Secure 16 to 19 Academies Bill

Christina Rees Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I will not detain the Committee long, but I want to voice my wholehearted support for my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham in introducing the Bill. I also wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to her for her well-known and long-standing commitment to children, both in her professional career as a doctor and in this place. It is perhaps a testament to that commitment that she has been instrumental in bringing forward this small but important piece of legislation. The people of Sleaford and North Hykeham are very lucky to have her as their representative in this place, and long may that continue.

It is a sad reality that a small number of children commit offences so serious that there is no option other than to deprive them of their liberty in order to protect the public. It is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that they receive the appropriate support to prepare them for their eventual release and to turn their lives around.

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my friend, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, for introducing this very important Bill. I am also grateful to the Minister for taking my intervention.

I appreciate that the Bill does not apply to Wales, but in Neath, we have Hillside Secure Children’s Home, which is the only home of its type in the UK. We receive children from all over the UK. The children live there, but they are locked up; they receive education and courses, learn social skills and are rewarded for good behaviour and achievements. The period of stay is usually 12 weeks, during which time they turn their lives around, but there is a cliff edge when they are released back into their communities. I have been campaigning since I was elected in May 2015 to secure funding for a step-down unit on the site of Hillside so that these children can live together in a supervised situation, thus avoiding the cliff edge when they go back into their communities and potentially reoffending. Could the Minister please advise me on that?

[Edward Argar]

It is always a pleasure to respond to the hon. Lady. She is right. Even though these specific measures do not apply to Wales, the concept underpinning the secure schools to which this relates is that of education with security, rather than the other way around, and a key part of that is preparing children and young people for release into the community, with the skills and the support to enable them to make a success of their lives. In that context, the hon. Lady highlights a particular issue in Wales, and tempts me to talk about resourcing and funding. I will not stray into that, but I am always happy to have a conversation with her about this, if that would be helpful.

If I may stretch your patience just a little, Mr Hollobone, I shall take this opportunity, given the hon. Member for Neath has intervened, to say I was very sorry to see her announcement that she is standing down from this place at the next election. I have got to know her well over the nine years I have been in this place, and it was a pleasure, during my brief sojourn out of office a couple of years ago, to be able to play a small part in supporting her Shark Fins Act 2023. I wish her well in the future, but I know that it will be a loss to her constituents not to have her in this place.

Secure schools are a landmark reform in youth custody that will help to reduce reoffending and ultimately lead to fewer victims of youth crime, thereby protecting the public. We look forward to opening the first of those, delivering on our 2019 manifesto commitment, very soon. It is an important new development, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham highlighted, which has a focus on education with the custodial element alongside it.

For such an important part of our vision for the future of the youth custody estate, it is important that we have proportionate termination measures should there be a need to close a secure school, and that that we have efficient processes in place for opening new schools in the future. The Government have already acted to establish secure 16 to 19 academies in legislation, and this Bill is necessary to ensure that specific provisions in the Academies Act 2010 are relevant to the new custodial settings.