CRIMINALMandatory life sentence - Home Secretary fixing tariff - right to fair trial not breachedR (Anderson) v Secretary of State for the Home Department; R (Taylor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department: CA (Lord Woolf Chief Justice, Lords Justice Simon Brown and Buxton): 13 November 2001Two prisoners serving mandatory life sentences for murder sought judicial review by way of declarations that the Home Secretary, in setting the tariff period necessary for retribution and deterrence before which they could be considered for release on licence, had acted incompatibly with their rights to a fair trial under article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, as scheduled to the Human Rights Act 1998.

The Queen's Bench Divisional Court [2001] Gazette, 20 April, 35 dismissed the applications.

The applicants appealed.Edward Fitzgerald QC and Phillippa Kaufmann (instructed by Irwin Mitchell, Sheffield) for the first prisoner.

Edward Fitzgerald QC and Sally Hatfield (instructed by Peter Ievins, Peterborough) for the second prisoner.

David Pannick QC and Mark Shaw (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the Home Secretary.Held, dismissing the appeals, that notwithstanding that the tariff-fixing exercise in the case of a mandatory life prisoner was either a sentencing exercise or so closely analogous to a sentencing exercise that any difference was of no significance, Parliament had deliberately chosen not to interfere with the Home Secretary's discretion as to the length of the tariff in the case of mandatory life sentence prisoners, even though it had done so in the case of other life sentences; that the European Court of Human Rights also considered that there was a material difference between a mandatory and a discretionary life sentence; and that, accordingly, until developments in the jurisprudence of the Court of Human Rights required a different decision, the court should not interfere with the clearly expressed views of Parliament, which were consistent with the approach adopted by the Court of Human Rights (WLR).