I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. He rightly says that this is about having an open mind. I was trying to persuade the Minister and the Conservative Members in Committee that they should have an open mind on a number of issues, because we are facing real challenges on deradicalisation programmes, the resources within the probation service and the fact that young people are going to be treated exactly the same as adult prisoners in the system—I will be coming on to that later.
We also want to understand whether the resources are available for the use of polygraphs and to deal with the impact on youth offender teams. I have already talked about the impact of longer licensing on the National Probation Service. Such measures as are in this Bill always have ripple effects, so we ask the Secretary of State to lay before the House, within three years, a report on the real financial impact of all these things. There should never be an issue of resources when it comes to justice matters, and a review would not only identify where there are issues, but arm the Secretary of State with the evidence he needs to resist further cuts to his Department’s budget and instead win some additional resources.
We should ensure that prisons are properly staffed and that those staff are properly supported, be it for their personal security or to provide them with adequate services when they suffer mental illness as a result of their job—services that we know are currently totally inadequate. I asked about these measures in Committee, but we still need reassurances. This is about not just funding for prison places, but the wider financial impact on society, especially when offenders get released from prison and need help rebuilding their lives. That is a particular concern for those who are young and may leave prison with no support system. These provisions do not come cheap, and I hope we are going to get some clearer answers on meeting the costs of the different services that I have laid out.
Throughout Committee, I stressed the importance of recognising that young offenders are different from older, adult offenders and that their age ought to be taken into consideration when they are being sentenced, even for the most terrible of crimes. That is why we tabled amendment 30, parallel amendments for Scotland and Northern Ireland and the remaining new clauses in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, myself and others.
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Amendment 30 would require a pre-sentence report to be carried out that would take into account the offender’s age and consider whether options other than a serious terrorism sentence might be more effective. We know there is a greater chance of young offenders rehabilitating and turning their lives around. I will spare the House the detail around age of maturity, which was discussed both in the evidence sessions and in debate, but I will say that young people are different, and that must be considered. We must be cautious when dealing with them to ensure that we do not inadvertently isolate them and increase their hostility to the Government, as well as to the police and probation services.
In Committee, the Minister talked about the number of 18 to 21-year-olds being involved in serious terror offences as being very low, suggesting that fewer than five were in prison at any one time. I hope very much that that is the case, though, as the Minister admitted, it is just an estimate. As I have said several times, I question the accuracy of that estimate. In a letter he sent me on 6 July, he said that only two under 18-year-olds and 10 18 to 20-year-olds were convicted of terrorism or a terrorism-related offence in 2019. I accept his point that not all those offenders would have been sentenced under the new legislation, had it been available—perhaps only a couple each year, but a couple each year would mean that over a number of years, far more than five would actually end up serving these longer determinate sentences. I will leave that argument there, since I am tying my tongue in knots, but I do not doubt that we will return to the subject again.