Crime victims 'betrayed' with unduly lenient sentences for offenders, say Labour

Latest government figures have shown that 10.8 per cent of eligible cases from Sheffield submitted to the ‘unduly lenient sentence scheme’ were referred to the Court of Appeal over the past three years, compared to the national average of 20.2 per cent in that time frame.

Labour’s Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry, has said Sheffield’s figures represent a “shameful betrayal of dozens of individual victims and their families, who already felt let down by the courts, and will now rightly feel let down by government ministers themselves”.

Since 1989, the scheme has allowed victims of crime, their families, and other concerned members of the public to submit cases to the Attorney General if they believed the original sentences were too lenient. The Attorney General then has the power to refer those cases to the Court of Appeal.

Nationally, from the start of 2020 to the end of 2022, a total of 2,886 sentences in England and Wales were submitted to the Attorney General. Of these, 1,912 were considered eligible for consideration under the scheme, and 386 (20.2 per cent) were referred to the Appeal Court for review.

In the same time frame in Sheffield, a total of 80 sentences passed at Sheffield Crown Court were submitted to the scheme. Of these, 65 were considered eligible, but the Attorney General chose to refer only seven (10.8 per cent) to the Court of Appeal.

From 2020-22, decisions under the scheme were taken by Sualla Braverman, now the Home Secretary. In that time, the referral rate for sentences handed down at Portsmouth Crown Court, the closest criminal court to her own constituency of Fareham, was 36 per cent. The combined referral rate for the next closest crown courts, Winchester and Southampton, was 34.6 per cent.

Among the sentences from Sheffield that Braverman chose to uphold from 2020-22 included Reece Grenall, who was jailed for 12 years in July 2022 for seven counts of sexual activity with a child and one of rape, and Solomon Sanyas, who was jailed for 10 years in May 2022 for rape, witness intimidation and assault.

Ms Thornberry said: “For so many victims or their families, this scheme offers the last hope of justice, and for the people of Sheffield as a whole, it is a chance to demand tougher sentencing for the crimes that plague their streets. That is why more cases are being submitted to the scheme every year.

“But instead of responding to that public concern, and the anguish of victims and their families, the government has rejected almost 91 per cent of those cases in the last three years, leaving Sheffield way behind the national average when it comes to the number of cases accepted.”

She added: “It just shows that the Tories are missing in action in the fight against crime, letting criminals off, and letting victims down. That will all change under Labour. We are the party of law and order, and the next Labour government will prevent crime, punish criminals and protect every community.”

A spokesperson from the Attorney General’s Office said: “Every eligible sentence referred to the Attorney General’s Office under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme is considered very carefully. The bar for a referral to the Court of Appeal is extremely high, and permission to refer a sentence will only be granted in exceptional circumstances.”

A spokesperson from Westminster said: “The ULS scheme is a serious legal process to address errors made in sentencing, not a political game for point-tallying. It just shows how far away Labour are from forming a serious government that is ready to make the tough decisions.”