Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I should like to support both of these amendments. I was astounded to learn that children can be sent to prison without a written report and I wonder whether in his reply the Minister could confirm that that does happen. Most noble Lords would find it difficult to believe. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, opens up some of the contradictions that lie at the heart of the Government’s policy. No doubt noble Lords will be aware that in most western European countries, and in England and Wales until the recent past, children in trouble are dealt with by the same authorities as other children with problems. Those are the local authorities, which have responsibility for all services for children. The Government recently reformed the systems for dealing with children at the local level and have introduced what appear to be considerable improvements based on the ideas behind Every Child Matters and Safeguarding Children. This is where the problems start. Once the actions of a child become of interest to the police, children are moved from mainstream services for children to the specialist world of youth offending teams, the courts and the Youth Justice Board. This structure leads to major dysfunction because it enables local services in the area where the child and the family live, and where the impact of the child’s behaviour is felt, to opt out. The child’s needs and the plan for the child become someone else’s responsibility, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, pointed out, for a hard-pressed local authority that can be quite welcome. It can also be greatly to the authority’s financial advantage to shift the spending responsibility to the Youth Justice Board’s custody budget. This is, however, a highly undesirable and ineffective outcome because all the research shows us that the more a child can be kept in a local situation and within mainstream services, the more the aim of the youth justice system to reduce reoffending is likely to be met. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, could make an important contribution to shifting the balance of responsibility back to the local area where the child lives and towards a youth justice system that might begin to use the £280 million spent every year on custody on a more productive outcome.