New guidelines aim to combat discrimination in sentencing but both Conservative and Labour justice ministers have criticised them

Good morning. Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has been accused by a Labour peer and prominent KC of “Trumpism”. Perhaps that is not surprising, but in an interview on the Today programme this morning Helena Kennedy admitted that the accusation also applied, more or less, to her Labour colleague, the justice secretary Shabana Mahmood. This is the latest development in a row that started when the Sentencing Council published new guidelines, taking effect from April. These say that, for certain types of offenders, a pre-sentence report will normally be considered necessary for offenders in certain categories.

In the Commons yesterday, during a statement about court sitting days, Jenrick asked about the new guidelines. Because reading a pre-sentence report often leads to a judge giving a reduced sentence (because it might explain mitigating factors in considerable detail), Jenrick said:

Why is the justice secretary enshrining this double standard—this two-tier approach to sentencing? It is an inversion of the rule of law. Conservative members believe in equality under the law; why does she not?

As somebody from an ethnic minority background, I do not stand for any differential treatment before the law for anyone. There will never be a two-tier sentencing approach under my watch or under this Labour government.

The Sentencing Council is entirely independent. These guidelines do not represent my views or the views of this government.

What worries me about these sentencing guidelines [is] … they say that you are less likely to get a custodial sentence because your case would be handled through a pre-sentencing report commissioned by a judge, if you’re a woman, if you’re trans, if you’re neurodiverse, if you’re an ethnic minority, if you’re from a minority faith group, which presumably means anyone who isn’t Christian.

Essentially Christian and straight white men, amongst other groups, will be treated differently to the rest of society.

The real issue is, the system at the moment, all the evidence shows that it’s disproportionately doing unfairness to certain sections of our society.

Women are certainly in that category. Young people from ethnic minorities are in that category. And so a court knowing more about them is a good thing.

This is about wokeness. They want to say this is about being woke. It’s not. It’s about basing the system on real evidence of where there are failures, and knowing more helps to get better outcomes.