In his statement, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the government will “make sure that life means life” by requiring judges to hand down mandatory whole-life orders, except in the rarest of instances, and will have more confidence to do so without concerns about being challenged in the Courts of Appeal. For the first time, entire life sentences will also be the standard punishment for any killings motivated by sexuality. This comes amidst the recent high-publicized murders of young women Zara Aleena and Sabina Nessa, with the Prime Minister saying in January that “immediate steps are being taken to address the serious issues” raised in the Chief Inspector of the Probation Service’s Reviews into Serious Further Offences published in January this year.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said:

I have shared the public’s horror at the cruelty of crimes we have seen recently. People rightly expect that in the most serious cases, there should be a guarantee that life will mean life. They expect honesty in sentencing. By bringing in mandatory whole life orders for the heinous criminals who commit the most horrific types of murder, we will make sure they never walk free.

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Alex Chalk KC, said:, “A whole life order will now be the expectation for murderers where the killing involves sexual or sadistic conduct. This important law change will ensure that the worst of the worst can now expect to spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

However, barristers have been eager to point out on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that “Judges can already give whole life terms for the worst offenders” under Schedule 21 of the Sentencing Act 2020, which sets out the framework for judges to make a determination of minimum term in relation to mandatory life sentence for murder.

This is the most recent public safety effort from the UK government and comes as the government has announced other draft measures, including an independent inquiry into the handling of wrongful imprisonment, plans to compel offenders to attend sentencing hearings and two year investments to tackle criminal case backlogs.