Secure Training Centre (Amendment) Rules 2007

My Lords, I hope that I will be permitted the opportunity of a short reply to this debate. I should have congratulated the Minister earlier on his new role and I do so very genuinely. I also congratulate Sally Keeble, his honourable friend, on her contribution to the debate in another place. The Minister should not apologise for one moment for the length of his reply. His reply has dignified this debate by being so full and addressing the concerns of all Members of the House. This has been a detailed, informed, sombre and instructive debate that should be required reading for all those involved in the management of secure training centres. This was the House of Lords at its best, with contributions from the church, the law, psychiatry, the criminal justice system and the youth justice system, as well as experts in social policy, children’s issues, the penal system, senior judicial experience, the voluntary sector and even Scotland. We have heard the contribution of two right reverend Prelates. I hope that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich will forgive me if I focus for one moment on his noble friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, who is retiring shortly. We had a typical contribution from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester tonight, and we shall miss in this House what I hope I shall be forgiven for calling his combination of a Socratic style and Aquinian principle. He can make what he wishes of that. A number of very important issues have been raised about staffing levels. That was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. On these issues, I would never start from the same starting gate as the noble Lord, but I was very grateful for his contribution. The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, made a very powerful point that must be repeated again and again. We are talking about children—and maybe we can learn something about how children who commit crime are dealt with in Scotland in a rather more constructive way. We heard brief and eloquent arguments from the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich about keeping the numbers down, the importance of recording events and always presuming that there should be no violence. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, rightly emphasised the importance of the views of His Honour Judge Pollard, which were given today and should heavily inform the debate. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, whose contributions on children’s matters we always regard as important in this House, along with the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, emphasised the need for proper professional qualifications, experience and expertise among those working in secure training centres—which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, emphasised, should be smaller. As to the Minister’s response, I am very grateful for that. However, I do not resile from my point about the Explanatory Note, because I took the trouble today to look on the Government’s excellent new statute law website. The Explanatory Note appears on the website but not the Explanatory Memorandum. If people are to understand what is meant by the legislation, please can the Government extend the website so that the manager of a secure training centre can see the Explanatory Memorandum as well as the Explanatory Note? The Minister obviously listened with great care to all that was said during the debate, but he did not quite answer the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, perhaps because he couched it in a fine Welsh-Latin phrase, eiusdem generis. But it is important that we all realise that good order and discipline is not a phrase with a separate meaning and it is not a ““safety valve””, to adopt the language used about another statute. It is simply part of the whole definition, which does not in any way dilute the last-resort principle. I am grateful to the noble Lord for making that point. The Minister has made considerable and generous concessions to the concern expressed in the debate, which I have expressed to him and his right honourable friend in the past few days. He has placed an emphasis on de-escalation techniques, which are of the essence of this argument. He has provided a clarity of statement, which I can tell him will be pored over and used by all those who deal with legal cases involving violence used in secure training centres. I welcome his confirmation that the scope of the inquiry will be wide, its timescale short and that it will have a fully independent chair. I take it on trust that that inquiry will be appointed very soon indeed. The Minister knows that I and others will return to this subject assiduously. I was reluctant not to divide the House on this subject but, having considered what the Minister said and how he said it, I have concluded that we should take his statement in its full constructive spirit and that in the circumstances—and just—it would be wrong to ask for the opinion of the House on this matter. I know that he is now the Minister responsible for legal aid and I hope that he will show the same constructive spirit when soon he is invited, as he will be, to the Old Bailey Bar Mess, to talk to barristers about recent unilateral changes made by the Government in the legal aid fee system. I hope that it will not be regarded by him merely as an initiation rite but as an opportunity for the sort of constructive dialogue that we have had tonight. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion. Motion, by leave, withdrawn.