Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

This amendment seeks to leave out a sub-paragraph. In the third paragraph of the letter sent by the Minister last Friday evening to interested Peers, she wrote that the reforms set out in this Bill to make local authorities responsible for the education and training of young people in youth custody, ""are central to ending the disapplication of education law for young people detained in youth custody"." Currently, young offenders in youth custody are excluded from education law, and this Bill will change that. The purpose of my amendment is to try to make the change complete. Perhaps I may explain. In the Bill as drafted, new Section 18A(1) set out in Clause 47 requires local authorities to provide education to those aged under 19, while new Section 18A(7)(b) restricts the requirement so that it applies only if the young people are being held in what is described as "relevant youth accommodation" in their area. In Clause 48(3), new Section 562(1A)(b)(ii)—if your Lordships can follow me—specifically excludes accommodation used "wholly or mainly" to hold people aged 18 or over. In a letter dated 6 October, the noble Baroness quoted the Youth Justice Board as having reported that in the year to April 2008, only one under 18 year-old was moved to young adult accommodation, and only four months before his 18th birthday. Even if there were no more than one or two of these cases a year, a principle is at stake here, one almost certainly recognised by the European Court of Human Rights, so there is some backing to the case. But it is stronger than perhaps noble Lords imagine because the reassurance given by the noble Baroness relates only to young adult accommodation as described in the YJB letter, while the accommodation I am concerned about is all of that subject to the exemption in Clause 48 which I have just described. It seems inescapable that that would include not just those places built specifically for young adults, but the whole of the adult estate into which, as some of us remember all too well, not tens or scores but on occasion hundreds, of young people of this age were decanted when a real pinch was felt through the pressure on accommodation. In her letter the Minister said that she was considering an amendment to address the plight of the rare birds of passage that she is planning for. After she has considered what I have said, will she confirm that she will table an amendment to agree that the Bill should make provision for the much larger, possibly non-migratory flocks, that I fear we may be destined to see perched in adult accommodation in the future. I beg to move.