Youth Justice

Debate between Josh MacAlister and David Lammy

Monday 18th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The Tories have a mixed record when it comes to youth justice and keeping young people out of criminality. We should remember that their local authority spending cuts led to a huge fall in council services for young people—about 70% in real terms. While they were in power, £1 billion was lost, leading to the closure of many youth clubs, a reduction in the outreach work that is vital to keeping young people on the right track, and youth workers being completely undermined. All that early intervention work was stopped—an entire generation sacrificed at the altar of austerity.

As the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) will know—he was at the driving wheel—the Tories also cut 20,000 police officers and 7,000 police community support officers, leading to a collapse in visible neighbourhood policing. On their watch—[Interruption.] Conservative Members really should listen to this. On their watch, more than 1,000 Sure Start centres closed. Early intervention was demolished on their watch.

I said it was a mixed record because there was a fall in the number of first-time entrants into the youth justice system. Figures peaked at around 110,000 back in 2007, but fell to just 7,500 while the Tories were in office in 2023. When they entered government, there were around 2,000 children in youth custody; by the end of their tenure, that had fallen to just over 1,000. Those were great achievements. It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman does not want to celebrate those achievements, which began under David Cameron and Michael Gove.

The hon. Gentleman asks about the age of criminal responsibility. As he will know, the Bar Council is consulting on this issue, and I look forward to receiving the conclusions of its work. He also asks about foreign national offenders. We are absolutely clear in this consultation that we will look at the 16 and 17-year-olds who arrive in our country from somewhere else and commit a violent crime; if they do so, I am afraid that they will be deported. We are really clear about that. We have driven up deportation in our country.

The hon. Gentleman asks whether we are abolishing the youth court and the criminal standard. Of course we are not. However, we are consulting on youth intervention courts because, just as we have seen in our family drug and alcohol courts, problem-solving approaches —gripping the young person, their parents and those who work with them; looking at the addiction and mental health issues and giving them support; holding the multidisciplinary teams to account—can really make a difference. We stand by that.

The hon. Member asked about young people on remand. We want to recruit a new generation of specialist foster carers, because it is much better to have a responsible, loving adult—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)]

We used to have them.

[Mr Lammy]

Exactly—we used to have them, and the Tories abolished them. We want to bring them back and grow their numbers so that we can support these young people.

There are a range of things we can do through this White Paper, and I encourage the hon. Member for West Suffolk to read it in detail. A lot of his predecessors would agree with it. It is good work, and we need to get on with it.