Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Philp]

I will follow your direction, Sir Charles, by saying just a few words on this clause, which is relatively straightforward and, I think, pretty inoffensive.

Clause 130 simply creates a requirement for probation officials to consult key local and regional stakeholders on the delivery of unpaid work. Unpaid work—or community payback, as it is sometimes known—combines the sentencing purposes of punishment with reparation to communities. We believe that, where possible, unpaid work requirements should benefit the local communities in which they are carried out. Nominated local projects are already popular with sentencers and the public, but there is currently no requirement for probation officials to consult stakeholders on the design or delivery of unpaid work, so members of communities and organisations within particular local areas that are best placed to understand the impact of crime and what might be useful in the local area do not necessarily have their say.

Clause 130 simply seeks to address the gap by ensuring that key local stakeholders are consulted, so that they can suggest to the probation service what kind of unpaid work might be useful in their local area. We hope that local community groups and stakeholders come up with some good ideas that the probation service can then respond to. That seems to be a pretty sensible idea. The probation service in some areas may do it already. This clause simply creates a proper duty, or a requirement, for the probation service to do it. Of course, if we understand the needs of local communities and their thoughts, we can improve the way unpaid work placements operate to support rehabilitation and also help the local community. If the local community can visibly see offenders doing unpaid work in their local area, whether it is cleaning off graffiti, cleaning the place up or whatever else it may be, that will, we hope, demonstrate that the programme is giving back to and improving the local community, but delivering a punitive element as well.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Philp]

I was about to conclude, but of course I will take the intervention.

[Sarah Champion]

When I used to run a children’s hospice, we had offenders under probation supervision come in. They were meant to be doing gardening at the children’s hospice, but instead they sat around smoking cigarettes. We kept on raising that with the probation worker, because we had invited the offenders there to give them a second chance, to help with their rehabilitation, to enable them to contribute to the community and so on. But the probation officer said, “What do you want me to do? I can’t beat them; I can’t make them work, but they have to come on these schemes.” Could the Minister give some examples of how the probation service will have the resources and the influence to ensure that people who are out in their local community are actually—

[The Chair]

Order. This is meant to be an intervention, not a speech. The hon. Lady is entitled to make a speech and could have made a speech, but can we treat this as an intervention?

[Sarah Champion]

I apologise, Sir Charles.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. First, I am extremely disappointed and somewhat shocked to hear that people who were supposed to be doing work at a hospice in Rotherham in fact sat around smoking cigarettes. That is obviously shocking and not what the orders are supposed to be about. The hon. Lady says that the probation officer shrugged their shoulders and said, “Well, what can I do about it?” Of course, if the person, the offender, was not doing the work that they were supposed to be doing, that would amount to a breach of the unpaid work requirement, and they could be taken back to court to account for their breach, so I am extremely disappointed by the attitude of the probation officer that the hon. Lady just described.

The hon. Lady asked about resources. Extra resources are going into the probation service for it to supervise exactly these kinds of activities, and I would expect them to be supervised and policed properly. I will certainly pass on her concern to the relevant Minister. I have already made contact about fixing a meeting for the hon. Lady and the Prisons Minister that we talked about in this morning’s session, in relation to victims being consulted about probable decisions. The same Minister, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, is responsible for the probation service as well—I am just adding to his workload. I will raise it with him, but I would certainly urge the hon. Member for Rotherham to raise this issue in the same meeting, because I know that the account she just gave will concern my hon. Friend as much as it concerns me.

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[Alex Cunningham]

I thank the Minister very much for that—it will, of course, be on the record, which I am very pleased to note. Before I get into my speech, I would like to thank Transform Justice and the Alliance for Youth Justice for the extremely helpful work they have done on this part of the Bill. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), the former shadow Justice Minister, who worked extremely hard on these particular issues. I am grateful to him.

Clause 131 amends the legislative threshold for remanding a child to custody. It will mean that remand to youth detention accommodation can be imposed only in the most serious cases, where a custodial sentence is the only option and the risk posed by the child cannot be safely managed within the community. It will introduce a statutory duty which states that courts must consider the interests and welfare of the child before deciding whether to remand them to youth detention. It also imposes a statutory requirement for the courts to record the reasons for the decision.

First, let me say that we are pleased with the direction of travel that this clause indicates, and we are keen for the Government’s work in this area to succeed. We are in complete agreement with the Government that custodial remand should be used only as a last resort for children. However, we do think that there is scope for these proposals to go further in tightening the threshold for remanding a child into custody. I will speak more on that when we discuss our amendments.

The current youth remand provisions were introduced in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and I well remember the Public Bill Committee, where I had the privilege of serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Sadiq Khan, now our excellent Mayor of London, and also my good friend. By 2019, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse noted a significant increase in the use of custodial remand for children. The Opposition warmly welcomes measures which aim to reduce the number of children remanded into custody, especially in light of the fact that in 2018/19 only a third of children remanded to custody or local authority accommodation later received a custodial sentence.

Our concerns about the use of custodial remands for children are compounded by the extreme racial disproportionality on remand, and the record proportion of children in custody who have not yet been tried in court.

Against the backdrop of the record court backlog and the waiting times for trial, there could not be a more opportune moment to address these issues. We particularly welcome the introduction of the statutory duty to consider the welfare and best interests of the child. We believe that, while these proposals can go further—I know that the Minister will listen carefully to our proposals shortly—these changes will help to reduce the number of children who are unnecessarily remanded to custody, so we are pleased to support them.



However, there are a couple of points on which I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts. Has he any further information to share with the Committee on his Department’s considerations of the impact that police remand has on custodial remand? Are there any plans to address that? Research by Transform Justice shows that police remand, where the child is detained by the police until court either in a police cell or in a local authority PACE bed—under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—is a driver of custodial remand. Transform Justice explains that point:

“This is because any child remanded by the police has to be presented in court within 24 hours, meaning Youth Offending Team staff often don’t have enough time to develop a bail package that will satisfy the court. Children who appear from police custody also usually appear in the secure dock, which can bias courts to view the child as more ‘dangerous’ and therefore more suitable for custodial remand.”

The criteria for police remand are spelled out in section 38 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and are very different from those used by the court for remand. In fact, the criteria for police remand of children are almost identical to those for adults, unlike the child-first approach taken in so many other areas of the justice system.

We know that the police remand more children than the courts. Of the 4,500 children who appeared in court from police custody in 2019, only 12% went on to be remanded by the court. Some 31% of those remanded by the police went on to be discharged, dismissed or have their case withdrawn, while 37% went on to get a fine or community sentence. The figures illustrate that police use of remand is seriously out of synch with the courts already. This clause may further widen that gap.

Is the Minister not concerned that the police may continue to overuse post-charge detention, undermining the positive efforts of the clause to reduce unnecessary custodial remand for children? Will the Government consider updating the police remand criteria, so they are in line with the new court remand criteria, to ensure consistent decision making across the whole criminal justice system?

I am greatly supportive of the provision in the clause that requires courts to record their reasons for remanding a child, not least because it will provide valuable data on the use of remand, which will enable us to continue to make improvements in this area. For that to be most effective in informing future policy decisions, we would need to have some sort of centralised monitoring system. Will we have such a system? It would mean that the need to record reasons would not only focus the mind of the court in a specific case; it would also benefit the system as a whole, as each case can inform our ongoing learning process about the use of remand and its effectiveness. Has the Minister considered the possibility of such a centralised monitoring system?

It has been suggested that the obligation on the court to record reasons would be most effective if courts had to specify why non-custodial alternatives were deemed unsuitable and how each of the custodial remand conditions has been met. Is that the kind of detail that the Minister envisages the obligation should entail? I am sure we all agree that it would be helpful for that level of information to be provided, so I am interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts.

Turning to the amendments, as I said earlier, the reforms to the threshold for remanding a child in custody are welcome, but there are a couple of areas where we believe they should go further. The Opposition amendments, if adopted, would get us closer to the goal of custodial remand being used only as a truly last resort.

Amendment 128 seeks to tighten the history test by defining a recent history of breaching bail or offending while on bail as having been committed within the last six weeks. The clause currently makes provision to amend the history condition so that the previous instances of breach or offending while on bail must be “significant”, “relevant” and “recent”. In order to reduce the number of children held unnecessarily on remand, it would be helpful to amend the clause so that there is a clear definition of “recent”.

In defining recent, we have to be mindful of what that means to a child. As the Alliance for Youth Justice notes:

“If we are to take a child-centred approach, we must consider how children experience time, and recognise the well-established principle that children change and develop in a shorter time than adults.”

The Youth Justice Board for England and Wales has recommended that “recent” be no longer than within a six-week period. I hope that the Minister will agree that clarity on that point would be of great assistance to the courts. I would be interested to hear from him what discussions his Ministry of Justice colleagues have had regarding defining a time limit for this condition.

Amendment 129 is a straightforward amendment to the necessity condition that would again help achieve the aim of using custodial remand for children only as a last resort. Although we welcome the strengthened wording of the necessity condition included in the Bill, which would require remand to be used only when the risk posed by a child cannot be safely managed in the community, we share the concerns of the sector that the benefits arising from this change may be undermined by its drafting. The amendment would therefore tighten and strengthen the wording. Transform Justice says that these benefits of the current proposed change to the necessity condition

“will be undermined by the loose wording of one of the other necessity conditions: that remand to YDA is necessary to prevent further imprisonable offences. This condition is highly subjective and casts a wide net, which may be widened further by youth sentencing provisions elsewhere in the bill.”

We share the concern expressed by the Alliance for Youth Justice that

“the latter part of the condition (to prevent the commission of an imprisonable offence) sets such a low threshold for meeting the Condition as to render the first threshold (to protect the public from death or serious personal injury) somewhat redundant.”

The amendment would tighten the latter part of the condition by ensuring that it applies only to serious imprisonable offences, which we think better reflects the intention of the clause.

Finally, amendment 130 would compel the court to record the age, gender and ethnicity of a child remanded in custody in order to provide better data on remand, particularly on disproportionality. We believe that this could be a helpful tool in addressing the deeply concerning and increasing levels of disproportionality at this point in our justice system. The numbers beggar belief. Nine out of 10 London children who are remanded are from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. A deeply comprehensive report that was published by the Youth Justice Board in January shows that race alone is a factor in remand outcomes for children. The researchers gathered data on thousands of English and Welsh cases, and information provided in practitioner assessments. Even when other related factors were controlled for mixed ethnicity black children, they were, as the Youth Justice Board notes,

“still more likely to be remanded in custody and, if not remanded, more likely to be subject to restrictions on bail.”

This is a serious injustice in our system that needs to be urgently addressed. More needs to be done than this amendment makes provision for, but it would be a helpful tool in breaking down the disproportionate outcomes that we are seeing. The amendment would at the very least provide accurate data to help understand this disparity, in line with the “explain or reform” principle outlined in the Lammy review, which I think is an eminently sensible step in the right direction. I hope that the Minister agrees and look forward to hearing his thoughts. I would also be grateful if he could share with the Committee any other initiatives his Department is working on to address this flagrant disproportionality in youth remand.

[Sarah Champion]

I fully support the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North on the amendments. I have a fundamental concern about remanding children. It impacts on them disproportionately in terms of their future outlook, opportunities and potential. We see within the remand youth justice system some of the highest levels of disproportionality in the criminal justice system. Although Labour Members welcome the measures in the Bill to tighten the tests that the courts must satisfy to decide whether to remand a child in custody, we still have concerns about this section of the Bill.

We agree with the policy to encourage the courts to impose a custodial remand only when absolutely necessary while ensuring the public remain safe, but as my hon. Friend stated, there are real concerns about the overrepresentation of black, Asian and minority ethnic people, who make up only 12% of the UK population but half the youth prison population. I would be much more comfortable if we were using the Bill to look at the reasons for that disproportionate make-up, rather than at further punitive measures. We have to take steps to ensure that all people, particularly all children, can reach their potential. I am very mindful of the fact that the literacy rate of the prison population is so much lower than that of the rest of the population. Why are we not investing more to address those underlying issues?

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[Alex Cunningham]

Secure children’s homes accommodate boys and girls aged 10 to 17 assessed as particularly vulnerable. As well as children held on justice grounds, secure children’s homes accommodate children detained on welfare grounds for their protection or the protection of others. The explanatory notes state that they

“currently rely on inherent powers to make arrangements for the ‘mobility’ of children detained in such accommodation to help address their offending behaviour and to support the integration of children back into the community at the end of their sentence. Clause 137 would provide a statutory power for the temporary release of children detained in SCHs. The Secretary of State or the registered manager of the home would be able to temporarily release a child to whom the clause applies. Temporary release under this clause could be granted under conditions. The Secretary of State and registered managers would have concurrent powers to recall children temporarily released…If the period for which the child is temporarily released expires or if the child has been recalled, the child would be deemed to be unlawfully at large.”

Overall, we are supportive of the Government’s proposals in this area and recognise that a good balance has to be struck between allowing temporary release of children from secure children’s homes to support their reintegration into society, and close monitoring of children on temporary release for risk management purposes.

The Opposition understand that temporary release is an important part of the rehabilitation process for children sentenced to custody, and that some child sentence plan objectives will require them to attend meetings or participate in activities outside the secure establishment. As the Youth Justice Board notes in its briefing,

“Allowing children to be released temporarily supports their constructive resettlement into their community both in maintaining family ties and allowing children to start or maintain education placements.”

While the clause is effectively just putting into statute practice that is already in place, we are pleased to see the Government conferring authority for these decisions and processes to the secure school provider, as they will be best placed to support the child in question.

Research published by the Department for Education comparing children on justice placements and those on welfare placements in secure children’s homes concluded that children on justice and welfare placements are fundamentally the same children. The research found that the level of risk posed by individual children was not related to whether they were on a justice or welfare pathway. The report examined whether there was a need to separate children on justice and welfare placements, but concluded that, rather than separating them, if anything the children would benefit from greater integration. While secure children’s homes managers already have powers under section 25 of the Children Act 1989 to consider and approve temporary release for children on welfare placements, we are pleased that the new provisions will put those managers in the same position for sentenced children on justice placements.

We note the concerns of the Howard League, however, that the clause applies only to children who have been sentenced and therefore excludes children who are held in secure children’s homes on remand from being able to access temporary release. The Howard League points out that this change will therefore create a disparity between children who are in secure children’s homes and children who are in secure training centres. Rule 5 of the Secure Training Centre Rules allows children who are on remand to be temporarily released. It explains that unless temporary release also applies to children on remand in secure children’s homes and schools,

“there is a risk that this will undermine the ‘seamless service’ between custody and the community which the Government envisions for secure schools”

We agree with the Howard League that all children remanded to custody should have access to temporary release where appropriate, as they do in secure training centres.

The Bill’s fact sheet on this provision says temporary release is “not a relevant factor” for children on remand. I find this surprising given that we know that, as a result of court delays, children are sometimes subject to quite lengthy custodial remands. The Alliance for Youth Justice further points out:

“introducing new legislation which restricts temporary release in Secure Children’s Homes to sentenced children would be detrimental, particularly to the development of Secure Schools, which we know have ambitious plans for transitions into the community.”

I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on this and wonder why this distinction has been maintained. Will he consider including children on remand in these provisions? It would be helpful to be reassured on that point, but on the whole we are pleased with the proposal and will offer it our support.

As we have heard, clause 138 would amend the Academies Act 2010 so that 16-to-19 academies can provide secure accommodation for the purpose of restricting liberty but only if approved to do so by the Secretary of State. On the whole, the Opposition support the principle of secure academies and we do not strongly object to these academies being run by charitable entities. But, as ever, there are some areas in which I seek the Minister’s reassurances, especially with this clause, as comprehensive information is not available from the Government.

The Alliance for Youth Justice briefing on this clause says:

“We are aware of concerns that have been prompted by this section of the Bill around the lack of clarity on the status of Secure Schools, in particular what legislation, regulation and guidance will govern and oversee their activities. It has been confirmed to the AYJ by the Youth Custody Service and Oasis Charitable Trust, that Oasis Restore, the first Secure School pilot, will be registered as a Secure Children’s Home and regulated by Ofsted. It has also been confirmed that 12-to-18-year-olds may be placed in Oasis Restore.”

There is clear discomfort in the sector about the limited information available on the plans for Oasis Restore and how the model will operate in practice. Can the Minister confirm that his Department will publish more information on this? Can he provide a timeframe for publication?

Another issue raised by the sector is that it is unclear how the introduction of secure schools fits into the long-term strategy for the youth secure estate. I understand that it is the Government’s stated intention for secure schools to replace young offender institutions and secure training centres, but we have not yet seen any proposed timeline for such changes. Can the Minister provide more information on his Department’s intended timeline for the changeover to secure schools for the Committee today?

The first secure school is being established in Medway, but I understand that children from across the UK can be sent there. Hazel Williamson put it very well in our evidence session when she said:

“As an association of YOT managers, we believe that children in custody…should be placed in small, secure units close to their homes. We do not advocate large custodial establishments where children are placed far away from their home; we would advocate small custodial units.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 20 May 2021; c. 133, Q212.]

Can the Minister confirm that the Government’s timetable for delivering secure schools will not entail children being detained hundreds of miles from their homes while still only a small number of these establishments are available?

The Youth Justice Board has shared its concerns about the links to children entering the youth justice system from practices such as off-rolling children. Indeed, there is a high prevalence of expelled children in the children’s secure estate. For instance, in 2018 in HMYOI Feltham, 89% of children had been excluded from school.

Can the Minister confirm that any academy trusts selected through the tendering process to open or run a secure school have got, as the Youth Justice Board put it

“the necessary skills, expertise, structures and ethos to support children in a secure setting”?

I know that the Howard League wrote to the Secretary of State on this issue last year, and its briefing says:

“This clause provides a legal basis for the ‘secure school’ model of youth custody: it allows academies to provide secure accommodation for their pupils if they have been approved to do so and establishes that running a secure academy is to be treated as fulfilling the charitable purpose of ‘advancement of education’ under s3(1) of the Charities Act 2011. In April 2020, the Charity Commission noted that ‘the proposed purposes of secure schools, as we understand them, do not wholly fall within the descriptions of purpose in s3(1) of the Charities Act 2011’ and that ‘we do not think the operation of a secure school can be exclusively charitable’. In November 2020, the Howard League wrote to the Secretary of State outlining the concerns that locking children up does not fall within charitable objectives. The proposal compounds this issue.”

It would be helpful if the Minister could share with the Committee his discussions with the Charity Commission, so that we all better understand the position that has been reached on this knotty issue.

Amendments 123 and 133 both relate to the inspection regime for secure 16-to-19 academies. Amendment 123 would make secure 16-to-19 academies subject to annual inspection by Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons, and amendment 133 would make them subject to annual inspection by Ofsted. I understand that the current inspection framework will come from Ofsted. However, I am sure the Government would agree that a secure school is a very different entity from a standard school. We therefore believe that such schools would benefit from a different inspection regime, to ensure that no aspects of their running are overlooked. Although it is true that it is not a prison, a secure school is still part of the secure estate, so there is expertise that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons can provide. Indeed, when Ofsted does inspections on the secure estate, HMIP is part of the broader inspection team. We think the inclusion of HMIP is important and should be put on a statutory footing. I hope the Government agree that it would add value to the monitoring and running of the secure school system as it is rolled out, so I hope they will be able to support our amendment 123.

As I outlined in my earlier speech, there is still much that is unknown and has yet to be decided in relation to secure schools. For that reason, we think it would be important for there to be regular inspections, especially in the early years of operation. That is why our amendment 133 provides for annual inspection by Ofsted, to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. Furthermore, we are entrusting such schools with the care of some of our most vulnerable children at a point in their lives when positive and engaged care can have the most impact, so it is only right that the schools are subject to the most rigorous monitoring while they do so. I hope that the Government agree and can support amendment 133.

Amendment 146, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, allows for local authorities to establish and maintain a secure 16-to-19 academy, and to exclude profit-making bodies from doing likewise. I am sure she will address her amendment in detail, but she has our support.

[Sarah Champion]

My amendment 146 is designed to ensure that local authorities are able to run secure 16-to-19 academies, either alone or in consortia, and to prevent such establishments from being run for profit. I will go into the detail of why, but, fundamentally, I do not think profit should be made from keeping our children safe. We are seeing some pretty gross examples of that at the moment.

In December 2016, the Government committed to phase out child prisons—by that, I mean juvenile young offenders institutions and secure training centres—and to replace them with a network of secure schools and children’s homes. I hope that this is not just the Government playing semantics and that they really are going to get rid of these institutions, because it is very clear, and the Youth Justice Board concedes, that secure training centres are not fit for purpose.

The Government must speed up the phasing out of secure training centres. When introducing secure schools and academies, they must ensure that they will meet high standards of care. We must ensure that secure children’s homes take an approach that fulfils all of a child’s needs and that they are not seen as cash cows for the private firms who run them to make huge profits.

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[Sarah Champion]

I do not wish to divide the Committee. I am content with what the Minister said about profit, but I would be grateful if he could write to me about why local authorities cannot apply.

[The Chair]

Minister, are you willing to do that?