A peer who sexually assaulted a boy and attempted to rape a young girl when he was a teenager has had his jail term cut by judges at the court of appeal. The former Labour politician Nazir Ahmed was convicted in January 2022 of three sex crimes, which happened in the 1970s in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. After a trial at Sheffield crown court, a judge handed Lord Ahmed, now 65, a jail term of five and a half years. Three appeal court judges have now cut that term to two and a half years after concluding that the trial judge, Mr Justice Lavender, “fell into error” when passing sentence. The lord chief justice, Lord Burnett; Lord Justice Holroyde, and Lord Justice Davis announced their decision on Friday after considering arguments from an appeal hearing in London in January. Ahmed had been found guilty of two counts of attempted rape and one of buggery. A woman had told jurors that Ahmed attempted to rape her in the early 1970s, when he was about 16 or 17 and she was much younger. Ahmed was also found guilty of a serious sexual assault against a boy under 11, also in the early 1970s. Mr Justice Lavender had given Ahmed a three and a half year term for the offence of buggery, and two terms of two years for each of the attempted rapes. He said the attempted rape sentences would run concurrent to each other but be added to the buggery sentence, making a total of five and a half years. Ahmed had challenged the sentencing decision and the appeal judges cut the three and a half year term to just six months, but said both two-year terms would remain – making a total of two and a half years. They said the fact that Ahmed was a child when he committed the offences had to be taken into account. If he had been sentenced shortly after committing the buggery offence, he would have been 14, with no previous convictions. They concluded that “a custodial sentence of six months would probably have been regarded as a suitable penalty”. But they took a different view in relation to the attempted rape sentences, saying the offences were carried out by a teenager “against a very young victim”. They made no criticism of Mr Justice Lavender’s reasoning in relation to the sentences imposed for the attempted rapes. The appeal judges said they had considered legal issues relating to the “correct approach” to sentencing an adult for an offence committed when they were a child.