Solitary Confinement (Children and Young People)

Debate between Jonathan Lord and Phillip Lee

Tuesday 1st May 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Dr Phillip Lee)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing this important debate on a difficult issue that is worthy of further discussion after today. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond.

The number of children entering the youth justice system has continued to decrease in recent years. In 2016-17, juvenile convictions and cautions were down by 83% since 2006-2007, with first-time entries down by 85% in the same period. The number of under-18s in custody also fell by 70% during that time, and in February stood at 870. That represents a success story, and everyone involved in youth justice should be pleased by those figures. However, the decline in overall numbers has resulted in a concentrated cohort of young people in the secure estate, many of whom demonstrate complex and challenging behaviour.

[Mr Lord]

I am pleased about the overall reduction but, as the Minister says, there is now a cohort of perhaps more difficult offenders. I admired the eloquence of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), but I do not think that she was able to answer my earlier question. If someone in a young offenders institution is a danger to themselves and others, what alternatives are there to removal from association?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lee]

I acknowledge that the youth justice population has an over-representation of the issues that the hon. Lady has just outlined, although the diagnosis of each of those is broad and, in and of itself, not straightforward. I know that the appropriate care is made available to individuals who particularly need psychiatric input. I look at that on a regular basis, and I personally see it as my responsibility to ensure that that is the case. If the hon. Lady would like to write to me with evidence of where that is not the case, I would be more than happy to receive such a letter.

At an absolute minimum, young people in segregation in young offenders institutions will be given time in the open air, outreach education provision, healthcare, physical education and access to legal advice. Individual regime plans are agreed for each young person by a multi-disciplinary team, taking account of all those issues and any other relevant information. They are reviewed frequently on an individual basis—again, in the interest of the young person. All under-18 young offenders institutions have been given additional training on the use of segregation and the rules governing it.

I note with interest the recent inspection report from the independent monitoring board for Feltham YOI, which is of course located in the constituency of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston. The report noted that significant improvements have been made in addressing violence and praised the dedication and commitment of staff within the establishment. I take this opportunity to reiterate my thanks to staff at Feltham and across the youth secure estate for their continued hard work in looking after the young people in their care.

The report also noted, however, that too frequently staffing levels within the establishment affected the daily regime and the ability to provide sufficient purposeful activity and time out of room. I share those concerns and am encouraged that, across both sites at Feltham, recruitment is swiftly improving. As of the end of March, there were 105 prison officers booked on to entry-level training. I believe that every child and young person should have access to and be engaged in meaningful activities, including education and physical activities. The regime should be purposeful, meet the needs of the cohort, keep young people occupied and active all day and deliver the highest quality education. That needs to sit alongside effective behaviour management, so that young people can be out of their rooms and able to participate safely in the regimes and activities provided.

That is why we have developed a new approach to behaviour management, which includes the roll-out of the custody support plan, to provide each young person with a personalised officer to work with on a weekly basis in order to build trust and consistency. We are also implementing a conflict resolution strategy, applying restorative justice principles to help resolve conflict. However, while acknowledging the work that is continuing to be progressed to address safety in youth custody, as demonstrated in the latest inspection reports from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons for Werrington and Parc young offenders institutions, I am clear that levels of violence within the youth estate are too great, which is why we are reforming youth custody to reduce violence and improve outcomes for young people.

Investing in our workforce is a cornerstone of those reforms. We continue to be impressed by the dedication and pride that our staff show in their work with young people, as evidenced by the fact that more than 200 frontline staff have voluntarily enrolled on a youth justice foundation degree funded by the Ministry of Justice. We want to build on that success and ensure that working in youth justice continues to be seen as the respected and rewarding profession that it is.

We know that many establishments have struggled with staffing, especially in the south-east, which is why we are increasing frontline capacity in public sector young offenders institutions by bringing in more than 100 new recruits and introducing a new youth justice specialist role. We have started recruitment for those additional frontline posts in order to relieve the immediate operational pressures, alongside additional psychology roles in the YOIs. In addition, we are developing a bespoke recruitment campaign and process for the youth custody service, to target those with a passion to work with young people. The first phase of this—a new website and targeted marketing material—was launched last week.

We will develop strong leaders, building the workforce required to create a therapeutic and aspirational culture in our establishments. Our reforms will empower the leaders, giving them the freedom to deliver the right suite of services to meet the needs of the young people in their care. We are working closely with NHS England to implement Secure STAIRS, a framework for integrated care in the youth secure estate, which aims to co-ordinate the services of health and non-health providers into a coherent package, supporting trauma-informed care and a whole-system approach.

I am a strong believer in the benefit that sport and physical activity can provide to children in custody. As well as the obvious health benefits, it can provide young people with a sense of achievement, enhancing self-esteem and transforming lives. For those reasons, I commissioned Professor Rosie Meek of Royal Holloway, University of London to conduct an independent review into the role of sport in the justice system, to identify best practice and make recommendations for improvement. Professor Meek’s report will be published shortly and I await its findings with interest.

We are also looking to support organisations that want to work with young people in the youth justice system and seek opportunities to build on existing collaborations between establishments, sports clubs and providers. For example, Saracens rugby club’s Get Onside programme, which runs at Feltham for young adults, is a shining example of how sport can engage young people. The young adults who have been through this 10-week programme, which uses the ethos of rugby to teach skills such as leadership and teamwork, have shown notably lower rates of reoffending than their peers. That is just one example of how sport can help young people lead a better, more productive life, away from crime.

Finally, we continue to work on our proposal to develop secure schools. Our model will be informed by best practice from outstanding alternative provision schools, and secure schools will be set up, run and managed in a similar way to free schools.

[Mr Lord]

I am encouraged by a lot of what the Minister has said and I urge him to keep up the good work in his Department and with these institutions. Does he agree that, given that solitary confinement has a clear definition in this space, and no young people are subject to solitary confinement in the UK, that pejorative phrase should not be used in such debates? Where removal from association is used as a last resort, we obviously urge that those young people benefit in the future from the sort of regime that the Minister is outlining.

[Dr Lee]

Yes, it is always important to use language appropriately. As I tried to point out at the start, use of the term is difficult when internationally no clear definition is agreed upon. The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston can be assured that I look at this issue all the time. I cannot talk about individual cases, because one is still running with the courts, but we consider the issue all the time. There have been other cases where difficult decisions have to be made. I am assured that at all times we are thinking about the child at the centre of the case, and the children being held with the child who is showing such troubling behaviour.

Secure schools will be operated on a not-for-profit basis by child-focused providers with strong leaders who will have the freedom to provide integrated services based on individual need, with education and healthcare and, if I get my way, sport at its heart.

I am under no illusions about the challenge we face. We are talking about some of the most challenging, often damaged young people in the country. However, our reforms will support establishments to provide better levels of care and enable more young people to engage in purposeful activities, outside their rooms, and work towards a brighter future.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston on her speech, and thank my hon. Friends the Members for Henley (John Howell) and for Woking (Mr Lord) and the hon. Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for their contributions. I will take away the points about the collection of data and the numbers of children who could be affected in this way, and I will be happy to receive any correspondence on the issue from any parliamentary colleague.

Question put and agreed to.

Mobile Army Surgical Hospital

Debate between Jonathan Lord and Phillip Lee

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

I thank my hon. Friend, who of course has a wealth of experience in the field in this matter. I was also going to come to the need for security. In the discussions I have had since I first mentioned this at Defence questions, there has been some disagreement about the level of security required.

The broader point is that this is about the re-tasking of our armed forces. Clearly a lot of change is going on at the Ministry of Defence and there are some cuts to regiments and to forces, but there is also a need to reconfigure forces so that they are interested in delivering not just hard power but softer power. Ultimately, in any response to a crisis—it could be a natural catastrophe such as an earthquake as well as the civil war in Syria—there needs to be joined-up thinking across all the parts of Government that would be involved.

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on the excellent idea that he is putting forward, which has my full support. There have been big increases in the budget for our international development funds but quite severe decreases in the defence budget. Perhaps this is a question for the Minister rather than my hon. Friend, but is there not a strong argument that when the Army is deployed on humanitarian grounds the money should come out of DFID’s budget rather than the Ministry of Defence’s budget?

[Dr Lee]

Yes, I was going to come to that. There should be a DFID-funded capability.

The capability needs to be constructive. A friend of mine has talked about having blue overalls, not blue helmets. In other words, we have a United Nations force with blue helmets, so why do we not have a force of people in blue overalls? Our intervention should not necessarily be military in appearance—we can also intervene in other ways. The capability should be resourceful. We are good at this stuff. We can draw on our experiences in the Balkans and the Falklands—I mentioned Rick Jolly’s field hospital—and prior to that. We are very good at this; we have the clinical expertise, in particular. The capability should be able to be expeditionary—that is, to go abroad. In the case of Syria, I foresee a situation where it could be located in a friendly country such as Jordan. It should also have a domestic application. God forbid that there is ever a chemical attack in this country, but the facility could also be deployed here.

The core goal should be to try to develop a stable world that we all appreciate, and that can be brought about by making friends and influencing people. The Arab street is not necessarily with the British or the Americans. We need to persuade civilians on the ground that we do not always have a malign, vested interest—a sense that we are just doing it for ourselves—in our approach to the middle east, but that we are there to do constructive and good things and to genuinely help people.

Turning to details and capacity, as a result of the conversations I have had I envisage a facility with at least 50 beds, perhaps more. If it is as successful as I think it will be I suspect we will extend it, but 50 beds is a good starting point. I think it should include a CT scanner, which is often not available in more rural areas and far-flung destinations. It is possible to put CT scanners in containers and companies such as Marshall Land Systems in Cambridge make container hospitals. There is no reason why we cannot do this. We need to consider whether the facility should also have paediatric and obstetric services, because it is not just soldiers such as those in the “MASH” television series who will be coming in, but children who have been affected by a neurological agent—such as those we saw in that dreadful footage—and pregnant women who have sustained injuries.

Cost is always relevant when it comes to Government spending and there are some figures available. Apparently the Finns purchased a hospital for deployment for about £5 million. I envisage that my proposal will probably cost between £5 million and £10 million. I think it should be a military asset, because the military is best placed to run it, but it should be staffed primarily with reservists, not regulars. Military logistics are important: the army are the best people to get this facility quickly into the field, and Kosovo is an example of that. The army’s command and control systems are relevant.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has rightly referred to the facility’s security, which is of paramount importance. I think it would be a target. The facility would focus on hearts and minds and on delivering care on the ground, and if I were an Islamist jihadist I would think, “We need to knock that out, because it’s going to start changing minds and attitudes.” The facility’s security would need some thought. For example, RAF Akrotiri is stationed close to Syria and the deployment of troops may need to be considered in exceptional circumstances.

Clarity of funding is clearly important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) has said. The politics of international aid are tough on the doorsteps of Bracknell—trust me: I experience it quite often. This proposal would be one way of using DFID funds for something that is demonstrably humanitarian and of leveraging in some funds to a defence asset that would be used primarily for humanitarian purposes, but—this would always be at the back of my mind—that could also be deployed if we ever go to war.