Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Hope of Craighead

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I remind the Minister that he used the word “depressed” in connection with our previous group on improvements. I have to admit that looking at the last committee report of the UN convention and comparing it with the previous committee report, I was depressed at how many in the previous one were still there in this present one. If you are looking for improvements, I suggest that you could start well with the two committee reports because they set out a very clear agenda for improvement.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I add a word on how this matter might be viewed in the courts. As many of your Lordships will know, I was a member of the UK Supreme Court; from time to time the UNCR convention was cited and we always paid close attention to what it said. It is plain from a number of our judgments that it did influence the way we approached cases involving children but, more importantly, there was a case called P-S Children in 2013 in the Court of Appeal in England, where it was said:

“The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child has not been made a part of English law but the duty of the court is nonetheless to have regard to it when considering matters relating to it”.

In that case, the question was whether a child had a right to be heard in proceedings relating to him. There was no statutory right, but there was nothing to prevent it. However, the court—having regard to what the convention said—went on to say:

“It should now be declared that the child does have the … important but limited right, that is to say, a right to be heard in the proceedings”.

That is just one example of the way in which the courts today are drawing upon the convention in developing their jurisprudence. It is also well established as a matter of fundamental law that when the United Kingdom has signed up to an international convention, it is to be presumed that this Parliament, when legislating, will legislate in accordance with what the convention provides. Therefore, if you find a provision relating to children, or the duties of authorities relating to children, the courts, if asked to do so, would interpret the legislation in the light of the convention.

We are in an imperfect world so far as England and Wales are concerned, but the courts are doing the best they can to follow the guidance of the convention and it would seem far better that England and Wales should follow the example of Scotland and legislate to put the matter beyond any doubt.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Hope of Craighead

Monday 14th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may add a word to what the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has said in amplification of his noble friend Lord Beecham. In addition to saying that £3 million would be made available, the Minister has been quoted as saying that a number of changes are to be introduced to ease the pressure on the Parole Board. In addition to the possibility of lay magistrates being used, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, can the Minister outline exactly what those changes are? I am quite certain that the Supreme Court introduced the Parole Board in oral hearings because it was satisfied that the board gave a fair hearing to people, and that was how it operated. I would hate to think of some of the parole decisions being reduced to bureaucratic decisions taken by officials.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I shall add a word based on my own experience. It is quite difficults to visualise the work of the Parole Board members unless one has seen them at work. One thing that struck me some years ago when I attended Parole Board hearings from time to time was the huge volume of paperwork generated by individual cases. Of course, the longer a prisoner remains in custody, the bigger the volume becomes. The technique which the Parole Board member has to apply to each case is to work his or her way through the file, which takes a great deal of time, then explain whatever views he or she has reached, based on the information in the file. It is immensely time consuming. My experience was that Parole Board members were extremely conscientious; the people who know best what the effect was of the diminution of resources on their ability to do their job are the Parole Board members themselves, which is the strength of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made. I suggest that his amendment deserves a great deal of consideration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I support the amendment and in particular the intervention made by the noble Lord, Lord Marks. In doing so, I remind the Committee of one group of people whom I mentioned during the debate to which my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd referred. I refer to prison staff. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, mentioned the word “hope”, because when I inspected prisons in which full life tariff prisoners were held, their governors made the point to me that the fact that those cases could be reviewed, which was not necessarily the same as that they might be released, gave the prisoners hope and therefore enabled them to conform with the prison regime. That was vital for the purposes of the prison staff who had to maintain the regime. It is important in considering this that the role of the staff should not be forgotten.

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

I want to add a footnote to the points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, based on my own experience. I became the Lord Justice General of Scotland about 25 years ago. At that time, one of the sentences that was available to a trial judge was a discretionary sentence that a person would be detained without limit of time. It was not a sentence of life imprisonment, but was in effect, as it was put in the case of young offenders, detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure; that is, at the discretion of the Secretary of State.

While I was holding that office, Strasbourg began to pronounce on the compatibility with Article 3 of that kind of system. It was decided in Scotland that the system was no longer maintainable, and what was required of me as Lord Justice General was to examine the cases of all those who had been given that kind of sentence to provide them with a tariff—or, in the Scottish terminology, a punishment part—which would set the date as from which their cases might be considered by the Parole Board. Until that was done, it had been entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State, and it was thought that that was improper. The system that was devised was to require a judge to review such cases, recognising, as others have suggested today, that it would be incompatible with the convention for the decision to be left with the Secretary of State.

It was a very unpleasant exercise for me as the people who had received those sentences had committed the most appalling crimes. In comparison with life sentences, which sometimes were relatively simple, these people deserved the most condign punishment. Nevertheless, it was decided that they required some kind of certainty, removed from the discretion of the Secretary of State, so that they could plan their time in prison and there could be some method for review. It was not of course for them to be automatically released; that was not the point of it. It was so that their time in prison could be subject to a regime which would give them, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, some reason for hope that, possibly, in the very long term and in exceptional circumstances, they might be released.

The system being put forward in this amendment is therefore very similar in principle to one which was introduced about 20 years ago in Scotland to cure a similar problem about leaving the matter to the discretion of the Secretary of State. For that reason, I, too, support the amendment as being sound in principle.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Hope of Craighead

Monday 18th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, 10 days ago, a number of us debated in this House the Second Reading of the Age of Criminal Responsibility Bill, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. I commend some of the things that were said then about the ability of children of the age of 10 to comprehend fully all the businesses of the criminal justice system when they were motivated against them. During the debate I cited the fact that the well known 10 year-olds Thompson and Venables, responsible for the murder of Jamie Bulger, were said by the psychiatrist involved in the case to have a developmental age of four.

You cannot expect a child with the developmental age of four to be able to comprehend exactly what is involved in the criminal justice system, whether it is an injunction, which does not carry a criminal record, or an anti-social behaviour order, which does. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, introduced age very early in this Bill, because all the way through we ought to have at the back of our minds that we are talking about anything to do with children of the age of 10.

We are way below the United Nations recommendation that the age of criminal responsibility should be nearer 15. We are way below what happens in Scotland and countries such as China. I am not sure that it is civilised to throw the criminal justice system at children of 10. Therefore, while I am glad that the intention is not that the injunction should carry a criminal record, we ought to take seriously the question of whether 10 is an appropriate age to start whatever process we have, because within society there should be other ways of doing it. I know that these are not very satisfactory at present, but let us not forget the conditions in which a lot of these children live their lives. I have always thought that it was unfortunate that Mr Blair, in his famous statement about being,

“tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”,

rather lost sight of being tough on the causes. It seems to me that we have to get to grips with the causes, as much as anything else, when we propose the injunctions and so on that we are talking about.

The other thing that concerns me is that we have here a Home Office Bill that talks about children, while in the Moses Room we have the Children and Families Bill, which also talks about children. We learn there that the Department for Education is not actually the key organisation in the development of children initially, but the Department of Health. Then we find that the Department for Work and Pensions has a role to play in all this, as, of course, does the Department for Communities and Local Government. Therefore all sorts of initiatives are going on, all aiming at the same thing, which lack co-ordination. I feel that there ought to be a Minister of child development in the Cabinet Office, responsible for pulling all these threads together, otherwise we will go charging off in a lot of directions, which will be unco-ordinated, and the casualties will be the very people whom this Bill claims to protect.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I might follow my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham on an issue which I raised at Second Reading: the position of the court granting an order. I raised the question of whether there was anything in the Bill that provided for rules to be made requiring the court to make sure that the individual understood the order that was being made, bearing in mind the consequences if the injunction was to be breached.

I think I am right in saying that nothing in the Bill requires rules to be made to deal with that matter, but will the Minister tell us whether the guidance deals with the position of the child in court? Obviously, the guidance deals with the steps preliminary to taking this action against the individual. However, if the age of 10 is to be adhered to, it is extremely important—for all the reasons that the noble Lord has given—that the individual fully understands the consequences of the order, as well as the need to obey it.

If there are no provisions in the Bill about rules to be made, it comes back to the guidance and the responsibility on those who are guiding the individual to ensure that the order is fully understood, and that there is a reasonable prospect of the child fulfilling what he or she is required to do.