Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I very much support this excellent amendment moved so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater of Butterstone. We have grown to expect that every time she rises to her feet. I particularly thank the Children’s Rights Alliance for its excellent brief which was sent to us all. It drew together the efforts that have been made over the years to get the Government to agree to what the amendment once again asks for. This matter has been raised over an impressive number of years. The brief mentioned the comments of my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham when he was Chief Inspector of Prisons in 1997. He described some conditions in youth offender institutions as institutionalised child abuse. Yesterday, we debated the Statement on the Green Paper on children in care, with its many excellent ideas for compensating the disgracefully inadequate support that over many years we have failed to provide for children in care, with a disastrous detrimental effect on their life chances. Prevention is a major Government aim, which would have all our support, and compensation for children in this situation—with all those ideas and many more to come no doubt from the consultation that has now begun on the Green Paper—is an excellent beginning. However, we must be hoping to reclaim at least some of the children who we have failed so far that they have arrived in a situation where still, deplorably, we put them into custody. On the education side, which has been mentioned, those children are not even getting the required 15 hours, except for in one institution, and there is even a doubt about that. They are getting about half—some eight hours—of education. When we think of people trying to provide that education in the complete chaos of overcrowded prisons, we can see that the situation is clearly going to get much worse. The financial case against imprisoning children is strong, with the Audit Commission in 2004 talking about the reformed youth justice system and saying that custody is the most expensive and one of the least effective methods. Certainly, some sentences deliver better outcomes for children and are less expensive than others. The Local Government Association clearly appears to agree, saying that it is time that we explored more effective and sustainable ways of dealing with children in trouble rather than resorting to locking them up. We have already heard that 70 per cent of those leaving custody are reconvicted within a year, so this clearly is not working. I very much hope that the Government will listen sympathetically to this excellent opportunity to put all the aims and excellent ideas that they have for prevention into practice by preventing the obvious downward path that children are going to follow if they go into custody.