Page 4090 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2005
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he did that. Sadly, the offenders would invariably reoffend and it fell out of practice, especially with His Honour, who was quite frustrated afterwards.
When you look at the sentences handed down by Mr Justice Gallop over the decades, they are probably an indication of good sentencing. It is a very difficult thing to do. Mr Justice Gallop certainly pioneered that and seemed to apply it very well. I do not know quite how well those bonds work, but the idea is a good one and we have no problem with a deferred sentencing order being codified. Obviously if the accused continues to offend or does something wrong during the period of deferment, the full force of the law should come down on them. But if it does work, then of course the court has a number of other options that may well be applicable.
In respect of victim impact statements, I am pleased to see that the penalty regime has come down. Previously an offence of assault occasioning bodily harm, or something more serious, had to carry five years or more. That has come down to one year for offences—that basically means any indictable offence—and summary assaults have a maximum of six months. Again, because they are violent offences, there are often victims who suffer grievously as a result. That is a positive step.
Turning to new clause 52, victims have been concerned about this for a while. I thank the Victims of Crime Assistance League and other people who were victims in respect of the development of the amendments in my bill. There was a fairly extensive consultation process in relation to that. One of the points they were very concerned about was the fact that, in the past, it was very hard because victims or their representatives were neither able to give oral evidence before the court nor to read out a victim impact statement. I see that that has now occurred in clause 52. That means that, when we come to the detail stage, I will not be proceeding with amendment No 20 because that is covered effectively there. We will wait and see how that works in practice, as to whether there is any further requirement.
It is also good to see that people close to the victim can now give a victim impact statement. Victims often do not want to do that because it brings back all the trauma. The secondary victims are often the family and loved ones. In many instances, other people would be better able to give a victim impact statement in evidence to the court. I am pleased to see that they will now have the ability to do so. I note that, as part of the consultation process, Victims Services were spoken to. I hope the Victims of Crime Assistance League were spoken to as well. That is not apparent from the Attorney’s speech. I certainly found them helpful in developing my draft legislation.
I now come to sentence administration, a bill we will be supporting. That modernises a range of existing laws and provides for the management of new sentencing options created by this particular bill. It sets out how to manage sentences, the consequences of failing to meet the obligations and how the administration of sentences applies. I have not had a great chance to go through all the amendments the attorney has made. We have only just had the supplementary explanatory statement dropped on the table, so I will listen with interest to what he says in relation to that. Some of them seem to be okay at first glance but it would have been handy to have had those earlier to allow people to look at them.
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