Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I appreciate that time’s winged chariot is bearing down on us and I shall speak only for a brief period. All custody in one respect is an institutional irony. In this sense, a person’s conduct is so intolerable within the bounds of society that that person has to go outside the walls of society in the hope eventually that he or she will be able to come back and will be a more wholesome and acceptable member of that society. That is true of all prisoners of all ages. Of course, there are people who are so savage and dangerous that there is no place for them, save in custody. There is also a dichotomy. I remember the maiden speech of the late Lord Lane, if only for the fact that I think that it was on the same day as I made my maiden speech in this House about 26 years ago. He was Lord Chief Justice of England and a lawyer of immense distinction. He said that in his view no person had ever been reformed by the fact of a prison sentence. I remember thinking at the time: how does that square with Rule 1 of the Prison Rules 1964, which states that the first and dominant purpose of prison must be the reformation of the prisoner? That should still be our goal in appropriate cases and it most certainly must be our goal for children—whether we speak of it as rehabilitation or reformation, it comes to very much the same thing. To suggest that in some way children have lost status and thereby are to be pariahs in the system would be entirely wrong. I have immense regard for the Minister, who is a person of massive humanity, great ability and considerable commitment. It would be unworthy of him if he were to reject the amendment on that basis. There may be other bases. I appreciate that with many of the amendments, one could say that, marginally, it might be better for it to be in the statute than not. This is no such case. These are not truncated adults. It may be argued that an adult has made a social contract with society that he does not want to have the rights of the citizen. You cannot say that of a child. We are imprisoning more children than any other country in western Europe. I said in the House some weeks ago that we are imprisoning more children than Germany, France, the Netherlands and Norway put together.