Youth Justice

Debate between Baroness Levitt and Lord Bailey of Paddington

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I think he and I are looking forward to speaking to each other about this tomorrow, as I shall be answering a Question on pretty much the same subject. I repeat that there is no intention to abolish the Youth Justice Board, but there is a policy, following a Cabinet Office review of arm’s-length bodies, not just the Youth Justice Board, of ensuring that matters that we believe should be retained within various Ministries and departments in order to ensure democratic accountability are returned there. That is the reason we have taken the view that we have. As the noble Lord rightly says, the review was commissioned. Our view was that we needed to go further than the recommendations that were made.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, we welcome the focus on reducing youth crime, but I would like to ask a question. The Minister detailed a 25% reduction in the number of children who are held on remand. Where did this figure come from? If that number is reduced arbitrarily, that pain will be absorbed by the community, because it will have a number of young people in its purview whom it would not have had beforehand who could be causing some problems there.

There was a comment about the propensity of Black children to be more vulnerable to being in the system. Excuse the roughness of the comment I am about to make, but unless as white liberals you are prepared to take on Black parents to do more—they need support and challenge in equal measure to do more to make our children less vulnerable to this system—you will achieve nothing. The things most facing Black children so they end up that way are lack of school achievement, lack of graduate jobs, the high number of single parents and all those things. That is what makes Black children more vulnerable to the youth justice system. Where is the work to improve those figures?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes two points, and I will do my best to answer them. As far as 25% fewer children on remand is concerned, that is not a number that we will take out on an arbitrary basis. It is a target. We are aiming to reduce by 25% the number of children who await trial in custody. The way we want to do that is by strengthening bail provisions, and there is a commitment of additional money so that we can look at things such as bail fostering arrangements to ensure that children do not go into custodial institutions, particularly for short periods, because we know what a terrible effect that can have on them, by breaking all the links I was talking about earlier with families and education.

As far as racial disparities and the disproportionate effect are concerned, it is a great anxiety to us that it remains the case that certain cohorts—normally Black and mixed-heritage children—are disproportionately represented in the justice system and in the custodial estate.

I absolutely take the point about involving parents; that is why we are exploring the question of parental orders and seeing whether we can expand them. This is not about criminalising parents but about making the point that these are children. Sometimes they look like adults, but they are children, with everything that is engaged in that. They need parents to help guide them. Certainly, I have experience of some parents in the youth court who would like to be more involved but the child in question rejects that. It may be helpful for them to be able to say to the child, “I am sorry, I am doing this because the courts told me I have to; there is a parental order in place”. We absolutely agree that these are all critical factors; that is why we are looking at diversion rather than simply locking children up all the time.