Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

I hope that the Minister will look favourably on these proposals and see whether they are at all possible in the areas that I have talked about. That would extend the benefits of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act more widely than the Minister’s current proposal. I have one further request: will the Minister examine how these systems could be monitored so that the impact of his amendment could be measured and, if necessary, we could look at further amendments in future criminal justice legislation? I beg to move.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

I congratulate the Government on the amendments that they are introducing into the Bill, which are the culmination of years of campaigning by my noble friend Lord Dholakia—within, and with the support of, the Liberal Democrats—to modernise the law.

Amendment 185FAA, in my name, was suggested by the Howard League, of which my noble friend Lord Carlile is president—unhappily, he cannot be with us tonight. Its purpose is to recognise that children may change in a shorter time than adults, something that the Minister has already recognised in his remarks today. The amendment affects a significant proportion of children with the opportunity to wipe the slate clean upon reaching 18 years of age. It refers to the question raised in the Green Paper that has been referred to: that the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 be amended so that children convicted of non-serious offences have a clean slate on reaching their majority. Paragraph 117 of the Green Paper says:

“We would welcome views on how we might do more for young offenders as we are aware that some people are, for example, finding their path to higher education blocked on the basis of juvenile convictions. ‘Wiping the slate clean’ once the offender reaches adulthood is a possible approach for all but the most serious offences”.

There is no reference to this suggestion in the Government’s response to the consultation, and I do not know whether any of the respondees actually dealt with the question that was asked.

Wiping the slate clean would have a big impact on the future employment prospects of young offenders. It is obviously intended to apply only to non-serious offences and the public will not be at risk of any harm. Clearly, the usual suite of public protection arrangements will continue to apply to jobs that involve working with children and vulnerable people. If this provision were adopted, it would be a powerful incentive for young people to rehabilitate as responsible adults in their communities. Such an incentive is important at a time when youth unemployment is at a record high and there is a risk of both crime and detention rates spiralling further.

The amendment has been crafted to ensure that rehabilitation periods are not spent before a young person completes their sentence. That does not mean that those who would otherwise be required to wait a long time before their conviction is spent would suddenly find themselves without any rehabilitation period at all, simply due to having committed an offence close to their 18th birthday. It would exempt those still serving their sentence at 18, including the licence period of that sentence, from the “wipe the slate clean” provision. In other words, if a young person committed a theft aged 17 and is sentenced to three years in detention, he would attract a rehabilitation period of three and a half years, commencing on the completion of his sentence at the age of 20. Therefore, the conviction would not be spent until he reached 23 years of age. However, if he committed a theft at the age of 14 and was sentenced to three years’ detention, instead of waiting until the age of 21 for the conviction to be spent his sentence would expire when he was 17 and his conviction would automatically become spent on his 18th birthday. This provision deals with the possible criticism that a person who commits an offence aged 17 years and 11 months would have his conviction wiped clean on his 18th birthday. That would clearly be unacceptable and is most certainly not the intention of this amendment.

The Government raised the question in the Green Paper but we have not had an answer. I would welcome a response from my noble friend.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, briefly, I support the government amendments that have been tabled and echo the many warm things that have been said about the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for his persistence in pursuing this matter.

I merely mention that in 2001 I was invited to inspect the young offender institutions in the Caribbean. In Barbados, I found a system in which, at the age of 18, every child automatically had their convictions looked at and the slate wiped clean of all except those that it was deemed in a schedule should be carried forward. I brought that information back and fed it into the team studying Breaking the Circle at that time. Given all the points that have been made by the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Thomas, it seemed particularly important that this should apply to young offenders so that they were not hampered, particularly in their further education, by crimes that they had committed as children.