Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Siân C. James

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s advice. It is a fair point and one that was laboured, quite properly, by the Justice Committee. The advisory group would not achieve the purpose that I have for it if it was not sufficiently independent. Rather than give my right hon. Friend the guarantee that I will come back here, I point out that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed and his Select Committee are ideally placed to ensure, in the detailed scrutiny that they will properly give these matters, that the advisers have credibility in the youth justice field and that a range of views is presented to me.

The group will serve no purpose if it consists of people who entirely agree with what the Ministry of Justice is doing. They will not be there to act as a cheer group for the execution of policy. This is an important area in which we need to be continually challenged so that we get it right. I expect the advisory group to challenge us continually to help us to get it right.

We will never be perfect, because we are operating in a financially very constrained time owing to the simply dreadful economic inheritance that we received. [Interruption.] Well, Opposition Members may get bored with this, but as the Minister responsible for youth justice, prisons and probation, I would much rather have inherited merely a flat budget. Sadly I have not, and we have to deal with that. We have to be innovative and clever about how we respond to those circumstances to deliver the rehabilitation of offenders in this much more challenging environment.

As the responsible Minister, I want to make it clear to all hon. Members that youth justice is critical to the Ministry of Justice and a visible part of the Department’s business plan. We already have three key youth justice indicators, which are the number of young people coming into the youth justice system, the number of young people reoffending and the number of young people being sentenced to custody. The Ministry, and I as the youth justice Minister, will continue to be held to account by the public and Parliament for our performance against those measures.

I should add that from my own day-to-day experience and information drawn from youth offending teams, I fully understand just how difficult it will be simply to hold performance at current levels in this economic environment and the associated social environment in the short to medium term, before our wider social justice agenda begins to make itself felt in the long term. To some extent, keeping the Youth Justice Board would provide me with a helpful sandbag from the direct parliamentary fire of ministerial accountability for performance measures. Difficult though it may be to improve on the current performance that we inherit from the YJB, those measures will be used to inform our youth pathfinder and payment-by-results initiatives. That work is vital to the Ministry of Justice.

There is no question that the focus on youth justice will be lost or that it will become a junior partner to the work of the National Offender Management Service. In addition, we have put in place mechanisms to ensure a proper policy focus on youth justice. Senior officials have established the cross-departmental youth crime and justice board, which supports the strategic agenda. Regular inter-ministerial meetings ensure ministerial representation from the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Education, the Home Office and the Department of Health, to support cross-Government work on the matter.

I turn briefly to the amendments on Wales tabled by the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth. The criminal justice system, of which the youth justice system is an element, is not a transferred matter. It is the Secretary of State for Justice who is ultimately responsible for youth justice in England and Wales, and the Ministry of Justice that is responsible for the secure estate and courts. The Government have no plans to change that. It would be unfair to imply to Welsh Ministers that they have a liability for outcomes when they do not have statutory responsibility for the administration of youth justice.

The proposal to establish a joint committee between the YJB or the Ministry of Justice and Ministers in the National Assembly for Wales is also likely to create further confusion throughout the youth justice system about who is ultimately accountable. Unless the wider statutory environment were to change, making that piecemeal statutory change would not be helpful. It would further complicate what is already a complex picture.

The Government recognise the differences between England and Wales in areas such as education, health and social care, which are essential to improving the life chances of children who have offended, and we will always take into account the views of Welsh colleagues. The need to reduce reoffending and offending among children and young people is shared. Current arrangements offer the advantages of scale that come with an England and Wales resource, as well as the opportunity to learn from each other and share effective practice while retaining the ability to tailor the delivery of youth justice to Wales. That is why we will ensure that there remains significant join-up between England and Wales in our youth justice priorities.

[Mrs Siân C. James (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I am amazed that none of the Whips has said a word so far. Is this a deliberate attempt to talk out the S4C amendment?

[Mr Blunt]

Youth justice is an extremely important issue and these points have to be put properly on the record. I am slightly surprised at the hon. Lady’s intervention, because she makes it at precisely the moment at which I am trying to deal with issues that I believe are of some importance to her, as a Welsh Member, as well as to the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, who is sitting right behind her.

The Youth Justice Board currently has a team based in Wales, which works closely with the Welsh Assembly, and we will continue to have a Welsh-based team under our proposals to bring the functions of the Youth Justice Board into the Ministry of Justice.

The Government have listened and responded to the concerns of all interested parties. A full public consultation has just concluded, and we will carefully consider the responses before laying draft orders before Parliament. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark asked about the balance of the responses to the consultation. There were, I think, 2,800 responses to the public bodies consultation, of which 68 were about the Youth Justice Board. It will not surprise him to learn that the balance of the responses was not supportive of the Government’s proposal—that is not a remotely surprising pattern when it is proposed to change something. However, before we lay the draft orders, there will be an opportunity to see the detail of them.

The youth justice system needs clear and visible leadership from me, as the responsible Minister, supported by a governance structure that retains a dedicated focus on youth justice. That is what we will provide as part of our proposals to abolish the YJB. I believe that is the best way to help us reduce offending and reoffending by young people, and I ask the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth to withdraw the new clause.

Office of the Public Guardian

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Siân C. James

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Dobbin.

May I start by offering the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) my apologies for not being the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), in whose brief the Office of the Public Guardian directly sits? However, as we speak my hon. Friend is debating amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill upstairs in Committee. So I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be happy to make do with me—well, he will have to make do with me.

As I said to the hon. Gentleman privately last week before this debate, I myself have had some unhappy constituency cases in the past 14 years of people who have fallen into the clutches of state-overseen administration of the affairs of a loved one. We have heard about another example of that from the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames). If one finds oneself in circumstances where professional administrators are taking a very substantial sum out of the case, one can then see the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce parallel that was adduced by the hon. Gentleman coming to fruition awfully for individual constituents. However, I do not think that that is actually the case here, because obviously the deputy at hand is not a professional administrator. She is a relative of one of the parties, which in cases such as this one is more common than the appointment of professional administrators.

At the beginning of my response to this debate, I want to say that the work of the Public Guardian and his role in safeguarding the interests of people who lack capacity is very important, and that it is entirely right and proper that we should consider the effective functioning of the Office of the Public Guardian and how well it is able to support the Public Guardian in fulfilling his statutory duties. However, I also want to say at the outset that I am not entirely clear whether the particular aspects of this case offer the best evidence to test how effectively the Office of the Public Guardian is operating or indeed to show up a particular fault on behalf of the office. It appears to me that the issues are essentially private matters, which could and should have been resolved by the parties themselves rather than with significant intervention by the state, in the form of the Office of the Public Guardian. I will come back to the individual cases that have been mentioned in the debate in the latter half of my remarks.

Let me provide some context by explaining the role of the Public Guardian, because there is a degree of misunderstanding about what precisely are the duties and responsibilities of the Office of the Public Guardian, and that gets to the heart of the case that the hon. Gentleman has discussed.

The statutory role of the Public Guardian was created by the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Among other things, he is responsible for maintaining a register of deputies appointed by the courts; supervising such deputies on an ongoing basis; and investigating any concerns raised with him about a deputy’s potential misconduct or abuse. I want to make it clear that the Public Guardian himself does not have any role in managing the affairs of a person lacking capacity and nor does he have powers to step in and take over the management of a person’s affairs if a deputy is deemed to be unable or unwilling to manage those affairs. Furthermore, it is not within the jurisdiction of the Public Guardian to remove a deputy once appointed, or to place limits on the way in which a deputy exercises his or her powers.

[Mrs Siân C. James]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Blunt]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not, otherwise I will not be able fully to respond to the debate.

The Public Guardian’s role is essentially supervisory and investigatory, and if he believes that a deputy is unable or unwilling to fulfil his or her functions effectively, he can make an application to the Court of Protection seeking the deputy’s removal and replacement. The hon. Member for Cardiff West made that clear in his remarks, but his constituent was obviously not aware of the situation until rather late in the day. Since coming into force in October 2007, the Office of the Public Guardian has worked hard to raise awareness of its role and function, and I hope this debate will make a small contribution to that.

[Mrs Siân C. James]

Will the Minister give way? I have a short intervention.

[Mr Blunt]

I am sorry. If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I want to be able to put the role of the office on the record and deal with the case presented by the hon. Member for Cardiff West. If I then have time, I will of course take the hon. Lady’s intervention.

Once a deputy has been appointed by the Court of Protection, the Public Guardian assigns him or her to an appropriate level of supervision. That process follows a risk-based assessment that ensures that all deputies receive adequate and proportionate oversight and support. An annual supervision fee is payable to the Office of the Public Guardian, which is proportionate to the degree of support or scrutiny required. In most cases, the supervisory regime requires the deputy to report to the Public Guardian on at least an annual basis. It can also result in further contact from the office throughout the year, to confirm that the deputy is carrying out his or her duties properly and to identify any need for additional support. In certain cases, it also involves a visit from an independent Court of Protection visitor, who reports their findings to the Public Guardian.

If a third party has concerns that a deputy has abused his or her position, that they are not acting in the person’s best interests, or that the person who lacks capacity is otherwise at risk, they can raise such issues with the Public Guardian. That can be done in confidence, as the office has a well-established whistleblowing procedure. In this case, the third party has plainly consistently been in touch with the Office of the Public Guardian, not least in the past three years through the hon. Member for Cardiff West.

After an initial assessment, if the concerns warrant further investigation the case is passed to the dedicated compliance team, which has responsibility for investigating allegations or concerns brought to the Public Guardian’s attention. The issues raised vary considerably, from relatively simple matters to extremely complex ones. An investigation often uncovers a number of different views as to what is in a person’s best interests, and those views can differ radically.

When considering allegations or concerns, the Public Guardian always considers first and foremost the impact on the person who lacks capacity. He considers to what extent their best interests are being met by the deputy and whether or not, in his view, the person’s interests might better be met by alternative arrangements. If there are significant concerns about how the deputyship is operating, the Public Guardian might make an application to the Court of Protection to seek either the removal of the deputy or limits on his or her powers. If there is evidence of a criminal offence or if serious issues are uncovered, the Public Guardian passes the details to the police. If no major concerns are uncovered but some residual issues bear greater scrutiny, the Public Guardian can allocate the deputy to a higher category of supervision, which enables his office to keep a closer eye on the situation or to provide a higher degree of support to the deputy. Finally, it is entirely possible that he might find the complaint unwarranted, or that there is insufficient evidence to pursue it.

It is always open to a third party to make an application of their own volition to the Court of Protection, seeking an order in relation to the management of a person’s affairs. For example, were a third party unhappy about the outcome of an investigation carried out by the Public Guardian, they would be entirely at liberty to make an application to the court to seek a deputy’s removal. That is the situation with the case that has been presented today.

This case concerns a dispute about the sale and maintenance of a foreign property in which two parties have a shared interest. One of the parties lacks capacity and has a deputy appointed to manage his affairs. The second party is of the view that the deputy has failed to do what is required from her side in order that the sale of the shared property can be progressed. I also understand that there are ongoing issues concerning the appropriate level of contributions to the maintenance of, and the shared service fees relating to, the property.

I know that the hon. Gentleman has taken a significant interest in the case and has written on a number of occasions to raise concerns. As we have heard, he wrote most recently to the Public Guardian in March 2011, but the office has no record of that letter, which is why the hon. Gentleman has not received an answer. I regret that that has happened. I obviously have no idea why, but I hope that today I can provide the hon. Gentleman with appropriate assurance on the issues that he has raised.

I am aware that there is a view that the Public Guardian could, and indeed should, take over active management of the case—as implied by the hon. Gentleman’s remarks today—and that his office should progress the sale of the property. However, that is not one of the functions of the Public Guardian, nor does it fall within the scope of his powers. Indeed, even if the Public Guardian had such powers and responsibilities, I am not convinced that this case merits such an intervention. On the face of it, it seems to be a dispute between two private parties, albeit complicated by the lack of capacity of one of the parties and the fact that the property is located abroad.

I have sought advice on the case, and it has become evident that it is not even wholly clear whose responsibility it is to advance the sale of the property. When the parties where divorced, Cardiff county court ordered, on 20 December 2000, that Mrs F’s solicitors shall have conduct of the sale of the property. I am not certain whether the property referred to in that direction is the property under debate; if it is, it is absolutely clear that it is Mrs F who should be progressing the sale. Since Mrs F has the keys to the property, I would want to see more evidence of obstruction by the deputy of a process that she should be progressing.