Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman says “all the time”. Will he give us a notion of how often that is—once a day, once a week, once a month? How many times have such cases happened since April, for instance? He is giving the impression that they happen all the time, but what does that mean?

[Chris Grayling]

A Minister is confronted by the practical threat of the arrival of a judicial review case virtually every week of the year. It is happening all the time. There are pre-action protocols all the time, and cases are brought regularly. Looking across the majority of a Department’s activities, I would say that Ministers face judicial review very regularly indeed. It happens weeks apart rather than months apart.

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[Andrew Selous]

I hope that I can reassure the hon. Lady on that point. I understand the concerns that she raises. Is she aware of how the secure college is designed? We will, for example, have 12-bed units for the more vulnerable groups, which could include girls and children under 15. There are 20-bed and 10-bed units. We believe that it will be possible to offer that proper support. The set-up will allow smaller groups of young people to foster that sense of community, belonging and close relationship with those that will be looked after.

[Julie Hilling]

rose—

[Andrew Selous]

I will just finish this point and then I will let the hon. Lady in, not least because her mother is one of my constituents. There will be no occasion when all 300 or so young people will be milling around together in any part of the secure college. I hope that that allays the hon. Lady’s concerns.

[Julie Hilling]

I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). Nobody involved in rehabilitation or education has said that this is a good idea. The Minister did not quite answer the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) about whether the teaching staff will be qualified teachers. Moreover, what sort of ratio of children to teachers does he expect in that learning environment?

[Andrew Selous]

As I think the hon. Lady knows, we will be running a competition, and we will be looking for innovation and creativity from providers. We will assess the bids very rigorously on the basis of the best quality of education, so we are a little way off being specific on that at the moment. The hon. Lady will have heard me say very clearly that this is an institution that will have education at its core, and that we would not be doing this if we were not absolutely determined to do better than is currently done on the education front.

Now, if colleagues will allow me, I will make a little progress. Both measures will ensure that girls, and boys aged under 15, receive the tailored support that they need in secure colleges. Throughout the passage of the Bill, and indeed the development of our plans for the secure college pathfinder, we have actively engaged with interested parliamentarians in both Houses and wider stakeholders and experts, including both NHS England and the Department for Education. In the light of the feedback that we have received from peers, we have made changes to the plans to enlarge the site of the pathfinder by two acres to ensure that the younger and more vulnerable groups have sports and recreational facilities near their accommodation, and that there is greater separation between the larger and smaller units on the site. I am therefore satisfied that the secure college pathfinder would be able to deliver a distinct regime that caters for the specific needs of girls and under-15s while always keeping them safe.

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[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

The Minister is aware that I am strongly against the creation of his secure college. Of all the witnesses we saw in Committee, not one was in favour of creating this prison for children. Indeed, most considered it a joke as it goes against the evidence and recommendations on rehabilitating vulnerable young children. The Government’s proposal for a secure college will introduce a new and dangerous kind of child custody. The Government plan to detain girls and boys aged between 12 and 17 in a 320-bed prison.

There is no doubt in my mind that if these plans go ahead, younger children will be extremely vulnerable. It is inevitable that they will experience higher levels of intimidation by older children and that their needs will be relegated because of a focus on the majority. Evidence shows that girls and younger children are likely to withdraw by refusing to engage in educational programmes or other activities in that environment, which completely counters the professed reason for creating this prison. There has been no impact assessment, so it is impossible to comprehend the implications for those groups.

Currently, young offender institutions only hold boys over 15 because it is recognised that larger institutions are unsuitable for younger children and girls. Girls and under-15s are currently held in secure training centres or secure children’s homes, which are smaller and have a higher staff-to-child ratio. Why cannot that tried and tested model be allowed to continue?

The reality of the secure college is that girls and younger children will still be sharing the same resources. Yes, they may have segregated use, but they will still see, hear and be intimidated by older boys. The vast majority of girls in the penal system have a history of sexual abuse. Imagine what it will be like for them in a testosterone-fuelled environment of boys trying to out-macho each other for fear of appearing weak. The Minister said that he has daughters so I am sure he can imagine how it will be for those girls when they try to sleep at night. How will they move on from the horrors that plagued their earlier lives or be able to develop as individuals when they are outnumbered by 19 to one?

The idea of a giant prison for children is a bad one. We have excellent youth offending schemes that have very positive results in rehabilitating young people. However, I have been in Parliament long enough to know that once the Government have decided on something, they plough on regardless. I beg the Minister to do the right thing and allow Lords amendment 74 to stand.

[Julie Hilling]

The notion of a secure college is flawed. Nobody except Ministers thinks it is a good idea—no educationalist, nobody who works in young offender institutions, nobody who works in the criminal justice system and nobody who campaigns for improvements in the way we treat children and young people in the criminal justice system. It seems to be based on a notion that going off to boarding school is a good thing, but this is not going to be like Eton. It will bring together large numbers of young people from very disturbed backgrounds who have committed serious offences. That is not a good idea.

Let us think about many of the young people who are in custody. Many have spent time in care and are likely to have had an absent parent. They have probably experienced neglect or abuse, and the prevalence of mental illness is high. Some 86% of young people in the criminal justice system have been excluded from school, 23% have learning difficulties and 36% have borderline learning difficulties. Boys aged 15 to 17 in prison are 18 times more likely to commit suicide than children of the same age in the community, and 11% of children in prison have attempted suicide. Simply trying to put knowledge into these young people without addressing their fundamental issues is doomed to failure. Young people need to be in the right place psychologically before they can start to learn. Simply trying to shove knowledge into young people who are disturbed, who have come from bad backgrounds and whose mental health is rubbish will not work; they need to be in the right place if they are to learn.

The average length of time spent in custody is 79 days, so how are those young people really going to learn a great deal in that period? The Minister talked about young people learning to read in a short period of time. There might be some successes in basic literacy and numeracy, but I do not see how it can work for their wider education process. We will be putting them in a college many miles away from home and the other support services they will need after their time in custody. They will then, after 79 days, have to reintegrate into their old school, or into a new school, and into those support services, which will not be on the doorstep to help them with their drug problems, mental health problems or all the other issues that young people face.

In Committee it was indicated to us that the teaching staff will not necessarily be qualified teachers. We are not sure about that, because the Minister will not tell us. The Government cannot just say that they will leave it until they have had a competition for people to apply to run the institution. Surely to goodness they need to lay down some firm guidelines on the qualifications and experience that those who will be working with the young people should have.

Why on earth will the Government not look at models that actually work? They should look to Scandinavia, where learning environments are in the community, where people down the street will not even know that the house on the corner is a youth custody premises, and where young people are treated holistically so that not just their education is dealt with, but all the other problems that have lead them to offend and have messed up their lives. They need that whole range of support services. We need that sort of therapeutic community, not a place where 320 young people will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said, vie for attention and to prove who is the most macho.

I do not believe that a secure college is a place for 15 to 17-year-olds, but it is very definitely not a place for girls and younger children, who should be in the community. The therapeutic programmes that work for young people are those that are close to the community and that are small and specific. As my hon. Friend said, so many of the young women who end up in the penal system have suffered sexual abuse and other forms of physical abuse. The Government should rule out ever putting them in a place with 320 young boys, which would make the experience awful for them.

I do not believe that we will change reoffending by locking up 320 young people together. I do not believe that we will change educational outcomes for those young people by doing that. I really wish that the Government would accept the Lords amendment, but I also wish that they would reconsider the whole proposal. If nobody else thinks that it is going to work, why are the Government arrogant enough to believe that it will? Surely they should start listening to the professionals, to those who work with young people and understand them, and not go ahead with the college, and they should certainly never contemplate putting young children and women into that place.

[Andrew Selous]

I thank hon. Members for their contributions. The Government are committed to improving outcomes for young people in custody. As I said, 68% of young people reoffend within a year of leaving custody, at an average cost of £100,000 a year to the taxpayer. We simply cannot be satisfied with the status quo and need to try something new. Education needs to be at the heart of the offer we put in front of those young people, and so does health.

We have engaged with parliamentarians, stakeholders, practitioners, experts and young offenders themselves on our plans and, in response to Parliament’s concerns, have amended the Bill to ensure that secure college rules are subject to the affirmative procedure to the extent that they authorise the use of force. We want to continue that dialogue as we implement our vision for secure colleges.

I say to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) that our vision is to have, rather than just a prison with some education in it, a building that is designed as a school—the plans have changed considerably since the first version. We do not think that it is right to educate those young people somewhere with bars on the windows; we think they deserve a better environment in which to learn. The published plans have changed hugely and, as I have said, there will be a considerable health offer within the establishment. Girls are already taught and looked after alongside boys in secure training colleges and children’s homes. We do not expect a delay. Blaby district council supported the proposals unanimously and the local further education college is very supportive of what we are doing.

On the equality impact statement, in accordance with the Ministry of Justice’s duties under the Equality Act 2010, we considered the impact of the proposals set out in the Government response to the transforming youth custody consultation in January 2014. That was made clear in the parliamentary question, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, on 16 June. I say to the other Members who spoke from the Opposition Benches that girls are already in youth custody, in secure training centres and in secure children’s homes, and many are sentenced there for a considerable time. We have a duty to give them a better offer. What we do at the moment is simply not good enough, and it costs us a huge amount of money. A Government with ambition are right to try to do the best for those young people.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 74.