Education and Inspections Bill

I follow with great appreciation the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. It is not often in politics—and I have had a long life in politics—that one suddenly sees the clear answer to a problem emerging between all parties in an intelligent and thoughtful debate such as this one. But it is increasingly clear—the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, put this very well—that the problem of a very high recidivism rate among young offenders in prisons and young offender institutions can be met only with much closer co-operation between the Department for Education and Skills and the Home Office. I do not want to add much to the eloquent remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, or the highly informed remarks of my noble friend Lady Walmsley, beyond one or two rather stark comments . A small percentage of children—probably only between 5 per cent and 10 per cent—follow what might be called a ““fateful”” path. That path often begins with their exclusion from school. Last year no fewer than 389,560 children were excluded from school, in some cases for only a very short time. But they suffered the experience of exclusion, itself a mark of the trouble that the child is in. Some of those children go on to receive anti-social behaviour orders, and some go on to young offender institutions. The one strand that is absolutely clear from the beginning to the end of this fateful process is that these children are neither educated nor trained to enable them to be a part of modern society, demanding as it is. I was shocked by figures from the then Home Office Minister, Paul Goggins, in a Written Answer to a Question tabled two years ago in the other place by Charles Hendry. Those figures—the most recent I have been able to find—say it all. In 2004, 81.7 per cent of young offenders—more than four-fifths of the total—had a level 1 or lower standard of literacy. In other words, they were at best semi-literate and in some cases absolutely illiterate. Some 78 per cent were innumerate, nearly four-fifths of the total. We are considering young men and women who already have, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, profoundly troubled backgrounds. Then, at a very early stage in their lives, they fall out. They cannot keep up with the education opportunities offered to them. Then, year after year, decade after decade, they sink ever more deeply into a situation in which they can neither cope nor be a part of our society. It is not surprising that such a large number of them end up in young offender institutions and then, all too quickly, end up in prison. Then they are all too quickly written off as members of society other than as those attacking society’s underlying strength and order. The answer lies very much with us. I wish to cite only one other figure before I say something about Amendment No. 26A. That figure also says it all. My noble friend Lady Walmsley has given the detailed indications of how ineffective so far the attempts to educate young offenders have been, although I give full credit to the Youth Justice Board for the efforts that it has made against an almost impossible challenge. But there is another astonishing figure. It costs £34,924 to keep a young person in a young offender institution and, at present, the annual average figure for those in such institutions is about 6,500. Noble Lords should not forget the figure of more than £34,000. Set against that is the cost of £3,800 for a youngster in secondary education. The gap between the two, given what the noble Earl said about recidivism, means that year after year, as a society, we pay huge amounts to keep youngsters in prison who—had we caught them early enough, given them proper literacy training and intensive extra support on the lines that the Government, to whom I give credit, are suggesting with personalised education—might have been taken out of this fateful journey which, apart from ruining young lives, costs our society huge sums of money. I am talking only about the costs of keeping them and not the desperate costs for the victims of sustaining the injuries and the crimes for which such young people are responsible. The answer leaps out. We have to catch these youngsters much earlier. We have to give them the intensive training and help that they need. Frankly, even the Youth Justice Board’s idea of 15 hours of education a week is a poor joke compared with the 30 hours that we expect children who are not in trouble to have, and we have to put that right. This Bill could give the Government the opportunity to tackle the causes of crime in a radical, far-reaching and exciting way. I wish briefly to mention Amendment No. 26A, which concerns immigration removal centres. I should declare an interest as a patron of the Gatwick detention centre, of which I am extremely proud. It recently received a Queen’s award for the outstanding nature of its work with detainees. In addition to what has already been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley about immigration removal centres, we should bear in mind another fact. My noble friend gave the figures, which are relatively limited—even the Save the Children Fund estimate of £2,000 a year is not huge. But noble Lords will have noticed that, in the past couple of days, the Government said that they cannot accept the proposal for an amnesty for illegal immigrants, but will take steps to remove them. Some illegal immigrants have been settled in this country for years—sometimes for more than 10 years. Their children are in school, and they have families that are settled and are sometimes working in this country. You will have a much greater problem removing them; there will be a lot of legal defences and attempts to bring cases; there will be support from neighbours; and there will be the voices of NGOs. Those people will not be deported in a matter of days, which means that, if the Government are serious in their effort, far more children will find themselves in immigration removal centres. I plead with the Minister to consider carefully the case made by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Judd. Those youngsters could be there not for four weeks, but for months on end or even a year or more. It is absolutely vital that the Government take steps to make education available to those children who have already been traumatised by the fact that their families are about to be removed. They are even more traumatised if that whole process is slow, long and drawn out and there is bitter controversy, as I fear will be the case. With that background, I think many of the arguments advanced by the Minister in another place against accepting Amendment No. 26A fall to the ground. I strongly support my noble friends who have tabled it.