Queen’s Speech

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, as one who sat on the Cunningham committee on these matters more than a decade ago, like the noble Lord, Lord Richard, I was very tempted to follow on into that debate. However, in the brief time that I have available I want to take as my text the line in the gracious Speech:

“My Government will legislate to reform prisons and courts to give individuals a second chance”.

These are bold and encouraging words. They match similar statements made in recent months by both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Justice. Last week, I attended the launch of the report, and recommendations, by Dame Sally Coates, which reviewed education in prisons and has been referred to on a number of occasions already. It was an inspiring event for those who want to see penal reform as a priority.

My particular interest, as a number of your Lordships will know, is as chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. From the beginning I have seen the job of the Youth Justice Board as cutting crime off at its head stream. That task has been performed with great success over the last 16 years. Noble Lords with experience in this field say that before the Youth Justice Board, youth justice was the concern of many but the priority of no one. The Youth Justice Board gave it that priority by pioneering a cross-disciplinary, holistic approach to the young offender, which has meant that the number of children in custody and the number of first-time entrants to the system are now at their lowest ever. That, of course, is not the success of the YJB alone. It has been the work of many hands, including the police, the magistracy, children’s services and probation, voluntary agencies and individuals in many spheres. We have also worked with the troubled families units so that we can go downstream of the offending to the dysfunctional families that are so often the root cause behind the child offender.

That that success has been achieved does not mean that serious challenges do not remain. That is why the YJB so warmly welcomed the decision to ask Mr Charlie Taylor, a respected educationalist, to carry out a thoroughgoing review of the youth justice system. As with the adult sector, the Secretary of State has put great emphasis on education. There is an undoubted case for reform of the YJB, but that case is built on success, not failure. Of course we sometimes make mistakes and we try to learn from them, but let me also put on record something that was also referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. I am constantly in awe of the work done by the men and women who, in our secure estate and in the community, work with children who are difficult, damaged and sometimes dangerous, both to themselves and to others. But thanks to the work of those who work in youth offending teams and in our secure estate, they are also capable of quite remarkable redemption and of taking the second chance referred to in the gracious Speech.

Mr Gove caught the spirit of his ambitions when he said recently that he wanted to change junior prisons into secure schools. It is an ambition that I fully support, but the reforms that the Prime Minister and the Justice Secretary have so eloquently espoused face a rocky road from where we are now to the sunlit uplands to which ministerial rhetoric beckons us. It is far better to have the major parties arguing about penal reform and the rehabilitation of offenders than clashing like rutting stags about how tough they are going to be about crime and punishment.

Thus far, Charlie Taylor’s direction of travel has been to propose a much more devolved youth justice system, with the new regional authorities controlling budgets and having far more opportunity for initiative and innovation in both the secure estate and the community. That offers a really exciting prospect for youth justice, although, if I may borrow a piece of advice given to me by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, there will still be a need for some central oversight about the “what”, even if a thousand flowers are allowed to bloom regionally about the “how”.

The task before us is to ensure that we manage the changes being proposed in a way that continues to prioritise the safety and welfare of children, who are all too often the victims as well as the perpetrators of crime. Mr Gove has set himself an ambitious agenda for reform. If he has any sense, and I think he has a lot of sense, he will call on the collective wisdom of this House in taking that agenda forward.