Youth Services

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Ashton of Hyde

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and perhaps I may focus on one thing that he mentioned. He described the importance of boxing to excluded young people. A care-experienced adult approached me a while ago. He had grown up in a very abusive children’s home. There are some excellent children’s homes but his was very abusive. When he was in his mid-20s he was approached by a police officer and was told that all the other residents there had died or were drug addicts or in prison, and he was the only one who had made his way through. The reason was that he had got involved with his local boxing club, where there were men who set him a good example. He had difficulties. He was in prison for a while and became a bouncer for a while, but later he learned how to read and write, and eventually he wrote the story of his life. He has been a successful author and a successful personal trainer, but it was boxing that really helped to change his life. Building on what works is such an important message.

I am grateful to the Minister for giving me the opportunity to speak to him before this debate. What he said was somewhat comforting and I look forward to hearing more along the same lines today. I am also most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for introducing this important and very timely debate.

The summary of the conclusion of the YMCA report given by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, contained a lot of what I would like to say. To my mind, it is very important thing to ensure that a strong youth work profession with great integrity is sustained over time. It is important that youth workers stay in their practice, gain experience over the years and pass on that experience to the next generation. We should have a very sound youth work culture in this country that informs policy—I see that as a very important way forward.

I would like to impress on the Minister the need to see youth work as a profession, in parallel with the teaching profession. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, would like to see an all-qualified youth work profession with a strong institutional base, and so would I. We heard about the National Youth Agency and another agency. I wonder how well they are funded and whether there needs to be an institution run by youth workers that sets guidelines for youth workers in general. How can the institutional base of youth work be strengthened, ensuring the quality of youth work? Whatever policy is developed in this area, I hope that there will be input and buy-in from all parties so that as far as possible we have a consistent policy from one Government to the next.

The current recruitment and retention crisis in the teaching profession, with no consistent policy for developing the teaching workforce, is a tragedy. It is important to develop a common policy and to stick with it. It is also important to recognise the difficulties of adolescence. Adolescence is a hugely challenging period for young people. They need guides and good exemplars to help them through that time. I urge the Minister to look at a statutory underpinning for youth services, as so many of your Lordships have said, to ensure that there is consistent funding, to get the basics right and to focus funding in particular on developing the youth workforce.

Why is there a need for youth workers? Perhaps before that, I will mention an article by the BBC questioning the value of youth work from a research base. Leon Feinstein, a well-respected academic, researched youth work a while ago and found that young people attending youth clubs were more likely to get involved in crime and other such activity than those who stayed at home—Margaret Hodge said that they would have been better staying at home—but in that particular example he said that the qualifications and the status of youth workers was unsound and doubtful. So it really hammers home that you have to have high-quality youth workers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, was going to mention that research. The point was that bad youth services were what did the damage, not good ones.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Absolutely—that is what I was trying to communicate. It was the poor youth work in those clubs that led to the poor outcomes. Several years before that research was produced, a research report on Summer Splash activity schemes found that crime rates around the local area where there were Summer Splash activities went down during the summer because those activities were going on. So it works if it is of high quality.

When I think about the need for adolescents to have this support, I think of Anna Freud’s work. Some time ago, she wrote her paper on Adolescence as a Developmental Disturbance—the clue is in the name. She described adolescence as a period of revolt, when teenagers are trying to break out and rebel against their parents, and their peers become much more important. They undergo many sexual changes, which makes them ripe for exploitation by others but also can cause them to exploit others sexually. They are finding their identity. If you think again about the needs of these young people, many of them are growing up without a father in the home—one in five children in this country is growing up without a father in the home. Visiting young offender institutions over many years now, so often I hear from prison officers that they are the first father figure in this young person’s life.

Visiting Rochester young offender institution a while ago, where there was a programme called Lions into Foxes, I found a 30 year-old BME man talking to a group of young BME lads about how to turn from lions into foxes—how to move from being impulsive and strong to becoming wily and thoughtful before acting. I visited a young offender institution recently where there had been a serious attack on one of the prison officers overnight. I visited one area of a prison and talked to two prison officers, who said that they had not had any serious incidents for the whole year. This was what was called a PIPE—a psychologically informed planned environment—where special attention is paid to the importance of relationships with the young people. Each young person has a key person relating to them, and with those relationships comes the ability to manage their behaviour, so that they do not act in destructive ways.

In conclusion, when we intervene late with young people, the costs can be huge. Last week I was talking to a provider of residential care for young people. A place in his children’s home, if you like, costs £250,000 a year—that is on the hard end, but they have many settings across the country—so if we do not get this right, the cost is huge. There is also, of course, human misery and human loss. So we need to get this right. Again, I emphasise those key issues to the Minister. I urge him to do what is necessary to make youth work an attractive profession; to ensure that there is a strong and well-funded institutional base for youth work; to try, if possible, to get buy-in from all parties in whatever strategy the Government are producing, so that there is consistency from one Government to the next; to look at the statutory underpinning for youth services; and to recognise that adolescence is a very difficult period, which was the point that Anna Freud was trying to make.

We ask far too much of teenagers, and we ask more and more of them as they deal with various things—social media and so on. We should provide them with guides and exemplars, men who they can see as good examples. As for me, if I want to think about how to behave towards women or about how to act towards work, I think back to what my father did and that gives me the guidance that I need. These young people need that kind of guide. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Youth Services

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Ashton of Hyde

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

When local authorities have to make difficult choices, who would noble Lords rather did that—the local authority or central government? We have provided additional money to enable local authorities to look at sustainable models. There are very good examples of local authorities which have grabbed the opportunity, looked anew at how to provide youth services and done it with local partners. I can give the example of Knowsley.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome what the Minister said about additional investment, but going beyond the local and thinking about national security—in terms of preventing the radicalisation of young people and the creation of gangs—does he not think it vital that we invest in youth services? These have been cut to ribbons in the recent cuts arising from the economic crash—they have been decimated. I welcome the money, but so much more work is needed. Will he and colleagues consider putting youth services on a statutory basis so that they are protected over time?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Earl may be aware that such services are on a statutory basis, and local authorities have a statutory duty to provide them. If we just take specific examples from recent years, Unison reported on the cuts to local youth services. For 2014-15, it reported that £85 million was cut. In the meantime, the Government spent £170 million on NCS, £10 million on the Uniformed Youth Social Action Fund, £300,000 on the British Youth Council, £500,000 on Delivering Differently and £270,000 on the Centre for Youth Impact. That is some £128 million against £85 million of cuts. My central point remains that difficult decisions should be made locally. It is not true that, for the reasons that the noble Earl expressed, the Government are doing nothing—let alone the National Citizen Service, which the coalition started in 2011 and which now has about 100,000 young people going through it.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Ashton of Hyde

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, I fully appreciate the laudable aims of this amendment, which seeks to make a positive change following the tragic cases of the three 17 year-olds who committed suicide following their encounters with the police. To lose a child is a tragedy, particularly in the sad circumstances surrounding the deaths of Joseph Lawton, Edward Thornber and Kesia Leatherbarrow. This Government have the utmost respect for the dedicated commitment of their families, who continue to campaign on this important issue.

The Government acted swiftly to ensure that they complied in full with the High Court decision in the judgment of Hughes Cousins-Chang. Changes were made as soon as possible following the statutory obligation to consult on PACE code changes. PACE codes C and H have been amended, and it is now mandatory that 17 year-olds have an appropriate adult with them at the police station and that the police inform a parent or guardian of their arrest and detention.

When this amendment was debated in the House on 23 July, noble Lords observed that the amendments to the PACE codes introduced inconsistencies between the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—the primary legislation—and the PACE codes with respect to the treatment of 17 year-olds. On the one hand, they are treated as children and bestowed with the appropriate safeguards. However, when it comes to the location of their detention overnight post-charge, and their pre-court appearance, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Howe, made the point that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act continues to treat 17 year-olds as adults. They acknowledged that, while 17 year-olds may look like adults and sometimes act like adults, they are still children who find the environment of the police station to be frightening and threatening.

There are, of course, already in place important safeguards for all children under 18 who come into contact with the police. Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 places the police under an obligation to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children when exercising their functions. This means that the police have to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of 17 year-olds detained post-charge overnight in the police station, and this is one way of ensuring that the best interests of those children can be upheld. Additionally, children under 18 have access to appropriate adults at the police station, who are with them throughout interviews and during procedures such as the taking of fingerprints and samples.

The Government are committed to ensuring that young people are protected and treated appropriately while in police custody. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, spoke passionately in Committee on this matter, so I hope he will be pleased that, shortly after the High Court’s decision in the case of Hughes Cousins-Chang, the Government launched a review of the remaining pieces of primary legislation that treat 17 year-olds as adults. We expect the review to report shortly. As he mentioned, the working group responsible for reviewing the legislation reported to the PACE strategy board earlier this month.

The Home Office review was wider-reaching than the amendment. If it is indeed right to amend the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 so that it treats 17 year-olds as children, then that principle should relate to all sections in the Act and not just the section that relates to overnight accommodation. Furthermore, any change to primary legislation needs full scrutiny, consultation and appropriate consideration by Parliament. This amendment is laudable in its aims but, in our opinion, represents a too-hurried and partial approach to the issue of how we treat young people at the age of 17 at the front end of the criminal justice system. There is more to be gained by pausing on this matter for the time being to enable the Home Office to consider the conclusions of its review. For these reasons, although I understand the reasoning behind the amendment, I respectfully ask the noble Earl to withdraw his amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his careful response and for his recognition of the great distress that these sad events have caused the families in question. I was very pleased to hear that his department has undertaken to review these matters so that they can be changed as soon as possible.

I wonder if it might just be possible for him to go back and speak to his department to see if something could be done by Third Reading in this area, but I understand from what he said that this is unlikely. I appreciate that the Government are doing all they can as fast as they can to remedy this. I encourage them to work as hard as they can on this because I am sure that they, as much as any of us, wish to avoid these tragic events befalling any more children and families in the future. I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.