Secure Training Centre (Amendment) Rules 2007

My Lords, it is a sad occasion, and I am sorry that the Minister has to deal with such a distressing matter so soon after taking up his new position, in which I wish him well. I know that his appointment has been welcomed by all those who are active on justice matters in this House. I would have wished that, in only his second week in the post, he was not required to take on the task of defending the indefensible and supporting the insupportable. Anyone in the House who doubts my use of those words should, I suggest, read the Adjournment debate in another place on 12 July in the name of the Minister’s honourable friend Sally Keeble. She said that the events of Gareth Myatt’s death were ““harrowing””. Noble Lords may agree that reading that debate is itself harrowing. Sally Keeble has been tireless in exposing what she calls the ““tragedy”” of the individual death and the scandal of the stonewalling when people tried to get improvements in the regime. She quotes one of the staff who apparently told the inquest: "““I should never have PCC’ed””—" that term is used to refer to restraint— "““he was half my size. It was rather like having run over a cat and then thinking ... if I hadn’t gone down that street, it wouldn’t have happened”” ””.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/7/07; col. 1715.]" We have been talking in this House for some time now about the regimes in secure training centres but we have been limited in what we could say by the sub judice rule, because the inquests of the two children who died in those centres were pending. The two inquests have just concluded with key verdicts that are very critical of current arrangements. We must recognise that, had these two children been living in Scotland, they would in all probability be alive today. If they had been placed in a local authority secure children’s home, they would in all probability still be alive today. Since the inquest ended, there has been considerable concern, and even anger, about a system of youth justice that puts vulnerable children into such a regime. There has also been great concern about the Youth Justice Board and the arrangements that it makes. That concern has been shared by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member; it has raised questions many times about the compatibility of our system of detaining children with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Last year, the committee requested information on a three-monthly basis from the Government on staffing levels, the use of restraint, injury arising from self-harm and other non-accidental injury. No information has been provided for 2007, although it has now been requested. Information from April to December last year showed a truly disturbing picture. The minimum—I stress that word—staffing level was not met at Oakhill Secure Training Centre in any one of those three quarters. There were, in those three quarters, nearly 2,000 incidents of restraint and 500 incidents of self-harm. No one looking at the data would be surprised at the announcement made last week that the Youth Justice Board has taken a quarter of the children out of Oakhill Secure Training Centre. The Youth Justice Board must have been very concerned indeed about Oakhill, since the inspectors went in in May 2005 and found such low staffing levels that: "““Between 28 March and 24 April, there was not a single day when the STC was anywhere near reaching the minimum staffing levels””." The information provided to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, although skeletal, gives a picture of the sort of children locked up in secure training centres. That can be deduced from the figures showing injuries resulting from self-harm—more than 500. These are the most vulnerable children. In the Adjournment debate, Mark Fisher MP, who was the MP for Gareth Myatt, said of him: "““He was so small that he hardly existed””.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/7/07; col. 1717.]" We do not have good information on the vulnerability of these children because a report commissioned by the Youth Justice Board on former abuse of the children held in STCs has been suppressed. I cannot imagine why that was done because what it contains is common knowledge to anyone with a basic grounding in social work or psychology. When the statutory instrument appeared, the Joint Committee on Human Rights wrote to the Minister questioning the need for it and asking why the Government felt they had to take this step. The Minister replied to the Joint Committee, setting out the arguments. I imagine that the Minister today might well have been advised to deploy some of them. They were: that the Government had to clarify the law; that this is, after all, only what is done in schools; that there is a training manual which is in the public domain, apart from the section that describes the holds, which is suppressed; that it will be used only as a last resort anyway: so what is the problem?; and that it will not be used simply when there is a refusal to comply with an instruction because Section 9 of the 1994 Act, which is the key provision, specifies that ““reasonable force”” may be used to, "““ensure good order and discipline … where necessary””." There is strong reliance on ““where necessary””. I would like to briefly comment on each of those arguments. The Government certainly had to clarify the law. It is astounding that, in the wake of the inquests of two such small vulnerable children, the Government decided to allow a wider use of restraint, rather than tightening it up and bringing it into line with local authorities’ secure children’s homes to prevent serious harm to the child or others. The Joint Committee was told that this is what is done in schools. There is no comparison with schools; they are not locked institutions, children can go home, parents can be called and teachers are trained for longer than seven weeks. The suppression of the part of the training manual that describes holds is bizarre and inexplicable. One can only imagine that the Minister foresees children in secure training centres reading the manual and conspiring with each other to thwart what the staff might do to them. I do not find that a credible interpretation. Finally, the Joint Committee on Human Rights was told that restraint will be used only as a last resort and that it will not be used just to ensure compliance, but only when necessary. Whose ““where necessary””? Will it be the ““where necessary”” of the staff member who told the inquest into the death of 14 year-old Adam Rickwood—this was the staff member who hurt Adam by grabbing his nose—that: "““There is no way I would hurt a child in our care, that is why I warned him twice. The manual says we are supposed to warn them once, but I did it twice””?" Will it be the ““where necessary”” of the pressured staff at Oakhill, which is understaffed, with no trained social workers there at all some of the time and a population of children who keep cutting or injuring themselves? Whose ““where necessary”” will it be? The Minister may tell us—I hope that he will—that he is setting up a review. He can do no less after two such tragic deaths and so much information in the public domain that raises questions about the role of the Youth Justice Board, the effectiveness of its supervision and its monitoring of secure training centres, which were all raised in the inquests regarding these two children. I hope that the Minister will accept all the requirements for such a review, which were set out by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for raising this Prayer and look forward to the Minister’s reply.