Youth Justice

Pam Cox Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the manner in which she made her remarks. She understands that we have seen this revolving door, where two thirds of children and young people released from custody go on to reoffend, and many of those young people are extremely vulnerable. We have to do something about it.

I thank her for mentioning the cohort of young people —way too many—who are within the care system. I am very grateful that the Minister responsible for children in care, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), is on the Front Bench today alongside me. He takes a huge interest in the work that our Departments do together to deal with this area.

The hon. Lady mentioned young people who are adopted. She knows that I am a parent of an adopted child, and I take these issues extremely seriously. She is right, and we are looking in totality at the way in which parenting orders have worked. There must be something going wrong if the number of parenting orders issued has fallen over the last decade from more than 1,000 to just 33 last year. We have to look at it in the round and ensure that judges have the right tools to support parents and guardians over this next period.

The hon. Lady raises the reforms we are making to the Youth Justice Board. It is still the case, if we look across the country, that there is a postcode lottery. We have to eliminate that postcode lottery, which also exists because of online harms, because of grooming, because of mental health and because of neurodiversity. I was in Feltham recently and I saw the good work that it is doing with young people who are neurodiverse. It is important that the Department, working with our colleagues in the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, bring some of these powers back to the centre so that we can get coherence across the country and end that postcode lottery.

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

I welcome this statement and the White Paper. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that programmes such as turnaround are felt in constituencies such as mine in Colchester and beyond?

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentoring turnaround, which is an important scheme that began under the last Government and has continued under us. It is making a big difference by diverting these young people. I will look closely at its use in her constituency, but we are absolutely clear that it is about not just diverting them but ensuring that we are diverting them to quality. We can see from the recidivism rate of 7% that turnaround is an exceptional programme.