I will come to that point shortly. The average time a young person spends in custody is only 79 days, meaning that most young offenders are not in custody long enough to improve their basic skills, but beyond a few vague commitments, no meaningful detail has been provided on how education or welfare will be delivered.
The House does not need to take my word for that. The Secretary of State wrote to the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights a few weeks ago. Describing the secure college proposals, he said:
“The Bill establishes the secure college in law. Beyond the legal framework, the legislation does not specify details of the regime to be delivered within the secure college.”
So there we have it—there is no comprehensive plan in this Bill for how education or welfare will be provided. But we need to know how this will work. For instance, I have met one prospective bidder who has admitted that it would not be possible for it to deliver education and welfare itself and that it would need to bring in a range of other specialist providers. As my hon. Friend suggests, we could have a situation in which one provider operates the secure college, another delivers the teaching, and two or three others—or even more—deliver welfare services, all in the same institution. Will the Minister tell us what measures will be put in place to ensure that that does not lead to confusion and chaos on the ground? Where are the minimum standards in the Bill to ensure that corners are not cut when secure college contracts are put out for competition?
We have therefore tabled amendment 12, which would place a specific obligation on the Secretary of State on health and well-being provision, and amendment 10,
which would require secure college staff in teaching, nursing or counselling roles to hold relevant qualifications. On education in particular, the Opposition believe that teachers should be properly qualified. That should be the case for any classroom, and it should certainly be the case when staff are working with challenging children who have complex needs, such as those who are found in a secure environment, but Ministers have given no guarantees yet that this will be the case in secure colleges.
That brings me to the third failure, which relates to the safeguarding of vulnerable young people who will be detained in the secure colleges. A number of concerns have been raised by groups across the sector, but Ministers have not been able to offer sufficient assurances on any of them. Let me run through three of them. First, there is the question of whether secure colleges should accommodate very young children or girls, which is highlighted by our amendments 14 and 15. These would prevent all girls and all 12 to 14-year-olds from being accommodated in secure colleges.
Both groups are in the extreme minority within the youth estate. In 2012-13, 96% of children in custody were boys, meaning that girls were outnumbered by more than 19 to one. According to the latest figures, there are only about 50 teenagers under the age of 14 in youth custody, and the majority are in secure children’s homes. The Government have signalled, however, that they intend secure colleges to accommodate both boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 17. That would come with huge safety risks. Even the noble Lord McNally, until recently a Minister and now chair of the Youth Justice Board, has warned against this approach. He recently told the Justice Committee:
“I would want to advise the Secretary of State to think very hard about whether young females should be there”—
that is, in secure colleges. He went on to say:
“Of course, co-education has its attractions, but I would not want the scheme to fail because of difficulties in trying to accommodate mixed groups”.
There is a further point here. The Minister told us in Committee that this issue would be addressed by the very architecture of the secure college, with different groups accommodated in separate units. He could not provide any further detail, however, because he said that not all the design decisions had been taken. This is just months before shovels are scheduled to be in the ground and construction of the secure college is due to begin early in 2015.
Secondly, the Government have thrown the future of secure children’s homes into doubt. Twenty-eight beds have already been cut and Ministers have signalled that many of the vulnerable young people currently accommodated in such homes will be moved into secure colleges. The kind of children for whom secure children’s homes cater would be all at sea in a 300-bed teenage Titan prison, and it goes against all the evidence showing that smaller establishments are by far the most effective for young people. It is easier to maintain control in such establishments, they are less violent, and staff are able to offer much greater hands-on support. They are also closer to home, enabling children to maintain links with their parents, which aids rehabilitation. That is why we have proposed amendment 13, which would require an adequate number of places in secure children’s homes to be maintained.
Thirdly, there are the conditions regarding the use of restraint. Opposition Members fully accept that there will be the occasional need to use reasonable force in youth custody environments. The Minister will be well aware, however, of the chorus of concerns raised that the Bill could be interpreted as allowing the use of reasonable force for the maintenance of good order and discipline. If so, this may be unlawful in the light of a ruling by the Court of Appeal in 2008, which we debated at length in Committee.
The Secretary of State’s letter to the Joint Committee on Human Rights said that there should be
“limited and clearly defined circumstances”
where reasonable force could be used to enforce good order and discipline, so I invite the Minister to lay out what these circumstances might be. I suspect he will say that this will all be worked out in the secure college rules, which have yet to be finalised. We keep coming back to this problem. A problem or area of concern is raised, and the Minister assures the House that it will be dealt with in the secure college rules. We then ask to see the secure college rules, but the Government have said they will not be available for scrutiny until after the Bill has become law.
I am sure the Minister will understand that this is a far from acceptable state of affairs. That is why the Opposition have retabled amendment 11, which would revise the wording in schedule 4. This would make it much clearer, resolve the legality issue and put a lot of minds at rest, while still allowing reasonable force to be used.
9.15 pm
The fourth failure relates to costs. The initiative is clearly a cost-driven exercise. The Government’s impact assessment states:
“We need to reduce the cost of youth custody”—
one of the key reasons behind it—but only this Government and this Justice Secretary would propose to save public money by spending £85 million of it when there is currently no space for this in the Ministry of Justice’s budget. No new money has been made available for the pathfinder, so further cuts will have to be made to existing services to pay for it.
Ministers also claim that the cost of a place in a secure college will be “significantly lower” than the current average cost of a place in youth custody of £100,000. At the same time, they also say that secure colleges will offer transformative education and training over and above what is being provided in existing institutions at a much higher cost. That sounds simply too good to be true, and it brings us to the final issue.
The Government are essentially asking for a blank cheque to go ahead with secure colleges. It is a pattern we have seen throughout the Bill’s scrutiny. Where experts in the sector raise problems, the Minister says, “We’ll work those out in the pathfinder.” Where Members of the House expose a lack of detail and ask questions, the Government say, “We’ll come back to you on that after the pathfinder.” I must remind the Minister—as he well knows—that this is not a Bill for a pilot. The Bill will set out the secure college model in law, and allow it to become the preferred model for future youth custody, which is the Government’s stated ambition, but as they stand these proposals are half-baked, lacking in credibility, and severely lacking in supporting evidence. We need
answers to these questions if Parliament is to have confidence that this is a good use of public money, especially at a time when the MOJ budget has been cut and youth offending teams and other services are being squeezed.
I genuinely look forward to the Minister’s response, and I hope he can address the concerns raised, but unless he is able to announce a radical change of direction, the Opposition will not be able to support these proposals and we will seek to divide the House on amendment 18 to strike secure colleges from the Bill.