Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment and it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and support it. It has been eight years since the Youth Justice Board took over responsibility for the way in which we lock up 3,000 children in custody in England and Wales. In 2000, the then Chief Inspector of Prisons, now the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who is in his place, recommended removing responsibility for juveniles from the Prison Service altogether and setting up a juvenile secure agency. This at the time was a step too far for the Home Secretary and he chose instead to ask the Youth Justice Board to bring about improvements through a process of commissioning and purchasing secure places from a variety of providers. At that time, 85 per cent were held by the Prison Service in young offender institutions, and it is still the case that those institutions hold the overwhelming majority of children who are in custody. Some progress has been made in improving regimes and raising standards for children held in prison in relation to their health and education—I have seen some excellent examples of what can be done on that score—as well as child protection, but to some extent those improvements are superficial and we need to go further. Young offender institutions are, first and foremost, prisons. That is not surprising; the Prison Service is an organisation designed for adults, who are 96 per cent of its clientele, and young offender institutions holding juveniles are managed by area managers with generic responsibility for all prisons. Similarly, Prison Service staff are generally recruited for work in any prison. Inevitably, there is a much stronger emphasis on security, control and the prevention of escape than on child welfare. In October 2007 the Prison Officers Association called for the use of batons to be available in children’s prisons, a stark illustration of the cultural gulf between Prison Service culture and a child-centred welfare-based approach, as advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. The physical conditions in young offender institutions leave much to be desired. They are designed in a similar way to adult prisons, with children housed in small Spartan cells. Again, the design of the buildings themselves is dominated by the need for security and the prevention of escape rather than meeting welfare needs. It is the inescapable conclusion of any analysis of this sort of provision that while the provision of the majority of places for children lies within that adult-dominated organisation in the shape of the Prison Service, the radical change that is really required is simply not going to be possible. The latest Home Office statistics show that 76 per cent of children leaving custody in the first quarter of 2005 reoffended within a year. That is a depressing statistic, and it is more or less the same as the figure for 2000—before the Youth Justice Board embarked on its reforming programme. It is clear to me, sadly, that custody, at least in the way it is currently provided, simply does not work in reducing reoffending, which of course is the Government’s primary objective. We are continuing to waste huge amounts of public on locking up children. About £281 million a year, which is 70 per cent of the Youth Justice Board’s budget, is spent on custody. Unless radical reforms are implemented, there will be no change to this dismal state of affairs. We have a new chair of the Youth Justice Board. Now that the Minister’s department shares responsibility for children in custody, as it has become the Department for Children, Schools and Families, he has an opportunity to change the situation. To what can we look forward in the review of youth justice promised by the recently published children’s plan? This is an opportunity not to be squandered.