Housing and Regeneration Bill

It is very easy to follow my noble friend Lord Brooke. The figure that I have is that 27 per cent of all prisoners begin their lives in care, and once they have left care, sadly, for various reasons, they have drifted into crime, which is difficult to get out of once you are in it. It was easy for me to add my name to the amendment, because my dear wife has spent quite an amount of time working with the YMCA, particularly in her home county and also for a time in London, where she was overseeing a hostel for people in just this situation. They were 17 and 18 year-olds who had nothing and who had nowhere to go. This is a very small and special demand. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, it is probably some 8,000 a year in a much wider spectrum of housing demand. These are people who on the whole, at least initially, do not need housing. What they need is a room where they have an element of supervision, guidance and community life and, above all, where they in are safe and honest environment. We are talking about specialist facilities. Yes, this is special pleading on another of those small problems that to the individuals involved is vital and essential, even if we are inclined from time to time to overlook it. None of us intends to do that. There is no easy answer, because we are dealing with a community ill. The noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, picked up that point again. Once you get into the wrong sector of society in early life, it is very difficult to get out of it. That leads rather more than simply to the provision of appropriate hostel accommodation where these young people can be made safe. You must also provide them with occupations. I recently met a young person who got into difficulty; the YMCA had got hold of him in time and, thank heavens, he was all right subsequently—but it could easily have gone the other way. I have nothing to add to what has been said, except to say that I am sure that the noble Baroness will be as sympathetic as everyone else has been to this issue. I repeat the dreadful mantra that this is a specialist demand that we lose sight of at our peril. If we cannot sort the problem of these young people—I do not mean that only they are a problem, but that it is a problem for us—the difficulties of an ever-increasing prison population and so on are what follow from our inability. None of us wants that to happen.