the times | Thursday November 11 2021 69
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Is the state properly financing the
criminal justice system? For details and
a chance to win £10,000 of prizes, visit
thetimes.co.ukLord Justice Holroyde could be forgiv-
en if he were fed up with the routine
complaint about sentencing that is
heard from the public and the media:
that life should mean life.
The Court of Appeal judge, who
when at the Bar prosecuted the man-
slaughter case in 2004 relating to the
deaths of 23 Chinese cockle pickers at
Morecambe Bay, has been the chair-
man of the Sentencing Council for the
past three years.
The independent body that advises
on consistency of approach in senten-
cing in England and Wales celebrated
its tenth anniversary in the teeth of the
coronavirus pandemic in April 2020.
More than a year later Holroyde has
announced a strategy document for
consultation setting out the council’s
aims for its next decade.
One of its five core objectives is to
improve public awareness of how crim-
inal sentences are arrived at and what
their purpose is. It might well be the
most difficult of Holroyde’s list of aims.
“There is a gap of understanding,” the
judge tells The Times bluntly in relation
to public awareness, adding that the
council does “our best to fill that gap”.
Holroyde says that much of the prob-
lem — “for perfectly understandable
and proper reasons” — is journalistic
reporting. “The media focuses on what
they want to focus on and they don’t
always have the time or space to focus
on all the factors that go into the
sentencing decision.”
That results in the majority of the
public gaining knowledge of a case only
through relatively short reports in
newspapers or broadcast media. And
the rise of social media means that they
might not even rely on them.
The obvious example of how
misunderstanding arises, Holroyde
says, is in the passing of life sentences.
Judges, he says, “will invariably go out
of their way to say what the minimum
term is and to explain that it is a life
sentence. But one doesn’t always see
that explanation reported.”
That is why objective five of Hol-
royde’s list is “to strengthen confidence
in sentencing by improving public
knowledge and understanding... in-
cluding among victims, witnesses and
offenders, as well as the general public”.
The council works with various
school schemes, including Young Citi-
zens, an education charity, in an effort
to improve students’ knowledge of the
criminal justice system. “We want to see
what more we can do,” Holroyde says,
noting that council members do not
visit schools at present.
However, he says, “we are continuing
to look for more ways to reach young
people, for example through the Youth
Justice Board, Magistrates in the Com-munity and the Judiciary in Schools, as
outlined in our five-year strategy”.
More widely, Holroyde, who in July
was granted a second three-year stint
as council head, wants to promote
transparency as well as consistency in
sentencing. “We want people to under-
stand why the sentence was imposed,
even if they don’t agree with it,” he says.
“But judicial independence and senten-
cing discretion has to be preserved.
And the weight of particular factors in
specific cases always varies.”
Holroyde was called to the Bar at
Middle Temple in 1977 and notes that
the entire approach to sentencing has
evolved significantly since then. “What
has happened during the course of my
working life is that we’ve moved away
from the situation that existed when I
started, when in the same building you
would have notoriously severe Judge X
as well as notoriously lenient Judge Y,
and sentences would vary considerablyShazia Khan, a founding partner at
Cole Khan Solicitors, acted for the
black croupier Semhar Tesfagiorgis
at the Central London Employment
Tribunal. The panel found that
Crown London Aspinalls, an
exclusive Mayfair casino, had
directly racially discriminated
against her because it stopped her
dealing to a gambler who requested
not to have black dealers at the table.What were the biggest hurdles you
had to overcome in this case?
Taking on the multimillion-pound
casino industry and supporting my
client through the rollercoaster of
litigation. This has been a victory of
seismic proportions because race
claims are the hardest type of
discrimination claim to win.What is the best decision you have
taken as a lawyer? To specialise in
employment, equality and
professional discipline —
fighting unlawful
discrimination and
protecting those
whose liberty to
practise their
profession is under
threat is a real
privilege.Who do you most
admire in the law?
Baroness Helena
Kennedy QC for her work
championing civil liberties and
human rights, especially her
#EvacuateHer campaign to provide
sanctuary for Afghan judges.What is the best advice you have
received? Louise Christian, my
training partner, taught me to
keep pushing boundaries,
to never give up, and
to find a solution
no matter what.What is the
funniest thing
that has happened
in your job? While
staying in Bristol, I
mistakenly knocked
on our opponent QC’s
hotel door asking to
borrow a hairdryer. He
looked mortified to see me.What are the best and worst
elements of being a lawyer? Thebest is partaking in the evolution
of the law to vindicate my clients
and seek redress. The worst is
dealing with opponents who
take on the persona of their
oppressive clients.What law would you enact?
Section 14 of the Equality Act 2010
to allow claims for intersectional
discrimination (for multiple reasons)
— this provision was never enacted.
Also Section 40 on third-party
harassment, which was repealed in- Semhar’s case illustrates why.
What is your favourite pop song?
Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run.Lawyer of the week Shazia Khan
Linda Tsang
[email protected]keep pus
to nev
to fi
noW
fu
th
in
sta
mis
on o
hhhotel d
bbbborrow a
lllooked mortify
e —work
erties and
ally herQueen’s
Counsel
Alex Steuart
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILLexclusive to members
Action plan We need more
than just talk on climate
Public interest v privacy
The family courts’ dilemma
Duff draft Termination of
Tenancies Bill needs rethink
thetimes.co.ukEducate the public on sentences
Lord Justice Holroyde wants to promote consistency in judicial approachdepending on which court the case was
heard in. I don’t believe that happens to
any significant degree now.”
In common with almost all sitting
judges — especially of his seniority —
Holroyde is cautious and measured in
his comments around controversial
issues. Most of his views fall back on the
bedrock of the existing guidelines.
For example, on the issues of whe-
ther expectant or new mothers should
be jailed, Holroyde points out that one
of the guidelines’ standard mitigating
factors is whether the offender has
caring responsibilities. “It is something
we have considered in the past and we
are going to look further into the way
that mitigating factor and the expand-
ed explanation is working and whether
we need to do more,” he says.
He adds that technology has helped
with sentencing, noting that “one of the
great advantages is that we can build in
drop-down menus. For example, a
standard mitigating factor is age and/or
immaturity. To find out more about
that you simply click on it for an
expanded explanation.”
Likewise, on the issue of whether
short jail sentences do more harm than
good, Holroyde points out that “in
some cases shorter sentences can be
the product of what started as a longer
sentence, but that has been reduced as
much as possible to reflect powerful
mitigation”.
As to the perennial wider question of
whether prison works, considering that
jail numbers and recidivism are high,
Holroyde parries by saying that “effec-
tiveness is not easy to define”.
He adds that “it is difficult simply to
say that if you reoffend afterwards the
sentence hasn’t been effective. You
might say that it hasn’t been effective in
preventing reoffending, but it may have
been effective in punishing appropri-
ately the seriousness of the offence.”Jonathan Ames
OUT OF COURT
The cases, the chatter, the chaos:
what’s really going on in the lawBlack judge
honoured
In 2004 Dame Linda Dobbs was
the first black lawyer to become a
High Court judge. The 70-year-
old, who retired from the bench in
2013, last week accepted a lifetime
achievement award at the annual
“inspirational women in law”
ceremony. She said her confidence
had been “robbed” when, having
become the first black lawyer to
join 5 King’s Bench Walk, the
chambers of Sir Michael Havers,
then the attorney-general, an
“outspoken black member of the
Bar... said that I was a token and
a coconut, taken on to make the
establishment set look good”.
In a previous interview with
London Southbank University,
Dobbs revealed that this lawyer
was Rudy Narayan, a Guyanese-
born black British barrister and
activist, who launched the Afro-
Asian and Caribbean Lawyers
Association in 1969, later renamed
the Society of Black Lawyers.Dead men rule
Carmelite Chambers has become
the latest barristers’ set to rebrand,
changing its name to Mountford.
The specialist criminal,
regulatory and public law set tells
The Times that it toyed with
several names, but rejected calling
itself after its former head, Dick
Ferguson, the first female
president of the Supreme Court,
Baroness Hale, or Nemone
Lethbridge, the barrister who
represented the Kray twins.
Instead the London set plumped
for the 19th-century architect who
designed the Old Bailey — Edward
William Mountford — because the
Bar does not have enough things
named after dead men.Rise in modern slavery
Only a third of British companies
have publicly stated the steps they
are taking to prevent the use of
modern slaves in their businesses
and supply chains, law firm
researchers have revealed.
Using open data sources,
analysts at Bolt Burdon Kemp
found that there had been about
a 175 per cent increase in referrals
of reported victims of modern
slavery in England over the past
four years to 2020.Judicial inflation
Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the
Rolls, the second most senior
judge in England and Wales,
dished out some interesting
historical data as he gave the Tom
Sargant Lecture, which was hosted
by the think tank Justice.
Vos pointed out that in 1973
there were 18 Court of Appeal
judges, as opposed to 39 who now
sit on that bench. The number of
High Court judges has risen from
70 to 105, and the circuit bench
has ballooned from 240 to 660.