Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Baroness Anelay of St Johns Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether I might assist the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, as I appreciate that the microphone did not come on at the beginning. I also appreciate that he is speaking from a position where many noble Lords are leaving either side of him. Perhaps noble Lords could leave speedily and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, might just hesitate for a few seconds to allow them to speed past him.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, on Monday I listened with great interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, said about the proposed secure college in moving his comprehensive Amendment 43C and to what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, said about the site selected for it and the unanimous opposition of all involved NGOs to the proposal. Both explained vividly why the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and I feel sufficiently strongly about it to oppose Clause 29 standing part.

Before explaining my case, I compliment the Minister on honouring his admonition to the House at Second Reading to keep an open mind and for not resorting to the rhetoric used by his Secretary of State about what he clearly regards as his pet project. At Third Reading in the other place, Mr Grayling said that it was beyond him how the Opposition could criticise his once-in-a-generation reforms, urging them to “think again” before they played party politics,

“with the future of young people … and to turn away from siren voices that said that this was a brutal new regime”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/6/14; col.1071.]

At a public conference I attended, he said that opposition to the secure colleges that he and the Deputy Prime Minister were committed to delivering with haste was a “totem of the left”.

Independent Cross-Benchers do not play party politics. I entirely agree, along with, I suspect, the vast majority of this House, with the Secretary of State’s analysis of why reform is needed and that the educational content of child custody must be improved. My criticism is not about the imposition of an alleged brutal new regime but, rather, that we lack any information about what regime is to be imposed on an establishment whose formation flies in the face of all the evidence of what does or does not work to satisfy the needs of children in custody. The Minister made much of the importance of allowing potential contractors to be creative and innovative but, as many noble Lords have pointed out, there are practical limits to that, such as the perpetual movement of children in and out of places of detention, requiring many individual syllabi.

My criticism is based on what I saw, marked, learnt and inwardly digested of the practical realities when responsible for inspecting secure children’s homes, secure children’s centres and young offender institutions, and on what I have seen and heard subsequently. Both at Second Reading and on Monday, the Minister said—unarguably—that we need to do better at rehabilitating young offenders because youth custodial outcomes are presently not good enough. By recognising that some people would continue to require separate specialist accommodation, the purpose of Part 2 of the Bill remains to establish a statutory framework for a pathfinder secure college, which the Government suggest is a solution to the problem. Educationalists and others will be invited to deliver a broad and intensive curriculum to support and engage young people. The House has already debated a consultation on the rules to ensure that establishments operate safely and securely, which is to be launched before Report.

In that connection, can the Minister confirm or deny that the person in NOMS responsible for writing the rules and policies for secure colleges is the former governor of HMYOI Brinsford, who was moved after the Chief Inspector of Prisons gave it a dreadful report, describing it as the single worst jail he had ever visited, to HMP Hewell—which is about to receive a dreadful inspection report—and from there to this role in NOMS? If that is true, I must question the judgment of whoever made the appointment.

While admitting that transformation could not happen overnight, the Minister claimed that the Government’s vision was justified by the fact that small local facilities simply could not deliver the high-quality and broad-ranging facilities that meet the diverse needs of young people. If Parliament did not share that vision, the construction of the next generation of facilities would have to take place within the existing framework.