"Just abolish it"
CAPX: 3rd April 2025: Dr Jake Scott argues there is a simple way to deal with quangos such as the Sentencing Council...
"Robert Jenrick has won an impressive victory by challenging the legality of the recommendations, resulting in the Sentencing Council delaying the introduction of the new guidelines... Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has pushed for a reconsideration, and the Government has announced plans to introduce legislation to ‘override’ the recommendations... Of course, there is a much simpler answer: abolish the Sentencing Council...
...Created in 2010, shortly before the general election of that year, the Sentencing Council is a non-departmental body that recommends the guidelines for judges when sentencing convicted criminals...
The predecessor body to that body, the Sentencing Advisory Panel... was a weaker institution, as its recommendations were submitted to the Court of Appeal for consideration. Gradually, throughout the Blair years, we have seen the creation and subsequent empowerment of a body that has superseded the state’s own capacity to determine how criminals are sentenced...
When this is considered alongside the Constitutional Reform Act (2005), which modified the position of Lord Chancellor by removing the office’s ability to set the maximum sentence, the democratic control of the public over how criminals are punished has eroded, and with it, the principle of legal equality in Britain...
This means the Sentencing Council as a body is a product entirely of legislation, and could be just as easily repealed, rather than adjusted or tinkered with through new legislation..."