My Lords, I apologise for being slightly out of turn; I will speak to Amendment 223A in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Marks, on secure accommodation and local authority provision. In December 2016, the Government committed to phase out juvenile young offender institutions and secure training centres and to replace them with a network of secure schools. These have since been renamed secure 16 to 19 academies. Legally, they will be approved by the Secretary of State for Education as secure accommodation and are defined in the Bill as “secure children’s homes”.
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In 2019, the Ministry of Justice contracted Oasis Charitable Trust to run its first experimental secure school, now called a secure 16 to 19 academy. As I understand it, this is due to open in late 2022, and local authorities were not permitted to tender for this contract. The Local Government Association responded to that decision in 2019, saying:
“We welcome the Government’s commitment to take forward the recommendations from Charlie Taylor’s review of the youth justice system … for secure schools to support improved outcomes for children in custody. We are, however, disappointed that councils were excluded from the opportunity to run these despite their significant expertise in youth justice and success in running SCHs.”
Noble Lords who have read and know Charlie Taylor’s review will know that his words were that local authorities were best placed because of the range of services that they provide and because they had experience of both education and secure schools, and, of course, the social services that manage and support young people. In response to the LGA’s point, the Government said:
“It is the policy of the government that academy trusts not be local-authority influenced companies, and as a result, no academy in England is operated by a local authority. The Ministry of Justice is committed to mirroring academies policy and procedures in secure schools to the greatest extent possible and our policy on this issue will be consistent. We will though want to keep this issue under review.”
Well, here we go; we are having a chance to debate that and to see whether the Government have kept it under review.
Local authorities have a long-established and important role in children’s social care and in youth justice provision, including, of course, the running of secure children’s homes. These new establishments will be “secure children’s homes”—that is how the legislation says it. They will be required to meet the quality standards set out in children’s homes regulations and, like all other secure children’s homes, they will be inspected by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. However, from the financial and administrative perspective, they will operate as academy trusts. This amendment removes the ambiguity about local authorities running secure 16 to 19 academies. It makes children’s welfare and interests paramount, rather than financial and administrative arrangements. Local authorities have the body of expertise for meeting vulnerable children’s needs in custodial settings and they provide a wide range of services to families within their local communities. Given the very serious harms caused by the most recent experiment of secure training centres, which were outsourced from their inception, this amendment provides a well-tested and tried way of providing these vital services.
The Government’s position is that academies cannot be run for profit. However, this is a new type of children’s establishment, which spans secure children’s homes and academies. All but one of England’s secure children’s homes are run by local authorities and the other one is run by a charity, although it does not look after children who are remanded or sentenced. Children may live in secure children’s homes after a family court has made an order depriving them of their liberty for welfare reasons or because a criminal court has remanded or sentenced them to youth detention accommodation.
Latest inspection judgments for England’s 13 secure children’s homes show that 69% are outstanding or good—including 54% that are good—and 31% require improvement to be good. There is, therefore, considerable expertise within the local authority sector in caring for children with very high levels of need in a locked environment. It simply does not make sense to exclude this knowledge and learning from the secure 16 to 19 academies. The lesson from the last experiment in child detention—secure training centres—should at least ensure that all future secure establishments are run by those with proven expertise in keeping children safe and looking after them well.
This amendment will not affect the first secure 16 to 19 academy—though it will ensure that future establishments are not run for profit—but, critically, it will allow local authorities to apply to run future establishments. Rebuilding the provision of local authority-run secure children’s homes through secure 16 to 19 academies would protect not only those children who would formerly have been sent to a penal institution but also those children in care for whom councils and family courts are desperately seeking secure accommodation.
Ofsted reported this summer:
“There is a shortage of secure children’s homes in England. Since 2002, 16 secure children’s homes have closed. At any one time, around 25 children each day are waiting for a secure children’s home place and around 20 are placed by English LAs in Scottish secure units due to the lack of available places. The limited number of secure children’s homes places means that, even when children get a place, they will likely end up living far away from home.”
Rather than reinvent the wheel, the Government should give local authorities the opportunity to tender for these secure establishments. I must say that this sounds like dogma—the dogma which says that “academy” can mean only something which is not local authority. For goodness’ sake, the important thing here is the service that is to be provided and not the name it is called. The definition of “academy” in this manner may suit the Government but it does not suit the interests of children, who need the best services so that they can get the best form of education in a secure environment and come out of that with an opportunity for their lives in front of them.