Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for the time, care and attention that they have devoted to meeting and briefing those of us who are involved on this Bill, particularly on this contentious issue.

In 1809, elements of my regiment, the Rifle Brigade, were greeted by those whom they were relieving during the mismanaged and ill-fated expedition to the island of Walcheren with the words, “Good luck, boys. You, too, are being made the sport of theory”. These came to mind as, incredulously, I read in the briefing paper on the abolition of the Youth Justice Board the statement:

“The Government believes that independent oversight of the youth justice system is no longer required”.

With that coming on top of the impact statement for the Public Bodies Bill’s stating that the Bill will have no impact on either the criminal justice system or human rights, I can only conclude from the proposed abolition of the one body responsible for overseeing youth justice within the system and the oversight of the human rights of young people involved with it that, as in 1809, theory has been allowed to subsume common sense.

The Youth Justice Board has been publicly recognised by Ministers as having played a critical role in transforming the delivery of youth justice, creating a safer, more distinct secure estate, reducing offending and reoffending by young people, and overseeing the successful establishment of youth offending teams, of which the Minister, Crispin Blunt, has said:

“The multi-agency YOT approach to justice that is embedded in local communities and heavily focused on rehabilitating offenders is the right way forward. One of my aims in my job is to adapt the adult system on the lessons from the youth system”.

If it has achieved, and is achieving, so much, why remove it? The secret of its success is that one organisation has provided continuous and focused oversight of a very particular part of the criminal justice system. Abolish it, and you risk all that has been achieved, and could be achieved in the future, by maintaining the momentum of progress.

In his letter dated 3 March to those of us interested in this amendment, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said:

“The government is committed to maintaining a dedicated focus on the needs of children and young people in the youth justice system”.

The letter also states:

“We are not seeking to revert the system to that which operated in the 1990s”,

and,

“Our current proposal, subject to the outcome of the Rehabilitation Revolution consultation … is that the main functions of the Youth Justice Board should be delivered within the Ministry of Justice’s Policy Group”.

But the Minister is proposing precisely the system that operated and failed in the 1990s.

I first became aware that all was not well with the administration of youth justice in the first week of my appointment as Chief Inspector of Prisons in December 1995, when I was alerted to the appalling treatment of and conditions for young offenders, particularly those under the age of 18 held in Prison Service custody. At that time the Social Services Inspectorate was responsible for inspecting all facilities for children in this country under the age of 18, except for those in the hands of the Prison Service, which claimed Crown immunity from the provisions of the Children Act 1989. This was something that I immediately campaigned to have changed and eventually happened following court action by the Howard League, but that is another story.

I therefore invited a social services inspector to come with me on my first inspection of a young offender institution at Onley—a split site, which holds both those between 15 and 18 and 18 to 21 in separate accommodation—to assess the conditions for and treatment of children who were held there. She told me that if it had been a social service or local authority children’s custody centre it would have been closed because of the lack of acceptable facilities or a suitable regime for children.

I then found that, as I had feared and as remains the case today, no one in the Prison Service was operationally responsible and accountable for children in prison and, therefore, there was no one whom Ministers could task with making the necessary improvements or chase when these did not materialise. For some inexplicable reason, the Home Office and the Prison Service believed that the young offender estate could be directed and overseen by bureaucratic diktat from people in policy branches. The results that I saw on the ground, over and over again, confirmed by experts, proved how wrong they were. On what evidence does the Minister think that substituting the Ministry of Justice for the Home Office will make it right now?

Against this backdrop, I well remember the collective sigh of relief among all those involved with youth justice when the Youth Justice Board was first introduced because they could now work face to face with someone responsible and accountable, who could come round and see for him or herself what they were doing on the ground, rather than impersonally with faceless bureaucrats behind desks in Whitehall ministries. I was naive enough to hope that making someone responsible and accountable for, amongst other things, the treatment of and conditions for children in prison, would be followed by similar appointments for other groups of prisoners. Because we were responsible for monitoring and hopefully influencing the treatment and conditions of children in custody, my inspectorate worked very closely with the YJB from the outset, passing on all our observations and recommendations as soon as possible, and very soon we began to see improvement because the YJB was able to override deficiencies in Prison Service management by requiring it to satisfy conditions and treatment criteria laid down in contracts.

The Minister will be familiar with the Crime and Disorder Act 1998—Chapter 37 of 1998—which established the Youth Justice Board. I will quote only from Clause 41(5)(f), which states that, among other functions, the board’s functions shall be,

“to identify, to make known and to promote good practice in the following matters— … the operation of the youth justice system and the provision of youth justice services; … the prevention of offending by children and young persons; and … working with children and young persons who are or are at risk of becoming offenders”.

How successful has it been? In addition to what Ministers have said, the Public Accounts Committee, to which the noble Lord, Lord Warner referred, said in its report:

“The Board has been an effective leader of efforts to create and maintain a national youth justice system, with a risk-based approach, and in recent years key youth crime indicators have been falling substantially”.

Like the Public Accounts Committee, I do not pretend that the YJB as currently constituted is perfect; improvements could and should be made both to its place and role in the criminal justice system hierarchy and the scope and methods of its activities. However, those can be rectified through the traditional review process. They do not justify the abolition of something that has proved itself to be a sensible agent of progress. The ideological reasons behind its abolition have been hinted at already by the noble Lord, Lord Warner.

My reason for pointing this out is that there appears to be an inherent contradiction between what is proposed in the Bill and what is in the Ministry of Justice Green Paper, Breaking the Cycle, from which I quote two statements. First,

“A ‘Whitehall knows best’ approach has stifled innovation both at national and local level”.

Secondly,

“A top-down approach has concentrated on process instead of results. Prisons and probation services were assessed on the basis of hitting multiple targets and whether they had complied with detailed central requirements. There was insufficient focus on whether they were delivering the right result for the public and communities”.

The Cabinet Office appears to be saying in the Bill that, yes, trying to run operational functions top-down from Whitehall clearly does not work and the practice is condemned. Yet although the alternative—appointing a named person to be responsible and accountable for independent oversight of operational functions—is successful where Whitehall has failed, it is no longer required because its laid-down role conflicts with the government policy, as confirmed in the letter from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, from which I have already quoted, which states:

“The YJB has primarily an oversight and a commissioning role, and it is this role that we propose to continue in the Ministry of Justice”.

Change is the name of the game. The rehabilitation revolution has been publicised as a “once in a generation” opportunity for change, ignoring the fact that it is only seven years since the last “once in a generation” change with the introduction of NOMS. It seems the Cabinet Office must make the only change possible, namely reverting to the “Whitehall knows best”, top-down approach that it has condemned, pretending—because it says so in its impact statement—that reintroducing failure will have no impact on the criminal justice system.

I thought that the Alice in Wonderland nature of all this had been exhausted until I read some words of the Minister for Prisons, Crispin Blunt, published on 14 January. He said:

“With Ministers making themselves more accountable, independent oversight of the youth justice system is no longer required, and the Ministry of Justice is able to lead an effective system going forward, building on the improvements that have already been made”.

What on earth does he mean by “more accountable”? Ministers have always been responsible and accountable for the YJB, as the chairman of the YJB has been to them. Is Blunt implying that it needs to be in the Ministry of Justice because accountability will be easier to exercise in the same building, or is he frightened by any suspicion of independent oversight? It is unfortunate that, in the recent past, there has been a lack of clarity about whether it was the Secretary of State for Justice and the Prisons Minister or the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and the Children’s Minister who were ultimately accountable for the YJB, but that is a matter for Ministers, not the YJB, to resolve. It is important that the YJB chairman should know precisely to whom he or she is accountable. Lest Ministers think that I am a lone voice in all this, let me again quote from the Public Accounts Committee report, which I read only after I had prepared my remarks to the Committee:

“The abolition of the Board raises a question about how a national focus on reducing offending by young people and reducing the use of custody will be maintained”.

On previous occasions in this House, I have wished that the clocks should now show the letters “PANT”—for “People Are Not Things”—instead of “0:23”; Ministers responsible and accountable for the conditions for and treatment of young people in contact with the criminal justice system must surely realise that, because so many of them are damaged and vulnerable, they need care that is positive and personal, transparent and consistent, provided and led by people. An impersonal, commissioned approach to that task, conducted by bureaucrats in policy departments, is neither practical nor sensible, as has been proved. I hope that, faced with that reality, Ministers will not be tempted to think of delegating oversight within the Ministry of Justice to the National Offender Management Service. NOMS would be a wholly unsuitable organisation because, first, it is not a service; secondly, it is all about adults; thirdly, within it, the Prison Service has already gobbled up the Probation Service; and, fourthly, its management structure is about commissioning and not oversight.

I will not mince words. On the basis of what I have seen, I regard the flagrant abolition of a personal system, responsible and accountable for the care of vulnerable and impressionable young people, reverting to a failed impersonal one, as nothing other than thoroughly irresponsible. The Government have had the courage and good sense to listen to reason about other parts of this Bill. I appeal to the Minister to adopt the same approach to the proposed abolition of the Youth Justice Board.