Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Blower and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, our first aim with Amendment 223A, to which I have added my name, is to ensure that secure academies may be run by local authorities. The present position is that, under the Academies Act, the local authority may not maintain a school that becomes an academy. The result is, as my noble friend Lord German said, to prevent local authorities running secure academies, apparently in the interests of consistency between secure academies and other academies.

Our amendment would enable a local authority to play its part. However, it is entirely non-prescriptive and does not require secure academies to be run by local authorities. It simply permits them to be so. We believe that local authorities have a very important part to play in the running of secure academies, with the very best prospect of success in educating, training and rehabilitating young offenders.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, mentioned Charlie Taylor. He has always taken and expressed the view that education for young offenders is at the heart of youth justice, and at the heart of reform and rehabilitation. We have considered in Committee the role of local authorities in youth justice at a number of levels and in a number of spheres. Education is, of course, at the forefront, but we should also not underestimate the importance of the local authority role in housing and social services. Both departments have a great deal to do with the criminality of young people. There can, we suggest, be no justification at all for ruling out local authority involvement in these secure academies.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, that generally we should be keen to avoid dogma and that what we are doing should be about outcomes. Nevertheless, the second purpose of our amendment is to ensure that secure academies are run on an entirely altruistic basis by not-for-profit organisations. The purpose of this part of the amendment is to ensure that secure academies must be run not for profit but for the good of those who attend them as students.

We have all seen the difficulties that befell the probation service under the Grayling changes, which have since been abandoned. Then the larger part of the probation service was shunted off to community rehabilitation companies, and that led to a decline in voluntary sector involvement, which is particularly important in this area. A failure of collaboration with local authorities and an excessive and single-minded pursuit of profit was to the detriment of the clients that the CRCs were established to help and look after.

I do not believe for a moment that that is in the Government’s mind, but it is a danger that may be inherent in the present proposals, and we suggest that the care of damaged young people who have been sent to secure academies by the courts should never be in the hands of organisations run for profit.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it takes a very particular kind of person to be a teacher, but it takes a much more particular kind of person to work in an institution with young people who are clearly already damaged when they arrive. The idea that the Government appear to be taking—a rather dogmatic view about how 16 to 19 provision should be run, in terms of there being only academies and only reflecting the way academies are seen in law in the schools sector—seems to be completely wrong.

It is obvious that the profit motive simply cannot function in this type of provision. Teachers, whether in secure accommodation or other places, are not as well paid as they should be, but the fact is that they are not motivated in general by the level of their salary. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason why we should think that anyone affording that provision should be motivated by profit.

My own experience of young people of this type is that I did, very many years ago, work in a non-custodial, non-residential setting for young people who were at risk of care or custody. I have to say that they were all at risk of custody. But the fact that I worked in a local authority provision, where we were able to work very closely with the youth offending team, our local social services and our probation service, and all of our play therapists and other types of therapists, meant that, in general, it was a very successful provision.

I have, like the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, had the opportunity through my union experience to visit teachers working in a whole range of institutions—some of which, I am sorry to say, no longer function. This type of provision, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said, should be at the irreducible core of what the state does and affords for some of our most vulnerable young people. For that reason, I am very happy to support the amendments.