Mandatory Life Terms Mislead Public, Says Lord Chief Justice

The lord chief justice yesterday voiced his opposition to mandatory life sentences for murder, saying they “misled the public”. Lord Phillips put on record for the first time his disagreement with the government over the life sentence, which ministers insist must be retained to reflect the unique gravity of murder.

“Asking the question: ‘Are mandatory sentences a good idea?’, the answer is in relation to current law, I don’t think they are. I think they mislead the public,” Lord Phillips said. The public would be told that a man who put a pillow over the face of his sick wife in a mercy killing had been given a life sentence, but the reality was that he would serve only a very short time in prison, he added.

Lord Phillips made his comments at his first press briefing since succeeding Lord Woolf in the top judicial job. In a lecture two weeks ago he said ministers’ insistence on retaining the mandatory life sentence meant the Law Commission had to carry out its review of the law on murder “with one hand tied behind its back”. But he acknowledged then that the mandatory sentence was “a political hot potato” and refrained from stating his own opposition to it.

Yesterday he also backed magistrates in attacking the trend for police to give on-the-spot fines or conditional cautions instead of bringing offenders before the courts.

He said police were resorting to more “diversion” in the face of delays in getting cases to magistrates courts. But it could not provide a penalty which tackled reoffending. “There is concern that the diversion might extend beyond its proper bounds. I think our concern is about the slippery slope.” Crimes such as assault should not be dealt with by fixed penalty notices because they needed to be looked at “in the round” by a judge or magistrate.

Lord Phillips reiterated remarks two weeks ago when he warned that jails would be full of “geriatric lifers” in future because of guidelines on minimum terms in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. These were set by parliament when judges took over from Home Office ministers the task of setting mandatory lifers’ “tariffs” – the minimum term they must serve. These were resulting in terms that were twice as long as when the Home Office fixed the tariffs, he said. But he was not suggesting dangerous prisoners should be released.

He told judges in a lecture last night that he was “questioning whether paying £40,000 a year to detain in prison old men who have served most of their lives there and who no longer pose a danger to the public is the best way of using limited resources”.

As a high court judge, Lord Phillips presided over the trial in which Kevin and Ian Maxwell, sons of the disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell, were acquitted of fraud. Yesterday he backed the government’s bill allowing complex fraud trials to be heard by a judge without a jury.