New Clause A.—(RELEASE ON LICENCE OF THOSE SENTENCED FOR MURDER.) (Hansard, 28 October 1965)

§ Mr. Sydney Silverman
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
Before advancing a reason for it, I would remind the House with great respect that neither the Amendment which we have just accepted nor the one that we are about to discuss was made in the Bill at the instance or with the support of the sponsors. Both of them were put down in a genuine and sincere attempt in another place to make a concession to a point of view that had been widely expressed in the House of Commons during the Committee stage and which had been equally widely expressed in the House of Lords and on behalf of some of the judges, at any rate. I hope that no one will take it as an unreasonable or intentional criticism of anyone if I say that I would have hoped that the Amendments might have been treated here with just a little more warmth and a little more recognition of the attempt to satisfy them than has been shown by those in whose interests they were made.
394 5.15 p.m.
The Amendment that we are now discussing is a further and perhaps more effective method of meeting that point of view than the Amendment that we have just accepted. It deals with a position not at the time of trial nor at the moment of sentence, when the question of release must in any case be a distant and remote one. It deals with what is to happen when the Home Secretary feels that perhaps the time has arrived when he ought to consider whether to release upon licence.
What the Amendment provides is that the Home Secretary shall do two things which are within what he has stated earlier in the Commons to be his intention, in any case, even if it had not been made statutory. That is to consult the Lord Chief Justice and, if he is still available, the trial judge. If the trial judge is still available and if he had availed himself at the time of the right, which he has under the Amendment which we have just accepted, to express his opinion as to the length of sentence, the new Clause will give him the opportunity of reviewing his own earlier declaration in the light of subsequent events.
In this connection, the subsequent events are at least as important as those which prompted the declaration in the first place. It does not require, and it is right that it should not, that the Home Secretary's decision should necessarily be governed by the advice he receives, but it places upon him a statutory obligation to make certain that the judiciary is associated with the effective length of the sentence. That is precisely what so many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen among the opponents of the Bill fought for so hard, so manfully, so gallantly and for so long and repeatedly throughout our own stages of the Bill. It may be that they have not got as much as they would have liked, but it was as much as another place would take.
We, as the sponsors of the Bill here, are content to accept it. I hope that, without troubling very much about it, the House might feel that we should graciously accept the Amendment that has been made. It does not in any way alter the executive or administrative character of the final Act, but it ensures that at the positive stage, when it becomes really important, judicial opinion is taken into account, together with all other relevant 395 opinion, on whether at that moment release on licence should be effected. In spite of all the interests in the matter, it does not seem to me that it is really of any value to pursue discussion on the question very much further.

§ Sir J. Hobson
I am sure that all those who were associated with me in the earlier stages of the Bill, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) has said, will be glad to find that the new Clause at any rate goes some way to meet our idea that the judiciary should have a part in the final decision which the Home Secretary will always have of determining the actual length of sentence that a man will serve in prison and should take a part in the decision as to when he should be released.
I am bound to say that it does not go anything like as far as we should have liked, and, the more I think about it, the more important it becomes that in murder cases and all other cases there should be some form of advisory body or parole body to assist the Home Secretary in considering the problems which arise about allowing a man to be released from prison. Not only his own individual problem but the whole problem of the deterrent effect of sentences within the community has to be weighed in the balance.
Having said that, I certainly do not wish to detain the House in any way on the Amendment, because I do not recommend any of my hon. or right hon. Friends to oppose it. It goes some way towards associating the judiciary in the final decision and gives the Home Secretary the benefit of consultations with the Lord Chief Justice, while leaving quite open what is to be the nature of those consultations.
I ask the Home Secretary if he will be good enough to say how he envisages this machinery working. It could work and the Statute could be complied with if the Home Secretary wrote to the Lord Chief Justice: "I am proposing shortly to release John Bloggs who was sentenced fifteen years ago at Winchester Assizes by Mr. Justice Scrogg, who is now half dead or half demented, or both, and cannot be consulted". What is the Lord Chief Justice to do? He has no information about what has happened in the 396 intervening fifteen years. He would be given no information as to how the prisoner had progressed, nor any circumstances about the background of the prisoner, and yet he would have been consulted. Or is the Lord Chief Justice to be given the whole of the prison reports and the medical reports and the reports on the home background and life history of the accused man and asked to give his advice to the Home Secretary on that basis? In my view either would be a consultation, and it would be useful to the House to know how the Home Secretary envisages that this consultation would take place.
Would the Lord Chief Justice be consulted only about the aspect of the trial as it took place and the matters which affect the general administration of the law, and would he be able only to answer that in his view sentences are not being sufficiently deterrent in the case of many murders and that he would prefer to see people kept in for longer periods? Or will he be able to look at the whole of the case of the individual and balance the public problems against the individual problems and in the ultimate analysis, in the Home Secretary's very arduous obligation of deciding whether to release anybody under his statutory powers, confront him with his views?
I am glad that the Lord Chief Justice is to be consulted but I should be grateful if the Home Secretary would regard this as an appropriate moment to state how he envisages the extent and nature of the consultation which will take place.

Sir Kenneth Piekthorn (Carlton)
I wish to put a purely verbal question, but perhaps it covers a certain ambiguity, and, if so, perhaps it should be cleared. I do not claim any qualifications for putting such a point, being neither a lawyer nor a draftsman.
The Clause reads that No person convicted of murder shall be released … on licence … unless the Secretary of State has … consulted the Lord Chief Justice of England or the Lord Justice General as the case may be together with the trial judge …". The question which I wish to put to the Home Secretary is, what does "together" mean? Is it intended to mean that the two are to be consulted 397 together, or is it intended to mean, as, with proper respect to the draftsmen, I do not think it should, "as well as"? There is possibly some slight importance here.
I might usefully perhaps speak without the attention of the sponsor of the Bill, but I can hardly usefully complete the very few words which I got up to say if he occupies the attention of the Home Secretary. What I was trying to ask the Home Secretary—and I must now repeat it—is whether the words as drafted on the Paper mean that the consultation with the Lord Chief Justice and the trial judge is to be consultation of the two together or whether they mean that at some time, whether together or separately, if it is physically possible he has to consult each of them or both of them.

§ Sir F. Soskice
I would answer the last question by saying that I would construe the word "together" as being simply "as well as". That is the meaning which I would put upon it.
I turn to the question asked by the former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson). I do not think that I can lay down in advance any precise method of approach. If one considers a Lord Chief Justice who cannot remember who John Bloggs was, to take the right hon. and learned Gentleman's example, who does not remember him or the circumstances of the conviction or anything about it, he would probably ask for some information about it. I imagine that that is what would happen, but one cannot conduct these consultations on such a very formal and precise basis. Naturally the Lord Chief Justice would wish to put himself in a position to give sensible advice.
I do not think that I have ever had a conversation with the present Lord Chief Justice without finding it useful and helpful to me. I have no doubt that that would be the kind of general procedure followed in the future. If he wanted to see documents, presumably he would ask for them, and I have not the slightest doubt that they would be furnished to him. Consultation must be useful consultation and not merely consultation in an empty form. I do not think that the 398 difficulty will arise which the right hon. and learned Gentleman envisaged.