Starmer ‘disappointed’ Sentencing Council won’t change guidelines that have prompted fears of two tier justice – UK politics live | Politics

The Sentencing Council has criticised Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, for misrepresenting the new guidelines it has issued saying the pre-sentence reports should normally be required before judges sentence people from ethnic, cultural or faith minority groups.

In his letter to the justice secretary released today, Lord Justice William Davis specifically identifies Jenrick and says comments he has made about the guidelines are wrong.

The council started consulting on the guidelines in 2022, and there were no objections – including from the then Conservative party government – until Jenrick told MPs in the the Commons earlier this month that they amounted to “two-tier sentencing”. Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, soon adopted Jenrick’s argument, and since then she has been trying to get the guidelines changed.

In a letter released on 10 March Davis said it was “completely wrong” to say the new guidelines would lead to minority ethnic offenders getting more lenient sentences, as Jenrick claimed. But Davis did not refer to Jenrick directly.

In his new letter Davis does quote Jenrick twice, from exchanges in the Commons, and argues that that in both instances what Jenrick was saying was wrong.

Referring to Jenrick’s claim that an offender is less likely to be jailed if the judge gets a pre-sentence report first, Davis says:

A pre-sentence report of itself does not make a custodial sentence less likely. It provides the sentencing court with information.

Davis even argues that in some cases a pre-sentence report can make a custodial sentence more likely.

Frequently the information provided will not assist the offender’s prospect of avoiding a custodial sentence: rather the reverse. By way of example pre-sentence reports set out the attitude of the offender to the crimes they have committed. A probation officer will provide a frank assessment of whether the offender has proper understanding of the damage caused to their victim. If the offender does not, the sentencing court may use that factor in its approach to the offender’s culpability and the risk presented by the offender.

Davis also says Jenrick was wrong to tell MPs that the new rules “will ride roughshod over the rule of law”. He says:

No part of the guideline is a set of rules which ignore the rule of law. In relation to sentencing, the rule of law requires that all offenders are treated fairly and justly by judges and magistrates who are fully informed about the offences, the effect on the victims and the offenders. The section of the guideline relating to pre-sentence reports is directed to the issue of information about offenders, no more and no less.

In her letter to the Sentencing Council sent a week ago, Mahmood said she was opposed to the guidelines on the grounds that they amounted to “differential treatment on the basis of race or ethnicity”.

In his reply, Davis says sentencing outcomes are different for ethnic minorities (they often get harsher treatment than white offenders) and he says dealing with this is a policy matter (and hence a matter for government, he implies.) “It is not for judges to introduce overarching policies to redress the imbalance,” he says.

But he argues that the new guidance does not amount to differential treatment.

Any judge or magistrate required to sentence an offender must to do all that they can to avoid a difference in outcome based on ethnicity. The judge will be better equipped to do that if they have as much information as possible about the offender. The cohort of ethnic, cultural and faith minority groups may be a cohort about which judges and magistrates are less well informed. In our view, providing the sentencing court with information about that cohort could not impinge on whatever policy might be introduced to deal with the underlying problem.