My Lords, unlike the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, whose vast experience of the custodial system in this country we all acknowledge, I will confine my remarks to the issue of under-15s and girls. I do not in any way depart from the criticisms of the general principle, but that has now been settled and we must accept that secure colleges will go ahead, provided the Government manage to enter into suitable contracts to build and operate them.
The Government’s proposal now to consult on and publish a report on this specific issue perhaps raises more questions than it answers. There are questions, going back to the original process, about which organisations or experts have supported the proposal to house under-15s and girls in an establishment of this kind. I am not aware of any. Perhaps the Minister can identify some. There is also the question, raised before by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about whether the Government have considered similar schemes in, for example, Spain and the United States—similar in the sense that they are addressing the problems of this young age group but conducted on very different principles from that which the Government propose to put forward in the context of the secure colleges envisaged by the Bill. Moreover, there have been representations from a wide range of major, national bodies, such as the Children’s Rights Alliance, the Prison Reform Trust, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, the Howard League for Penal Reform and, in a recent briefing, which some of your Lordships will no doubt have received, eight national women’s organisations concerned particularly with the problem of girl offenders in these institutions.
There are also questions about the proposed consultations that the Government will enter into. Will they take place after the go-ahead is given for the construction of that part of the college that would house these young people or is that element of the proposed building contract to be deferred until the process is completed by the consultation to which the Minister refers? If it is not, I fear that it will become pretty much a fait accompli. Once the provision is made it is hard to envisage that the Government would fail to use it in the way that is currently envisaged.
There are also questions about the nature of the consultation. The Minister has circulated documents saying that the Secretary of State will consult the Youth Justice Board, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and Ofsted. The Minister has said it this afternoon. One would expect that and it is welcome, although I note in passing that the Chief Inspector of Prisons has, in what unfortunately will be his last few months in office, just published a response to the questions about the rules of the proposed college. In that response he is clearly expressing concern about the provision for under-15s and girls as well. So one potential respondent to the consultation is already expressing those concerns, although the chief inspector will no longer be with us as he is leaving his office in the new year before the final decision is made.
Will that consultation be confined to those three important institutions or will it go wider? Will it, for example, embrace the British Medical Association, which published a report this year called Young Lives Behind Bars, dealing with the provision of custodial facilities and the treatment of young offenders, which raised a great number of concerns? Will it embrace the local authorities to whose areas these young people will go back? It would seem to be essential that the social services—children’s services departments in particular but perhaps also other departments; one thinks of housing and the like—should be consulted about the provisions that are to be made for their young citizens who will be for a period incarcerated in the new college. The question also arises as to whether the other bodies—for example, the probation service, however it is to function under the new regime—will be separately involved. Again, one might have thought that that would be a given but it is not explicit in the Minister’s paper that outlines the consultation process.
It seems to me that there are significant questions to be asked even about the limited process that the noble Lord has outlined. I concur with the views of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that it is an inadequate response. I take the point that was raised in the intervention by the noble Lord from the government Benches, who—if I may respectfully say so—perhaps rather naively thought that the Government might have contemplated that the report would require parliamentary approval. I agree with him, it would have made a significant difference, but that is not, apparently, on the agenda. One has to ask again why the Government are so reluctant to put their report on this hugely sensitive area to the test of the support of both Houses in the event that the consultation concludes that it is desirable to proceed with this very controversial measure.
I join the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in hoping that Members will look at this one, now limited aspect of what has been a very controversial proposal and conclude that the Government have not made their case to proceed in the way that they propose to do, even with the very limited concessional gesture that the Minister has outlined. If the noble Lord seeks to divide the House, I will ask my colleagues on these Benches to support him but I hope, as he does, that that support will not be confined or indeed even governed by a political stance as much as a genuine concern for these young, vulnerable people, and doubts about the rationale for and the potential problems that might be caused by the Government’s proposals, if implemented.