Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

I beg to move,

That this House does not insist on their Amendment No. 47 to which the Lords have disagreed.

Following consideration of Commons amendments in the other place last Wednesday, hon. Members will know that the Government no longer intend to abolish the Youth Justice Board as part of the Bill. Therefore, I will not be asking hon. Members to insist on the Government amendment agreed by this House on Report. The amendment has reintroduced the Youth Justice Board into schedule 1 to the Bill. As my noble friend Lord McNally made clear in the other place, the Government have never waivered in our commitment to maintaining a distinct focus on the needs of children and young people in the youth justice system. We have never proposed to remove youth offending teams or dismantle the dedicated secure estate for young people.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

It is an unusual experience for a Committee to publish just after midnight a report containing recommendations that are accepted by midday the following day. As my hon. Friend has mentioned youth offending teams, I wanted to remind him that the Justice Committee, as well as pointing to the dangers of abolishing the Youth Justice Board, stated that if it survived it would have to take a lighter touch and a less centralised approach to the management of youth offending teams than it had taken in the otherwise good work it had done.

[Mr Djanogly]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that contribution and acknowledge that the recommendation appeared in his report. I will certainly take it back to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who will take up the matter in due course.

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[Jon Trickett]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and for the moderate way he expressed them. We will see over time exactly what the Government’s intentions are.

The Government have set out to remove the independence of the youth justice system. The Minister repeated that they want, in effect, to bring it under direct ministerial accountability. There is no financial case that I can see for what the Government are trying to do. I have reservations about something as important as the operation of the criminal justice system, whether or not it deals with young people, being brought under ministerial direction. That is not a debate to be had this afternoon because the Government have withdrawn the proposal. However, any attempt to bring the criminal justice system under direct ministerial accountability will be resisted in this Chamber and in the other place, because it is a long-established tradition that the criminal justice system should, as far as possible, operate independently of the Executive.

The Government have not recognised the case for independence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) said in Committee, the Government are committed to bringing the YJB under the remit of central Government. It is, in effect, a nationalisation. The Government want to nationalise the criminal justice system, whereas we want to defend its independence, as one would expect. In my view, none of the YJB’s core functions will be able to be carried out within central Government.

I do not wish to repeat all the arguments that have been debated elsewhere, but I simply urge the Government to keep in mind, in whatever review they carry out in future, that the independence of youth justice and of the criminal justice system in general needs to be maintained. After all, as has been widely acknowledged, the YJB does an amazing job. It has reduced youth offending, it has protected young people, and on the whole it has made the youth justice system better. In Committee, the YJB was praised, as it has been here today and was in the Lords the other week, by Members on both sides. I am glad that the Government have now recognised formally that it does invaluable work, and that they have withdrawn this proposal. We look forward to seeing in due course whatever the Government do next in relation to this matter.

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) is slightly confusing the very necessary and important independence of the courts with the status of a body such as the Youth Justice Board. The Executive are, and must be, accountable to Parliament for the efficient provision of things such as custody and alternatives to custody. They may choose to do this by way of a semi-independent or arm’s length body, but that is much more an administrative decision than a decision about judicial independence, for example. The two concepts are different and should not be confused.

I rise to underline and clarify the points made by the Justice Committee in its 10th report, which was published on 23 November, just after midnight. In that report, we set out our concerns about what would happen if the Youth Justice Board was abolished and what the Ministry of Justice would have to do in order to ensure that youth justice got the focus that the YJB had given it in the good work that it had done. We also set out what needs to happen in the circumstances in which we now find ourselves, whereby the Government have taken the decision not to abolish the YJB. Our concern was that one of the YJB’s weak points—perhaps the only one that came out strongly in evidence—was that quite a lot of people working in the sector felt that it was too “top down” in its approach to youth offending teams. The success that we have seen in youth justice has been achieved by youth offending teams bringing together every agency at local level and working together. That has been encouraged and supported by the YJB. However, the YJB itself told us that its oversight of youth offending teams will be lighter touch in future and that it is working to

“promote peer support and allow more room for professional judgement”.

That lesson needs to be learned. Indeed, when the Minister gave evidence to us, he gave examples from his own experience to underline that that approach was necessary. He also set out his own case for having greater ministerial accountability and greater ministerial awareness of what the YJB is doing.

The Youth Justice Board will continue. Many people will welcome that because it has provided a very specific focus and enabled things to be achieved in youth justice that have not been achieved in the rest of the criminal justice system. There has been a much better understanding of where to strike a balance between custody and alternatives to custody in youth justice than in other fields. There has also been much better local co-operation between the various agencies that deal with young people. We need to build on those experiences.

I wish the board well in the future. However, I underline the point that the Select Committee made in its report and hope that Ministers have noted it.

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The problem is that if aggrieved parties are denied the right of appeal to the chief coroner, they will seek judicial review, as the Minister confirmed. I suggest that the cost to the taxpayer of abolishing the appeal process will therefore be far greater than the savings made.

[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Gentleman talks as if the appeals system exists and is about to be removed, but in fact it does not exist, because the chief coroner was not appointed and the clauses were not put into effect. The situation that he is describing as some strange and horrific future possibility is actually what we have now.

[Jon Trickett]

Of course it is, and I am baffled by that intervention, given that I have just said that section 40 allows for an appeals system to be introduced in due course. What was envisaged was a proper coronial system with an appeals process and a chief coroner who would have authority over the whole system. The Government are seeking to stop that logical process, which could be tested first by a pilot, and to put in an illogical system, with a chief coroner who would effectively be reduced to a purely administrative post.

In response to a series of parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests, Ministers have revealed that at no stage have the Government estimated the likely costs of additional judicial reviews, as opposed to an appeals system. On that basis, it is odd to argue that savings will be inherent in this decision.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I point out that discreet use of hand-held devices is allowed in the Chamber? If it were not, I would have disallowed it in this instance.

[Sir Alan Beith]

The Select Committee on Justice has taken extensive evidence on the failings in the coronial system and the need for reform. We felt strongly that there should be a chief coroner and I continued to press that argument with Ministers on many occasions. The Government found alternative ways of trying to achieve the same things, and it would be wrong to suggest that in their use of the powers of the Lord Chief Justice they were not hoping to achieve significant reform.

Clearly there is consensus about reform. Anyone who has seen the experience of families who have had delayed inquests or poor service from coroner’s offices, and who is aware of the completely patchwork system of support for coroners around the country, realises that fundamental reform is required. That can now be achieved through the office of chief coroner, which I felt all along was the sensible way to do it. That involves professional leadership, training and tackling the jurisdictional issues so that, for example, the chief coroner can move inquests to a coroner who is in a position to provide the service when there is too much pressure in another coronial area.

Where there is not consensus is on the appeal issue. I know how strongly the Royal British Legion feels about that and I respect its campaign, but significant legal questions are raised by whether we substitute the decision of one coroner for that of another—that is a quite different process from judicial review. We do not have time to debate that in detail today, but I simply say that there is wide consensus on the need to reform the coroner system. There are many good coroners and many excellent coroner’s offices, but it is a very uneven system. The chief coroner should now be a mechanism for undertaking that reform, but the issue of appeals is one on which there is much more to be argued over and we might be holding out to families the false promise that they will somehow be in a better position than they would be with the present system. It would be wrong of us in this House to do that, so I urge the Minister to get on with the crucial reforms of the system, which the chief coroner can achieve.

[Simon Hughes]

I strongly endorse the views just expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). I represent a coroner’s court in Southwark and we have had very good coroners—Monty Levine, who was very famous, and Andrew Harris, the current coroner, who is a friend of mine. However, like other colleagues, I have had experiences, involving constituents and others, of really bad coroner’s decisions. The Taylor family have been mentioned by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), and Michael, who died, was a constituent of mine. I am also talking about the inquests after the Marchioness sank in my constituency, the battle that the lovely late Eileen Dallaglio had to fight on behalf of her daughter and the battles that all the others like her had to fight. In the end, they had to go through a judicial review because they were terribly treated by the coroner who dealt with that case.

I welcome the fact that the Government have changed their mind and that the scheme introduced eventually by Labour—we had to push but it was eventually put on the statute book—can now be implemented in respect of creating a chief coroner. I urged, as others have, that that decision be taken. It is reasonable to proceed gradually along the road that has now been accepted by the Government. They are clear that they are going to report back on Army coroner’s inquests—the Armed Forces Bill does that. As Lord McNally said in the other place, this is not just about training; it is about monitoring, reporting and direction. That will give us a good base. There will also be an annual report to Parliament.

May I end by saying that I also have the privilege of being the Member of Parliament for the headquarters of the Royal British Legion, and I know that INQUEST has worked with the RBL very well. They are very honourable organisations, they have fought an honourable fight and they have won an honourable victory. The House owes its gratitude to them and to the Government for understanding the strength of feeling on this case.