Young People: Suicide

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble and right reverend friend Lord Eames on obtaining this debate. As was forecast by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley of Nettlestone, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has done, I shall focus on young people in custody. I am conscious that what I am going to say may not strictly be the province of the Minister, but I hope very much that in the context of this important debate he may relay some of what I am going to say to his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice.

In 2012 I launched a report by the Prison Reform Trust and the charity INQUEST, titled Fatally Flawed: Has the State Learned Lessons from the Deaths of Children and Young People in Prison? The answer to that question was clearly no. Of the figures that my noble friend gave, 46 of this age group died in custody by their own hand between January 2011 and January this year. This report showed that there is commonality between the children who had committed suicide. They all had multiple disadvantages: substance abuse, mental health difficulties, learning disabilities, ADHD, special educational needs and personality and conduct disorders, plus all the other neglect.

Added to that, one has to remember that the adolescent brain has not fully formed at this stage, and cognitive behaviour and the development process are not completed until, possibly, the mid-20s. Therefore the problems that young people face are first, acute, and secondly, different from those of adults.

Last week the Youth Justice Board published the report Deaths of Children in Custody: Action Taken, Lessons Learnt. This was the result of long analysis, and it included the conclusion that the Youth Justice Board must work with providers of custody to enable them better to understand how to support children who are at risk of being suicidal or self-harming. There are other factors in this, but the clear finding was that there were common features in all the reports on all the suicides of this group, which surely gave an opportunity to identify common solutions.

Having called for an independent review and having had that call rejected by the Ministry of Justice, when I raised a Question about this three weeks ago I was disturbed to hear that the review to be carried out by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, will not include children. This was also mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater. Well, why on earth will children not be included? The factors include, inadequacy of management in the custodial centres, inadequacy of staff training, multi-agency failure in communicating individual vulnerabilities and needs, and failure to listen to children. There is also failure to circulate and implement recommendations which have been laid down in countless reports by the ombudsman and others, and recommendations made by coroners in inquests under Rule 43 of the Coroners’ Rules.

The Ministry of Justice’s reasons for rejecting the report were that, instead, it would have internal reviews by Ministry of Justice agencies; it would have discreet specialist reports into such things as the use of force; it would have better publication of information; and it would try to expand the scope of the law governing inquests. That has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this debate, which is the prevention of children committing suicide, particularly in custody. I therefore ask the Minister to do all that he can to persuade his colleagues to include children in the review by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, so that, among other things, it can include the Youth Justice Board report which contains many of the factors that it will need to carry for a slightly younger part of the same age group.