland, where there was a loss of confidence in the judicial system, whereby under the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002 the Judicial Appointments Commission was set up? I appreciate that that is a different body, but its composition is crucial to building back public confidence, a matter that the hon. Members for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) and for Nottingham, North raised. There are 13 members: the chairman is the Lord Chief Justice, five persons are members of the judiciary, one is appointed from the Bar Council for Northern Ireland, another is a solicitor appointed by the Law Society, and there are five lay members who are representative of the community. In Northern Ireland, women and ethnic minorities are not well represented in the judiciary. Although the Minister has spoken about women as lay magistrates, I heard nothing about ethnic minorities being represented in the judiciary. It is important that their voice be heard.

I did not interrupt, but that was more like a mini-speech than an intervention.

I will certainly reflect on the points that the hon. Lady made. She reminded us in an earlier debate of the changes to judicial appointments in Northern Ireland and of the particular circumstances that have given the issue of confidence in the process even more salience and political force than is the case outside Northern Ireland. She makes a good point. I believe the latest figure is that 5.7 per cent. of magistrates are drawn from the ethnic minorities. We will shortly discover from the census the extent to which that reflects our society. It is obviously an important point.

The Minister is being very helpful in his response. Will he consider that it is essential to involve Parliament earlier than subsection (8) would allow? Under it, the Secretary of State and the Lord Chancellor would be consultees, and that does not adequately reflect the case that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North made.

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming—

I shall now deal briefly with amendments Nos. 541 and 538. In addressing amendment No. 541, I shall respond to the point that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) raised in his intervention. Amendment No. 541 would remove the council's power to determine the priorities of issues that require guidelines. Ministers and/or the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs would be given the power to direct the Sentencing Advisory Panel to provide advice, which the council would then be obliged to consider.

The council is responsible for sentencing guidelines, so it seems appropriate that it should determine the priorities for the panel. However, we must recognise that, under the Bill, both the Secretary of State and the panel can indicate to the council that they feel that there is an issue that must be dealt with. Moreover, the panel, when that process begins, must have an opportunity to be notified in order to research, consult and express a view.

The Secretary of State's present power to propose to the council that a guideline be considered is sufficient to take account of Parliament's concerns. That was the point that the hon. Gentleman raised. However, in practice, the council will be aware of points that others have raised. For example, if the Home Affairs Committee were to identify something, I am sure that the council would look at it. We shall undoubtedly reflect on Report on the mechanism for parliamentary scrutiny of the council's work.

As regards amendment No. 538, the Bill already contains provisions for the council to make an annual report to Ministers on the exercise of its functions and for that report to be laid before Parliament. I would expect the council to take the initiative in producing useful information for a range of people, including the public. I would also expect that information to be easily accessible. The annual report may form a part of that information. However, I am not persuaded that to place a statutory obligation on the council as to the way in which it produces information for the public would be beneficial. Therefore I request that amendment No. 538 be withdrawn.

I was just looking for amendment No. 538 in the group of amendments. Since I did not table it, I am happy to withdraw it. I see that it should be amendment No. 638.

I thank the Minister for his comments and for his positive attitude towards the way in which all Members have dealt with the matter. That is almost unique in my experience, and the Minister is to be commended for his open-mindedness in agreeing to consider further the points raised. To an extent, our job finishes in Committee. However, the Minister has the difficult job of discussing the nitty-gritty with the Home Secretary and the Lord Chief Justice. I wish the Minister well. Both the Home Secretary and the Lord Chief Justice are people of good will who want sentencing to command public support. I am sure that however difficult the negotiations are, he will be working with people who want the process to be a success.

We shall come to some subsidiary questions, but we have dealt with the main thrust of what we attempted to do today. I thank the Minister for his positive response to the amendments. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 151 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 152 ordered to stand part of the Bill.