Nick de Bois – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nick de Bois on 2014-05-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will invite the Sentencing Council to consult and report on the adequacy of current sentences available for killing with one punch.

Jeremy Wright

Manslaughter has a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Whilst sentence lengths for manslaughter have increased by almost 50% since 2008 there remains clear public concern about the sentences imposed in so called “one punch” manslaughter cases.

Clarification of the sentencing of these difficult cases would assist the courts and be helpful to the public. The Secretary of State therefore wrote to Lord Justice Treacy, the Chair of the Sentencing Council on 8 May 2014, to make a formal request that the Council gives consideration to producing guidance on the sentencing of these cases.