Report stage in the Lords
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Lord Thomas of GresfordLiberal Democrat- Quote
- My Lords, this amendment stands in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lady Linklater. It concerns the role of the sentencing council in relation to promoting awareness of matters relating to the sentencing of offenders by courts in England and Wales, in particular the sentences imposed, the cost of different sentences and their relative effectiveness in preventing reoffending, and the operation and effect of guidelines. This clause is of the greatest possible importance to that very important function of the sentencing council: communicating to the outside world what exactly it is doing, how and why. It is important not only because it involves disseminating fractured information—that matter is dealt with in subsection (1) and the council will be expected to publish such information—but because it is concerned also with “awareness”, a word which implies a greater understanding of what the courts are doing. It is the very stuff of what we need to know and its proper communication—the very stuff which is missing at the moment. It is about how the public can come to understand what sentencing is about and what it achieves. Therefore, it is inevitably to do with engaging with the public if they are meaningfully to be made aware. It is all too easy to publish papers of facts and figures about its activities, but we all know what tends to happen to that sort of information: it remains on a shelf, unread by all but a few devotees, while the rest of us are none the wiser. The amendment would open the door to the possibility of closing the gap in public understanding and, even more importantly, addressing that lack of trust in the sentencing process. How can anyone have confidence in something that is not properly understood? In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, argued for the Government that, because awareness was a more abstract concept, it was, “less appropriate to tie an independent body to such a statutory duty”.—[Official Report, 15/7/09; col. 1248.] That in a way is an extraordinary argument, for what is the point of publishing information or promoting awareness at all if it is not allied to understanding? The noble Lord was further worried that to explain to the public or make them aware of what the sentencing council does in relation to penal policy would mean straying into political territory. Again, I would suggest, that is an imaginary fear, given that it is generally agreed that to describe and explain the roles and duties of the council objectively, it is necessary for public understanding of and trust in our criminal justice system. Politics or preference, as the noble Lord suggested, does not come into it. Awareness-raising is a function performed by other guidelines councils, notably in Victoria in Australia, and of course what our magistrates do regularly all over the country when they run their local crime community sentence programmes, involving magistrates in the Probation Service, which my noble friend Lady Linklater described in Committee. There is also an exercise run by the judiciary, called “You Be The Judge”, which is another way of communicating how the system works and sentences are arrived at. However, those exercises happen rarely because they are quite time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, sentencers are no strangers to creating awareness. However, it is important that it should be acknowledged as such and the sentencing council should have a duty to promote it. It is also worth considering how deterrence, one of the recognised objectives of sentencing, can possibly be meaningful or effective if no one knows what it is actually about. An offender cannot be deterred by something that he is not aware of. At present, the British public not only lacks trust in our system but, unsurprisingly, is very ignorant of the realities. Some recently published figures from the British Crime Survey show that 75 per cent of the British public think that British courts are too lenient. Yet when asked what percentage of men convicted of rape should go to prison, two-thirds of the public said that it should be less than 80 per cent, whereas in 2007 it was 97 per cent of that group. When asked about death caused by drunk driving, 41 per cent thought that the perpetrator should go to prison, when in fact 96 per cent of those found guilty of the offence were sent to prison. It is a commonplace experience for those of us involved in the criminal law to put to friends or guests the scenario of a recent case and ask them what sentence they would pass; inevitably, it is far more lenient than the actual sentence imposed by the judge. So the public have a distorted view of sentencing. Judges are in fact more punitive than the public imagine them to be and more punitive than the public themselves. Since it is widely accepted that there is little public confidence in sentencing, what body could be better placed to rectify the situation as the source of guidance than an independent body consisting of experts, whose experience as judges and other related fields are more likely to promote greater understanding and confidence than politicians would in a month of Sundays? To say, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, did in Committee, that it would be inappropriate and impossible to deliver is seriously to minimise the quality and distinction of the sentencing council membership and its abilities to describe its role in a professional, clear, unbiased and understandable way, thus generating greater awareness in the public at large. Your Lordships will recall that this afternoon my noble friend Lady Linklater suggested that the council should have on it someone with experience of the media to be able to advise the council how to promote greater understanding. It should be a duty, because it has such potential significance and should not be downplayed, in the context of the range of activities that the sentencing council will be expected to undertake. If we lose this opportunity now, the moment will pass and it will be a long time before we can look again at that confidence in and understanding of sentencing, which is born of awareness. That is the purpose behind this amendment. I beg to move.
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Lord Hunt of WirralConservative- Quote
- My Lords, the noble Lord’s amendment would place a duty on the sentencing council to “inform, consult and engage with the public on penal issues”, rather than, as the Bill currently stands, operate with discretion to promote awareness of sentencing. The noble Lord has justified the amendment with his customary skill and imagination, fortified by some very interesting statistics. In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater of Butterstone, suggested holding “Any Questions”-style meetings across the country to help to promote understanding of the judicial system. All those ideas have an attraction, certainly, but we must not forget that the primary purpose of the sentencing council is to set guidelines for sentencing, and, as such, has as its members several members of the judiciary. We are concerned that, if there was a statutory duty on the council to engage with the public, that might risk involving its members with campaigning, which might well not sit with the independence of the judiciary. We note, too, that under Clause 119(1) the council must publish data but under subsection (2) it “may promote awareness”. That distinction is important. There is a duty to publish information about sentencing and once that information is in the public realm it is there for everyone to make use of as they think fit. However, while that duty is correct and easy to judge if it has been met, it is considerably more difficult to place a duty on the council to promote awareness. For example, by what standard will we decide if the council has met its obligations? We commend the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater of Butterstone, for raising the issue of public awareness of sentencing matters, but in this instance we do not think that they should press the amendment to a vote.
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Lord BachLabour- Quote
- My Lords, we agree almost entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said on this issue. Amendment 89A changes the requirement on the council to promote awareness of sentencing issues. It does this first by adding a new duty on the council to, “inform, consult and engage with the public on penal issues”, and secondly by requiring that the council “must” promote sentencing rather than the current “may” do so. On the first point, the amendment would require the council to engage with the public on penal issues. That would be a completely new role for the council. Without better particulars, we wonder what that new duty entails because “penal issues” is a wide term. The ordinary meaning of the words would suggest anything relating to the punishment of offenders. Could it mean that the council must consult for example on the nature of prison regimes, the security of prisons or on the provision of education and healthcare? Those are all penal policy issues and all worthy and important, but they do not in themselves relate to sentencing and they should not in our view be within the remit of a sentencing council. It would be inadvisable to place a mandatory duty on the council to consult on something which is so potentially wide ranging. The second part of this amendment relates to the promotion of awareness of sentencing. It remains the Government’s view that an independent body such as the council should promote awareness, but we are also of the view that it would be ill-advised to place a statutory duty for such a task. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the noble Lord, as my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe managed to do, “promotion of awareness” is a much more abstract concept than the publication of statistics and is not one that fits with such an absolute duty. We think it advisable, given the nature of the task, to give the council some discretion about how it promotes awareness. However, I want to make it absolutely clear that by not supporting Amendment 89A in full we are not trying to discourage the council from promoting awareness of sentencing. I am happy to state on the record that the Government fully expect the council to undertake this task. We will encourage it to do so. We will expect it to report on how it has done so and we expect it to be scrutinised on how well it has performed. In the light of that, I hope that the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.
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- Lord Thomas of GresfordLiberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I am most grateful for that reply. I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the involvement of judges in campaigning. That is not the issue. The point is that judges need to have contact with public opinion. How do they do that? They would get a very distorted view if they did that through reading newspapers. Or do they do that through the sort of exercises that my noble friend Lady Linklater has been carrying out all over Britain on behalf of the Esmée Fairbairn trust? I know that your Lordships are aware of the trust’s work and the reports that it has produced, in which the judiciary are exposed to the way that prisons work, the way that the public are thinking and so forth. We cannot lose sight of the fact that there is no God-given tariff for prison sentences. They must reflect the confidence of the community and what the community expects. The public need to be informed of what the council is saying, but the council also needs to engage with the public to find reactions. It is a question of two-way communication. That, I am sure, is what lies behind the amendment in my name and that of the noble Baroness. However, I can see that at this time there is no point in dividing the House. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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Lord GoodhartLiberal Democrat- Quote
- My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to abolish indeterminate sentences, known as IPPs or DPPs. IPPs are indeterminate sentences which are imposed on adult criminals; DPPs are sentences imposed on the under-18s. They are very similar in their operation, and I will use IPP as a description to cover both of them. I am delighted to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who is, of course, an iconic figure in your Lordships’ House. IPPs were created by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. They can be imposed for offences which carry a maximum sentence of at least 10 years but do not provide for life sentences. Ninety-five offences fall into this category. IPPs can be imposed if the criminal has a previous conviction for any one of 153 listed offences. Any such previous conviction creates a presumption that the criminal presents a serious risk of causing future harm to members of the public. Unless that presumption can be rebutted, the criminal who has been convicted of any one of the 95 trigger offences will get an IPP sentence. The sentence will contain a minimum term or tariff. That tariff is the minimum term which the judge hearing the case would have imposed in the absence of IPPs. There is no maximum sentence for an IPP. The statutory upper limit of the sentence for that crime is ignored. For all practical purposes, the IPP is a life sentence, and nothing else. Prisoners’ release requires them not only to have served the tariff in prison, but to have satisfied a panel of the Parole Board that they have reduced the risk that they present to the public. I did not practise in the criminal field when I was at the Bar, but I became aware of the defects of IPPs when I read a report published a year ago by the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Chief Inspector of Probation. The report is absolutely devastating. It concludes that the courts do not receive accurate pre-sentence reports on the risk of harm when considering whether to impose an IPP and many assessments of risk are, as a consequence, too high. The report concluded that the Parole Board system which determines IPP releases is severely underresourced and, as a result, IPP prisoners languish for months and sometimes years in local prisons because they cannot get the training that they need before they can apply for release. The introduction to the report says: “Prisoners and staff became increasingly frustrated with their Kafka-esque predicament, unable to access the interventions they needed in order to secure release”. That is the comment of two people who know more about IPPs than anybody else.
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Lord RamsbothamCrossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I put my name to the amendment because ever since indeterminate sentences were proposed in the 2003 Act, I have been very concerned about their practical impact. At the time, many people forecast that they would be a severe impediment on the ability of the Prison Service to deal effectively with prisoners—not just the IPP prisoners, but other prisoners who would be likely to have the limited resources to tackle their own reoffending problems denied to them. What was unfortunate about the introduction of the IPP was that it went ahead without proper impact assessments by the Home Office, which failed totally to look at the impact not just on the Prison Service but on the probation service. Both must be considered in the future. Only yesterday, I was visited by 11 people from the probation service, including nine who were about to qualify from the latest officers’ course. They told me that, given the number of cases that they had to deal with and the cuts being imposed on them, the demands on them were such that when starting a case they simply did not have the time to complete the pre-sentence reports which the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, mentioned as being one of problems. With the best will in the world, they cannot offer sufficient time to complete the reports, given the number of cases that they have to look at. I have often said two things in this House about the context in which these sentences are being considered. First, it is extraordinary that no one knows the cost of imprisonment. That is not to say it is not known how much money has been given to the Prison Service by the Treasury and how much is distributed to each prison. However, it is not known how much it would cost to do all the things with and for prisoners that the Government say need to be done, including all the activities so ably described by the noble Lord in connection with indeterminate sentences. Are there assessments? How much do they cost? How much do the programmes that have to be carried out cost? Furthermore, how much does it cost to keep someone in prison for the additional period beyond the tariff that might otherwise have been imposed? Bearing in mind the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, produced—that only 76 such prisoners have so far been released—and given the numbers who have gone into prison, this is a recurring expense to the Prison Service which adds financial and overcrowding problems to those that already exist. In my book they are avoidable. Secondly, the place of prisons in the criminal justice system is analogous to that of hospitals in the health service. They are the acute part of the system where treatment takes place, and you should go there only if you need the treatment that only hospital or prison can give. You must go there conscious that it will never be complete in either—it will have to be continued by aftercare in the community. The moment that the work that only prison or hospital can do has been completed, the patient or prisoner should be removed as quickly as possible from that expensive acute environment into somewhere where that work can be carried out. If you are being sensible, particularly in times of recession, that will be where it is cheaper, as well as just as effective. The problem with this sentence is that because it was improperly proposed, improperly conducted, improperly impact-assessed and improperly introduced, it has built up problems which are getting almost beyond control. Indeterminate sentences are swamping some of the prisons and removing resources which should be made available to other prisoners, and therefore are having an undue impact on the ability of the Prison Service to protect the public by preventing offending. I suspect that this amendment may not meet the Minister’s immediate approval, but he and his successors must in all conscience examine the impact of the indeterminate sentence on the prison system for which they are responsible, otherwise they will be conniving at its ruin.
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Lord Carlile of BerriewCrossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I declare an interest as the president of the Howard League for Penal Reform. I support the amendment. I do not think that I can improve on the eloquent way in which it has been proposed by my noble friend Lord Goodhart and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. The Howard League has identified all the reasons that have already been given, so perhaps I can simply add this. IPPs are causing all the difficulties in the Prison Service described by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, so the Prison Service does not like them. Judges do not like IPPs because what they have to say in sentencing is at best misleading and at worst fictitious. Defence lawyers do not like IPPs because they cannot give realistic advice on pleas to their clients. Defendants are pleading not guilty on the off-chance that they might avoid an IPP, thereby lengthening hearings and clogging up the criminal justice system. Everybody involved in the criminal justice system who has touched this method of sentencing knows that it is not working. It is overdue for reform for the reasons already given.
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Lord Mayhew of TwysdenConservative- Quote
- My Lords, I feel confident that, in the preparatory work for this amendment, the Minister will have been told the latest figure of those who have completed their tariff and yet have been unable to get through what you might call the anteroom—the need to acquire a certificate as to their lack of risk to the public, which is to be provided by the probation service. What is the total now waiting for that administrative exercise to be completed? It is an absolute scandal that anyone who has reached their tariff should for that reason be unable to proceed through to release.
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Lord HyltonCrossbench- Quote
- My Lords, I support the amendment on grounds of certainty, rehabilitation and resettlement.
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- Lord Hunt of WirralConservative
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- My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Goodhart and Lord Ramsbotham, have done us a great service by raising this issue. The noble Lords, Lord Carlile of Berriew and Lord Hylton, and my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew have reinforced the concern that exists that we are dealing with a very serious situation. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, gave a pretty scathing assessment of the Government’s record on the administration of sentences for public protection, which everyone is now referring to as IPPs. The purpose of these sentences is to set a minimum tariff for dangerous or violent offenders—the punitive part of the sentence—and an indeterminate part, whereby the prisoner must satisfy the Parole Board that he no longer poses a risk to the public before he is released. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, pointed out, the Government are well aware of the problems that are now present in the prison system. He may well be right that there should have been a much greater impact assessment. Perhaps the Minister will answer directly the questions posed by the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Goodhart. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, with all his experience, posed the greatest question: how much will it cost to do the things that need to be done? There are too many people with IPPs for the inadequate efforts that have been made so far to deal with them. I understand that there are rehabilitation courses that are just too full for anyone to get on them, so that many prisoners have gone past their minimum tariff but have, because of administrative incompetence, been unable to show the Parole Board that they have made sufficient progress to justify their release. It is scandalous that this has been allowed to happen, as my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew of Twysden has pointed out.
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Lord TunnicliffeLabour- Quote
- My Lords, we return to the issue of indeterminate sentences for public protection, which the amendment seeks to abolish. The Government introduced these public protection sentences in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. They apply to offences committed on or after 5 April 2005 and are designed to deal with dangerous offenders who have committed serious violent or sexual offences. Once such offenders have served their minimum term, they remain in prison unless and until the Parole Board determines that they can be released safely, under supervision, into the community. It must surely be right that we should limit the release of dangerous offenders in this way. Public protection must be paramount, and I am pleased that, at least on this basic issue, the Benches opposite agree with us. I believe, and we contend, that IPPs are right in principle, but the amendment provides for the automatic release of dangerous offenders with no account taken of the risk that they might still pose to the public. Turning to the issue of practice, the Government have acknowledged that there have been some difficulties in the management of IPP prisoners who have received short tariffs. We have responded by taking measures in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 to focus these sentences on offenders from whom the public need most protection. We have also put in place much improved systems, backed up with additional resources, to ensure that offenders are enabled to demonstrate their reduced risk to the Parole Board and thus show that they are suitable for release. Those changes have improved the regime now, as they will for the future, and the number of IPPs passed has reduced significantly since the 2008 Act came into force. However, we also need to assist the position for those already sentenced. That is why the Prison Service has put in place better arrangements. Almost all post-tariff IPP prisoners now have sentence plans, and efforts are being made to increase the provision of courses to IPPs. We won the Court of Appeal challenge that detention post-tariff was unlawful and that prisoners in this position should be released. The House of Lords confirmed that judgment. It made it clear that there is no duty on the Secretary of State to provide particular courses to prisoners, although he needs to ensure that reports are provided to enable the Parole Board to make decisions on the basis of risk. At the moment, a little over 5,600 people are serving IPPs, 2,130 of them post-tariff, and approximately 60 per cent of IPP prisoners have at least one programme. Clauses 128 and 129 provide for public protection sentences to be made available for a wider range of terrorist-related offences. They insert certain terrorist offences into Schedule 15 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which lists specified violent or sexual offences that may attract a sentence of imprisonment for public protection or an extended sentence. All these terrorist-related offences are appropriate for inclusion in the schedule, as they demonstrate a sufficiently direct risk of harm in that they relate to the planning and/or commission of violent crimes and carry maximum custodial sentences of 10 years or more. As I have emphasised, public protection is paramount and it is important that we take the opportunity to update the schedule to keep pace with changes in public risk. I have sought to answer the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, concerning numbers. If we can be in any way more accurate or illustrative on that, I shall write to him. However, we have not been able to address the issues of cost. We will look at whether something useful can be said on that and, if so, will write to noble Lords. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
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- Lord GoodhartLiberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I am grateful to all Members of your Lordships’ House who spoke in support of the amendment. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, that IPPs should be retained but I absolutely agree with him that IPPs are only part of a wider problem of rehabilitation and that a thorough reform of the whole sentencing procedure is necessary. I was seriously disappointed by the reaction of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. Being in the view of a Parole Board panel a potentially dangerous offender is not a sufficient reason for imposing what is, in fact, a life sentence when the offence is one that does not itself bear a life sentence. It is all very well to say that the protection of the public is paramount, but if that were the case anybody who had committed a serious crime would simply be locked up permanently with no hope of release. The protection of the public is an important factor, but it is necessary to maintain a balance between treating somebody who has committed perhaps a serious crime with a total lack of support and simply locking them up for life and considering the interests of the public. Being a potentially dangerous offender in the Parole Board’s view is not a sufficient reason for imposing a life sentence. That has to be borne in mind. Had this debate taken place a couple of hours earlier, it was my intention to call a Division as it is an important matter which needs to be brought to the attention of the Government. We need to show our concern about the way in which this has been mishandled. It is now almost a quarter to 10, so it is not an occasion when it would be remotely appropriate to call for a Division. I appreciate that I cannot bring the matter back at Third Reading, so in these circumstances, it is with regret that I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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- Lord TunnicliffeLabour
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- These amendments relate to powers to impose driving disqualifications and extend the principle that we have already established in Schedule 15 that time spent in prison should not erode the impact of disqualification. The provisions already contained in the Bill deal with those offenders when the court imposes both a driving disqualification and a custodial sentence for the same offence. These are likely to be serious road traffic offences for which it is imperative for public confidence that offenders feel the full impact of the ban. These new amendments are intended to cover those cases when the court imposes a driving disqualification while at the same time the offender is being sentenced to imprisonment for another, unrelated offence, or is already serving a custodial sentence for another offence. Again, the intention is that the effect of disqualification should not be significantly undermined by the time spent in prison. The key amendments are Amendments 90C, 90G, 90K, 90M, 90P and 90R. Each of these amendments inserts similar provisions alongside the sentencing powers applicable to the courts in different parts of the United Kingdom to impose driving disqualifications. When the court sentences an offender to a driving disqualification which will overlap to a greater or lesser extent with a current custodial sentence, the court must, in determining the period of disqualification it imposes, have regard to the fact that the effect of the disqualification will have a diminished effect as a distinct punishment during the time that the offender is also detained in prison. The court has to be mindful of that consideration if, and the extent to which, it is appropriate to do so. The more the two sentences overlap the greater the potential increase in duration of a driving ban which the court might impose. This approach differs from the provisions when the court imposes disqualification and custodial sentence for the same offence. In those cases, the court will be required to add a distinctly calculated extension period to the ban. Because of the extent to which a driving ban and custodial sentences for different offences overlap may vary, these provisions give the court discretion as to the increase in disqualification that might be appropriate in each case. I hope that noble Lords will accept the amendment.
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- Lord Thomas of GresfordLiberal Democrat
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- My Lords, the purpose of the amendments in this group is to insert in Schedule 16 the proviso that the section does not apply if the defendant can show that his or her conviction was imposed outside England and Wales and resulted from a trial that would have, if the trial had taken place in England and Wales, breached Article 6 of the convention rights within the meaning of the Human Rights Act. We are concerned about the quality of justice in certain countries. The purpose of these amendments is to ensure that the courts can take into account the fact that a trial was in breach of Article 6 of the convention rights. I beg to move.
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- Lord BachLabour
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- My Lords, Schedule 16 implements the council framework decision of July last year on taking account of convictions in EU member states in the course of new criminal proceedings. Courts will be required to treat previous convictions of other member states in the same way as previous UK convictions. To a large extent, this merely sets out what can and does already happen. For example, overseas convictions can already be adduced as evidence of bad character or taken into account in sentencing decisions. As I said in Committee, these amendments are obviously well intentioned but we do not think that they are necessary. The effect of the amendments as drafted would be that we would fail to comply with the provisions of the framework decision. This is because the amended legislation would oblige courts not to take into account other EU convictions to the extent that domestic convictions are taken into account since a separate assessment of whether to admit those EU convictions would be required beforehand. Moreover, it would be an impracticable, if not impossible, task for the courts in every case. As drafted, the amendments would oblige courts to determine whether a conviction resulting from a trial in another jurisdiction would, “if the trial had taken place in England and Wales”, have breached Article 6. However, different rules of procedure and evidence apply between countries. For example, evidence admissible in some EU states would not be admissible in England and Wales, and it would often be difficult to predict accurately how such cases would have proceeded here, taking this into account, before any assessment of Article 6 compliance could be made. All EU member states are subject to Article 6, which guarantees the right to a fair trial. The framework decision is predicated on compliance with the convention and states that it shall not have the effect of amending the obligation to respect fundamental rights. It will not be necessary for courts to consider the procedural proprieties of trials in other member states. Despite differences in national legal systems, convicted persons throughout the EU will have had recourse to the same framework of rights by which to challenge the previous conviction if it was procedurally unsound. We do not think it practicable or proper in implementing the provisions in the framework decision for our courts to be required to undertake a separate assessment of Article 6 compliance, and it would not be necessary because of the safeguards already in place. As regards convictions from countries outside the EU, no provision in the schedule makes any material change in respect of non-EU convictions. The amendments proposed only clarify the existing law, which already applies to all convictions wherever obtained. Those clarifications concern the “bad character” provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and related Northern Ireland provisions. Under those provisions, it will, as now, be open to the defence to argue that a conviction is unfair by Article 6 standards. A court could continue to exclude evidence of a conviction that was shown to have resulted from an unfair trial. The court may, for example, exclude evidence under Section 101(3) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 if such evidence would have a sufficiently adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings; and, under Section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the court may refuse to allow evidence to be given on which the prosecution proposes to rely if it appears to the court that, having regard to all the circumstances, the admission of the evidence would have such an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings that the court should not admit it. I hope with that explanation that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, will withdraw his amendment.
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- Lord Thomas of GresfordLiberal Democrat
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- My Lords, your Lordships will recall that I spoke at considerable length in Committee on this issue, and I have attempted, having regard to the time, to limit what I said tonight. However, it is unfortunate that the amendments in the Bill ensure that convictions in an EU member state can be used to take into account evidence of the bad character of the defendant, to impose a presumption against bail, to consider whether a person should be tried summarily or indicted, and in sentencing. It is going a little far to say that the judges must automatically take at face value any conviction in any EU state, regardless of any arguments that may be advanced about the quality of the defendant’s trial at the time. At this hour, however, I do not propose to divide the House. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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