I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

When I spoke in this House on 1 April, I set out the Government’s intention to introduce emergency legislation, because I believe that our justice system must be above all else fair, and that, standing before a judge, we are all equal, no matter the colour of our skin or the question of our faith.

Given the existential nature of this matter for our justice system, I was clear that we would move at pace to change the law. The Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill was introduced that same day.

With Second Reading taking place just three weeks later, we are forging ahead with plans to legislate as quickly as possible. Before I set out the contents of the Bill, it bears repeating how we came to be in the current situation and why expedited legislation is necessary.

In the last Parliament, the Sentencing Council put forward revised guidelines on the imposition of community and custodial sentences. I should note that during a statutory consultation they were welcomed by the last Conservative Government in no uncertain terms.

The shadow Transport Secretary, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who was a Justice Minister at the time, should be able to furnish his colleagues with the details, but as he is absent today, I will do so.

Can the right hon. Lady clarify whether the guidelines proposed under the previous Government were the same as those with which she is dealing now, or did they differ—and if they differed, how did they differ?

They did not differ in any substantial way. All the guidelines, in so far as they concern issues relating to race, religion, culture or belief, are exactly the same as those to which the Justice Minister responded under the Conservative Administration.

Hiding behind that, I am afraid, shows a failure to reckon with the Opposition’s own track record, which has become quite a hallmark of theirs in recent weeks and months.

These guidelines help judges, when sentencing an offender, to determine whether to impose a community order or a custodial sentence, providing guidance on the thresholds for disposals of this type.

In the process of deciding which threshold has been met, judges are required by law to obtain a pre-sentence report, except in circumstances where they consider such a report to be unnecessary.

The reports are used to give the courts more context of the offending behaviour in a given case, and set out any factors that should be considered as part of the sentencing process.

As I said to the House on 1 April, generally speaking I am in favour of the use of pre-sentence reports, and in fact I have recently freed up capacity in the Probation Service precisely so that it has more time to produce reports of this type.

The purpose of the pre-sentence reports, used properly, is to provide the court with the full context of the offending behaviour.

That enables the court to ensure that when it imposes a custodial sentence it will be successful and capable of being delivered in respect of that offender, or else a community sentence should be imposed instead. It is a useful mechanism that judges have at their disposal.

We would expect it to be used in all cases except when the courts consider it unnecessary because they have all the information.

Because I consider pre-sentence reports to be so important in giving the courts all the information that they need to pass the right sentence for the offender who is before them, I have specifically freed up capacity in the Probation Service so that it can do more work of this type.

However, the updated guidelines specifically encourage judges to request them for some offenders and not others, stipulating circumstances in which a pre-sentence report would “normally be considered necessary”. That is the bit that I am seeking to change.

The right hon. Lady has just said something very important: namely, that she would normally expect a pre-sentence report to be given in all, or at least almost all, cases.

I hope that is her position, because what seems unfair to me is that a pre-sentence report, which presumably enables people to present arguments in mitigation, should be available to some people who have been convicted of a crime but not to others.

Surely it should be available either to everyone or to no one, because everyone’s individual circumstances deserve the same degree of consideration.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In fact, we fully support section 30 of the Sentencing Act 2020—the sentencing code—which makes it clear that a court must obtain a pre-sentence report unless it considers it unnecessary to do so.

That would be in cases where judges consider that they already have at their disposal the facts that will enable them to make a determination of the correct sentence for any particular offender.

I think that the Sentencing Council got things right in the paragraph of the current guidelines that comes before the one that is the subject of the debate and the Bill, which states: “PSRs are necessary in all cases that would benefit from an assessment of one or more of the following: the offender’s dangerousness and risk of harm, the nature and causes of the offender’s behaviour, the offender’s personal circumstances and any factors that may be helpful to the court in considering the offender’s suitability for different sentences or requirements.

” That covers all the areas in which we would normally consider PSRs to be necessary, and I would like them to be used more extensively.

Indeed, I would like them to be the norm in all cases, because I think they offer important information to people who are passing sentence—unless, of course, it is unnecessary because judges have already been furnished with all the details, having heard the whole of the case that has been taking place before them.

The Lord Chancellor has just given us, very helpfully, the list of matters that might be relevantly considered in a pre-sentence report.

As she has said, however, one of the items on that list is “personal circumstances”, and that is what the Bill will remove from the Sentencing Council’s discretion. May I ask her why she has not used in the Bill the language that is included in the explanatory notes?

Paragraph 8 states that the Bill will “prevent differential treatment… It does this by preventing the creation of a presumption regarding whether a pre-sentence report should be obtained based on an offender’s membership of a particular demographic cohort”.

That strikes me as a much narrower exclusion, and perhaps one better targeted at the problem that the Lord Chancellor has, in my view, rightly identified.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right. That is why we have offered the additional context in the explanatory notes.

Personal characteristics and personal circumstances have, over the years, been elided in different court judgments, and the different definitions of the two have sometimes slipped.

I wanted to make it clear in the Bill that we are constraining the Sentencing Council’s ability to create guidance for PSRs in relation to personal characteristics.

We refer in the Bill to race, religion, culture and belief, specifically to ensure that the Sentencing Council understands that we are targeting this part of the offending section of the imposition guideline.

It will then have its own interpretation of how personal circumstances and personal characteristics should apply.

I would expect this to be analogous to protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010, in terms of the way in which the courts are likely to approach the question of what a personal characteristic is for the purpose of the Bill.

However, I wanted to make the intention behind the Bill very clear to the Sentencing Council, and to everyone else. It is tightly focused on the offending section of the imposition guideline and leaves the wider question of personal circumstances untouched.

As I will explain later in my speech, there is helpful Court of Appeal guidance on circumstances and on other occasions on which a PSR should normally be required, and nothing in the Bill will affect the Court of Appeal precedents that have already been set.

Is the Lord Chancellor aware that the Sentencing Council guidelines, and indeed the Bill, turn on issues that some of us have campaigned on for decades? I think that there would be concern if the Bill undermined the independence of the judiciary.

I thank the Lord Chancellor for opening the debate, and for her answers to the questions so far.

I think every one of us believes that the foundational principle that justice is blind must be adhered to in every way, but we live in an age of ever-changing political correctness, which, regardless of whether we like it or not, invades Parliament and our lives.

I am very much in favour of what the Lord Chancellor has said about race and faith. As a person of faith, I want to make sure that race and faith can never be mitigating or aggravating factors when it comes to justice.

Given the lives that we live, the world that we live in, and all the things that impact on us daily and in this House as MPs, can the Lord Chancellor confirm that faith, justice and religion will always be preserved in the way that they should be?

For me, one of the most moving parts of the parliamentary day is when the day starts with prayers. Those are Christian prayers, and I am of the Muslim faith, but I always find it moving to be part of them and to hear them.

They remind us that we all belong to a country with a long heritage, which is steeped in faith. The source code for much of the law of England and Wales is the Bible. The hon.

Gentleman makes some broader points on the issue of faith and how important it is, and I suspect that he and I have a lot in common in that regard. There must never be differential treatment before the law of our land, and before any court, on the basis of faith.

I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s point about parliamentary sovereignty and that fact that policy must be determined by this place.

I think many Members from across the House will have been quite shocked by the response of the Sentencing Council to her letter when she asked it to consider the guidelines again.

Does she agree that if this place continues to butt heads with the Sentencing Council over guidelines like these, maybe the best thing to do is abolish the Sentencing Council?

Given that the Sentencing Council refused the Lord Chancellor’s first invitation to rewrite its guidance, is she confident that the limited nature of this Bill is sufficient?

Would she not be wiser to take a broader power to ensure that in future all sentencing guidance has an affirmative vote in this place?

I think the Lord Chancellor just said that the approach to the guidelines taken by the Sentencing Council puts the foundation of the justice system at risk. Given that, how can she have confidence in a Sentencing Council that takes such an approach?

I do not think anyone is questioning the firm action the Lord Chancellor is taking. The point my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) made is: why should it be necessary for her to take that action?

Surely, if the Sentencing Council cannot see the distinction she makes between its proper role and Parliament’s proper role, it is not fit to do the job.

The Sentencing Council might argue, rightly, that given the guideline was welcomed by the former Government, it probably thought it was on safer ground than I consider it to be.

However, there is clearly a confusion, a change in practice, or a development in ways I disagree with about the proper line between what is practice or the application of the law and what is properly in the realm of policy.

That is what I am absolutely not going to give any ground on and that I will be setting right.

The right hon. Lady is right about the moving process or trend that she has described, but the trouble is that it is part of a bigger problem, is it not? It is the problem of judicial activism, and it is not new.

For some time, judicial activists have sought to do exactly what she has said, and it is they, not people in this House, who endanger the separation of powers.

The right hon. Lady is making a point about the wider justice system and the importance of equality before the law.

What has she done to assure herself and the House that, in all aspects of her Department’s work, people are being treated equally under the law—whether in relation to parole, how they are treated in prison, bail conditions and so on?

I have ordered a wider review of all guidance across all the MOJ’s work in so far as it relates to equality before the law to make sure that the problems we have uncovered here are not replicated elsewhere. There is the issue of bail guidance, which was discussed in the House earlier.

I have already ordered a review, and that guidance is being redrafted as we speak. That particular guidance has been something like 20 years in the making—it has been added to over many years—so the redraft has to be careful and we must make sure it does not have any unintended consequences.

However, we are cracking on with that work at pace, and I will make sure that, by the time I am done, we can all be absolutely clear that this sweep towards allowing potential differential treatment is sorted out once and for all.

rose—

I call the shadow Lord Chancellor.

In November 2023, the Sentencing Council consulted on these guidelines, and said that a pre-sentence report may be “particularly important” if an offender belongs to an ethnic, cultural and/or faith minority community. Does the shadow Minister agree that it was particularly important? I do not.

If he does not agree, why did he say nothing for two years?

I have to applaud the hon. Gentleman for reading out his Whips’ questions there. I have said it before and I will say it again, however: I do wish that he and those on the Labour Front Bench would stop perpetuating something that is obviously untrue. They know it is untrue.

It has been said numerous times. The Sentencing Council itself—[Interruption.] Let me finish my point, because it is important.

Order. The shadow Lord Chancellor has just suggested that those on the Government Front Bench are perpetuating an untruth. He might like to think about whether he wishes to withdraw that comment.

Let me finish the point. If hon. Members do not like the answer, perhaps they should hear it in full.

The Sentencing Council made it clear that the guidance that was put before the previous Conservative Government was materially different from what was ultimately put before this Labour Government. The council said in the previous iteration that pre-sentencing reports would usually be required.

There was a presumption that pre- sentencing reports would come forward, but importantly, it preserved full discretion.

The guidance that was ultimately brought forward, which was given the nod by the Justice Secretary’s officials who were present at the final meeting of the Sentencing Council, made a significant distinction: it said that such reports “must” be requested.

That removed the discretion available to judges, which was a very significant difference.

I have the pre-sentence report guidance in front of me. It says: “When considering a community or custodial sentence, the court must request and consider a pre-sentence report (PSR) before forming an opinion of the sentence, unless it considers that it is unnecessary”.

It then goes on to describe various circumstances in which a pre-sentence report might be considered necessary and may “normally be considered necessary”. It does not remove judicial stipulations and interventions completely, and to suggest otherwise is not accurate.

The guidance does not use that phrase. It says a report would “usually” be required. That is an important point, because it removes discretion.

Of course, there might be instances in which a judge would not request a report, but I think it would be extremely unlikely, in practice, that a judge would choose not to take forward a pre-sentence report, in the light of the new guidance. That is why we felt it so important to take action.

My right hon. Friend deserves great credit for championing the cause of justice and obliging the Government to follow suit, albeit grudgingly.

Leaving aside the fundamental injustice that he describes—the two-tier justice system—does he acknowledge that what the Sentencing Council proposes and continues to do undermines popular faith in the rule of law and justice and, as the Lord Chancellor herself says, tears the whole system apart?

The right hon. Member is painting a terrifying picture of our justice system. In his work, has he managed to identify when these issues all started?

The guidelines we are talking about came into force—or would have done—under this Labour Government.

I will not return to everything I said earlier, but those of us who were in this Chamber on the day that I revealed this issue all know that neither the Justice Secretary nor any of her Ministers had the faintest idea that any of this was happening.

I watched the Justice Secretary look to her Ministers; she was greeted by blank faces. They had no grip on what was happening in their Department. The hon. Member for Hartlepool makes the good point that the issues that we are discussing predate this Labour Government.

This is a broader issue facing our country. We all have to be defenders of equality under the law. I do not seek equality of outcome in our criminal justice system; I seek equality of treatment. That is the heart of a fair criminal justice system.

That may be a point of difference between some of us in this House. All I seek is for every person in this country—man or woman, regardless of their religion or the colour of their skin—to be treated exactly the same by the law.

Everywhere we look in the Ministry of Justice, we see this ideology. The most worrying part is that I think the Justice Secretary knows this. She stood here and said that the appearance of differential treatment before the law is particularly corrosive, and I agree wholeheartedly with her.

Will the right hon. Member give way?

I call the Mother of the House.

I can see that, when it comes to this legislation, I am in a minority—it is not the first time, and I suspect that it will not be the last.

There has been a great deal of misinformation about the Sentencing Council’s original guidelines, both in the run-up to and during the debate, so I, with all humility, want to insert some facts into the debate. First, it is important to recognise what the Sentencing Council actually is.

Much of the debate today and in recent weeks has seemed to presume that it is a bunch of heedless young barristers and social workers. On the contrary, the Sentencing Council is largely composed of some of the most senior judges in the land.

They include: Lord Justice William Davis, its chair, who was called to the Bar in 1976; His Honour Judge Simon Drew, a circuit judge sitting in the Court of Appeal; Lord Justice Tim Holroyde, lord justice of appeal and vice-president of the Court of Appeal; and the honourable Mr Justice Mark Wall, who was appointed a High Court judge in 2020.

There are also some senior probation officers and magistrates. That is hardly a cohort of men and women who need the firm hand of an MP on their shoulder to explain to them what the rule of law is.

The right hon. Lady is making the important point that the Sentencing Council is comprised of senior and learned individuals. Given that, what circumstances does she think conspired to let it get the guidelines so very wrong? It is clearly felt on both sides of the House that they are wrong.

Yes, they can.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, Josh Babarinde.

After the Chair of the Justice Committee, I propose to introduce a four-minute time limit. I am conscious that many Members will be disappointed this evening.

I call the shadow Minister.

My hon. Friend is right; the issue is not just these guidelines.

In the last Parliament, we legislated to increase the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving to life imprisonment, after an offender killed three members of my constituent’s family and was given a sentence of only 10 and a half years. Does my hon.

Friend agree that we need a broader power, so that where Parliament’s intent is not recognised by the Sentencing Council, we can act?

Clearly, Parliament needs to have oversight of revisions to sentencing guidelines, so that they reflect the will of Parliament. The Government failed to act and have now brought forward this lacklustre measure. In the past few months, my hon. and right hon.

Friends have uncovered multiple instances of two-tier principles being applied to bail, probation and other judicial matters. This is not a one-off, or a whistleblowing “fix it and move on” situation; it is systemic and endemic.

We need much more radical reform than the Government are bringing forward today.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I have to wrap up. When will the Government get serious, get a grip and put an end to this, once and for all?