Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

But it does remind me that he is also a radical reformer of your Lordships' House, as I well remember from when we debated the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. He, the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Strathclyde, and I were each one of four opposed to the massed ranks of supporters of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. That is by way of inviting him to come back to our regular Friday engagements on that most important matter. I was very interested in the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, about the late Lucy Faithfull. My father, in addition to being a clergyman, was a social worker employed by Oxford City Council. For some time, Lucy Faithfull was director of social services. The noble Baroness will know that it was not only in your Lordships' House that she was a very much admired person. I shall come to the point that the noble Baroness raised about that piece of legislation. I was also interested in the whole question discussed by several noble Lords about how young people are regarded by society. There was a view among noble Lords that part of the reason that more young people are in custody reflects not what we might regard and what I described earlier as rational public opinion, but more emotion, where young people wearing hoodies are stigmatised. As someone with a number of young children still at home or at university, that concerns me. The answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, is that the Government have a responsibility for encouraging society as a whole to think positively about the contribution that most young people make to our society. I think that young people now have to work much harder at school than I ever had to. Many of the pressures that they are under are considerably greater than when I was growing up. I also think that a benefit of the new department for children will be to enable us to have a greater focus in projecting the good things that so many young people do and represent. It is important to bear that in mind. Equally, with those children who are not so good, we have to have custodial sentences available as an option, but I agree that it should be as a last resort. That is what the law is and that is what we will seek to do in practice. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made some interesting comments about targets. I know all about targets as a former Minister for targets in the National Health Service. I well understand what he says: that when separate government departments, quangos or executive agencies have targets inconsistent with those of other agencies, you run into trouble. My experience is that that is easier to say than to do. It is not for the want of trying. The new PSA target approach recognises much more the need for interdepartmental consistency. I am certainly not an expert but in the new approach to targets for local government, apart from giving much greater discretion to local authorities about which targets they choose, there is a much greater effort to get much greater consistency of approach because of the duty of partnership now laid on the partners of local government at local level. You cannot wave a magic wand and have that happen overnight, but it is part of our aims. It is the reason why joint responsibility between my department and the department for children on youth justice matters is so important. On Amendment No. 5, the Government's view is that custody is already a last resort for young people. The Judicial Studies Board, in the Youth Court Bench Book issued in March 2005, emphasised that. I assure the Committee that we will be seeking the help of the Sentencing Guidelines Council to issue guidance on sentencing, especially on youth rehabilitation orders. I refer the Committee to Section 152(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which states: "““The court must not pass a custodial sentence unless it is of the opinion that the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it, was so serious that neither a fine alone nor a community sentence can be justified for the offence””." The Bill makes it even clearer that custody is a last resort. I must say that we do not think that our approach is out of step with what is envisaged under the new clause contained in Amendment No. 5. I cannot offer an absolute undertaking, but I can agree to take this back to see what the Government can do with it. I hope that that shows that I do not disagree with many of the philosophical viewpoints that have been put forward. Also, on the question about people being placed in custody for minor offences, sometimes the tables are a little misleading. I offer to write to the Committee with a broader explanation. Many offences in the table, which may include robbery, for instance, would not be listed as violent. There are issues about the description and categorisation on which I offer to provide an aide memoire, if noble Lords would find it helpful. Turning to Amendment No. 6 I accept that, in every case where a court is contemplating a custodial sentence for a child or young person, the court ought to consider whether a youth rehabilitation order with intensive supervision and surveillance or intensive fostering is appropriate before resorting to the sentence of ultimate severity. I agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Linklater and Lady Falkner, over the importance of that option for the courts. The problem that we have, which was hinted at by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, is accepting the proposition that the court cannot impose a custodial sentence unless the young offender has previously received a youth rehabilitation order with intensive supervision and surveillance. Of course, we see ISS as a last step before custody. Indeed, it has been designed for those young offenders who would, if it did not exist, be subject to a custodial sentence. We are at one with the noble Baronesses on that. We believe that the Bill provides adequate safeguards to ensure that ISS is used as a direct alternative to custody. The points raised about experience by the noble Baronesses are interesting. The aim of ISS was to reduce the frequency and seriousness of subsequent offending among persistent offenders. Research shows that the frequency of offending in the intensive supervision and surveillance sample went down by 39 per cent over two years. I know we can all trade figures and I am always urging caution in that regard, but that must have some encouragement for all of us. I am discovering that ““uptariffing”” is the word used in criminal justice circles. I understand what is meant by that and it is not good. It is to be avoided but we know what we mean. We are obviously concerned about that and our hope is that sentencing guidelines will assist sentencers in ensuring that penalties are appropriate. There has been a very interesting debate about the balance between micromanagement, to which the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred, and discretion to the judiciary. It depends which argument we want at any one time and we all have to be cautious and recognise that there is always a balance. There are times when the Government consider it is right to be prescriptive, and there are circumstances in which discretion needs to be given to the judiciary. We will argue about that. However, we have the problem that the detention and training order is the only custodial order available to the youth court. Generally, it is the sentence available to the courts for a juvenile who has committed an offence which, if committed by an adult, would be liable to a maximum sentence of less than 14 years’ imprisonment. All the same, as the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, suggested, it means that it is available for some very serious offences. For example, an offender may have committed several violent offences previously and not received a youth rehabilitation order with intensive supervision and surveillance or intensive fostering. The clause as drafted would preclude the courts from imposing a custodial sentence where it deemed it necessary. For that reason, we have problems with Amendment No. 6, although I hope noble Lords will recognise that we do not have any disagreement at all with the general principle of it being used as a last resort for custody.