Rights of Children (Police Custody)

Debate between Janet Daby and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that no reference should be made during the debate to any ongoing legal proceedings.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the rights of children while in police custody.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. In March, I led an Adjournment debate following the incredibly concerning case of a constituent who was held in a cell for nine hours before an appropriate adult was called. Unbeknown to his family, he had been missing; he had not arrived at school, and they were unaware of his whereabouts. From that case and many others of a similar nature, it is clear that the law is simply not working for children in police custody. There is room for further debates on the general policing of minors and children, but today’s debate is focused on the rights of children while in police custody.

I am sure the Minister knows that various legislative protections are in place to ensure that children are detained as a last resort, and for the shortest possible time. The failing is that this is clearly not happening, because the policies are being ignored. Some 50,000 children are held and locked up in police custody every year. Children are detained in cells in police stations that have primarily been built for adults. On average, children are detained for over 13 hours, with 21,369 detained overnight in 2019. The decision to detain children is approved 99% of the time, and it is time the whole process was reviewed.

According to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the role of the appropriate adult is to safeguard the interests, rights, entitlements and welfare of children and vulnerable people who are suspected of a criminal offence by ensuring that they are treated in a fair and just manner and can participate effectively. The Act derived from public concern over the Maxwell Confait murder case in my constituency in 1972, which led Parliament to pass the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, known as PACE. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Confait case, which involved a tragic murder and the wrongful arrest, charging and sentencing of minors, which was later overturned.

PACE tackled a number of areas of growing public concern, including the treatment of suspects in police stations and cells, the length of detention without being charged, the conduct of interviewers and access to lawyers. In cases where the suspect is a child or vulnerable person, PACE requires the presence of an appropriate adults, also known as AA.

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[Janet Daby]

I agree with my hon. Friend that, in such instances, it is abuse. It is harmful for children to be in such situations. The very service that is there to protect them is also doing them incredible harm. The Government have to take that on board and to accept their responsibility and the role they need to play. The welfare of the child is “paramount”—it says that in the Children Act 1989. If the welfare of the child is paramount, their welfare needs to be paramount on all occasions and in all situations. The very services that are there to protect and support them need not only to carry out justice—absolutely—but to consider the welfare of the child.

I am sure we want more for our children—I am hearing that already—but we must not keep them in a state of despair. That is simply wrong. As I said, the Government can change that. Even with children who end up being convicted, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and carry on with a system that is devoid of compassion.

Cutting the detention clock for a child in custody would mean that the appropriate adult is likely to be called out quicker and is more able to stay for the duration of the detention. It would also lead to a decrease in the frequency of overnight stays. That would be better for the public purse economically, but also for the physical and mental wellbeing of the child.

For the police, it would improve relations with key communities in the area, reduce reoffending rates and ensure that all their collected evidence was reliable. It would prevent the collection of evidence from being hampered by the lack of sleep or the worry and stress stemming from 13 or so hours in solitary confinement. To be clear, calling for a reduction in the child detention clock would not hinder the police’s ability to fight crime. The police currently have the power to request an extension from the superintendent if the case is complex. That power would be retained even if a lower detention cap was implemented.

During the previous Adjournment debate, the Minister failed to respond to my call to cut the stay limit from 24 hours. Will she hear me now and respond to that call? There is evidence calling for a stay limited to 12 hours instead of 24.

I will mention two other things before I finish. First, there must be far higher reporting and monitoring of the use of strip searches in police custody. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for her recent parliamentary question. The current rate of strip searches is woeful. They are degrading and humiliating and, as we have seen, they completely traumatise children. Will the Minister commit to increasing transparency and accountability on this issue and exploring technological alternatives that are less intrusive, less emotionally harmful and less damaging to the child?

Secondly, a decade of legal aid cuts has meant that firms cannot afford to send down more than minimally trained representatives to police stations, and then only for the shortest possible period. Lawyers therefore often arrive just before the interview, when the child is too exhausted to engage—if the child gets a lawyer at all. Currently, children have to opt in for legal advice, and too many children forgo their right to legal representation; they are burnt out, emotionally exhausted and probably do not fully understand, and they falsely believe it will make the process go faster. The fallout from this kind of misunderstanding can be avoided if we instead implement an opt-out system.

There is also a danger that post-pandemic remote legal advice will begin to spread. Research from Transform Justice shows that remote legal advice increases the stress and anxiety of children and impedes the communication between lawyer and child. To ensure high-quality advice that serves the needs of the child, it is vital that the Minister continues to champion in-person legal advice, moves towards an opt-out system and bolsters legal aid.

As I draw to a close, I ask the Government to maintain public safety and to protect children throughout the youth criminal justice system. I call on the Minister to review the detention clock for children, to roll out the Met’s new approach to appropriate adults across the Met and the police nationwide, which will allow us to begin finally to have a child-first approach to police custody suites, and to implement opt-out legal representation system for children. I ask again whether the Minister will commit to increasing transparency and accountability for strip searches and exploring technological alternatives that are less intrusive and harmful to minors. As a country, we should see the welfare of the child as paramount in all instances and across all services at all times.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 4 o’clock. I am obliged to call the Front Benchers no later than 3.37 pm. The guideline limits are 10 minutes each for Her Majesty’s Opposition and the Minister. Janet Daby will have three minutes at the end to sum up the debate. I believe that three Back Benchers are seeking to catch my eye, so there should be plenty of time for everyone to get in.

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[Janet Daby]

I thank everybody who participated in this afternoon’s debate. All hon. Members, including the Government and Opposition spokespeople, spoke comprehensively. Many issues were touched on, but the thread that ran through everybody’s contribution was the need to safeguard the wellbeing of young people, children and minors.

I was particularly struck by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova). She spoke about a young person who had been held in a custody cell for 23 hours and then discharged without being charged with any offence. Young people who are arrested by the police are sometimes not charged at all because no evidence is found that they have committed a crime.

I have worked closely with the police in previous jobs and have had brilliant professional relationships with police officers. I do not believe that anybody comes to work to do a bad job; I think everybody goes to work to do a good job, including the police, but people do not always have the tools or training they need to do that or the policies in place to enable that. There is room for change, which I will mention briefly in the time I have left.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his contribution and comments, which were very meaningful. He mentioned the rights of children and that a 10-year-old child is still learning about what is right and what is wrong. Those children may not have the ability to say whether they need legal representation or not, but they absolutely need it.

The hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) spoke about young people needing to be protected and about preventing overnight detention, as well as being an advocate for safeguards to be in place for strip searches.

I welcome the Minister’s comments about what is happening in regard to strip searches. I would be interested to see the information she offered to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea to clarify if it relates to all strip searches; it is an issue we need to be open and transparent about. I was interested to hear about the Government’s work to prevent the adultification of young people, as well as about the new design for custody suites.

The main point of the debate was about the detention of children and about appropriate adults. As I mentioned, successful child trials have been rolled out with the Met. I press the Minister and the Government to look at that trial to see whether it could be pushed forward across the Met and other police forces to ensure that children are not detained longer than necessary. I also press them to consider minimising that stay from 24 hours to 12, to look at the whole legal aid system, in order to ensure that all children can access legal aid, and to consider the opt-out system.

Thank you very much for your time, Mr Hollobone.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Thank you for yours.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the rights of children while in police custody.