Youth Offending

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Oates]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the progress in reducing youth offending in England and Wales over the past 25 years.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)]

My Lords, the last two decades have seen significant reductions of children in the formal youth justice system and in youth custody, and this is good news. We now have a much smaller but, perhaps unsurprisingly, more complex group of children in the justice system, and we need to adapt to deal with this. The youth justice White Paper, published on 18 May this year, sets out a comprehensive programme of reform through which we will modernise the youth justice system.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her Answer. In her reply to questions on the Statement yesterday, she stated that

“there is no intention to abolish the Youth Justice Board”.—[Official Report, 20/5/26; col. 427.]

We are grateful for that. However, she will be aware that the powers of the Youth Justice Board set out in Section 41 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 are being steadily stripped away, starting with Liz Truss as Justice Secretary removing the custodial powers and now with the Government following suit by removing the monitoring powers and the core funding powers. Does she not think it would be better to follow the example of the 1997 Labour Government in establishing the board, rather than the example of Liz Truss in stripping it of its power?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to be debating the issue of the Youth Justice Board two days running with the noble Lord. The YJB has made valuable contributions to improving outcomes for children, but it has become clear that the youth justice system is now facing a different set of challenges from those that the board was originally designed to address. We are reforming the board so that it can focus on where it can add the greatest value, which is in driving the continuous improvement of youth justice services, and we are bringing the oversight and funding responsibilities into the Ministry of Justice in order to ensure clearer democratic accountability. I state again, and reassure the noble Lord, that the Youth Justice Board will remain a valued, independent public body with a clear purpose.