Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

Secure colleges and other places for detention of young offenders etc

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)]

I beg to move, That the House disagrees with Lords amendment 74.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to take Lords amendments 127 to 131.

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[Andrew Selous]

As it has been some months since we last debated the Government’s plans for secure colleges, let me briefly remind Members of our ambition for secure colleges to transform the experience of young people in custody. At present, 68% of detained young people reoffend within 12 months of release—that is the highest reoffending rate of any group of offenders. Despite that poor outcome, we are paying on average about £100,000 a year for each place in youth custody—the figure rises to more than £200,000 a year for places in secure children’s homes, though the reoffending outcomes are no different. So it is clear that carrying on as we are is simply not an option. The Government believe that we must have higher ambitions for turning around the lives of troubled young people who end up in custody, and that putting education at the heart of youth custody, properly integrated with health and other support services, is the way to equip these young people with the skills and self-discipline they need to build productive, law-abiding lives on release.

Secure colleges will do that by being places of education first and places of detention second. We want to move away from the culture of bars on windows, and foster one of engagement and personal development. Our intention is to test the secure college model by opening a secure college pathfinder in Leicestershire in 2017. This purpose-built facility will, for the first time, provide detained young people with a secure learning environment in which education has been designed as the core of a regime tailored to the specific needs of young people.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I understand the aspiration to try to provide something that is educationally rather than penally driven, and we all hope it works. Does the Minister accept that there is a risk that it will not quite work? Would it not be sensible to phase things in, starting off by involving just boys over 15 and then expanding the scheme only if it actually works?

[Andrew Selous]

The intention is not to introduce girls and children under 15 at the start. We have engaged throughout this process and we intend to carry on doing so. We will, through a competition to be launched next year, invite potential operators to demonstrate how they would deliver innovative education and rehabilitation services to these young people. I am disappointed that we are today discussing Lords amendment 74, which excludes girls and under-15s from secure colleges, denying them access to the substantial benefits that we believe the secure college model will deliver for detained young people. I recognise the arguments that have been made during the passage of the Bill, both here and in the other place, about the particular needs of girls and under-15s detained in custody. I recognise also the need for establishments to put in place appropriate protections to ensure that these more vulnerable groups are kept safe. Those are valid arguments, and the Government are extremely mindful of their responsibilities to these vulnerable young people.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The lack of any improvement over 40 years by any Government in reducing recidivism condemns us as politicians. We welcome any fresh initiative, but can the Minister tell us whether there is any model, anywhere in the world, where the system he is introducing has worked?

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[Andrew Selous]

As the hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out, we have lamentably failed to reduce reoffending over a very long period. In addition, we spend a huge amount of taxpayers’ money per place to achieve very poor results. I have seen good education in our current establishments, but I believe we can do better. The time is ripe for us to try something different, based on sound principles, putting education and health at the heart of what we are doing, and making appropriate interventions, all of which will be in place. We are confident that secure colleges can not only meet the needs of girls and younger children in custody, but improve on the education and reoffending outcomes that current facilities achieve.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I agree with the Minister that we should put education at the heart of the rehabilitation agenda for young people. Will he say what educational qualifications the staff at the secure college will have?

[Andrew Selous]

As the hon. Lady may know, we are going to run a competition, which I will describe shortly, to find an education provider. But we are committed to increasing the amount of time in education and we want innovative responses to raise standards further because, as she will know, the results at the moment are simply not good enough.

As I have said, at this stage the Government have plans only for a single secure college pathfinder that will open in 2017, and it has been designed so that it is capable of housing about 300 young offenders aged 12 to 17. It is true that the majority of the young people in this first secure college will be boys aged 15 to 17, but that does not mean that girls and under-15s could not be safely accommodated on the same site and provided with the tailored services required to rehabilitate and educate them. Girls and boys aged 12 to 17 are already safely accommodated together in secure training centres, as well as in secure children’s homes.

Our designs for the secure college pathfinder have been specifically developed to ensure that if girls and under-15s were to be placed there, they would be accommodated in separate and smaller living units, entirely distinct from the accommodation for the majority of older boys. In our consultation on our plans for secure college rules, we also proposed a rule that girls must be separately accommodated from boys.

[Mr Llwyd]

The Minister has more or less taken my speech away from me, because to a large extent my concerns have been allayed and it is good that he is running a pilot for boys to see how that works. But how long does he think an individual youngster has to spend in that set-up in order to gain education. In other words: is there a minimum time?

[Andrew Selous]

Obviously, how long children spend in these institutions is not up to us but up to the courts. What I say to the right hon. Gentleman is that significant improvements can be made in a short period. I have seen huge advances in a child’s reading within an eight-week period, so significant advances in education can be made in relatively short periods and, of course, many children are sentenced for considerably longer than that, as he will well know.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

Does the Minister envisage the girls and younger boys being educated completely separately from the older boys?

[Andrew Selous]

What we have committed to is separate living accommodation. When I visited a secure training centre recently, I saw young children—both girls and boys—happily learning how to put up wall paper and to cook banoffee pie. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the accommodation will be separate. The whole set up and design of the secure college will be such that it will be possible to have considerable separation if and when we need it. I hope that he is reassured by that.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

The Minister may be aware that when the Bill was in Committee, we heard from a number of experts, including charities, doctors and other people working with young people and offenders, and they said that the way that the secure colleges had been set up as large institutions was completely unsuitable for young people.

[Andrew Selous]

I hope that I can reassure the hon. Lady on that point. I understand the concerns that she raises. Is she aware of how the secure college is designed? We will, for example, have 12-bed units for the more vulnerable groups, which could include girls and children under 15. There are 20-bed and 10-bed units. We believe that it will be possible to offer that proper support. The set-up will allow smaller groups of young people to foster that sense of community, belonging and close relationship with those that will be looked after.

[Julie Hilling]

rose—

[Andrew Selous]

I will just finish this point and then I will let the hon. Lady in, not least because her mother is one of my constituents. There will be no occasion when all 300 or so young people will be milling around together in any part of the secure college. I hope that that allays the hon. Lady’s concerns.

[Julie Hilling]

I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). Nobody involved in rehabilitation or education has said that this is a good idea. The Minister did not quite answer the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) about whether the teaching staff will be qualified teachers. Moreover, what sort of ratio of children to teachers does he expect in that learning environment?

[Andrew Selous]

As I think the hon. Lady knows, we will be running a competition, and we will be looking for innovation and creativity from providers. We will assess the bids very rigorously on the basis of the best quality of education, so we are a little way off being specific on that at the moment. The hon. Lady will have heard me say very clearly that this is an institution that will have education at its core, and that we would not be doing this if we were not absolutely determined to do better than is currently done on the education front.

Now, if colleagues will allow me, I will make a little progress. Both measures will ensure that girls, and boys aged under 15, receive the tailored support that they need in secure colleges. Throughout the passage of the Bill, and indeed the development of our plans for the secure college pathfinder, we have actively engaged with interested parliamentarians in both Houses and wider stakeholders and experts, including both NHS England and the Department for Education. In the light of the feedback that we have received from peers, we have made changes to the plans to enlarge the site of the pathfinder by two acres to ensure that the younger and more vulnerable groups have sports and recreational facilities near their accommodation, and that there is greater separation between the larger and smaller units on the site. I am therefore satisfied that the secure college pathfinder would be able to deliver a distinct regime that caters for the specific needs of girls and under-15s while always keeping them safe.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the Minister for giving way a second time; he is being very generous. We all hope that everything works out as he anticipates. What assurances can he give us that the contract that would be signed would be such that if there were a decision not to go ahead with extensions, the taxpayer would not be financially penalised?

[Andrew Selous]

I am not sure whether the contract would specifically relate to the number and type of young people who were on the site, so I think that those would be separate issues. However, there is a strong argument for not discriminating against girls and young people. As a father of three daughters, I would not want to think that we were in any way discriminating against girls. That is an important principle.

I should stress that although the other place has proposed amendment 74, the Government have been clear that no final decisions have been taken on who will be accommodated in the secure college pathfinder. That will be determined in the light of analysis of the make-up of the youth custodial population ahead of the pathfinder opening in 2017. We have also given our commitment that girls and under-15s will not be placed in the pathfinder from its opening, and that any decision to introduce them would be carefully phased.

I hope that Members will agree that girls and under-15s should not be prevented from benefiting from the enhanced opportunities and facilities provided by secure colleges. Members should acknowledge the careful consideration that we have given to these matters, and the efforts we have made to ensure that girls and under-15s could be accommodated safely in the secure college pathfinder. For those reasons, I urge the House to reject Lords Amendment 74.

Lords amendments 127 to 130 are minor Government amendments consequential to earlier amendments made by this House to extend the secure college provisions to Wales. Those amendments were necessary to ensure that principals of secure colleges were treated under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 in the same way as those in charge of other types of custodial establishment.

The purpose of amendments 127 to 130 is to ensure that the Welsh language text of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) 2014 Act is consistent with the English language text of the 2014 Act as amended by schedule 5. That is necessary because the two instruments are legally separate. I can assure the House that the effect of the amendments is unchanged from the English version seen earlier, and I ask Members to agree to Lords amendments 127 to 130.

Lords amendment 131 concerns the process for approving secure college rules. In its third report of the Session, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee recommended that if the Bill is to enable secure college rules to authorise the use of force for the purpose of ensuring good order and discipline, those rules should, to the extent that they authorise the use of force, be subject to the affirmative procedure. The Government were pleased to accept that recommendation on Report in the Lords and consequently ask the House to support this amendment.

As the first set of secure college rules will contain provisions authorising the use of force, an effect of this amendment would be to make the entire first set of rules subject to the affirmative procedure. That will give Parliament additional oversight of the first set of secure college rules. The Government’s consultation on their plans for secure college rules closed on 27 November. We are considering the responses that we received. I urge Members to agree to Lords amendment 131.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

I rise to speak against the Government’s motion to disagree with the other place, and in favour of Lords amendment 74. I give notice of our intention to vote against the Government’s motion tonight.

This debate is about sparing girls and young children—the most vulnerable offenders—from a flawed, expensive and potentially dangerous institution, with which the Government should not be going ahead. I listened very carefully to what the Minister said and will respond to some of his specific points in a moment, but would not the Government’s proposal for secure colleges be a step in the wrong direction for our youth justice system? It is a plan without any real supporting evidence.

Even the Government’s own impact assessment accepts that their plans are untried and untested and the Government have not been able to produce a single independent expert to vote for the proposal. The NSPCC, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and nearly 30 other leading children’s charities have publicly condemned the plans as “expensive and dangerous”.

Let me be clear: improvements need to be made to youth custody. Reoffending is still too high and education can and should play an important role in the rehabilitation of young offenders, so I welcome the efforts that Ministers are making to improve the delivery of education in young offenders institutions where it is not good enough. At a time when the youth custody population is falling, however, Labour does not think that construction of a new type of prison is the correct way to proceed.

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[Julie Hilling]

The notion of a secure college is flawed. Nobody except Ministers thinks it is a good idea—no educationalist, nobody who works in young offender institutions, nobody who works in the criminal justice system and nobody who campaigns for improvements in the way we treat children and young people in the criminal justice system. It seems to be based on a notion that going off to boarding school is a good thing, but this is not going to be like Eton. It will bring together large numbers of young people from very disturbed backgrounds who have committed serious offences. That is not a good idea.

Let us think about many of the young people who are in custody. Many have spent time in care and are likely to have had an absent parent. They have probably experienced neglect or abuse, and the prevalence of mental illness is high. Some 86% of young people in the criminal justice system have been excluded from school, 23% have learning difficulties and 36% have borderline learning difficulties. Boys aged 15 to 17 in prison are 18 times more likely to commit suicide than children of the same age in the community, and 11% of children in prison have attempted suicide. Simply trying to put knowledge into these young people without addressing their fundamental issues is doomed to failure. Young people need to be in the right place psychologically before they can start to learn. Simply trying to shove knowledge into young people who are disturbed, who have come from bad backgrounds and whose mental health is rubbish will not work; they need to be in the right place if they are to learn.

The average length of time spent in custody is 79 days, so how are those young people really going to learn a great deal in that period? The Minister talked about young people learning to read in a short period of time. There might be some successes in basic literacy and numeracy, but I do not see how it can work for their wider education process. We will be putting them in a college many miles away from home and the other support services they will need after their time in custody. They will then, after 79 days, have to reintegrate into their old school, or into a new school, and into those support services, which will not be on the doorstep to help them with their drug problems, mental health problems or all the other issues that young people face.

In Committee it was indicated to us that the teaching staff will not necessarily be qualified teachers. We are not sure about that, because the Minister will not tell us. The Government cannot just say that they will leave it until they have had a competition for people to apply to run the institution. Surely to goodness they need to lay down some firm guidelines on the qualifications and experience that those who will be working with the young people should have.

Why on earth will the Government not look at models that actually work? They should look to Scandinavia, where learning environments are in the community, where people down the street will not even know that the house on the corner is a youth custody premises, and where young people are treated holistically so that not just their education is dealt with, but all the other problems that have lead them to offend and have messed up their lives. They need that whole range of support services. We need that sort of therapeutic community, not a place where 320 young people will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said, vie for attention and to prove who is the most macho.

I do not believe that a secure college is a place for 15 to 17-year-olds, but it is very definitely not a place for girls and younger children, who should be in the community. The therapeutic programmes that work for young people are those that are close to the community and that are small and specific. As my hon. Friend said, so many of the young women who end up in the penal system have suffered sexual abuse and other forms of physical abuse. The Government should rule out ever putting them in a place with 320 young boys, which would make the experience awful for them.

I do not believe that we will change reoffending by locking up 320 young people together. I do not believe that we will change educational outcomes for those young people by doing that. I really wish that the Government would accept the Lords amendment, but I also wish that they would reconsider the whole proposal. If nobody else thinks that it is going to work, why are the Government arrogant enough to believe that it will? Surely they should start listening to the professionals, to those who work with young people and understand them, and not go ahead with the college, and they should certainly never contemplate putting young children and women into that place.

[Andrew Selous]

I thank hon. Members for their contributions. The Government are committed to improving outcomes for young people in custody. As I said, 68% of young people reoffend within a year of leaving custody, at an average cost of £100,000 a year to the taxpayer. We simply cannot be satisfied with the status quo and need to try something new. Education needs to be at the heart of the offer we put in front of those young people, and so does health.

We have engaged with parliamentarians, stakeholders, practitioners, experts and young offenders themselves on our plans and, in response to Parliament’s concerns, have amended the Bill to ensure that secure college rules are subject to the affirmative procedure to the extent that they authorise the use of force. We want to continue that dialogue as we implement our vision for secure colleges.

I say to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) that our vision is to have, rather than just a prison with some education in it, a building that is designed as a school—the plans have changed considerably since the first version. We do not think that it is right to educate those young people somewhere with bars on the windows; we think they deserve a better environment in which to learn. The published plans have changed hugely and, as I have said, there will be a considerable health offer within the establishment. Girls are already taught and looked after alongside boys in secure training colleges and children’s homes. We do not expect a delay. Blaby district council supported the proposals unanimously and the local further education college is very supportive of what we are doing.

On the equality impact statement, in accordance with the Ministry of Justice’s duties under the Equality Act 2010, we considered the impact of the proposals set out in the Government response to the transforming youth custody consultation in January 2014. That was made clear in the parliamentary question, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, on 16 June. I say to the other Members who spoke from the Opposition Benches that girls are already in youth custody, in secure training centres and in secure children’s homes, and many are sentenced there for a considerable time. We have a duty to give them a better offer. What we do at the moment is simply not good enough, and it costs us a huge amount of money. A Government with ambition are right to try to do the best for those young people.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 74.

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Specified offences

[Andrew Selous]

I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 1.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments 2 to 73, 75 to 96, 108 to 126 and 132 to 143.

[Andrew Selous]

We have heard today passionate arguments from all parts of the House on parts 2 and 4 of the Bill on secure colleges and judicial review. The Government amendments made to parts 1 and 3 of the Bill in the House of Lords have significantly enhanced it. I do not intend to explain every amendment at great length, but I will touch on some.

Lords amendments 70 to 72, 116, 117, 126 and 142 introduce important changes to the law by creating a new criminal offence that specifically targets the behaviour commonly referred to as revenge pornography. I am sure that hon. Members across the House will agree that this behaviour is intolerable.

[Dr Huppert]

As the Minister says, this is a very important issue, and I raised it when the Bill was here before it went to the other place. It is very good to have this criminal sanction, but does he agree that it will be effective only if it is matched by education so that it is not necessary because people simply do not do these things?

[Andrew Selous]

I pay tribute to the part that the hon. Gentleman played in earlier debates on this issue. He is of course right: the law can go so far, but people need to be educated, and that is absolutely part of what we need to do to stamp out this despicable practice.

The malicious disclosure of intimate sexual photographs and films is undoubtedly an extremely distressing experience for victims. Most are left distraught, not only by the disclosure of images that they once thought were private and personal, but by the breach of trust perpetrated by this abhorrent offence. Careers and subsequent relationships have often been ruined as a result.

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[Dr Huppert]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right about there being scope for data-matching images, and there is some nice work being done on technologies for hashing an image so that it can be identified, but it will be harder than in the case of child abuse images.

As I said in an intervention on the Minister, we need a substantial improvement in education not just around this offence—ideally we want a situation where no one is ever prosecuted under the offence because the message has been sent so clearly that people simply do not share intimate images of former partners or whomever—but on the much broader issue of sex and relationships education. For me, this is fundamentally an issue not about revenge or pornography—the term “revenge porn” is not ideal—but about consent. We need a system where, particularly through education, we get people to understand what consent is about: what can be agreed to and what cannot be agreed. Whether it is sexual assault and physical violence, emotional assault or the taking and spreading of such images, it should be about whether consent has been given. That is the education I would like to see. The Government should have compulsory sex and relationships education for everybody at school to tackle these issues of consent, and they should do what they can to ensure society changes so that we have that focus on consent. I welcome the amendments very much, and I am grateful the Government have agreed to them.

Very quickly, amendment 73 was led by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who did a fantastic job. I had the privilege of co-sponsoring the amendments, but she did the work, and I am not in any sense trying to claim credit. The amendment will make a big difference to grooming. Her approach to the amendments—working constructively with Ministers, discussing the issues, not trying to play party politics, but making the case sensibly and pragmatically—has delivered her success, and she should be very proud of getting the law changed to protect young people. Perhaps there is a lesson there for other right hon. and hon. Members about how to get the law changed.

[Andrew Selous]

I thank all Members who have contributed to this wide-ranging and considered debate; the number of points raised confirms the importance of the amendments we have made during the Bill’s passage. As I set out, the Bill represents the next stage of our reforms to deliver a cost-effective system in which the public can have real confidence. The amendments in the other place have advanced and improved the Bill, and I thank its Members for their continued scrutiny.

Hon. Members have raised several issues that I shall address as best I can in the time left. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) touched on the issue of recall adjudicators. He will be aware that the Government decided to legislate now because of the Supreme Court judgment in the case of Whiston, which was handed down on 2 July and so only recently opened the door to an alternative mechanism that does not require determinate sentence recall cases to be reviewed by a court-like body. I am of course conscious that the change has been brought forward at a late stage in the Bill’s progress, but it was necessary for us to use the opportunity that the Whiston judgment has afforded us.

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[Maria Miller]

Will my hon. Friend join me in urging the industry to take action and put in place a code of practice to ensure that those affected by this dreadful crime know where to go, who to report the offence to and how long it will be before the images are taken down? People want certainty; they do not want the uncertainty that currently prevails.

[Andrew Selous]

Yet again, my right hon. Friend speaks very wisely. I agree with the challenge she has put to the industry. She is right to do that and I hope it will pay attention to the debate in this House. I am with her in the demands that she has quite properly placed on the industry in expecting it to fulfil its proper social responsibility in this regard. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge talked about the important role that victims have played, and I think he did the House a service by putting on record the role that victims have played in describing the terrible ordeal that they have been through. That has certainly helped inform our debate.

These amendments address a number of issues that have been brought to our attention by Members in the other place as well as those brought forward by the Government. I firmly believe that they enhance and improve the Bill, and I am proud to say that we are tackling the appalling behaviour known as revenge pornography, which has featured considerably in tonight’s debate. We are also addressing an important lacuna in the reporting restriction framework and introducing recall adjudicators to go some way to alleviate the pressure on the Parole Board. These and other measures are not only critical, but absolutely necessary. I urge the House to support them.

Lords amendment 1 agreed to.

Remaining Lords amendments agreed to, with Commons financial privileges waived in respect of Lords amendments 5 to 34, 75, 123 and 124

Ordered, That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendments.

That Dr Julian Huppert, Andrew Selous, Mr Andy Slaughter, Karl Turner, and Mr Ben Wallace be members of the Committee;

That Andrew Selous be the Chair of the Committee;

That three be the quorum of the Committee.

That the Committee do withdraw immediately.—(Damian Hinds.)

Committee to withdraw immediately; reasons to be reported and communicated to the Lords.