Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

In rising to speak to my Amendment No. 119 and also warmly to support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, I have to declare a certain sense of déjà vu. About three weeks ago, almost at the end of a day in Grand Committee, this amendment was called and there was insufficient time to raise it. I deliberately tabled it both in this Bill and in the Children and Young Persons Bill to emphasise the linkage between these two. My wish, having read all that is in the two Bills, is that perhaps this Bill had been brought by the Minister for Children, supported by people from other ministries, to make the point that there really was a holistic bringing together of what is needed. I do not dissent in any way from what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I am glad he brought those points out. I have a number of points to make in support of that, really based on my frustration during my five and a half years as chief inspector in trying to persuade the system to listen to what was actually happening, and to put people in charge who were responsible, accountable and making it happen. I will go on repeating that none of these systems will work unless those people are there. It is absurd that in the Prison Service there is no one responsible for children and no one responsible for the young offenders. There are planners, yes, but doers, no. My amendment refers to one group which bridges them—those young people sent into custody from care and so who come into custody without parents. Sensibly, when the Youth Justice Board introduced the detention and training order, an order spent half in custody and half in the community, it insisted that, at the beginning of the custody period, there should be a case conference involving those people responsible for planning what the sentence should be and how it should be carried out. It also invited parents to attend. There was another compulsory conference at the end of the sentence where the same people attended, with the idea of making certain that the transition to community was planned, and that it was overseen by the same people. Interestingly, I was finding that up to 60 per cent of those young offenders had parents attending those conferences. Who was missing? It was the people in care. This amendment tries to ensure that if people go into custody from care, the person responsible for that care is responsible for them throughout the period they are in custody, to act in loco parentis, to attend conferences, most particularly to plan the resettlement and transition stage and to come with them out into the community. I am seeking to put that burden on the local authorities to make certain that they ensure that a named person who knows this young offender stays with them. I hope that will improve how things happen for them and that we will overcome some of the frightful problems of people in care having no one responsible for them when they come out and having nowhere to go and no one to look after them. I am very glad that this amendment was grouped with that of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, because in each of the various clauses to which he refers the local authorities are mentioned. One lesson that I learnt from looking at young offender establishments is that the more local they can be, the smaller and the more linked to communities they can be. Then those communities can bring in their resources, their people, their work experience and so on. There is then much more chance of engaging with the young persons and being able to oversee their transition into the community and not waste what is done in custody. Yesterday I described such a situation being developed by the foyers of localising young offenders, which I really think is an opportunity for hope. I can see no place for these awful Trojan prisons in this context. Going back to what a child needs, lessons about what is needed must be learnt. I hope that in the spirit of these amendments the Minister will pick this up and pass it on to the people responsible and respond to the points that have been made.