Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 67: 67: After Clause 14, insert the following new Clause— ““Custody Assistance for looked after children in custody After section 23ZB of the 1989 Act (which is inserted by section 14) insert— ““23ZC Assistance for looked after children in custody (1) This section applies to— (a) a child looked after by a local authority who is taken into custody; (b) a child or young person being held in custody who was previously being looked after by a local authority; (c) a child or young person who has been released from custody but who was, prior to his or her detention, being looked after by a local authority; and (d) a child or young person— (i) who is of a description prescribed by regulations made by the appropriate national authority; and (ii) in relation to whom the regulations impose the duties in this section on local authority. (2) It is the duty of the local authority— (a) to ensure that a person to whom this section applies is visited by a representative of the authority (““a representative””); (b) to arrange for appropriate advice, support and assistance to be available to a person to whom this section applies. (3) The duty contained in subsection (2)(b) only applies to a young person aged 18 years or over if that person seeks the relevant advice, support or assistance. (4) The duties imposed by subsection (2)— (a) are to be discharged in accordance with any regulations made for the purposes of this section by the appropriate national authority; (b) are subject to any requirement imposed by or under an enactment applicable to the place in which the person to whom this section applies is held in custody. (5) Regulations under this section for the purposes of subsection (4)(a) may make provision about— (a) the frequency of visits; (b) circumstances in which a person to whom this section applies must be visited by a representative; and (c) the functions of a representative. (6) In choosing a representative, the local authority must satisfy themselves that the person chosen has the necessary skills and experience to perform the functions of a representative under this section. (7) In this section— ““held in custody”” means held in detention by the police, prison service or other court authority and ““taken into custody”” and ““released from custody”” shall be construed accordingly; ““the appropriate national authority”” means— (a) in relation to England, the Secretary of State; and (b) in relation to Wales, the Welsh Ministers.”””” The noble Lord said: It is unfortunate that our time is almost up just as we are about to deal with this group. The last time we met time was short when we were about to deal with an important grouping on healthcare, which I suspect was similarly proscribed. Much of what lies behind my amendment has come out in many other amendments, particularly those recently raised by my noble friend Lady Meacher, which is not surprising. Members of the Committee may remember that in the report entitled Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime, by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, a point was made that prisons and probation were silos and he wanted to try to bring the silos together. I did not dispute the fact that they were silos, but an unfortunate fact about custody—particularly prison custody—is that for too long it has been conducted in isolation from things such as healthcare. For example, it was not until 2004 that the NHS became responsible for healthcare in prisons and it is only recently that the departments running education have been responsible for education in prisons. Therefore, they have been isolated from what has been going on in the mainstream which has affected all those who go into custody. When I was the chief inspector, I discovered to my horror that there was a Victorian idea that prison amounted to what they called a living death. Therefore, when you went into prison you lost all rights to citizenship, which included, for example, the right to vote. It seems to me that this Bill brings an opportunity to put right some things which, when inspecting prisons, I had seen were wrong. From my very first visit to a young offender institution I was appalled to see the treatment meted out to children. However, having very fortunately been introduced to the then director of the Association of Directors of Social Services—the very good director of social services for Portsmouth—I asked him to send one of his inspectors with me when we went to a juvenile establishment. She looked at the treatment and the conditions there and said that if that had been a local secure home it would have been closed because of the treatment of, and the conditions for, the young children. That night, after the inspector had told me that, I met a former corporal of mine who was responsible for the reception of young people. Normally the shifts stopped at 8 pm, but he told me that he always stayed until at least 9 pm because people would arrive late. Sure enough, just before 9 pm, a van arrived from an exchange point at a young offender establishment, Glen Parva in Leicestershire. Among those who got out was a 16 year-old boy from Hull who had gone to court that morning. He did not know that he was to be put inside, but he was then put in a van and sent to Glen Parva and finally ended up in this place, Onley, near Rugby, just after 9 pm. No one knew where he was; he was in tears; he was confused and luckily this man began to talk to him and he let fly something which I had not appreciated before. Although, on occasions, it was possible to get in touch with the parents of such people, there was one group about whom they felt helpless and that was those who came from care because no one was responsible for them. Allegedly, when they went into care they ceased to have any right of access to the various things that care can provide. I have raised this before, but all of us are very conscious of the intense humanity of the Minister, which he has demonstrated throughout the Committee and in other debates in the House. It is marvellous and we are thrilled about it. But I have to say to him again that I was enormously disappointed by the sentence in his letter of 3 December saying that the Government did not accept that young people in custody required to be looked after, or for the state to assume a formal parenting role for them. I submit that that is totally and utterly wrong, quite apart from being against the spirit of everything that has been raised in every amendment throughout this Committee. I was also slightly concerned by the Minister’s comment on Amendment No. 62 that young people lost status as a result of going into custody. That must be extinguished from every statute book in this country in 2008, and it ought to have been done before. Looking at the amendments again as a result of what has been said, I was wrong to have put in that this applies only to a young person aged 18 or over, because I believe from what we have said that that ought to be extended. The purpose is to make certain that, when someone goes into custody, the person who has been responsible for them as their care officer before they go in should remain with them during the time that they are in there. That is given particular relevance by the Detention and Training Order conditions, which provide that very soon after a young offender goes in there is a case conference to which parents are invited. The Youth Justice Board will tell you that in about 60 per cent of cases a parent attends that case conference and therefore they are kept in touch with what is going to happen to the young offender. Then another important conference takes place before release. That conference should be attended by the person who has been overseeing what has been going on and who is going to oversee the important transition into society. That includes things like making certain that there is accommodation, that there is something to do and that drug treatment or healthcare is continued, in addition to what the youth offending team leader has to do as a professional responsibility. That is the human, care bit; that is what care is all about. We have heard the figures relating to the number of people in custody who have experience of care. Some of them have had huge numbers of interventions over a period and there has never been any consistency to them. Custody is a very stressful time, and continuity of care is more important during the period of custody than at any other time that we have been talking about. That must go over. This is not helped by the fact that, at present, thanks to overcrowding, young offenders are sent miles away from home. Here is an opportunity. The Minister for Children says that she wants to be responsible for the administration of justice for juveniles. Here is a case for supporting the fact that children should not be sent too far away from home so that they are not separated from their care worker, who must be helped to maintain conference with them. That is why I tabled the amendments. What I have found most interesting during this Committee is that so many other amendments have in a way led up to this one and have emphasised that this has been missing from the way in which we conduct things for far too long. I hope that we will be able to put that right in the Bill. I beg to move.