My hon. Friend is absolutely right. All the evidence explains that small units that are closer to home with a higher staff ratio are more suitable, particularly for girls and young offenders who have complex needs.
Let me respond now to some of the Minister’s points about the accommodation of girls and young children. We know that girls and children under the age of 15 are
overwhelmingly in the minority in the youth custody population. In 2012-13, 95% of children in custody were boys and 96% were aged between 15 and 17. If those ratios were reflected in the 320-bed secure college, the Government would be accommodating fewer than 20 girls and about a dozen younger children together with nearly 300 older and troubled teenage boys. That has all the makings of an incredibly intimidating environment with real safeguarding concerns for the most vulnerable offenders and it is why large facilities such as young offenders institutions only accommodate boys over the age of 15. It also helps explain why, as I have just said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), all the evidence shows that small units closer to home with a higher staff ratio are most suitable for girls and young offenders with complex needs. Ignoring the evidence in deciding the composition of the secure college would create a near impossible task for the college principal as the regime would inevitably need to be designed to cater for the needs of the majority, making it all the more likely that the needs of the minority would slip through the cracks.
The problem is compounded by the fact that Ministers have not carried out an equality impact assessment on how girls and younger offenders would fare in a secure college. That was confirmed in a written parliamentary answer to me on 16 June and by the Joint Committee on Human Rights earlier this year. The Committee’s report on the scrutiny of the Bill stated:
“We note that the Government does not appear to have carried out any equality impact assessments of the proposed secure colleges policy, and we recommend that such assessments should be carried out and made available to Parliament at the earliest opportunity.”
I remind the Minister of his Department’s response to the Committee’s report. It claimed:
“We believe that the pathfinder Secure College, an establishment”
comprising
“distinct accommodation units and capable of supporting different regimes for the various groups of young offenders, will provide…an individualised service.”
My simple question for the Minister is as follows: how? How will those warm words be delivered in reality? The House has been given no credible information about what life inside a secure college would be like for those young people.
We know that young people in custody have complex needs: mental health issues, learning disabilities, drugs, alcohol and problems of domestic abuse and family breakdown. However, the Government have proposed no credible plan for how the secure college would cater to those needs. They have not explained how they will be able to deliver better results at a cheaper cost than has been possible in other youth custody environments or how they would do so when the average time young offenders spend in custody is only 79 days.
Right hon. and hon. Members do not have to take my word for it. Let me remind the Minister of the Secretary of State’s letter to the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights earlier this year. 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.”
The most obvious example of that is the secure college rules.
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The rules are crucial. They will not only determine the regime delivered in the secure college but dictate important issues such as the reasonable use of force. The Minister knows that there has been a chorus of concern about that and that the Equality and Human Rights Commission and others have warned that the Bill might even be unlawful as it is drafted. The Opposition do not think that it is sensible to place the most vulnerable offenders in an institution with such question marks about the reasonable use of force. We do not think that that is a good way to legislate.
The Minister also talked about plans to house girls and the youngest offenders in distinct accommodation units, which makes the design of the secure college very important. I invite all right hon. and hon. Members to look at the proposed plans for the secure college, as it does not take an architect's eye to see that this is not “a school with a fence around it”, as the Secretary of State has described it. The plans are all but identical to the plans for a young offenders institution to be built on the very same site that the Government cancelled earlier in the Parliament. Although there might be plans for distinct accommodation in the secure college, the Bill contains no requirements for separate facilities in any future secure colleges.