Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I begin by assuring the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that Peper Harow, in the name of Childhood First, is alive and well. Indeed, my noble and learned friends Lord Woolf and Lady Butler-Sloss and I have the honour and pleasure of being patrons of the organisation.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I apologise to the noble Lord. I remember it being burnt down and have not kept up with developments since.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

The house itself was burnt down, but the organisation is functioning in smaller houses, which is much more effective than having one large house.

I propose to speak only about Part 2 of what was already a vast Bill before other clauses were added during its passage through the other place. That is not to say that I do not have concerns about Clauses 1 to 5, which will add significantly to the work of the already overstretched Parole Board, about Clause 6, which appears to be a badly rushed measure on which the Minister in the other place was unable to provide information, either about its projected cost or its alleged benefits, or about Clauses 7 and 8, about which there must be doubt because the impact assessment seems to ignore the inevitable number of breaches of supervision by short-term prisoners, discussed many times during the passage of the Offender Rehabilitation Bill. I leave Part 4 to my noble and learned friends with great confidence, enhanced by their contributions to today’s debate.

My concerns about Part 2 began with the Government’s published response to the consultation on Transforming Youth Custody, in which I was disturbed both by the lack of detail about the proposed secure college and the phrase in the final paragraph of the ministerial foreword, signed by the Secretary of State and the Deputy Prime Minister,

“we are committed to delivering at pace”.

That suggests that this is a pet project of the Secretary of State, which he is determined to push through as quickly as possible whatever anyone says. My concerns were further fuelled by three things that the Secretary of State said at Third Reading of the Bill in the other place. First, he said:

“We are not a Government who legislate without taking into account the views of Parliament”.

That claims sounds a little hollow when I recall the deliberate denial of parliamentary scrutiny of the reordering of probation. Secondly, he said that,

“the rules that underpin the secure college provisions will be subject to public consultation. They were published during the passage of the Bill to benefit from the wealth of expertise within the youth justice sector”.

Bearing in mind their importance, as mentioned by the Minister, it is essential that this House sees and scrutinises those rules. I therefore ask the Minister why they have not been available to the House before we start work on the Bill. Thirdly, he said:

“I urge the Opposition to think again before they play politics with the future of young people”. [Official Report, Commons, 17/6/14; cols. 1070-71.]

Like many other noble Lords, I welcome the Government’s stated ambition of creating secure educational establishments where core learning skills, vocational training and life skills will be the central pillars of a regime focused on educating and rehabilitating young offenders. I also welcome the acceptance of the measures introduced by the Children and Families Act for the treatment of those with special educational needs. As an independent Cross-Bencher, my opposition to this proposal is nothing to do with party politics, but entirely based on my practical experience as Chief Inspector of Prisons, when I inspected every young offender institution, and many secure training centres and secure children’s homes, in England and Wales. I found good establishments and bad establishments. What united the good ones was that their governors were trying desperately to achieve what the Government state to be their ambition, while regretting that their attempts were hampered by a lack of resources, including time—the average length of sentence being a bare 78 days. My inspection experiences and my subsequent involvement with the youth justice system lead me totally to disbelieve the maths of the Government’s claims and to ask the Minister: first, whether there are any maths; secondly, on what they are based; and thirdly, why they have not been made available for us to scrutinise.

Having seen many wise, dedicated and experienced governors try and fail to squeeze more out of their pint pots, I have to admit that what I dislike most about this proposal is the presumption, based on no evidence, that private sector companies working for profit can come in and do what experienced professionals have failed to achieve, in larger establishments, with larger catchment areas and at less cost. Such a presumption suggests that no one has worked out the cost of essential custodial educational staff/offender ratios, because, if they had, they would have realised that the cost of ensuring there are sufficient skilled custodial staff is bound to have an impact on the provision of purposeful activity and vice versa. The risks that private sector companies take with staff numbers in adult prisons are simply not acceptable when they are responsible for safeguarding this vulnerable age group.

The proposal also confirms that pace has encouraged the rejection of the unanimous advice from experts that small establishments are far better and safer if anything is to be achieved with this particular group, and for the need to preserve the principles of maintaining closeness to home, development of good family contact and links to the local authorities of children in care. If pace means commissioning £85 million of limited funding on an unsubstantiated proposal before it has been scrutinised and approved by Parliament, without knowing whether it is possible to implement what is proposed, it is better described as playing with the future of young people.

The Minister said that the commission to build would not be confirmed unless and until the Bill receives Royal Assent. I submit that it is bordering on contempt of Parliament for the Government to announce the award of the £85 million pathfinder contract to Wates to build what they describe as a purpose-built 320-place secure college on a site at Glen Parva in the East Midlands before the Bill has completed its passage through Parliament and without any idea about the requirements of the educational contract whose delivery the build is meant to facilitate. Far from it being designed to satisfy secure college aspirations, Wates has been commissioned to build what was agreed for a young offender institution on the same site in 2009 but subsequently not built. The Minister’s mention of Titan prisons reminded me that it was Wates that told me of Jack Straw’s infamous direction that they were required “to hold as many people as possible as cheaply as possible”. I hope that the same has not been directed by the Secretary of State in connection with the proposed secure college.

Other noble Lords have mentioned paragraph 10 of Schedule 6, which allows staff to “use reasonable force” to ensure “good order and discipline”. I fail to see why this paragraph is necessary, because an independent review of restraint in juvenile secure settings chaired by an eminent adolescent psychiatrist produced admirably clear minimum rules that were accepted and published by the previous Secretary of State. Presumably they are not tough enough for Mr Grayling. I could go on but I will reserve my fire for Committee.

Before that I would like to make an appeal to the Secretary of State through the Minister. Bearing in mind that, thanks to the welcome reduction in numbers, largely achieved by the efforts of the Youth Justice Board, the nature of the child prisoner population has changed from its far wider representation into being a toxic mix of the most violent, troubled and damaged. That change gives him a perfectly valid reason for dropping his proposal and putting it into the aspirational basket. All would not be lost because he could then task the newly appointed director of young offenders, if paragraph 20 of the Government’s response to the consultation is to be believed, to conduct a deliberate and costed examination of what improvement and change was possible with the available resources, including quantifiable evidence to support his claim that secure colleges will reduce reoffending rates and show how such a reduction will be achieved in practice. Meanwhile, in the absence of proof, it would be irresponsible of the Government to ask this House to rubber stamp this proposal and responsible of them to prove that I am wrong by producing the evidence that justifies the pace with which they are pursuing their proposal with unsubstantiated ambition.