Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Elton Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

It does not deserve to lose that place.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, so much that needs answering is building up around my noble friend on the Front Bench like a snow drift that I feel, if I add too much, he will not have his hands free to start digging. Therefore, I propose to make only two points at this stage, although I fear that there will be much more to be said after he has given his answer.

My points arise from the fact that in my party, as in others, there is a convention that when you intend to make a strong stand against your own party, you are honour bound to write to all Ministers and to the Whips. I dutifully wrote to my noble friends on this Front Bench and to the responsible Minister in another place. That responsible Minister, for whom I have a great deal of time, Mr Crispin Blunt, wrote me a letter, which I regret I do not have with me, that contained two points which I clearly remember and which I thought worth mentioning.

The first was that I inferred from it—I think not wrongly—that the principal motives he was giving for this move were the fact that the reoffending rate was stuck at around 75 per cent, which is far too high. It is worth saying that that results from a change in the population in which the reoffending occurs. At least two noble Lords have pointed out a 30 per cent reduction in reoffending and a substantial reduction in the YOI population. That is because the YJB has been faithfully carrying out a policy of which we all approve, and of which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State also approves, which is to keep young people out of custody. Who do you keep out of custody first? The answer is those least likely to immediately offend again. So you have a diminishing number of harder-nosed inmates who are more likely to reoffend, and when they come out they do reoffend. What is surprising is not that the statistic has not gone down, but that, as a result, it has not gone up. That is a mark of success by the YJB.

The second point I draw to your Lordships’ attention is that, in his reply, the honourable Minister, Crispin Blunt, suggested, indeed asked me—I will not say implored as it gives the wrong impression—to get in contact with some youth offender team leaders before I contributed to this debate. I suppose he suggested that in the expectation that my case would be weakened and his would be strengthened by the process. However, the opposite is true. There was one who, I thought a little timidly, did not wish to be committed, even though I said that everything was unattributable, but the others were quite clear in their own minds that this is a serious threat. A number of them thought that it would inevitably result, as your Lordships can clearly see, in a reduction in the quality of service, control and care which these young people receive. They said that the YJB had started off being bureaucratic, but that it had learnt not to be and in the past two years, in particular, it had made great progress in that direction. They said it had been a wonderful gift to them in providing a means of sharing best practice round the country. All these disparate and very complicated teams could work out the best standards to apply and learn from each other regularly. They said that they had succeeded in raising the profile of juvenile offenders when it had been, most unfortunately, too low before and that people now knew what they were about.

I have some experience in the administrative side of this area: I have considerable experience as a Minister and three and a half years of very relevant experience in the Home Office. I am sure and I hope that my noble friend will attempt to reassure us but, although he is saying that they will take all the personnel from YJB and simply move them into the Ministry of Justice so that it will still be staffed by people with straightforward, hands-on experience in their own area, I do not think he will tell you who will replace them when they retire. I fear that, as they will then be integrated members of the Civil Service, they will be replaced by integrated members of the Civil Service who have not had such experience. Indeed, I am told that those who are understudying the job at the moment are having to come out of their offices and learn for themselves what they have not learnt from their own experience.

That means that in two or three years’ time, whatever assurances we are given now, it will be back to bureaucracy. For all the reasons that have been iterated so variously, powerfully and persuasively around the House so far, I strongly advise my noble friend to listen to noble Lords and to whatever else it may be necessary for me and others to say after his lengthy reply, which I now eagerly await.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak in this debate, but in listening to the speeches, I could almost hear the Minister’s reply. I just add three short points. First, when the coalition began, I was extraordinarily encouraged by its approach to offenders and rehabilitation and felt that it was developing a real understanding of what would make a difference and, as the noble Lord said, the factors that lead to the offending of young people in particular. Secondly, I was encouraged because I felt that we now had a Government who would listen and, on listening to evidence, could change their mind. I think that that is the sign of a mature Government. The press may make something of the Government changing their mind, but I think that ordinary folk see that as a strength.

The three points that I want to make are as follows. First, all the evidence points to the fact that, as the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said so eloquently—I will not repeat speeches that have been made—bureaucracies do not run organisations well; we have to find alternative structures. I can say that from a long career as a director of social services, having been in three non-departmental public bodies and having reorganised at least three huge departments to ensure that the service was delivered more directly. The Youth Justice Board has learnt—a point that I will repeat. As the chair of the Children and Families Court Advisory and Support Service, I know how long it takes to change a service to something that delivers not simply the service as before but one with outcomes—not outputs—for children that make a difference. My second point is based on that. The present Government should be looking for structures that represent people; not structures that meet a particular dogma or even, dare I say, a manifesto. The Government have already made changes; they could look at this one.

My third point is very different from those that have been made by others—I shall not repeat all that has been said about the vulnerability of those young people, which I know as well as anyone in the House. At the moment, there is a decrease in reoffending. If we take the long view—and I have the long view, having been in social work since 1963; I assure your Lordships that I am not that old, but I have been working there for a long time—we know that what leads to offending is young peoples’ life chances. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has continually talked to us about children who go through the care system and end up in our prisons, young offender institutions or the mental health system.

At the moment, there is an increase in the number of children coming through the care system. I can judge that only by the fact that, a few years ago, CAFCASS was dealing with 86,000 children; at the moment, we have 145,000 children in private and public care. They are children coming through the care system and children who will be in divorce. I often stand up for single mums, but we know that broken families give children less life chance.

Let us look at what is likely to happen in future. I hope that local authorities will be able to develop their services, but with the necessary reductions in their budgets, that will be very difficult. Unless those preventive services are on the ground and we stop the large number of children coming through the courts and into the care system, it is inevitable—because all experience tells us—that we will have an increase in the number of young people in the young offender, prison and mental health systems. Therefore, it is crucial that the Government hold on to the professional expertise and to what works. I am not saying that the Youth Justice Board is the end of all that might be wonderful because everything needs review at some point, but we know that it is better than going back into departments where people do not have that professionalism and expertise because it is very difficult to build them fast. If the Government want to hold their position in caring for children and keeping the numbers down, then they need to hold on to those people who know how to do it, who know how to manage those teams and work with them and who know about multidisciplinary working with young people in the very difficult climate that we all know we are facing as a result of the economic position.

--- Later in debate ---

There has been a lot of emphasis on the Youth Justice Board, perhaps quite rightly so, but without enough attention to the success of the youth offender teams—another key, holistic, part of the reforms, which I would like to see carried into other parts of the youth justice system. A lot of the things that were said as part of the general debate were—

[Lord Elton]

The noble Lord said that not enough attention was paid to the youth offender teams. I specifically asked the Government to pay more attention to the youth offender teams, which do not want the Government to go on with what they are now proposing.

[Lord McNally]

The noble Lord gives me the opinion of the youth offender teams. It is always a bit dubious when noble Lords claim to know the opinion of a section under inquiry. In fact, we are also in contact with youth offender teams, but I take the point that he mentioned them.

I am trying to see whether there is anything that I should particularly answer beyond these points. As I said at the beginning, it is a cheap shot to say that bureaucracies cannot run things. The term bureaucracy is easily slung around. I take the point that we should concentrate on structures not dogma. The issue is not dogma but whether, within the constraints that we face, we can organise this more effectively. I take on board the criticisms and we are listening.

If the noble Lord, Lord Warner, wishes to test the opinion of the House, that is his right to do so. He is a former Minister and there are a number of others around. One of the problems as well as pleasures of being a Lords Minister is that, when you are in a position like this, you cannot make policy on your feet. You can take it back to colleagues and you can listen. I have listened and I will take the issue back to colleagues, if the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is in a mood to take that in the spirit that it is offered. I cannot promise beyond that, as he knows. As many have said, gathered together in the House today is an enormous level of ministerial, local government, social service and charitable experience that any Government willing to listen should listen to. I will take this away and am also happy to talk further with the noble Lord on the matter, but that is as far as I can go today, having set out where we are trying to go and why.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Warner, will be minded to make up his mind at this rather early stage and decide whether to test the opinion of the House. There is one thing that I would like to impress on the Minister—that no matter how hard his hand may be pressed to his heart when he gives an undertaking that something will be kept for ever out of NOMS or that personnel will be recruited for ever from outside the Civil Service, his hand will wither and he will pass away and the statute will survive. Therefore, I hope that the rock-bed minima that we will require before agreeing to this part of the Bill can be expressed, and the Government must undertake to express them, in a parliamentary instrument, which, if it is to be revised, will have to have the approval of Parliament again. That is the only way in which to preserve a ministerial undertaking beyond the life of one Parliament—and, sometimes, for even less than that.

The other thing that I am tempted to dwell on is the context in which the Government are making up their mind. The Minister is operating in two contexts. One is a political context in which a coalition is committed to a bonfire of the quangos. I could make a long speech about that, but I remind my noble friend the Minister that the function of a bonfire is to get rid of rubbish. You do not hack fruiting branches off a healthy tree and chuck them on a bonfire. That should not be any constraint on the Minister.

Then there is the administrative context at the heart of a substantial government department. I have been in such a place and I, beyond anybody, admire the independence and rectitude of the Civil Service. But in this case, the Civil Service is faced with swingeing cuts in personnel. The Minister asks for advice on how to set up a body of 12 people, each of whom he appoints, whose chairman he appoints and all of whose functions he can dictate—that is all in the statute setting up the body under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. It is entirely his responsibility and he is entirely answerable for it already. The question is where that advice is coming from; it is coming from a department, which has, as far as I know, been asked only for the positive arguments and how to sell this measure to Parliament. When there is a prospect of those 12 places, and the 301 people employed by the body, suddenly being drafted into the department, diminishing the need for redundancies by that number, the department is not going to drag the seabed to find arguments against.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will encourage his honourable and right honourable friends to stand aside from where they are at the moment—in the heart of their department—and look at this from outside, as we do, as people passionately concerned for the future welfare for the children of this country.