Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 122: 122: Clause 39, page 21, line 7, leave out ““fulfil the duty imposed”” and insert ““participate in education or training as required”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to the other amendments in my name in this group. Amendments Nos. 122 and 123 are designed, like previous amendments, to remove the compulsion element from the Bill and to insert the right to participate. I am sure that the Minister will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to repeat that argument, because our views are already well known. This group of amendments is an attempt to deal with the corollary of compulsion: the sanctions for failing to comply. Once again, I raise my fear of criminalising young people for failing to participate in education or training. The Minister said in our earlier debates that this was a somewhat emotive term, but that is what will happen if a young person does not comply. He has also told us that it is envisaged that sanctions will be used, if at all, only in a small minority of cases. Even if that is so, the deleterious effect that a conviction would have should give the Government—indeed all of us here—pause for thought. Amendments Nos. 143 and 144 would delete the criminal element in the Bill and translate it into civil penalties. The amendments specify that non-compliance would be a civil matter rather than a matter for the criminal law. There is a risk, however small, that young people may be criminalised by the Bill as it stands. That is of great concern to the organisations with the most experience of dealing with challenging young people and those young people who are most typically disengaged from the system. I have had meetings with Edge, the Prince’s Trust and the Z2K Trust, organisations that have to work with the aftermath of young people who have become involved in the criminal justice system. I worry that we are not helping these young people by threatening them with criminalisation. It is a sad irony that the young people in greatest need are the least likely to benefit from the Bill, particularly if it threatens them. We need an approach that is founded on the principle of encouragement and support and which is sensitive to the fact that such young people might not be in a position to abide by the terms of the Bill. I cannot restate often or firmly enough the Conservative’s enthusiasm for increasing participation. We simply do not think that the system that the Government wish to put in place will work. Amendments Nos. 147, 148 and 149 reflect our anxiety about the fact that young people may also be regarded as having committed a recordable offence that might figure on national police records. I hope that the Government can provide reassurance on that point. Would that not be a barrier to participation in the workplace, one of the goals of the Bill? There may be no automatic checks with the CRB, but some jobs require such checks to be made. The Children’s Rights Alliance worries that a conviction could show up in advanced criminal record checks and hang over young people for the rest of their working lives. I have tabled these amendments because I would like to hear the thinking behind the Government’s decision on having criminal penalties rather than civil ones. Amendments Nos. 152 and 154 would place a limit in the Bill on the amount payable in fines. How do the Government expect young people who are not in education, employment or training to pay? The purpose of Amendment No. 155 is to put in the Bill an explicit prohibition on taking legal action in any court other than the youth court against a young person who does not pay the penalty notice. It would help if the Minister could clearly spell out the mechanism that he foresees being used to prosecute any failures to comply. Is it not the case that a young person who does not participate will be liable to a fine? If he does not pay the fine, he will be pursued for non-payment. What happens if the process is strung out so that he turns 18 before the issue is resolved? Is it not the case that he can then no longer be dealt with in the youth court? The Government have tried to reassure us that the matter drops once a young person reaches 18, as the Section 2 duty of this Bill no longer applies. If that is so, a defaulting young person simply needs to draw the process out to avoid his criminal punishment. Is that a satisfactory or fair conclusion to proceedings? If a defaulting young person is being pursued through the courts for non-payment of a fine, which is a different offence from the original failure to participate, what is the young person’s legal position? I hope that the Minister can respond on this point. I hope that the Government recognise from the opposition to these clauses standing part that there is considerable unease on this matter. I beg to move.