Conservatives accused of ‘peddling fake law’ with pledge to jail child killers for life
Legal experts accuse Tories of creating ‘nonsense’ policies after years of cuts to criminal justice system
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Your support makes all the difference.A Conservative election pledge – to jail child killers for life – has been dismissed as “fake law” amid calls for all parties to tackle a worsening crisis in the justice system.
Days after the number of people punished for crimes in England and Wales hit a new record low, the Tories unveiled a commitment to jail adults who murder children for life, without parole.
Robert Buckland, the justice secretary and lord chancellor, said: “Under a Conservative majority government, the law will be rewritten to be absolutely clear: any murderer who denies a young, innocent child the right to life surrenders their own right to liberty. They do so permanently, and they do so without exception.”
Anonymous campaigner and blogger the Secret Barrister accused Mr Buckland of “peddling fake law”, adding: “A lord chancellor with respect for the rule of law and integrity of the justice system would be on the airwaves correcting this nonsense”.
Responding to a Conservative Party tweet claiming it would “make sure life means life for child killers”, the anonymous junior barrister called the claim “a lie”.
“It won’t apply to all (or even most) ‘child killers’ – only adults who commit murder,” the Secret Barrister added. “The law already provides for whole life tariffs for adults who murder children. The number of cases this will apply to is virtually nil. It is a distraction. It is a lie.”
A more detailed summary of the Tories’ proposal said only adults aged 21 and over – who commit the “premeditated” murder of under-16s – would be subject to whole life orders.
The Conservatives said they would make the change by amending the Criminal Justice Act 2003, but then misinterpreted the law.
A press release claimed it was currently “too restrictive” and only made whole life terms the starting point for judges in cases if a murder was of multiple children, or involved sexual or sadistic conduct.
But the law only says that the offence must be of an “exceptionally high seriousness” to meet the threshold, and gives those factors in a non-exhaustive list of examples.
The Conservatives admitted that even if the law were changed, the “sentencing decision in any given case would continue to rest with the judge” and the “policy will be subject to the usual judicial discretion” – meaning the term could be lowered for mitigating circumstances.
Ellie Cumbo, the Law Society’s head of public law, said “premeditation” was not clearly defined in law and many child murders may not reach the bar.
She told The Independent that judges already take pre-planning into account, and that only a “small number” of cases would be affected.
“The whole life order already exists in law, and is imposed exactly where you would expect – in cases of this extremely rare and serious type,” Ms Cumbo added.
Other legal experts questioned how premeditation would be defined, and whether judges or juries would decide on the issue.
Barrister and author Andrew Keogh said the proposals would “impact very few cases”.
“Will a single offender actually serve a single day longer in prison as a result?” he said. “I await the impact assessment when or if the legislation is published, but I strongly suspect it will not. Sounds tough, but probably of no real effect at all.”
Experts also voiced doubt over a separate Conservative election pledge to get anyone illegally carrying a knife “charged within 24 hours and in court within a week – three times faster than the current average”.
Boris Johnson said: “We are speeding up prosecutions to make sure the threat of being caught is always an effective deterrent.”
But the Conservatives gave no indication of how the process would be “sped up”, amid staff shortages in the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and a backlog of criminal cases waiting to be heard.
Half the the magistrates’ courts in England and Wales have been closed as part of austerity measures since 2010, and the number of sitting days has also been reduced to cut costs.
“There’s not only a question there about how the courts would accommodate that, but about how the CPS would make a charging decision in 24 hours,” Ms Cumbo said.
She pointed out that the courts themselves are responsible for deciding when cases are heard, and are working with “very limited resources”.
“Listing is a mess because the courts are completely overburdened with cases, so it’s difficult to see how another fixed requirement will be accommodated when they’re already groaning under the weight of cases,” the lawyer said.
“There’s a question about how you can accomplish a pledge like that without increasing resources to the CPS and courts.”
The Law Society is among organisations campaigning for the government to increase funding across the criminal justice system, as prosecutions plummet.
Statistics released by the Ministry of Justice last week showed the number of people punished for crimes in England and Wales hit a new record low in the year to June, while recorded crime rose by 6 per cent.
The rate of people jailed has fallen to 6.5 per cent, and the number given immediate prison sentences is at its lowest in a decade.
Separate statistics show that prosecutions are dropping for every type of crime, down to just 7.4 per cent of all recorded offences – a fall of 41,700 in a year.
The number of criminal trials being held in England and Wales has plummeted to a record low, falling by 67,000 in the past 10 years.
Legal organisations have largely blamed the change on severe cuts made by the Conservative Party to the Ministry of Justice and police budgets, causing fewer cases to be solved or brought to court.
While Mr Johnson has made a promise to hire 20,000 new police officers in three years a key pledge, the Public Accounts Committee said the system may not be able to cope with the consequences of a rise in demand.