Rights of Children (Police Custody)

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) for securing this important debate.

I am mindful not to speak about cases currently going through the courts. I intended to allude to child Q, unaware that the case is in court. I will modify my speech accordingly. None the less, it is damning in the 21st century to be talking about children being strip-searched by police officers while at school and in their own environment. It is also damning to have seen the public report, which I hope I can speak about. Perhaps I cannot, as I have just received an eye from the Chair. That report is public and gives a damning account of what—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Lady resume her seat? I am acting to try to protect the hon. Lady. She was honest to say that her speech was to be about a particular case, and now she is going to do her best to talk about the same issues without referring to the particular child, but we all know who she is talking about. She will have to be very careful and speak only in general terms. I am saying that to protect her and Parliament.

[Claudia Webbe]

Thank you for your guidance, Mr Hollobone.

We know there are cases where children are not given an appropriate adult when brought into custody, are not presented with their rights, or are asked whether they want representation. Such practices must end. We must come to a better understanding of how we treat children, not only when protecting them from crime, but when they are brought into custody and falsely accused, or otherwise.

I have dealt with cases in my constituency where children innocently engage in social media and are then caught in a spiral in system where they are brought in for questioning; they are frightened by the type of questioning and the way it is posed. They are immediately so fearful of that questioning and the adults in the room that they are ready to sign anything in order to get out of there as quickly as possible. Children should have an appropriate adult; they should be told their rights in a manner that gives them an informed choice about having proper representation. If necessary, a pause should be given, so that they can make that informed choice. It is important that they have an adult in the room and have proper legal representation because what they say and admit to in that room can rest with them forever and a day and affect every aspect of their life going forward. It is important that children get the right representation from the outset, because many of them are in the midst of important, serious exams that will affect the rest of their lives. They need to be in the right mindset to do those exams.

In one of the schools in my constituency, children had been accused of a form of bullying, which turned out to be a conflict between ethnicities and races. The children and parents were not given the proper support and advice, and the children were told to stay away from the school environment until the investigation was complete, without being given any support to study at home or do anything that enabled to them to have a better understanding of the education that they need to continue with.

I am continuing to be mindful not to talk about child Q, Mr Hollobone, but I will say that it is important that children are allowed to feel safe in their school environments, neighbourhoods and communities, and that they know that the first action by the police will not be to bring them into an invasive situation wherein they have less power, but that the police will treat children as children, with the right and proper support around them. I hope that all the recommendations that come out of many of the serious and important reports on the way that children are treated in custody are implemented, and that somebody is appointed at a senior level to ensure that this is the case. Too often, recommendations remain unadopted and sit at the bottom of the shelf, but they need to be implemented to protect the future. It is even more vital that racist and misogynistic attitudes are left out of the custody suite and interactions with children. Far too often, black and other globalised children are left reeling from racism and, if they are young women, misogyny.

Institutional racism and misogyny in the police force needs to be seriously addressed, especially when it involves children. At the end of the day, we are talking about police services that have already been deemed to have used sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language when it comes to dealing with people in their custody. We know of adults being wrongly strip-searched. We also know that two serving Metropolitan police officers were jailed for sharing photographs of the bodies of Bibaa Henry and Nicola Smallman, two young black sisters from north London who went missing in June 2020. The officers shared the photos with 41 members of a police WhatsApp group. The police were also accused of showing a lack of interest in the fact that the two sisters were missing, which delayed their search.

The Metropolitan Police Service was recently forced to deny that it is plagued by a culture of misogyny, after an official report revealed shocking details of officers sharing messages about hitting and raping women, as well as about the deaths of black babies and the holocaust. The Independent Office for Police Conduct said in its report on behaviour at Charing Cross police station that there was a culture of “toxic masculinity” and that the behaviour was not confined to rogue individuals, but was part of an offensive Metropolitan police culture. The report states:

“We believe these incidents are not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’.”

Of course, that inquiry came after the brutal police crackdown of a vigil in the memory of Sarah Everard. I do not believe that that case is—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. The debate is about the rights of children while in police custody. I understand that the hon. Lady has made the remarks that she has for reasons of context, but the debate is specifically about the rights of children in police custody, so I would appreciate it if she came back to that subject.

[Claudia Webbe]

Thank you for that guidance, Mr Hollobone. Indeed, I was highlighting a policing culture that no adult, let alone a child, should be subjected to. We simply cannot expose children to that type of policing culture. It is therefore vital that measures to avoid holding children in police custody, or to reduce the time that they spend in it, are strengthened and enforced.

The Youth Justice Legal Centre found that children are not interviewed under caution outside a custody suite as often as they could be. Too often, children who are refused bail are not transferred to local authority accommodation, as is legally required; instead, they are kept in police cells. That must end. I also support the calls from the Just for Kids Law charity for an end to the overnight detention of children by police. Children are currently subject to the same time limit as adults. We cannot allow that to continue and it must change.

We must redouble our efforts to end the scourge of racism and misogyny that plagues our police forces and all aspects of society, and in doing so, we must ensure that our children are not exposed to unnecessary harm in police custody.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

I will come on to the point that the hon. Lady made about black children, but I hope she heard my earlier comments about the importance that the Government place on prevention. That is the reason for the hundreds of millions of pounds we are spending over the long term on violence reduction units, to look at what actually works in this space to prevent young children from being drawn into knife crime, gang culture and a life of crime. [Interruption.] Sorry, did someone wish to intervene?

[Claudia Webbe]

Obviously, the Minister was referring to the policing of black children, not the criminalisation of black children.

[Rachel Maclean]

I will move on in my speech and address those points.

Turning to the issue of children being detained in police cells, whether they are black or any other ethnicity, looking at the system as a whole, I am pleased to say that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services reports that its custody inspections show a decrease in the number of children held in custody in recent years. I think we can all agree that that is positive, although we must continue to keep that under review.

We take our responsibilities towards children in detention seriously. Those aged under 18 should not be treated in the same way as adults in the criminal justice system. They should not be placed in a cell or be allowed to associate with an adult detainee in any circumstances. We are clear that all new custody suites must be designed with the capability to allow separation of adult males, adult females and children.

Members have made reference to data in their speeches. I can tell the House that the Home Office will publish data on strip searches in custody for the first time this year as part of a wider custody collection, which will greatly increase transparency and accountability. We anticipate that this collection will ultimately become mandatory.