Youth Justice Board

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

That is extraordinary from someone who has held the position that the noble and learned Baroness has held. The straight answer is that, because the board is coming into the Ministry of Justice, the responsibility will be that of the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. That is very clear. However, within the Ministry of Justice, we are in a transition period. We are going through this along with the Youth Justice Board, which is co-operating very effectively in the transition. When those lines of responsibility are cleared and when the legislation has cleared Parliament, we will be able to go ahead with implementation and those lines will be clear. As I said, I acknowledge that the system of youth justice has moved from being a Cinderella organisation in the 1990s to one that has been extremely effective, but we are now removing that layer of national control to ensure that there is proper, local responsibility by devolving responsibility to youth offending teams. That was also part of the initial plans that the previous Government put in place.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

Will my noble friend consider, in the medium term, investigating the way that youth justice operates and replacing youth courts with something along the lines of the children’s panels that operate very successfully in Scotland, in which the magistrates sit down together with parents and social workers to try to work out the proper solution for the individual offender?

[Lord McNally]

That is the kind of constructive suggestion that I hope will come forward from the Green Paper that my department published yesterday. The Green Paper shows that we have been successful in establishing youth justice as a priority in our system, as the paper has a distinct chapter on youth justice. There is an invitation to all parts of this House—and indeed to all bodies—to feed in constructive views. This is not the end of the youth justice story. The Youth Justice Board has been a successful chapter and we intend to carry on with that work. We will study ideas that come from the Scottish and Northern Irish systems.