Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

I apologise to the Minister for not raising the point that I am now going to mention. However, as it is based on a report that was published only last week, I have only very recently become aware of the position that I wish to raise. When I was the newly appointed Chief Inspector of Prisons, I found that the treatment of and conditions for women prisoners in Holloway was a national disgrace. I was frustrated to learn that current practice for handling inspection reports offered no hope of immediate remedial action, so I fell back on army practice and suspended my inspection for six months, during which period I expected defined action to be taken. I feel the same frustration about the proposal for a secure college contained in Part 2 of the Bill, having learnt that the rules of the House do not allow me to bring forward a Third Reading amendment based on a report that was published only last week, which I believe changes the whole nature of the proposal.

Before the Bill leaves the House, therefore, because the treatment of children is a matter of national importance, I feel that I must make one last appeal to the Government. Before doing so I assure the Minister that nothing I am going to say reflects on the way that he has taken the Bill through the House—during which, all noble Lords, while not necessarily agreeing with him, have admired the skill with which he, as a renowned advocate, has defended his brief, and been assiduous in briefing us, both verbally and in writing, on that brief. However, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Nash, during the passage of the recent education Bill, who was able to accept the case for inclusion of young offenders with special educational needs among those for whom education, health and care delivery must be provided, the noble Lord’s position in regard to any reasoned suggestion of change to the Secretary of State’s pet plan, appears akin to that of the tank commander with whom the Chinese student tried to reason in Tiananmen Square.

Last Tuesday, I took part in the launch of a British Medical Association report, entitled Young Lives Behind Bars: the Health and Human Rights of Children and Young People Detained in the Criminal Justice System. Welcoming it, Norman Lamb MP, Minister of State for Care and Support, wrote:

“The newly established Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Well-Being Taskforce, includes a specific working group on vulnerable children and young people, including young people in contact with the Youth Justice system and will focus on how services can best meet their needs”.

In her foreword, Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, who has considerable experience of working with young offenders, wrote:

“This timely, authoritative report presents an overview of the complex reasons why children and young people offend, their multiple needs and the challenges they present. It enables practitioners and policy makers to reflect on their work with young people in trouble”.

She went on to say:

“An almost 60 percent reduction in child imprisonment over the last seven years … offers a tremendous opportunity for health and justice professionals to focus on the most vulnerable children and help them to get out of trouble”.

I quote two of the report’s recommendations:

“Practitioners should consider how best to encourage involvement and interaction with healthcare services, in a manner that is appropriate to the needs and concerns of children and young people in custody”,

and:

“Health and wellbeing of children and young people should be seen as concerns for all those working in the secure estate, not just healthcare professionals. To this end, all staff working in the secure estate must be adequately trained and supported in identifying and reporting health concerns”.

I said on Report that the House is being asked to rubberstamp a pet project of the Secretary of State for Justice, without the known agreement of the Cabinet committee appointed to ensure that all departments drive forward the aims of the government’s social justice strategy, key indicator number 3 of which is a reduction in the number of young offenders who go on to reoffend. In addition to ignoring proven national and international good practice, as well as the advice and pleas of countless people with experience of working with young offenders, I now understand that the Secretary of State has ignored the advice of paid consultants such as Deloitte, which recommended smaller establishments on the lines of Diagrama in Spain—the subject of a fascinating article in the Guardian on Saturday entitled “Tough Love”—and current practice in America.

I admit that this is the first I have heard of the children and young people’s mental health and well-being taskforce working group, charged with focusing on the needs of the very children whom the Secretary of State is proposing to detain in his secure college. Far from being children for whom normal education and security provision might be appropriate, these have a multiplicity of mental health and behavioural needs, and their reaction to any regime, let alone one based on the education that almost all have rejected or from which they have been excluded, will be conditioned by the complexity of their problems. Furthermore, the majority are to be uprooted from their family and local social or healthcare workers, whose involvement in their post-release rehabilitation is crucial. A recent conversation with NHS England has caused me to look again at two remarks made about healthcare by the Minister on Report:

“We also have been working closely with NHS England… to test our designs for the secure college pathfinder”,—[Official Report, 22/10/14; col. 660.]

and,

“a … health unit placed strategically in the middle of the design … will be the best way of delivering healthcare uniquely tailored to those individuals”.—[Official Report, 22/10/14; col. 663.]

True, a health unit is now placed strategically in the middle of the design, but it was not there when the Minister briefed us in July, suggesting that working closely with NHS England is a comparatively recent occurrence. What is more, as I am sure he realises, adequate tailoring of the delivery of healthcare appropriate to meet the multiple and complex needs of 320 damaged and vulnerable children requires more than just a strategically placed health unit. NHS England tell me that it is pressing for healthcare, particularly mental health care, to be embedded in the culture of the proposal, requiring confirmed resources, particularly of appropriately trained staff, without whom healthcare, adequately tailored or otherwise, cannot be delivered. But, as the Minister knows, there is an acute shortage of appropriately trained staff in the country, let alone in the middle of Leicestershire.

So the situation appears to be this. On the one hand, we have the Secretary of State for Justice who, without any evidence and in apparent defiance of government strategy as well as vast amounts of expert advice, insists on pressing ahead with his claim that his,

“new form of youth detention accommodation with”,

as yet unspecified,

“innovative education provision at its core … will equip young offenders with the skills, qualifications and self-discipline they need to turn away from crime”,

and believes that,

“it is right to focus on the educational outcomes that the establishment achieves rather than the staff it employs”.

On the other hand, we have the cross-government social justice strategy, a specific working party of the NHS children and young people’s mental health and well-being task force, and the declared opposition of countless experts who know from practical experience how essential trained professional staff are to the development and future well-being of this damaged and vulnerable cohort of children.

I said in Committee that the changed nature of the detained children population, resulting from the Youth Justice Board’s success, gave the Secretary of State ample justification for rethinking this proposal. I fully accept that I failed to persuade the House to vote that he should be required to obtain the approval of both Houses before proceeding with his proposal or to test the opinion of the House on a rethinking amendment. However, I submit that the evidence now available, thanks to the BMA report and the recent involvement of NHS England and the mental health and well-being task force, exposes serious flaws in the well intentioned, education-based secure college proposal, which clearly is not tailored to the characteristics, capabilities and needs of its suggested population.

I realise that that is not something that either the Minister or the Secretary of State can resolve, because of the involvement of the NHS and a Cabinet committee. I therefore ask the Minister that it be referred to the Prime Minister himself, who, I hope, will make a statement in the other place on whether, having examined all the available evidence, he authorises that the proposal should go ahead or that it should be put on hold until it has been rethought.