Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, in speaking to this Motion, for the benefit of the House I should say that, with the agreement of Her Majesty’s Opposition, it is proposed that Motions B and C be put together and be debated together.

As to Motion A, we have spent a considerable amount of time debating the Government’s plans for secure colleges and our ambition to improve the education and reoffending outcomes of young people in custody. I am pleased that, since the last time we met to debate these provisions, which deal with who should be accommodated in secure colleges, the House of Commons has accepted a government amendment to the Bill to give Parliament a vote on the matter. I therefore beg to move that this House does not insist on its Amendment 74 and agrees with the Commons in its Amendment 74C, and I hope that noble Lords will welcome the Government’s response.

Before I go into the detail of the amendment, I take this opportunity to thank noble Lords for the quality of their scrutiny during the passage of the Bill. There have been many hours of informed and passionate debate on the important and sensitive issue of how young offenders are detained and the support that they receive to become rehabilitated. As well as those who featured prominently in our debates, there were other noble Lords who brought their expertise to bear on the issues, whether in meetings, of which there were a number, or in correspondence, and I acknowledge their contributions also. The co-operation that we have encountered has led us to find a compromise, which I am hopeful and even—dare I say?—confident will satisfy noble Lords.

As the Secretary of State and my other ministerial colleagues have made clear throughout the passage of the Bill, we do not want to prevent girls and under-15s in future being able to benefit from the pioneering approach and enhanced provision that secure colleges will offer. We recognise that these groups are more vulnerable and require tailored support, but as noble Lords will know, girls and younger boys are already safely accommodated together on the same site as older boys in both secure training centres and secure children’s homes, demonstrating that such an approach can work well. Our plans for the pathfinder secure college to open in 2017 have been carefully developed, in consultation with a number of noble Lords, to provide separate and tailored facilities for younger and more vulnerable children, should they be placed there. Of course, their placement will always be as a result of the intervention of the Youth Justice Board.

We recognise, however, that there remains concern about the accommodation of girls and under-14s in secure colleges. While I am confident that secure colleges will be able to meet the needs of these vulnerable groups and achieve improved outcomes for them, I appreciate that noble Lords are, and were, seeking further safeguards and a clearer role for Parliament. When this House last considered amendments made to the Bill in the other place, I made a commitment that, before girls or under-15s were introduced to the first secure college, the Government would lay a report before Parliament setting out the arrangements for accommodating, safeguarding and rehabilitating these groups. Today, I am able to go further and am seeking to amend the Bill to make the commencement of the power to provide secure colleges for the detention of girls and under-15s subject to a resolution of both Houses of Parliament. This will give Parliament a clear role in approving the use of secure colleges to detain these groups and will enable that decision to be informed by learning on how secure colleges are operating. The Government will, of course, fulfil the earlier commitment that I made to produce a report, and this will be laid before Parliament ahead of the debates on the commencement of the power in order to provide further detail on the plans and to inform the debate in both Houses.

I hope noble Lords will feel that their concerns have been recognised by the Government and that our response goes some way towards allaying those concerns. I believe that the amendment before the House represents a practical and common-sense solution that provides Parliament with the safeguards it is seeking, while ensuring that the opportunity remains for girls and under-15s to benefit in future from the enhanced provision that secure colleges will deliver. I therefore ask the House to accept this amendment in lieu of its previous amendment.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I am content to agree with Commons Amendment 74C and am most grateful to the Minister not only for the way in which he has presented the Government’s change of heart but for his courtesy in giving me and a number of other noble Lords advance warning, by letter and also in discussion, of what it would contain. I say again how much I, and I am sure many other noble Lords, have appreciated the courtesy and admired the skilled advocacy that he has deployed throughout the passage of this Bill. I do not include the Minister in any criticisms that I make of the secure college proposal, on which he and I may not agree, but which I will continue to oppose as strongly as I am able for as long as it takes. As I have said before, I regard the very idea of building the biggest children’s prison in the western world as a stain on our treasured national reputation for fairness, decency and humanity under the rule of law.

I appreciate that the Minister is under the strict riding instructions from a Lord Chancellor whose jurisprudential credibility has been forensically unpicked by my noble friend Lord Pannick and a Secretary of State for Justice who has wreaked havoc on the ability of the prison and probation services to protect the public. With that track record, noble Lords will appreciate why I pray that that same person never gets his way with his pet plan for the detention of vulnerable and damaged children.

At each stage of the Bill, I have drawn attention to some new development or piece of evidence that adds to the strength of the case against the secure college proposal, and today is no exception. First, last week came the welcome announcement that, thanks mainly to the determined efforts of the Youth Justice Board, there are now fewer than 1,000 children in detention. Does it really make sense to hold one-third of them in one place and plan a repeat with yet more?