Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 1st November 2021 Lords Chamber

I will say one last thing on the Sarah Everard vigil. If we could only find out who authorised the way that the police behaved, that would be really good because it was appalling. There was one photograph of a girl flat on her stomach, being held down by four police officers: how could it have looked any worse for the police? A judge-led inquiry is the least we can expect from this horrendous crime.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I speak in support of Amendments 122 and 275 in the name of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti—who has already made an eloquent and erudite contribution, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said—and other noble Lords. I will also echo elements of the noble Lord’s contribution.

Amendment 122 encapsulates and incorporates precisely the advice that I would now want to give to my own two daughters and, in due time, my own grand-daughter, in the light of what we all know happened to Sarah Everard. There has been talk of flagging down buses or otherwise seeking assistance, in the case of a lone arresting officer seeking to require a person subject to arrest to enter a car or, as the amendment says

“premises other than a police station”.

I simply do not find such advice or suggestions helpful or sufficient. These suggestions would not, I am afraid, assuage the well-grounded fears of many women in the wake of recent events and revelations about the behaviour of some police officers. The amendment, however, sets reassuring and necessary parameters, and I am in full support of it. We must use this legislation to afford clarity and safety to women.

With regard to Amendment 275, again, I believe that action taken hitherto by Her Majesty’s Government is insufficient and that a statutory inquiry, for all the reasons advanced already in this debate, is needed. It is needed to learn lessons but also to give a signal that we will now begin to restore the faith and trust in the police which has been so manifestly and extensively damaged.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have to tell the Committee that I find these debates very difficult. I was a police officer for over 30 years and, for part of that time, a senior police officer. Like the overwhelming majority of hard-working, decent and honest police officers in this country, I find it very difficult to hear this sort of debate and to say the sorts of things that I will say now. I do not have the same sympathy for senior police officers who are failing in their leadership. I recall speaking privately to a former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and asking that individual, “What on earth is going on at the moment?”. He said, “Well, Brian, I think when the police come under pressure, diversity goes out of the window”. The police have been under a lot of pressure because their resources have been reduced, because knife crime has become an epidemic and because of the horrific situations we find ourselves in.

As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said earlier, it is not just about Sarah Everard. In the last two weeks we have had a Metropolitan Police officer charged with rape and another with indecent images of children. There were a whole series of cases that point to a real issue with the culture in the police service, and in the Metropolitan Police in particular. So I completely understand and support the principles behind the amendments, and I have indicated my support for Amendment 122 by adding my name to it.

I want to bring some real-world practicality to bear on the amendments. Amendment 122, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, suggests that a police officer

“may not require or ask the person under arrest to enter a vehicle or premises other than a police station unless at least one other constable is present in the vehicle or when entering the premises”.

Not only does that go to the heart of the Sarah Everard scenario, but it is entirely consistent with best practice for the protection of the person arrested and the arresting officer. I should explain that in the police a person who has been arrested is called a prisoner, and I will do the same.

First, it does not specify that the provision should apply only to a woman or a child, as Amendment 123 does. The noble Baroness pointed out how there might be legal difficulties with that but, as she said, what if the arresting officer is gay or the person arrested is a gay man? Where would the protection be for the arresting officer against allegations of inappropriate behaviour in those circumstances, or the protection for the arrested person, if we restricted it only to a woman or a child? As the noble Baroness said, a black person may also have fears about getting into a vehicle when there was only one officer present. From my own professional experience, I have lost count of the number of reports of black people who have been beaten up on the way to the police station. The issue that we need to address here is male violence perpetrated by police officers, whether directed at a male or a female prisoner, although women may understandably feel more threatened with a lone male arresting officer than a male prisoner would. Amendment 122 would provide protection for the police officer and for the person arrested, whatever sex or sexuality they may be.

Secondly, it is very dangerous for a lone police officer to drive with a prisoner in the car. The prisoner could attack the officer while driving even if handcuffed, as we saw with the tragic death of police Sergeant Matt Ratana, who was shot in Croydon police station by a handcuffed prisoner. Ideally, police officers should patrol and respond in pairs wherever possible, and at least one of those police officers should be female, but that is not always possible. Ensuring that two police officers are present is an important and almost always adequate safeguard.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, and as the Minister said in answer to an Oral Question on Thursday, only about one-third of police officers are female—even fewer, I believe, in the Metropolitan Police—so the practicality of requiring a female officer to be present, as Amendment 123 demands, may not always be possible, and in some cases it would not be appropriate to release the prisoner if a female officer could not attend the scene.

I turn to the other aspects of Amendment 123. Giving the person arrested

“an immediate and reasonable opportunity to contact another person”

could have serious officer-safety implications. I myself have been subject to attempts to rescue a person that I had arrested, albeit that it was in Brixton a few months before the Brixton riots. There is a real danger that the arrested person could summon people to effect her escape from police custody. And, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, alluded to, the problem with the arresting officer providing a telephone number purporting to be the number of a police station or control room, were he to have criminal intent, is that he may have an accomplice on the telephone number given to the prisoner.

Long delays between arrest and arrival at the police station, in my professional experience, expose both the arresting officer and the person arrested to danger. It may not always be possible, for example if the prisoner is violently resisting arrest, either to explain her rights to her or to provide them in writing. Again, in my professional experience, people do not want to be arrested by the police and are unlikely to attend a police station if allowed to go free. I completely understand the sentiments behind both these amendments. I have serious reservations about the practicality of Amendment 123, but I have no hesitation in commending Amendment 122 to the Committee.

I also strongly support Amendment 275, which calls for a Macpherson-type inquiry, under the Inquiries Act 2005, into the Sarah Everard atrocity and all the surrounding issues. This is something akin to the issues of public trust and confidence around racism that came out of the tragic death of Stephen Lawrence and that the Macpherson inquiry looked to address. We are facing an equivalent situation here in terms of misogyny and violence against women and girls. It is absolutely appropriate that we have a similar inquiry to the Macpherson inquiry to deal with that. I prefer Amendment 275, for that reason, to Amendment 281.

I also support Amendment 282: mandatory training for all officers, not just recruits, on violence against women and girls. Of course, culture is the most difficult thing to change, but training is an important part of changing that culture. I also support Amendment 283, with the caveat that I believe the vetting procedures used in the recruitment of all police officers need to be urgently reviewed, not just for officers transferring between forces.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, talked about the Sarah Everard vigil. I will refer to this at length when we come to the public order parts of the Bill, but I was an advanced, trained senior police officer in public order. I read the Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services report into the Sarah Everard vigil. How HMIC came to the conclusions that the police did everything right, on the basis of what it wrote before it got to that conclusion, I have no idea. The evidence in that report is completely contrary to that conclusion, in my professional judgment. So, there is something seriously wrong here: how can we change the culture if we have that sort of whitewashing by HMIC?

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, raised issues around police leadership and police culture and what I have described before as a culture of cover-up rather than own-up. I have always believed the way to build public trust and confidence is, when there is misconduct, to show you are ruthlessly dealing with it rather than trying to cover it up to protect the reputation of the force. I will say more about that when we come to a later group on the duty of candour. The noble Lord is absolutely right: there is a failure of leadership at the top of the police service. It makes me very uncomfortable to stand here and say that, but it is something I felt when I was in the police service and continue to feel now. I absolutely support these amendments.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, our first aim with Amendment 223A, to which I have added my name, is to ensure that secure academies may be run by local authorities. The present position is that, under the Academies Act, the local authority may not maintain a school that becomes an academy. The result is, as my noble friend Lord German said, to prevent local authorities running secure academies, apparently in the interests of consistency between secure academies and other academies.

Our amendment would enable a local authority to play its part. However, it is entirely non-prescriptive and does not require secure academies to be run by local authorities. It simply permits them to be so. We believe that local authorities have a very important part to play in the running of secure academies, with the very best prospect of success in educating, training and rehabilitating young offenders.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, mentioned Charlie Taylor. He has always taken and expressed the view that education for young offenders is at the heart of youth justice, and at the heart of reform and rehabilitation. We have considered in Committee the role of local authorities in youth justice at a number of levels and in a number of spheres. Education is, of course, at the forefront, but we should also not underestimate the importance of the local authority role in housing and social services. Both departments have a great deal to do with the criminality of young people. There can, we suggest, be no justification at all for ruling out local authority involvement in these secure academies.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, that generally we should be keen to avoid dogma and that what we are doing should be about outcomes. Nevertheless, the second purpose of our amendment is to ensure that secure academies are run on an entirely altruistic basis by not-for-profit organisations. The purpose of this part of the amendment is to ensure that secure academies must be run not for profit but for the good of those who attend them as students.

We have all seen the difficulties that befell the probation service under the Grayling changes, which have since been abandoned. Then the larger part of the probation service was shunted off to community rehabilitation companies, and that led to a decline in voluntary sector involvement, which is particularly important in this area. A failure of collaboration with local authorities and an excessive and single-minded pursuit of profit was to the detriment of the clients that the CRCs were established to help and look after.

I do not believe for a moment that that is in the Government’s mind, but it is a danger that may be inherent in the present proposals, and we suggest that the care of damaged young people who have been sent to secure academies by the courts should never be in the hands of organisations run for profit.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it takes a very particular kind of person to be a teacher, but it takes a much more particular kind of person to work in an institution with young people who are clearly already damaged when they arrive. The idea that the Government appear to be taking—a rather dogmatic view about how 16 to 19 provision should be run, in terms of there being only academies and only reflecting the way academies are seen in law in the schools sector—seems to be completely wrong.

It is obvious that the profit motive simply cannot function in this type of provision. Teachers, whether in secure accommodation or other places, are not as well paid as they should be, but the fact is that they are not motivated in general by the level of their salary. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason why we should think that anyone affording that provision should be motivated by profit.

My own experience of young people of this type is that I did, very many years ago, work in a non-custodial, non-residential setting for young people who were at risk of care or custody. I have to say that they were all at risk of custody. But the fact that I worked in a local authority provision, where we were able to work very closely with the youth offending team, our local social services and our probation service, and all of our play therapists and other types of therapists, meant that, in general, it was a very successful provision.

I have, like the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, had the opportunity through my union experience to visit teachers working in a whole range of institutions—some of which, I am sorry to say, no longer function. This type of provision, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said, should be at the irreducible core of what the state does and affords for some of our most vulnerable young people. For that reason, I am very happy to support the amendments.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to those who have spoken in this short debate. Clearly this amendment is at the centre of this group of amendments. In summing up what everyone has said, I would say that the direction everyone has travelled in is not that these schools or academies should be provided by local authorities, but that they should be given the right to tender to provide those schools or academies.

The judgment that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, made, was that it does not matter who runs them, providing they get the very best education for these very vulnerable children. The standard of education is what is important, not who runs them. At present, local authorities are excluded simply because there is a view that anything called an “academy” in England cannot be run by a local authority, which seems to create an absolute block to the opportunity for everyone in these institutions to have the best opportunities for life and education.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, these are the most vulnerable of children and young people; their lives and futures are at stake. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, talked of the qualities of the teachers. These teachers have to be the very best, because they are facing the most difficult of circumstances and it becomes a real challenge. It requires a very special person indeed to devote their life to this sort of education. Where you find the best teachers is in the quality of the tender exercise for these establishments.

Excluding local authorities because they breach the Government’s standard that any academy must not be run by a local authority seems to miss the point. My noble friend Lord Marks talked about the experiment with the rehabilitation companies. A lot of effort went into those. The one thing that was totally absent at the end was the engagement of the charitable and voluntary sector. In other words, because they were driven by having to meet a contract, they were not driven by providing the best service for rehabilitation. Quite rightly, that system has now been overturned.

It drives one to think that, if you have as your goals what is best for the child and what are the best services you can provide, excluding those with the most expertise in this area seems simply crazy. I hope that the Minister will be able to address these matters and take on board the whole point of these amendments, which is not to prescribe local government but to offer it the opportunity where it can compete, providing it can offer the best. What matters is the best for our children, not who should run the service.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Lords Hansard - part two & Report stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

I commend my amendment to the House. If it were to become law, it would represent an important step towards dealing with child offenders in a way that was more humane, more in line with the reality of children’s development and more effective than our current approach in addressing the environmental and welfare needs that cause the offending. This is one of the shortest amendments I have introduced, but, if implemented, it will change the shape of the criminal justice system for our children.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is late, and I have very little to add to this debate, since it has already been extensively outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and other speakers, save this. I have extensive experience of working with educators from many jurisdictions, including all those mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and many beyond. Some will have, as I have myself, worked with a small number of 10 year-olds who, for a variety of reasons usually to do with adverse childhood experiences, behave in ways that are exceedingly difficult to manage—and some can, under certain circumstances, become aggressive or violent. But what I know is that educators from all those jurisdictions, in general, understand that 10 is simply too young to be an age of criminal responsibility, and many from the countries mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and many others are astounded it is 10 in England.

Ten year-olds, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti has said, need to be nurtured if they have hitherto had circumstances in their short lives that have damaged them seriously. In my own view, 12 is still too young to be an age of criminal responsibility, and had the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, been able to be in her place tonight, she would certainly, I am sure, have listed all the jurisdictions that have an age significantly above 12, as well as notably, as referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. But it is the case that a move from 10 to 12 would be a move in the right direction, and I hope the Government will consider this seriously.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, we have two amendments before us in the sense of concept. I will take Amendment 88A first and then Amendments 89 and 90 together—they raise quite discrete issues.

Amendment 88A is twofold. It requires the centralised monitoring of youth remand decisions made by the court and the laying of a report of findings before Parliament on an annual basis. On centralised monitoring, as I made clear in Committee, courts will now be required to provide the reasons for their decision in writing. This will be provided to the child, their legal representative and the youth offending team, and it goes beyond what courts already do at present. The record will therefore provide qualitative information, which is not currently readily available. That will enable us and partners in the criminal justice system to understand and better monitor the reasons given for the use of custodial remand.

However, those decisions are complex. We should not prescribe in law at this time how the information should be collected and processed. I am also mindful not to impose unrealistic burdens on operations. As I have indicated previously, HMCTS is also currently designing a new digital case management system, which will deliver better data capturing and reporting. We will consider the best way to collect, analyse and, if appropriate, publish that information.

On the second point, as I explained in Committee, my department already regularly publishes statistics on remand: youth justice statistics are published annually; youth custodial statistics are published monthly. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, will agree that our objectives are in fact aligned here, and understand the need for pragmatism at this time. I therefore urge him to withdraw Amendment 88A.

Amendments 89 and 90, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, would raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 years and require a review of the age of criminal responsibility. As I have said before, the primary objective of the youth justice system is to prevent children offending in the first place. Where it occurs, we must provide the police and courts with effective tools to tackle offending. That is why we believe that setting the age of criminal responsibility at 10 is the correct response. It provides flexibility in dealing with children and allows for early intervention with the aim of preventing subsequent offending.

Importantly, having the age of criminal responsibility at 10 does not preclude other types of intervention where they would be a better and more proportionate response. This could include diversion from the criminal justice system in the first place. I can answer with a simple “yes” my noble friend Lord Attlee’s question about whether the age of the child is taken into account by the CPS as part of the public interest test. Diversion from the criminal justice system is happening in practice. There has been a dramatic fall since 2009 in the number of children aged between 10 and 12 years in the youth justice system. We want that downward trend to continue.

As I said in Committee, no 10 or 11 year-old has received a custodial sentence since 2010. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, talked about never seeing a 10 or 11 year-old in court. In response to the specific point about criminal damage or arson, in 2020, 171 children were proceeded against for either criminal damage or arson. Of those, the number aged either 10 or 11 was zero. We discussed the appalling Bulger case in Committee. It is a rare case, but it is important that when awful cases such as that arise, we have the correct mechanisms to deal with them.

The fact is that there are a range of approaches across Europe—and the wider world—to the age of criminal responsibility. Other European countries also have an age of criminal responsibility set at 10. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, said that she was astounded that we had the age of 10, but so does Switzerland—not a country one normally associates with human rights breaches—and I suggest that neither Switzerland nor the UK is in contravention of our international obligations.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew. As some noble Lords will know, I spoke on issues relevant to this amendment at an earlier stage of the Bill.

In quoting the Taylor review, the noble Lord, Lord German, made the case for his Amendment 90A. It would be singularly inappropriate—I think this was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—to debar all local authorities from setting up appropriate provision simply because of the use of the word “academy”. This is wrapped up with other aspects of educational policy. If the local authority is capable of providing what would manifestly be the best institution and provision for this group of young people, who need absolutely the best quality of education that can be afforded to them, it should do so. I take the view that the provision in Amendment 90A should categorically be in the Bill to ensure that we do not debar any local authority from engaging in the process to set up an institution. As has already been said, this does not require that local authorities should do it but it does not debar them; debarring them would be unreasonable.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar) (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments covers Part 9 of the Bill. I will cover the group in two parts, if I may.

Amendment 90A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord German, would allow local authorities to establish and maintain secure academies either alone or in consortia. The noble Lord kindly mentioned the sustained engagement that he has had with me and others on this matter; in turn, I acknowledge my gratitude to him for his time and commitment. As he mentioned, I wrote to him and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, outlining that, in our view, it would be legally possible for a local authority to set up an entity capable of entering into academy arrangements directly with the Secretary of State, and that this is not prevented by the Academies Act. Therefore, as I set out in that letter, there is no legal bar to what the noble Lord wants to happen. I understand that, as he said, he wants to put the matter “beyond any doubt”, but I have explained in writing that there is no legal doubt on this point at all; indeed, I think I heard him accept this afternoon that it is “clear” there is no legal bar. I therefore say to him and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, that there is no issue of being debarred here. I suggest that the amendment is therefore unnecessary.

I accept that the Government’s policy remains that academy trusts are not local authority-influenced companies and that our position on secure schools is to mirror academies’ procedures. However, I can confirm that, when considering the market of providers of future secure schools, my department will assess in detail the potential role of local authorities in running this new form of provision. We of course recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, noted, that local authorities have a long-established role in children’s social care and the provision of secure accommodation for children and young people. In particular, the secure children’s homes legal framework may present a more straightforward route than the 16-19 academies framework for the expansion of local authority involvement in the provision of secure accommodation. However, I reiterate that there is no legal bar here. I therefore suggest that the amendment must necessarily be unnecessary.

I now turn to Amendments 90B to 90F, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede. Local authorities have a duty, under the Children Act 1989, to ensure sufficient, appropriate accommodation for all the children they look after and to ensure sufficient children’s homes for other children whose welfare requires it, whether or not they are looked-after children. I recognise that some local authorities have sometimes found it difficult to access the most appropriate accommodation, particularly for children with the most complex needs. It is right to say, both from the judgment of Lord Justice Baker, which was mentioned, and indeed from other judgments, that some of these children have extremely challenging and very complex needs. It is also the case that, sometimes, children are placed in locations away from home when they may be better served by a placement in their local area if one were available. We are looking carefully at that, not only in my department but in others as well.

We are taking significant steps to support local authorities to fulfil their statutory duty. We have started a programme of work this year to support local authorities to maintain existing capacity and to expand provision in secure children’s homes to ensure that children can live closer to home and in provision that best meets their needs. In the spending review we announced £259 million to continue this programme to maintain and expand capacity in both secure and open residential children’s homes. We acknowledge, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said, that it may take—I will use the same phrase—some time to see all the benefits of that capital investment, particularly when you are talking about new builds, but it is the case that the capital programme will also result in increased capacity in the secure children’s home estate in the shorter term as we seek to create more beds through investment in a range of projects, including extensions of current buildings, refurbishments and rebuilds. I know that in the judgment referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Justice Baker used the phrase “urgent attention”, and that is what we are giving this problem.

Ofsted has also taken steps to support local authorities in this area. It has an amended process to make it easier for local authorities or other providers to apply for registration of children’s homes in emergency situations. It is also now easier to open and run a single-bed children’s home, which can be one of the most commonly needed types of accommodation when the child has very complex needs. It can be almost impossible, sometimes, to have more than one child in that location. Ofsted has now published guidance on these changes, and I hope that will help as well.

Before I sit down, I should also remind the House of two other relevant pieces of work ongoing in this area. First, the independent review of children’s social care, which commenced in March last year, is looking at this whole area in a fundamental way. Secondly, also in March last year, the Competition and Markets Authority launched a market study examining the lack of availability and increasing costs in children’s social care provision, including children’s homes and fostering. It has proposed a number of changes, of which I will not go into detail now, but they are important. We will look at the full reports when they come out. I expect both of those pieces of work to be serious and substantial reports.

I recognise the aims of all noble Lords who have supported these amendments; we all share the same aims here, but I suggest that we have existing statutory requirements and significant, wide-ranging and independent reviews under way, looking at the whole care system, alongside that CMA market study. For those reasons, I hope the noble Lord, Lord German, will withdraw his amendment and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, will not press his. I urge them to do so.