Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

My Lords, it gives me enormous pleasure to follow my hero, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who never speaks anything but words of the deepest wisdom.

Since we last debated the future of the Youth Justice Board, the folly of the Government’s plan to dismantle it seems ever more misjudged, unnecessary and worrying. It is misjudged because the work of the YJB is highly specialist, dealing as it does with the most damaged, difficult and needy children in our community, who must be managed by people with specific experience and expertise, as they have. Children are not—as I said in Committee—small adults and should definitely not be managed by civil servants from NOMS in the MoJ who just do not have the expertise and whose work is with adults, not children.

It is unnecessary because, as we heard so eloquently in Committee from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, the ministerial powers of oversight, responsibility and accountability, which has been an area of central concern to the Minister, Crispin Blunt, are already in place in statute, giving him the power to make changes, decisions and appointments and other wide-ranging powers of overall control.

It is worrying because the desire to abolish the YJB betrays a determined failure by the Government to appreciate just how important, effective and significant this work is with children and young people who offend or are at risk of offending. This work by the YJB over the past few years has resulted, as we have heard, and as the most recent figures show, in a further drop in reoffending by young people. It is an extraordinary achievement.

This failure is exacerbated by a wish to make a decision which is driven by administrative concerns, convenience and cost-cutting—the input side of the balance sheet—rather than recognising and valuing the outcomes now being seen by the YJB, whose work has truly taken off in the past few years and is now achieving real results in terms of properly embedding and co-ordinating the youth offending teams, reducing reoffending and offending through prevention and diversion schemes, joint publications of inquiries, the oversight of the setting of maintenance of standards of professional practice, and much more.

This Bill has rightly concerned itself with rationalising those public bodies which have developed over the years with bureaucracies growing, mopping up precious government resources and duplicating effort which could be absorbed in existing government departments. The tests against which an organisation is validated therefore are that it performs a specific, necessary public service, independently establishes facts and is politically impartial. The YJB's success against these tests is beyond doubt, just as its value is clear to the many bodies with which it works, several of which were quoted in Committee. I will add the words of the Children's Commissioner, who represents the voice of children in this country. She says:

“It is imperative that responsibility for the custodial component of the youth justice system is held by an agency that understands and appreciates the distinct and special needs of children and young people, particularly those who are vulnerable”.

It is because these tests are clearly being met and because of its track record of success and the considerable savings that are being made to the Exchequer through the success of diversion and prevention work, as well as because of the judgment of specialists in the field, that I believe that the YJB clearly should not be abolished.

Furthermore, the YJB itself is quite prepared to look at how to accommodate itself to the administrative thrust of government thinking. It is quite able to see a modus vivendi within the MoJ as an executive agency, with its specialist focus maintained, its separate identity from NOMS and its ability to work at arm’s length from government, just as NOMS and other organisations already do. It is a mystery to me why this option has been resisted so far by the ministry and why it appears that my dear noble friend the Minister and, particularly, his colleagues in the Commons are hell-bent on reinventing the wheel in the name of some perceived convenience. The idea that the work of the YJB could be taken over wholesale by Ministers and senior officials is totally unrealistic, particularly when it has taken the YJB years to reach its current levels of expertise. We have already heard from the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the marvellous Keppel unit at Wetherby YOI. It demonstrates the extent to which specialisms within the specialist provision of the children's estate are so necessary. It is probably saving lives in the process. I just hope and pray that we are not being served notice that other groups in the criminal justice system not currently at issue but seriously important, including women and the mentally ill, can expect no future special attention, and that the reports of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, on women and of the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, on mental health, whose recommendations have had wide support, are now to be shelved.

We should acknowledge around this House and in the country at large our overriding duty of care for the youngest in our society who need us most and should remember our responsibilities to our most vulnerable children by ensuring that their needs can continue to be met by the very organisation which has the knowledge and skills. To do otherwise would be a serious dereliction of our collective duty. I wholeheartedly support the amendment.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I start by tendering an apology to the Youth Justice Board and to your Lordships' House for a figure I gave in an earlier debate concerning the number of deaths of young offenders in custody. Those figures had improved substantially in recent years, but I was not aware of that fact. That improvement was in good part, of course, due to the efforts of the Youth Justice Board.

One might have thought that a Bill that deals with part of the justice system would rest upon a sound evidential base. Where is evidence to support the proposal contained in this Bill for the abolition of the Youth Justice Board? Such evidence as there is appears to point entirely the other way. As my noble friend Lord Warner and others have said, the reduction of about one-third in the number of young offenders in custody, in those who reoffend and in those who do not come before the courts at all because of policies of prevention and diversion, is testament to the successful approach of the board. That has been supported by a number of reports. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to the work of the Youth Justice Board in conjunction with local authority services, which was acknowledged as far back as 2004 when the Audit Commission reported.

Of course, the Audit Commission is also under sentence at the moment, although we have yet to see legislation about that. Even at that stage, the Audit Commission reported:

“The new structures work well. The YJB sets a clear national framework … and takes a lead role in monitoring progress”.

It also emphasised the role of the young offender teams. It stated that they,

“are critically placed between criminal justice, health and local government services to co-ordinate and deliver services to young offenders and the courts”.

A report commissioned by the previous Government concluded:

“Overall, the YJB earns its place as a crucial part of a system which aims to tackle one of the most serious social policy issues in this country”.

Most recently, there have been reports from the National Audit Office and, as my noble friend Lord Warner, mentioned, the Public Accounts Committee in terms of the recent statistics on the reduction of offending by young people. In a report published only three months ago, the National Audit Office declared:

“The Board … has been an effective leader of efforts to create and maintain a national youth justice system with a risk based approach, and in recent years key youth crime indicators have been falling substantially”.

The Public Accounts Committee report, which was published only six weeks ago, concluded:

“The youth justice system has been successful in reducing the number of criminal offences … an achievement in which the Youth Justice Board has played a central role”.

It continued:

“The planned abolition of the Youth Justice Board has arisen from a policy decision and not as a result of any assessment of the Board’s performance”.

The board has brought together a whole range of organisations and institutions working in youth justice. It has developed a substantial programme of secure estate commissioning. Indeed, it has been so successful that it decommissioned 900 places recently. Value for money is certainly very much part of its agenda. A range of other initiatives has been taken. Those initiatives range from the piloting of YOTs, as we have heard, to the delivery of the persistent young offenders’ pledge to halve the time from arrest to sentence, working with the parents of young offenders and much else besides.

Against that background, it is disconcerting that the Government still are unclear about how the functions of the board will be discharged in the future. In particular, there is widespread concern in your Lordships’ House and beyond about the potential transfer to the National Offender Management Service, which deals with adult offenders. NOMS, to put it mildly, has a chequered record. I would invite the Minister in his reply to assure the House that, if the amendment fails—I certainly hope that it will not—it would not be the Government’s intention to transfer the Youth Justice Board’s functions to the National Offender Management Service.

As my noble friend Lord Warner indicated, should the amendment fail, as a backstop, an agency would be a better solution. But given the pressures on the department, its ministerial members and the officials working within it, it is inconceivable that the Young Justice Board’s functions would be adequately discharged if they are simply transferred into the department. The independence, to a degree, that even an agency status would confer and, in particular, the separation of youth justice from adult justice and NOMS must be a precondition of any organisation of our services for young offenders.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of an advisory group to the Prison Reform Trust, which by sheer coincidence is meeting tomorrow to consider its response to the Green Paper, Breaking the Cycle. I join my noble friend Lord Warner in congratulating the Government—that is perhaps the first time I have done so since joining your Lordships’ House—on a refreshingly open approach to an issue on which I fear that my party did not excel in general when in government. That said, the Youth Justice Board was a commendable feature of that Government’s policy and I entirely endorse what all the speakers today have said about it.

The reality, though, is that this country has a fairly shameful record on youth justice, only partly alleviated by the very good work of the Youth Justice Board. It is true that, thanks in good part to the board, the number of children and young offenders now in custody has diminished over recent years, but it very much needed to. Over many years, we had, and I suspect that we still have, a significantly higher number of children and young people in custody than most other countries in the European Union—something like six times more than France and 100 times more than Finland, with a figure in the UK of around 25 per 100,000 in the population.

Looking at the composition of that group of young people, one can perhaps understand the reason for their entering the justice system. Thirty-nine per cent of children in custody have been on the child protection register and/or have been neglected or abused. Forty-eight per cent have been excluded from school. Eleven per cent of children in custody have attempted suicide. Indeed, the latest figure is that one young offender commits suicide every month while in custody. The youth offending team officers report that children who have learning impairments or difficulties more frequently receive custodial sentences than those who do not. Fifty per cent of young offenders are committed to custody for non-violent crimes. There is a real issue over the number of such children. What is perhaps even more striking is the level of educational attainment and the IQs of those in custody. Twenty-three per cent of young offenders in custody have an IQ of less than 70. Another 36 per cent have an IQ of between 70 and 79. We are dealing, on any view, with a significantly disadvantaged part of the population.

The Youth Justice Board has done excellent work, particularly, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned, in co-operating with local authorities in tackling this problem. However, there is little financial advantage to those authorities in so doing. Two councils have been singled out in the documents that I have just read in preparation for tomorrow’s meeting: Leeds and Hull. The latter is still a Liberal Democrat-controlled council. The former was until recently, effectively, a coalition-controlled council; it was a Conservative and Liberal Democrat administration. There is no party-political point to be made here. Both authorities invested considerably in dealing with young offenders. The Prison Reform Trust concludes that they saved the Government millions of pounds but did so at the expense of their own council tax payers and services. There is a role for local government in dealing with this, but it is one that imposes burdens on local authorities, which must be borne in mind as part of a developed approach to dealing with these issues.

The Prison Reform Trust has yet to make its conclusions known or to determine its response to the Green Paper. However, it looks as though it will suggest that the sentencing guidelines that have recently been published should be supported. The guidelines state:

“Before imposing a custodial sentence as a result of re-sentencing following breach”—

many of these young offenders find themselves the subject of custodial sentences following the breach of a previous order—

“a court should be satisfied that the YOT and other local authority services have taken all steps necessary to ensure that the young person has been given appropriate opportunity and support necessary for compliance”.

There are also recommendations for bail legislation. Just as we criminalise young people at an earlier age in this country than anywhere else in Europe, so we remand them in custody at a younger age than anywhere else in Europe. That should be reviewed, too.

The Prison Reform Trust will also make some observations on the assumption, which I hope will turn out not to be correct, that the present proposals for how the functions of the Youth Justice Board could best be delivered by the Ministry of Justice will stand if that remains part of the Government’s policy and if Parliament approves. Two particular concerns are likely to emerge. One is that the responsibilities of the Youth Justice Board for commissioning a secure estate and placing individual young people in custody should be fulfilled by MoJ staff working within the youth justice unit, rather than NOMS. While commissioning and placing in the juvenile secure unit are clearly important parts of this role, they are not well met by current young offender provision. The secure estate team should be separate from those dealing with adult custody so that independent decisions are made that make custody truly appropriate to the needs of vulnerable children. All this suggests the key importance of independence and the ability to work with local partners, particularly local authority services and the local community sector, which has a clear role in helping to resolve the huge problems faced by many of these young people.

Like other noble Lords, I hope that the Government will seriously think again about this matter. I cannot see what is to be gained by translating the functions of the Youth Justice Board into what is effectively a bureaucracy, thereby diminishing its visibility and public accountability and the capacity to work at the appropriate level—that is, locally, in conjunction with other partners—and reducing the independence that ought to be brought to bear on a crucial social issue of this kind. I hope that the Government will think again about this.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, I assure the Committee that I have no intention of allowing the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to steal my thunder on this amendment. I have waited some 11 and a half days to reply to this subject, which we have discussed several times. I want to become more knowledgeable on many of these issues and this gives me an opportunity to do so. I admire the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for the way in which he introduced his amendment. He said that it was a probing amendment and I can understand why. I will spare him all the details but it is not technically perfect and I do not think that it would achieve what he wants it to achieve. However, I understand the issue that he is trying to resolve.

The amendment seeks to amend the definition of “electorate” to include those eligible to register who have not done so. It would require the Electoral Commission to make an estimate of the unregistered electorate and include this in the figures used by the Boundary Commission to draw up constituencies. The amendment would require the Electoral Commission to take into account the socioeconomic profile of each constituency in estimating the number of unregistered eligible voters.

The most important principle here must be to make sure that one elector means one vote. For this to be the case there must be broad equality in the number of registered electors in each constituency. That is the key principle. The only question then is of how best to achieve it. Surely that is to use the register of electors and make sure that it is as accurate as possible. While we know that there is underregistration, we must also remember that the registration rate in the UK—estimated at around 90 per cent—is broadly in line with that of comparable democracies. The electoral register has been the basis of boundary reviews for decades, under Governments of all shades.

[Lord Beecham]

Do the Government have a view on the impact of individual registration on the likely overall levels of registration when that comes into effect? Is it not likely that individual registration will reduce the number of registered electors, particularly in those areas with a socioeconomic profile that already causes problems?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not see why that should be the case.

It is also not straightforward to determine the number of people missing from the register. Although it would be possible to match population estimates against registration numbers to generate a notional rate, population data are estimated and would include some people who are not eligible to register to vote due, for example, to nationality. The Electoral Commission itself, in its recent report on underregistration, calls the process of estimating registration rates “an imprecise science” and says:

“All current approaches to estimating the completeness and accuracy of the electoral registers at a national level are imperfect”.

The House has already heard about the limitations of the population data that would inevitably be the basis of any estimation. We will return to this in the next group of amendments.

Introducing estimated figures—acknowledged as imprecise and imperfect—into the calculation of constituency size risks introducing inaccuracies or inconsistencies across the UK, as my noble friend Lord Rennard pointed out. In the interests of a fair and equal system, where each person’s vote across the UK has the same weight, constituencies should be calculated on the basis of registered electors, as the Bill proposes. To do otherwise would be to perpetuate a situation in which some votes are more equal than others.

Legal Aid

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

Yes, I am familiar with the quotation. The problem is that, in the 60 years since legal aid was introduced, its scope has increased considerably. Like the previous Government, we were convinced that as a contribution to cutting government spending we had to find ways of reducing the legal aid bill. I do not pretend that these are easy decisions, but as I said before, the difference between being in opposition and being in government is that you have to take those decisions. We have done so.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, has an estimate been made of the increasing number of people who will be compelled to seek support from advice agencies, including citizens advice bureaux but many others as well, as the result of the withdrawal of legal aid and advice for such a wide range of significant topics? Will the noble Lord indicate whether any estimate has been made of the increased funding that will be required to support those agencies? Will the Government be making provision for that extra funding?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, we estimate that the proposals on civil and family legal aid might affect between 460,000 and 512,000 people.

Legal Aid and Civil Costs Reform

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, if we are going to recalibrate legal aid, we shall have to explore the alternative resolution of disputes through mediation and other means. On the exceptional cases fund, part of the consultation will be about the criteria and the range of that fund. The recommendations of the Legal Services commission to the Secretary of State will determine how the fund is used, but the opportunity to consult will be taken to ensure that the fund is flexible to the needs of those who really need access to justice.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the conflation of the costs of civil and criminal legal aid in the sum of £2 billion, to which my noble friend Lord Bach referred, disguises the greater proportion devoted to criminal legal aid? What will the percentage cut on the civil legal aid budget be? Can he also indicate where he expects alternative provision to be made and at what cost, and who will fund that cost? Perhaps he could also identify an estimate of the number of cases currently in receipt of legal aid in the categories that will no longer receive legal aid: that is, as the Statement made clear, education, employment, immigration, debt, housing and welfare benefits.

On a slightly tangential matter, will the Minister ask his right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor to look again at the court fees that local authorities are required to pay in child protection cases and which are widely thought to inhibit the necessary promotion of those cases? I declare an interest as an unpaid consultant in my former practice as a senior partner in a Newcastle firm of solicitors.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I shall write to the noble Lord on the specific numbers that are being dealt with in areas that are now going out of scope. I shall raise the issue of court fees with the Lord Chancellor. The target saving is £350 million, and I made it clear that that would come mainly from the civil side.