Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on the theme of rehabilitation. I echo what the noble Lord said: effective rehabilitation is a costly business. You need to invest in the right people and professionals, and support them properly, if you are to get the outcome that you want. That investment is well worth making. The National Grid Transco young offender programme was able to reduce reoffending by young people leaving prison from 70% to, I think, below 4%. Those young men went into employment and earned money for their families. Many were having children and setting a good example to the next generation. That was extremely carefully done and required hard work from all around, including the chairman of National Grid Transco in his lobbying for other companies to be involved in this process of mentoring and then employing young men from custody.

I join the warm welcome for Part 2 of the Bill, the reform of family courts. I was pleased to hear my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss speak about her brother’s vision for this future that has now come to us. I certainly see hope there in many possible improvements to the service for children and families.

I will concentrate on one aspect of the Bill: the possibility of an amendment to this legislation that might offer to reduce the numbers of women in custody and children taken into local authority care, and save the courts and local authorities both money and time. I refer to an amendment to Part 2 of the Bill that changes Section 33 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. This section deals with parental neglect and its punishment. I hope we might consider amending this section to extend the choice of disposal to include support. I hope we might also discuss ensuring that guidance is clear about offering support prior to court proceedings. In discussing this, I apologise to my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss for failing to consult her before Second Reading. No doubt the House will look to her for advice on this matter in Committee and I should certainly not wish to add to the legislative forest if legislation already meets my concern. However, I am struck by the anomaly of legislation that seeks only to punish neglect and not to provide for the alternative—support—where appropriate.

This House was concerned some time ago about the effect of introducing parenting orders. The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, will remember the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, the former chair of the Youth Justice Board, commented to me that in his experience parenting orders were the most effective tool at its disposal—the least costly and the one most welcomed by the recipients. Parents often commented, “Why weren’t we offered this help before?”. To give a few statistics, between 2001 and 2010, the number of cases under Section 33 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 trebled from 782 to 2,172; 67% of these resulted in cautions.

I would be grateful if the Minister might write to me about the remaining 33%. How many cases went as far as custody? How many mothers were imprisoned as a consequence? What became of the children whose mothers were imprisoned? How many children were taken into the care of the state as a consequence of the imprisonment of their mother? I recognise that these are emotive questions. It may be that my concerns are groundless—that very few, if any, individuals are incarcerated and that those few may merit this treatment. I would certainly wish to be assured that this is indeed the case. Even if it is, however, there still may be merit in amending the legislation and guidance to ensure that more families receive the early support they need.

I hope the Minister and your Lordships might be prepared to listen to the concerns of the charity Action for Children about the 1933 legislation. The charity has a long-standing interest in this area. The University of Salford’s four-year Evaluation of the Action for Children UK Neglect project was launched last week. Research found that Action for Children’s intensive family support services intervened successfully in most cases of neglect, even when neglect was a most serious concern, to the level of child-protection intervention. Parenting programmes and outreach were highlighted as particularly effective interventions.

Action for Children works with around 50,000 children and young people across its 480 services. It has a great deal of experience of working effectively with troubled families. I hope that your Lordships will be available to attend a briefing from the charity in the course of the Bill, and the Minister may be prepared to listen carefully to their concerns. No doubt Action for Children will wish to consult my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss if it has not had the opportunity to do so already.

I shall make one or two other observations about the capacity of courts to make good judgments in family proceedings. The complexity of these cases can be quite daunting and it encourages me that the proposal may offer more opportunities for training in sentencing, child development and in similar areas involving children and families. The district judge Nicholas Crichton, of the Inner London Family Proceedings Court, has made a tremendous difference to families in this country with his innovation of the Family Drug and Alcohol Court. He also goes to eastern Europe and trains the judiciary there to deal with children and families. Where one has expertise in a judge, they can make a huge difference to our society and to that of others.

I am concerned about what is happening with expert witnesses. As your Lordships may be aware, there has been concern about the rates of remuneration for expert witnesses. In particular, independent social workers are now the lowest paid, at £30 an hour. That is lower than a process server in a court. Often in local authorities, front-line social workers are very overstretched, particularly at the current time. Sometimes they are young and inexperienced, and a court needs a good expert to make an assessment of what should happen in a particular child’s case.

I know a few independent social workers. The father of one was a social worker and so is his daughter, and my experience has been that these are the sort of experts one would want giving advice in court. The danger is that if one sets the rates of pay so low, the best of them may leave and it might become difficult to find good ones to advise the court. I hope that the Minister might keep that in mind in this particular area. There is a need for good advice to the courts to make the speedy decisions we all want to see for children and to avoid delay.

Perhaps I may also briefly mention looked-after children. I do this in part because the family courts often deal with children who have grown up with a mother or father who themselves grew up in care. If you look at the statistics, it is staggering how many young women in care will go on to have children who are themselves taken into care. If we can avoid that situation, it is very much to be condoned. I am afraid that recent reports about children’s homes in the press, in the Times in particular, highlight the fact that we still have a long way to go in providing a fit-for-purpose service to many of our looked-after children. The many children being taken into care is a good thing. They will have better outcomes as a result of the care of the state, but too many within that group—a small but significant minority—are not getting the care they need.

Only about 4,000 of our children are now cared for in children’s homes—about 7% of the children being looked after—but they have a high level of needs. Because it is such an unpopular option, they will be there probably after a number of breakdowns in foster placements; they will be very troubled children. Some of the staff who care for them are wonderful and dedicated, but they do not have the professional development to help them manage those children as well as they should. In research comparing this country with Denmark and Germany, in Denmark 90% of the staff had a BA (honours) qualification. In this country it was 30%. The regulations require staff qualifications in children’s homes to be NVQ level 3, about equivalent to an A-level, and managers to have an NVQ level 4. That is about the beginning of a degree course or a foundation-year degree. However, the children in our homes are much more troubled than those in Denmark or Germany, because half the children in care in those countries are kept in residential settings. It is a much more popular option, so there is a mix of children with different levels of need.

It troubles me very much that those in our children’s homes are not getting the expert professional support and care which they need. Some have been sexually exploited by predatory men. Others will go on to be parents, perhaps while they are still in care, and quickly have their children taken away from them and be processed through the family court system. There will be other opportunities to debate this, I know, but I suggest that the Government need to look very carefully at this area and think about investing in the training and development of children’s home staff.

Briefly, the Magistrates’ Association is interested in a duty to oblige co-operation between magistrates and probation. It is concerned that the essential liaison between the two has declined over time. If one looks at the success of the Youth Justice Board, one sees a good working relationship between magistrates and young offender teams. I have been concerned in the past about anti-social behaviour orders and what has reassured me is that magistrates have increasingly understood the right way to use these orders and have consulted youth offender teams.

It might be necessary to legislate for closer liaison between the probation service and magistrates. This would make a big difference to successful alternatives to custody and reduce the adult prison population, as the Youth Justice Board has so successfully reduced the population of children in custody in this country. I look forward to the Minister’s response.