Consultation responses to terrorism sentencing guidelines must be fully considered - MPs

The Justice Committee supports the Sentencing Council’s broad approach to preparing its draft guideline on terrorism. However, MPs urge the Council to give full and careful consideration to the responses received to its consultation even though it wants to finalise the guideline as soon as possible.

As a statutory consultee on draft Sentencing Council guidelines, the Committee submitted its own observations in the form of a letter to the Chairman of the Council, which is published in today’s report.

The Committee’s key observations include:

• That while most sentencing guidelines include “age and/or lack of maturity” (where it affects the responsibility of the offender) as a potential mitigating factor, it has not been included as factor for terrorism offences. The Committee recommends that this be included for all terrorism offences. 
• While the Council proposes sentencing ranges that are up to the statutory maximum for the offences of funding terrorism and failure to disclose information about acts of terrorism, for five other offences the proposed sentencing ranges are slightly below the statutory maximum, which allows the courts some flexibility to sentence above the range in exceptionally serious cases. The Committee believes that the latter approach is preferable and recommends that the Council reconsider the upper limit of the sentencing ranges for the two offences where the statutory maximum is currently proposed.
• The guidelines should explain the objectives of sentencing for terrorism offences within the context of the Government’s wider strategy on the prevention of terrorism, taking into account the impact of sentencing on the prison population.

Committee Chair, Bob Neill MP, said: 

“With recent terrorist attacks in mind, the Sentencing Council has accelerated the process of producing new guidelines to ensure that they are available as soon as possible. While I commend the urgency with which the Council has responded, it must not in any way compromise the full and careful consideration of the responses that it has received to its consultation, including our own. I hope that, in particular, the Council will consider our observations on sentencing ranges, mitigating factors and the impact of sentencing on prisons. Terrorism is a very serious offence and it is right that the guideline reflects public concerns and the grave threats that it poses to society.”

ENDS

BACKGROUND: Draft Sentencing Council Guideline on terrorism

On 12 October 2017, the Sentencing Council published for consultation a package of sentencing guidelines covering terrorism offences. Mindful of recent terrorist attacks, the Council felt it important to expedite the project so that the definitive guideline could be published as soon as possible; for this reason, the consultation period was reduced to six weeks from the normal period of three months. Alongside the draft guideline, the Council published a consultation stage Resource Assessment.

The offences covered by the draft guideline are as follows: 

• Preparation of terrorist acts (section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006)
• Explosive substances—causing an explosion likely to endanger life or property (section 2 of the Explosive Substances Act 1883), or attempting to do so, or making/keeping explosives with intent (section 3 of the 1883 Act)
• Encouragement of terrorism by making prohibited statements (section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006) or dissemination of statements (section 2 of the 2006 Act)
• Membership of a proscribed organisation (section 11 of the Terrorism Act 2000)
• Support for a proscribed organisation (section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000)
• Funding terrorism, by receiving, using, possessing or providing money or property for the purposes of terrorism (section 15 to 18 of the Terrorism Act 2000)
• Failure to provide information about acts of terrorism or about someone involved in acts of terrorism (section 38B of the Terrorism Act 2000)
• Possession of articles for terrorist purposes (section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000)
• Collection of terrorist information (section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000)

In publishing its consultation paper, the Sentencing Council aimed to seek the views of a wide range of respondents with an interest in the sentencing of terrorism offences; in all, 25 responses were received.  As it has done in relation to previous consultations, the Council shared these responses with the Committee, as well as producing a note summarising its proposals and respondents’ reaction to them; this note is reproduced as Appendix 3 of the report. Because of this assistance from the Council, the Committee considered that it was unnecessary for us to seek separate evidence on these proposals, either formally or informally.

The Justice Committee’s response to the consultation was submitted by way of a letter from the Chair to the Chair of the Sentencing Council, Lord Justice Treacy, dated 24 January 2018.  The Committee has published this short report to draw the attention of both the House and other interested parties to the draft terrorism guideline and to the Committee’s own response, in Appendix 1 of the report. Lord Justice Treacy replied to the Committee’s letter on 5 February 2018; his letter is at Appendix 2.