Robert Jenrick says the justice secretary's decision to override independent guidance on how ethnic minorities should be sentenced is "unfair" and "discriminatory". The shadow justice secretary adds, "she has failed totally in her duty to uphold the rule of law". He adds "two-tier sentencing" is "biased" against men, white people and Christians. Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00In just a matter of hours, two-tier sentencing guidelines that are biased against men, against
00:05white people, against Christians, are going to come into force in our country.
00:10And the justice secretary has failed to resolve this challenge.
00:14We have been urging her for weeks to bring forward legislation to override the Sentencing
00:20Council's guidelines.
00:21We produced our own bill and asked her to support it.
00:24She rejected that.
00:26And so, as of tomorrow morning, people's cases are going to be being heard in this way.
00:32And this is going to be unfair, discriminatory, and it's going to cost the taxpayer millions
00:37of pounds for the privilege.
00:39The justice secretary has failed.
00:41In fact, she's been humiliated by the Sentencing Council.
00:44And whatever she does now is going to be too little, too late.
00:47Well, I think she's failed.
00:49I think that she has failed totally in her duty to uphold the rule of law, because the
00:54rule of law, at its essence, is about equality before the law.
00:57She didn't even know about these sentencing guidelines until we raised them with her.
01:01She didn't take up our bill.
01:03She said that she would bring forward emergency legislation.
01:06She hasn't.
01:07And now, from tomorrow morning, Tuesday, these new guidelines have come into force.
01:13And as of now, Parliament has not even seen legislation.
01:17So we're going to be living tomorrow under two-tier justice brought forward by this two-tier
01:23Labour government.