Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

No, I will not. New clause 40 tries to ensure that the ISS option is available and that custody is genuinely the last resort. The Government's view that the ISS option is only available for offences punishable with imprisonment and where the court is of the opinion that the offence was so serious that custody would otherwise have been appropriate is not a sufficient safeguard to ensure that it is used appropriately. If we are sensible about youth penal processes, we will prevent the unnecessary use of short custodial sentences that do not work. We will recognise that some young people are a danger to the public and therefore have to be kept in custody. The new clause provides a bypass for serious offences, but it would also make it clear in statute that custody should be the last resort—and it is time that that was done. Amendments Nos. 176, 210, 212 and 213 reflect a discussion that we had in Committee. The Standing Committee for Youth Justice made comments that I was happy to repeat to the Committee, welcoming the proposal in the Bill to introduce a youth version of the conditional caution. However, it expressed the concern that the provision would be extended only to young people aged 16 and 17, and there is indeed little logic in doing so. Children younger than 16 are coming to the attention of the criminal justice system more and more, and the youth conditional caution should be available for anybody over the age of 10 years, provided there are certain safeguards. The child should be able to understand the implications of the conditional caution, and that would require an adult to be present and able to explain it. That could be accommodated within the proposed code of practice. The Minister had at least a glimmer of sympathy for that view in Committee and suggested that he would at least consider extending the age range at a later stage. I cannot see any particular argument for not taking this opportunity to do so. The intention of amendments Nos. 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207 and 208 is to ensure that proceedings on a breach of a youth rehabilitation order commence in the youth court, rather than the Crown court. I do not want to repeat the debate that we had in Committee, but the youth court is especially well informed on the progress or otherwise of a youth rehabilitation order. It would be a misuse of the Crown court's time—which is a very expensive resource—to spend it unnecessarily on such proceedings. If proceedings start in the youth court, the amendments would allow them to move to the Crown court if it first applied the order. Allowing the youth court to start such proceedings would not undermine the ability or authority of the Crown court to deal with serious instances of non-compliance. It would also allow the young person to be sentenced rapidly and with some sensitivity, and that would be appropriate. Amendments Nos. 206 and 209 would preclude the court from imposing an intensive supervision and surveillance requirement, or a custodial sentence, for breach of a youth rehabilitation order in cases in which the original offence did not warrant custody, or was non-imprisonable. That is simply a case of ensuring that the final disposal is commensurate with the gravity of the original offence. It simply is not right that a minor offence should become an imprisonable offence by virtue of a breach of order, although the original offence was not of sufficient gravity to warrant that sentence. I ask the Minister to consider the value of those amendments. I now come to the two most important sets of amendments that I am proposing in this group. The first set is amendments Nos. 196 to 200, which would ensure that a child or young person was legally represented before a youth rehabilitation order was imposed. The Government have moved some way in that direction in the Bill; there is already a proposal for legal representation when a custodial sentence is effectively being imposed by means of a youth rehabilitation order. However, because serious restrictions are involved, and because the young person is making serious undertakings that must be clearly understood and that should be properly argued through before the court, legal representation is appropriate, as it would be in most other circumstances. The Minister said that he would reflect on debate on the issue and would consider the points made, where the lines were drawn, and compatibility with human rights legislation. I invite him to give me the results of his contemplation and to say whether he would be amenable to further amendment at a later stage. My last point is on new clause 42, which is on a matter of real principle. It has to do with custodial sentences for offenders aged under 18. It seeks to reintroduce the situation that pertained some years ago, when there was a statutory custody threshold that had to be met before a child was sentenced to custody. The aim is to ensure that children are locked up only as a last resort for reasons of public protection, except when a mandatory custodial sentence applies. The Minister quite properly told me when we discussed the matter in Committee that he did not think it appropriate to override the mandatory custodial sentence, in respect of the threshold, and I accept his advice on that. The new clause has therefore been reworded to except the mandatory custodial sentence, and to accept his view on such sentences for serious crimes. However, to go back to the point on which I started my contribution, it is appropriate that there should be a high threshold for custodial sentences for young people because short custodial sentences for children are shown not to be effective—far from it. They actually appear to encourage recidivism, and there are other disposals that are much more effective at deterring offending. That is the crucial point. We have far too many young people in our prisons. They are taking up valuable resources, to no effect. Given that the recidivism rate is so high for youth offenders, we have to question whether it is value for money, quite apart from anything else—