My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 50 along with that of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. The amendment seeks to take Clause 70, which disapplies the provisions of Part 3 to detained young people, out of the Bill and I am pleased that the Government have accepted that. I also support Amendment 49, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.
I can be brief because most of the points have been made. I welcome the Government’s recognition that, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, it was unbelievable that the provisions in Part 3 ought not to apply to detained young people and they have come some way, at least, to applying some of the provisions to young people in custody. However, I regret that, compared to the situation that will exist for young people in the community, the provisions in the government amendments are weak and that, as they stand, they will not give detained young people the same rights to and expectations of support as those in the community.
A number of points have been raised and I would like to summarise two significant holes in the proposals in the amendments as they hang together. First, where there is an EHC plan in existence before a young person goes into custody, the amendments will require the home local authority to maintain that plan and be ready to re-implement it on the release of that young person. That is good. However, as the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Storey and others have said, the amendments will require the local authority and the healthcare authority to use only their “best endeavours”. That is very different from the duty on the local and healthcare authorities for young people in the community to secure the provision in the EHC plan. That is a big hole and I should be grateful if the Minister would address that issue and say why the Government have diluted the duty on local authorities in respect of detained young people.
The other big gap, which has been addressed in different ways by different contributors to the debate so far, relates to what happens to young people while they are in custody. Most of the amendments address the issue of what happens when the young person is released—they ought to be able to go back home and the home authority should carry on implementing the EHC plan that was in place—but there is nothing in the amendments about what happens in custody. There is a duty on YOIs and custodial institutions to co-operate with the local authority but there is no requirement on the institutions to, for example, identify if a young person has SEN if it has not been identified before they go into custody. This may well be the case because many of them have special educational needs. There is no responsibility on the custodial institution to request an EHC assessment. They can, but there is no requirement for them to do so. There is no responsibility laid on the custodial institutions to take over the responsibilities that would exist for a local authority if that young person was still in the community.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the contractors providing the education, but the responsibility ought to lie with the public sector organisation, or the quasi-public sector organisation in the case of a privatised institution, which is holding these young people. It ought to be its responsibility to address the special educational needs of those young people while they are in custody, working closely, of course, with the home local authority from which a young person has come and to which they will return.
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As these amendments stand at the moment, there is nothing that requires the young offender institutions to pay attention to the special educational needs of the young people in custody or to address them in any way at all. That is a big gap. I do not know whether it has arisen because the Ministry of Justice does not want to take on those responsibilities but it is a glaring omission. It means that a young person may go into an institution with an EHC plan and may come out with the home authority ready to implement that EHC plan again but, in the middle, there is no requirement on anybody to do anything. That is a big gap. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, these are the most needy young people in terms of their special educational
needs, with huge issues. This is an opportunity, when they are in custody, to address those issues very securely. I hope the Government will rethink and strengthen these amendments. The amendments are good, in so far as they go, but they need to be strengthened further in those respects. I hope that the Minister will agree to think again.