Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I, too, support the amendments very strongly, and draw attention again to two aspects. In our discussion of children and young persons with regard to the Bill, a very large amount of time has been devoted to advocacy and to making certain that advocates are available whenever disciplining young people is involved. Again, that links to the fact that this should undercut the whole administration of youth justice. The second subject of considerable concern was the suggestion that young juvenile asylum seekers and others should brief their own solicitors. Have you ever heard anything so silly when they do not have English as their first language and know nothing about the law, let alone about this country? This suggests that this whole business of the legal representation of the young needs to be looked at seriously right across the board and not only in the context of the amendment.