Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Elton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I would briefly like to speak on Motion A1, which would ensure that girls and younger children are kept out of secure colleges as we know them. We know them to be tough, intimidating and challenging places. The children’s charity, the NSPCC, believes it would be unsafe, inappropriate and potentially damaging to hold girls and under-15s in such institutions, especially as they would be with many older boys. The main reason for this is that many of the girls in custody are highly likely to have experienced sexual abuse. Placing them in custodial institutions may be traumatising and damaging to their rehabilitation. Placing girls and young children in secure colleges will cause serious and unprecedented safeguarding risks that should be considered.

Every child deserves to have the best education on offer, to help them prepare for the future and to help them cope with life. But to reach their full potential, children need to feel safe and not intimidated or bullied. We know that these environments will be made up of the most troubled children in the country. There is a need to give these vulnerable children the confidence to reach their potential, to help them engage with their education and to give them stability and consistency. The evaluation report by Ofsted does nothing to address these serious safeguarding concerns. I ask my noble friend the Minister: how will these concerns be addressed? What type of facilities will be put in place to give children and young people the stability, safeguards and requirements that are needed to deal with their mental and physical health and well-being? I look forward with great anticipation to my noble friend’s response, and hope he gives full consideration to our concerns today. I will accept nothing less than a compromise.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, I was the Minister responsible for the police and the probation service for one year, and Minister for the Prison Service for three years. I was a teacher for 10 years and have been a father for 50, as well as a grandfather for just a few. I find myself in a very uncomfortable position. I have a great loyalty to and a great length of service in this party. On the other hand, I come here not by appointment by any present power but through my father having preceded me, and I remain here on a vote not of my party but of the whole House. Therefore, I feel that I have to be thoroughly independent in this matter.

I must say to my noble friend that all those spheres of experience that I have chime with the advice that he is getting from all quarters of this House. It is not necessary for me to repeat in a humdrum way what has been so eloquently and inspiringly uttered by others, but I want to tell my noble friend that I cannot possibly follow him into the Lobby on this occasion.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on what he has said and the courage that he has shown. There are just two other questions that I should like to ask the Minister. I was once upon a time, and for some years, a Prisons Minister.

The first question rests on the fact—noble Lords can check this—that young women are most likely to engage in serious self-harm between the ages of 16 and 20. Self-harm is much more common among women prisoners than among male prisoners; it is four times as high—so disproportionate is this attempt to raise sympathy and get attention. Is the Minister aware of these quite striking figures for the very high level of self-harm among young women, some of it serious self-harm, in the very age group that we are considering sending to secure colleges? What steps will be taken to ensure that any girl sent there has no previous record of self-harm?

My second question is quite different. We have all listened closely to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and we respect his extraordinary integrity in this House on issue after issue. Is the Ministry of Justice determined effectively to rule Parliament out of a system of consultation, advice and help, which I believe that most of us in this House are crying out for? We have seen an astonishing list of dismissals of Parliament in the course of proceedings on this Bill. I find it very unfortunate, and I am not sure that it is what the Minister intended, but it is certainly the net effect.

Will there be any consultation with the House about who will be the author of this report? In the light of the Home Office committee on sexual abuse, one can see what an intensely controversial question that will be. Will there be any willingness to listen to the House on consultation after the plans have been put forward for submission to the ministry? Finally, will the Minister consider whether the response given by the Commons to our amendments—namely, “it is not appropriate”—is an appropriate argument or even an appropriate answer to the many issues raised by the deep concern of many of us, of all parties, in this House?