My Lords, I support the noble Lord’s amendment. If I may, I will elasticate the rules of order slightly by referring to some other issues relating to the spending of cautions and of convictions.
In 2013 and 2014, an ad hoc committee of Members of this House and of the other place reported, sponsored by the National Children’s Bureau and the Michael Sieff Foundation, on the youth courts. I was part of that group, as was the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, who was very valuable member, and as was a certain Back-Bencher called Robert Buckland, who later became Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. To be fair to him, despite having gone to the other side of good behaviour by becoming a member of the Cabinet, he always remained personally committed to what we had found. Our second recommendation was this:
“Children who have committed non-serious and non-violent offences, who have stopped offending, should have their criminal record expunged when they turn 18.”
I believe that that is a very important principle for which there is supporting evidence around the world. I am disappointed that the Bill is a touch pusillanimous in not picking up that recommendation—and I am grateful to say to the Minister that a number of our recommendations have been picked up.
If the noble Lord were to speak to Charlie Taylor, who held a very important position in the Ministry of Justice at that time, as chairman of the Youth Justice Board, and who is of course now Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, he would find that he is also very supportive of that recommendation, with his huge experience of dealing with young people, first as a teacher and then in the criminal justice sphere.
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The evidence that I refer to comes in part from the United States. Some of its states have a graduation system for young offenders and, when they reach the age of majority, their youth offending record is expunged —unless the offences that they have committed have been quite or very serious, in which case a graduation period is built in for further time for good behaviour to be demonstrated. They then graduate, and it is seen as a high-school graduation. We need something very similar here.
A number of noble Lords in the House, like me, have been Members of the other place, and we probably all have experience of young people coming to us in their 20s and saying, “I could not get a job as a school teacher because I was cautioned for possessing cannabis when I was 17 years old.” It does not seem right to me,
or, I suggest, to any reasonable person, that people should be lumbered with that sort of disadvantage when they have not merely gone straight but have actually built an important and useful life in society.
The other thing that I, as a chair of a mental health charity, will say in that context is that the most valuable people in our charity are people with lived experience of the issues that they are dealing with, whether it is drink, drugs, gambling or whatever. But those people should have the opportunity to go up the management scale to fulfil their potential.
Of course, we have all read and heard about the great work that Timpson does in employing people who come out of prison. For people to be able to graduate out of their youthful offending is an imperative, in my view, and I very much regret that we have waited seven years since the report that I referred to was produced. I urge the Minister—I do not expect him to reply immediately—to go away and come back with some reflections so that we could table an amendment on Report that would make the law change in this very important detail.