Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

It would be impossible to rise with more positive feelings towards an amendment than my feelings towards that which has just been moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater of Butterstone. I always feel when I listen to her that she brings the moral authority of her Presbyterian background together with the authority of her engagement. In all my work over a lifetime in organisations involved in social engagement, I always think that those who speak with the authority of actually doing as distinct from just theorising are particularly powerful and should be listened to particularly carefully. Many of the arguments that the noble Baroness has put forward have been elaborated on in previous amendments. She knows, and she agrees with me, that we should be concerned with children up to the age of 21 for the reasons that she put forward in connection with her own amendment. We have been over this ground. I simply cannot understand our collective complacency about the issue. The noble Baroness referred to 1997. I worked with great enthusiasm—and I do not mind saying it—for the election of the Labour Government. Part of why I was working with enthusiasm was the Labour Party’s enlightened attitude on issues of this kind. I am sad that we have somehow rationalised ourselves into accepting the unacceptable. I do not see how anyone with civilized values who looks at what is happening in Britain can be anything but alarmed. I look at the statistics again. Since 1990, 30 children have died in custody and care of the state; 28 of those deaths were self-inflicted; one was a homicide; and one was restraint-related. All of those, apart from the most recent which were in secure training centres, were in Prison Service accommodation in young offender institutions. How can we call ourselves civilized and live with that situation? Of course these are children and of course we must have special provision that is carefully designed and styled for the task in hand, which is to save them from a wasted life and enable them to be rehabilitated and to become full and positive citizens. Of course the aura surrounding a prison is all wrong from that standpoint, although I agree with the noble Baroness that excellent work is being done in some prisons. I crave the Committee’s indulgence in drawing my next point to its attention because it relates to the noble Baroness’s point about raising the age. In the same period to which I referred, 201 young people aged 18 to 21 have died in custody, including 178 self-inflicted deaths and five homicides. That is a nightmare and it is time we did something about it. The noble Baroness has put forward an amendment that helps us to move towards tackling this issue effectively.