My Lords, I want to make two small points, the first of which was introduced quite well by the noble and learned Lord,
Lord Mackay. The one report not mentioned was that of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, which reported on an inquiry jointly with the police about children and the police. One thing that came clearly out of that inquiry was that when children kick off—to use a phrase that children would use—and create a disturbance because of difficulties in a children’s home, if the police are called to help deal with that disturbance they have to record it as an offence. But if it happens at home in a domestic situation and the police help out, it is not recorded as an offence because the people concerned cannot be pressed to press charges. We must look at the spectrum of these things because once a child has a criminal record we know that they are likely to feel fewer inhibitions about starting on that road.
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In my day we had something called IT. It was nothing to do with technology. It was called intermediate treatment. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, will remember it well. It was a different sort of order where a child was not criminalised but had to go into a programme which sometimes related to the offence they had committed, so children who took away cars were sent off to learn how to manage cars properly and it took all their leisure time. The IT programmes were immensely successful. There are things that could be done in the future but certainly I think chief constables are keen not to have to prosecute. They have to because statistics are kept and the people who keep the statistics say that they have to be consistent. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and I heard this explanation with some disbelief. Surely the Government can do something about it quickly to stop that kind of intervention.
The second point I want to make is slightly different and is about asylum-seeking children and children who find themselves in this country at 18 and then discover that they have an immigration status that they did not know they had. Why can youngsters get to that point? The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was right about that. I do not know why in this day and age a school does not discover that a child has an uncertain immigration status. Schools are doing so well at the moment. The Minister knows that. Surely we can tackle this issue. I would like to be sure that there is a plan from when a child enters the system right through and that we do not wait until the day the child finds themselves cast out. We must have a plan on that day for what is going to happen to them with the proper legal support and advice. I cannot think why we should take these children in at all if we cannot promise that we can give them hope for a future that does not mean being returned to the terror that they have just left. We have to make those decisions sooner rather than later. If there is proper planning I am not against children being returned. In the Vietnamese programme children were returned successfully because the planning was done properly. It is when we do not have plans that problems arise. I met a young man recently who found himself with no status on the day of going to college and he did not go.