Police and Justice Bill

I support the noble Baroness in her amendment and hope very much that my noble friend on the Front Bench will be able to look seriously at what the amendment seeks to do. The noble Baroness has put the case in her exemplary way. It is difficult to add to her argument but I would like to underline two or three points. First, yes, I am as concerned as she is about the protection of the child. But I am also concerned about the effective protection of society. This is where we repeatedly become counterproductive. Punishment of course has a key place in penal policy, but I would suggest that punishment without rehabilitation has little to be said for it. The battle is to enable the offender to become a responsible and positive member of society. The difficulty with this provision is that, at a young age, a child is stigmatised within the community. Does this mean that we have given up hope of rehabilitation? If we have any serious commitment to rehabilitation, the concept of anonymity at that age is tremendously important. It allows us to get to work on the really demanding and tough job of working with the child to help him to become a responsible citizen. As things stand, I do not believe that we are helped in that endeavour. Nevertheless, a couple of other points need to be made. I always think that when we discuss these issues, in this House in particular, we must be honest with ourselves. Most of us do not suffer the kind of living hell that is the experience of many of the most disadvantaged communities in our society. This evening I shall be on a train to Cumbria, to my home in one of the most beautiful and lovely parts of the country. As I go, I shall be reflecting that there are many who are locked into a daily, weekly, monthly, annual experience of delinquent, aggressive behaviour with which it becomes very difficult to cope. I therefore believe that we should be at pains to put on record our solidarity with those at the receiving end of this experience. That makes it all the more important for us to be objective about what is really going to help: not just to express the frustration by naming and shaming, but to do something that will overcome a repetition of the problem in the future. I am one of those who is troubled that in so much of the execution of our current penal policy, whatever our high intentions, there is still a tendency to confirm a life pattern of delinquency and to aggravate the problem. It was not only a passing reference—a sort of marginal comment—to talk about the ““badge of honour””. Among some young people, I think it would be quite an attraction to have all the publicity and their name in a newspaper. Is that going to help with rehabilitation and winning that child to an understanding of the damage—psychological and physical—and the harm that their conduct may be doing to others? There is a serious hard job of work to be done with such young offenders. It needs to be done by expert people working in confidence with the young child, and not in the context of a great media hullabaloo about the individual concerned. From that standpoint, and simply because I believe in our responsibility to the communities that are suffering, I think that it is our duty to look very hard at what is actually going to be helpful and what is not. I do not believe the current situation is helpful. I believe that the noble Baroness is absolutely right to be seeking to correct the situation.