Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, so much that needs answering is building up around my noble friend on the Front Bench like a snow drift that I feel, if I add too much, he will not have his hands free to start digging. Therefore, I propose to make only two points at this stage, although I fear that there will be much more to be said after he has given his answer. My points arise from the fact that in my party, as in others, there is a convention that when you intend to make a strong stand against your own party, you are honour bound to write to all Ministers and to the Whips. I dutifully wrote to my noble friends on this Front Bench and to the responsible Minister in another place. That responsible Minister, for whom I have a great deal of time, Mr Crispin Blunt, wrote me a letter, which I regret I do not have with me, that contained two points which I clearly remember and which I thought worth mentioning. The first was that I inferred from it—I think not wrongly—that the principal motives he was giving for this move were the fact that the reoffending rate was stuck at around 75 per cent, which is far too high. It is worth saying that that results from a change in the population in which the reoffending occurs. At least two noble Lords have pointed out a 30 per cent reduction in reoffending and a substantial reduction in the YOI population. That is because the YJB has been faithfully carrying out a policy of which we all approve, and of which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State also approves, which is to keep young people out of custody. Who do you keep out of custody first? The answer is those least likely to immediately offend again. So you have a diminishing number of harder-nosed inmates who are more likely to reoffend, and when they come out they do reoffend. What is surprising is not that the statistic has not gone down, but that, as a result, it has not gone up. That is a mark of success by the YJB. The second point I draw to your Lordships’ attention is that, in his reply, the honourable Minister, Crispin Blunt, suggested, indeed asked me—I will not say implored as it gives the wrong impression—to get in contact with some youth offender team leaders before I contributed to this debate. I suppose he suggested that in the expectation that my case would be weakened and his would be strengthened by the process. However, the opposite is true. There was one who, I thought a little timidly, did not wish to be committed, even though I said that everything was unattributable, but the others were quite clear in their own minds that this is a serious threat. A number of them thought that it would inevitably result, as your Lordships can clearly see, in a reduction in the quality of service, control and care which these young people receive. They said that the YJB had started off being bureaucratic, but that it had learnt not to be and in the past two years, in particular, it had made great progress in that direction. They said it had been a wonderful gift to them in providing a means of sharing best practice round the country. All these disparate and very complicated teams could work out the best standards to apply and learn from each other regularly. They said that they had succeeded in raising the profile of juvenile offenders when it had been, most unfortunately, too low before and that people now knew what they were about. I have some experience in the administrative side of this area: I have considerable experience as a Minister and three and a half years of very relevant experience in the Home Office. I am sure and I hope that my noble friend will attempt to reassure us but, although he is saying that they will take all the personnel from YJB and simply move them into the Ministry of Justice so that it will still be staffed by people with straightforward, hands-on experience in their own area, I do not think he will tell you who will replace them when they retire. I fear that, as they will then be integrated members of the Civil Service, they will be replaced by integrated members of the Civil Service who have not had such experience. Indeed, I am told that those who are understudying the job at the moment are having to come out of their offices and learn for themselves what they have not learnt from their own experience. That means that in two or three years’ time, whatever assurances we are given now, it will be back to bureaucracy. For all the reasons that have been iterated so variously, powerfully and persuasively around the House so far, I strongly advise my noble friend to listen to noble Lords and to whatever else it may be necessary for me and others to say after his lengthy reply, which I now eagerly await.