Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for introducing this amendment. I apologise for missing the first 30 seconds of his contribution. I think he said that the Joint Committee on Human Rights was very surprised to find that there is no legal requirement for children to be represented in legal proceedings, as indeed we were. The Bill expressly provides for representation when a fostering order is being considered, but not when a child might go into custody. In correspondence with the Government, the Minister told the committee that this was a reasonable provision because there are already a number of safeguards in place to ensure that a young person will be granted publicly funded representation where necessary, mainly in the form of the interests of justice test in the Access to Justice Act 1999; and that legal representation is available to anyone facing criminal proceedings where it is in the interests of justice that public funding should be granted. The Minister also told the committee that accompanying guidance states that the court should give consideration to whether the defendant is of a young age, and to the defendant’s ability to understand the proceedings or to state his own case. The Government also said, in probably the most significant part of their submission, that extending the scope of publicly funded representation for children, "““could impact significantly on legal aid funding””." The Joint Committee on Human Rights, needless to say, was not convinced by the Minister’s arguments. The committee was surprised, given the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I draw the Minister’s attention to general comment 10, issued by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2007. The general comment has a large section on the right of the child to be heard. Article 12(2) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that a child be, "““provided with the opportunity to be heard in any judicial or administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly or through a representative or an appropriate body in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law””." The committee also stresses the right to effective participation in the proceedings. Finally, the committee says: "““The child must be guaranteed legal or other appropriate assistance in the preparation and presentation of his/her defence””." The committee recommends that the state parties provide as much as possible for adequate, trained legal assistance. This is a rich country. The Committee on the Rights of the Child would clearly expect the United Kingdom to be able to afford trained legal assistance for children coming before the courts. It is my experience and, no doubt, that of those who are involved in this work that the children and families caught up in this system are overwhelmingly poor, inarticulate and ill resourced. They need legal help to make sure that the outcome of their confrontation with the system is a just one. I support the amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow.