Statement
The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 18 May.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the youth justice system in England and Wales. I am today publishing a White Paper, with a once-in-a-generation set of reforms to build a youth justice system that intervenes early, responds more effectively and does more to turn young lives around, so that we can better protect the public. I am very grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my honourable friend the Member for Rother Valley, Jake Richards, and, before him, my honourable friend the Member for Scunthorpe, Sir Nicholas Dakin, for all their hard work in getting us to this point.
Over the past two decades, the number of children entering the youth justice system and being detained in custody has fallen dramatically. This progress is the result of real cross-party consensus, with a modern youth justice system that began under Tony Blair’s Government and was continued, during his time as Prime Minister, by Lord Cameron—he famously said he would ‘hug a hoodie’—who, with Lord Gove, asked me to carry out the Lammy review.
But this success has brought a new challenge. Our youth justice system is now working with significantly fewer young people, but they are significantly more vulnerable and at significantly higher risk. Most begin their journey into crime long before they come to the attention of the police, their lives shaped by instability, by trauma and often by neglect—the kind of childhood that most of us in this House could barely imagine. Some grow up surrounded by violence, addiction and abuse, while others are moved endlessly around children’s homes or foster care placements, never staying in one place long enough to have the stability needed to feel safe, let alone the love and care that would enable them to really thrive. All those factors make them more likely to end up in the justice system. When we fail to intervene early enough, the consequences can be devastating—for those children, of course, but also for victims and entire communities, because around 80% of prolific adult offenders first enter the justice system as children.
The risks that children face have also changed. Today’s children are navigating online harms, criminal grooming through social media and exposure to extremist content. Too often the system has struggled to keep pace: opportunities to intervene are missed, warning signs go unnoticed and agencies do not consistently share information. This means that children can slip through the cracks between services, which risks escalation, and responsibility between agencies becomes blurred. The lessons emerging from the Southport inquiry, following the tragic murders of three young children by Axel Rudakubana, a violent 17 year-old who was known to authorities, are a terrible reminder of what can happen when systems are not sufficiently co-ordinated and not sufficiently decisive in the face of escalating concerns.
We must learn those lessons but also strike the right balance. The system must recognise that they are still developing and that most have huge capacity to change. We should not over-criminalise but, at the same time, avoiding criminalisation must never mean overlooking risk or failing to act. Benign neglect, however well intentioned, is still neglect. Where behaviour causes harm, timely, proportionate and effective intervention is essential to protect the public and to support children to change course.
That principle is reflected throughout this White Paper. First, we will intervene earlier, investing an additional £46 million over the next three years in our turnaround programme, which is already showing promising results in diverting children from crime, and by strengthening the join-up with other programmes that support children on the cusp of offending. We will also strengthen and expand the use of parenting orders, which can compel parents to address their child’s behaviour, including attending counselling or guidance sessions. If they do not act, they will face penalties. We will deliver on our manifesto commitment to introduce an offence of child criminal exploitation, building on the work carried out by others, including Baroness May, and placing the focus where it belongs: on the adults who groom, the adults who coerce and the adults who profit from exploiting children. Through new youth diversion orders, we will tackle the increasing number of young people who commit terrorism offences, allowing agencies to intervene before that risk escalates.
Where offending does happen, we will ensure that children get the right response at the right time. Diversion must be firm, fair and effective. We will fundamentally reform the youth out-of-court resolution framework, to improve consistency and public confidence so that children receive interventions that genuinely address their behaviour and cut crime. We will also pilot problem-solving youth intervention courts, laser-focused on rehabilitation and prevention. They bring together judges, youth workers and specialist support to tackle the root causes of offending, whether mental ill-health, school absence, addiction or exploitation, while still demanding accountability from young offenders.
Custody will always be necessary for the most dangerous offences, but for many children even a short spell inside can deepen their problems, exposing them to more violence and criminal influence. So we are setting an ambition to cut the number of children remanded in custody by 25% over this Parliament, alongside an intention to reduce the use of short custodial sentences, which so often are ineffective, with more than two-thirds of children going on to reoffend. Instead, we will invest £5 million in intensive community placements and stronger bail support, protecting the public while giving children a genuine chance to change course.
We will also reform the childhood criminal records regime, because mistakes made at 13 should not become a life sentence of closed doors and lost chances, not least where this prevents young people from getting a job, which is a crucial factor in helping offenders turn their lives around. We will carefully consider the age of criminal responsibility in this country, which currently sits at just 10 years old, to ensure that it still reflects a modern understanding of childhood, vulnerability and development. We will also strengthen local youth justice services so that they are better equipped to meet the needs of today’s children.
We will soon set out detailed proposals for a new approach to youth justice service oversight and funding arrangements so that children receive consistently high-quality support wherever they live. That includes reforming the Youth Justice Board, sharpening its focus on continuous improvement of local services and transferring some of its key functions to the Ministry of Justice, so that Ministers are fully accountable for how the system performs.
I have been clear that custody will, where appropriate, be necessary for public safety. However, we will take further action to improve safety and education across the youth estate, while setting a clear long-term direction of travel away from large, outdated institutions and towards smaller settings that can better rehabilitate children.
The White Paper is also about fairness. Not all children in our justice system are equal. Those in care are still far more likely to be drawn into the system. Black children remain vastly overrepresented—22% of the youth custodial population, compared with 6% of 10 to 17 year-olds overall. Black children are also overrepresented among victims, being around six times more likely to be victims of homicide. I warned about this disproportionality when David Cameron asked me to do the Lammy review, nearly a decade ago, and the fact that it persists today should shame us all. These reforms will begin to address that, building a system that is fairer and more consistent.
It is not a choice between punishment and rehabilitation. It is about what works: protecting the public, cutting reoffending, and stopping vulnerable children—so often victims themselves—becoming tomorrow’s dangerous adult offenders. This Government will do whatever it takes to give more children the chance of a better future, and to keep the British public safe. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, we on these Benches welcome any measures that genuinely and effectively prevent young people falling into a life of crime. Every young person diverted away from violence and offending is welcome. The continued reduction in the number of children held in custody is welcome. The fall from around 2,800 children in custody in 2003 to approximately 1,400 today reflects significant progress across successive Governments. We also recognise that the nature of offending has changed. Cases involving county lines, online exploitation, organised gangs and serious violence are often more complex than those faced by the justice system a generation ago.
However, while some of the Government’s individual proposals in this White Paper may sound reasonable in isolation, a deeper concern runs through the paper. Once again, the Government are at risk of confusing rehabilitation with the dilution of accountability. The White Paper is right to identify young people not in education, employment or training as being at heightened risk of offending. But, if the Government are serious about prevention, they must confront the economic conditions affecting young people across the country. The most effective intervention for many young people is not another review, another pilot scheme or another bureaucratic framework; it is to deliver an economy that can provide them and their families with stability.
There is a reference in the White Paper to reshaping the justice system. The paper records the Government’s proposal to undertake what they describe as a “fundamental look” at the role and purpose of the criminal courts for child defendants. This work will consider whether entirely different court processes should apply not only to children but potentially also to vulnerable adults and young adults. This raises material concerns. If the Government wish to reform sentencing policy to reduce reoffending, that is one debate, but gradually reshaping the philosophical foundations of our criminal justice system itself is quite another.
The Government appear to be intent on treating long-standing justice structures not as constitutional safeguards but as obstacles to be removed or redesigned. We have already seen proposals to weaken jury trial and other proposals designed to keep offenders out of prison. Now Ministers appear to be questioning whether traditional criminal courts themselves remain appropriate for wider categories of offenders. But where does such a process end? Accountability and punishment are being steadily downgraded within a system increasingly defined through the lens of vulnerability.
At this point, I turn to the issue of victims and public confidence. The Government proposed further consultation on the victims’ code, including consideration of a separate code for children. Once again, this Government are drawn towards creating new frameworks and pursuing new consultations rather than improving the operation of an existing system. If there are gaps in protections for child victims, strengthen the existing code. If the Minister believes the current code is unfit for purpose, why was that not addressed during the passage of the Victims and Courts Act just a matter of weeks ago? We must break from a constant cycle of consultation and restructuring. Improving outcomes is not synonymous with endless consultation and the expansion of bureaucracy.
The Government’s underlying philosophy of justice is perhaps laid bare in the sentencing proposals in this paper. For example, they explicitly reject vehicle theft as deserving of a custodial sentence, no matter how many vehicles an individual may have stolen. We do not argue that custody should follow in every case, but sentencing in all cases, youth and otherwise, must reflect individual circumstances. The issue before your Lordships is whether the Government still believe that custody serves any meaningful deterrent or punitive function. The message increasingly appears to be that more or less all young offenders should remain in the community. Once they remain in the community, the Government now stipulate in their White Paper that they
“do not intend on making electronic whereabouts monitoring mandatory”.
So offenders are not to be placed in custody, but nor are they to be monitored. The public are right to ask in these circumstances where the balance is between rehabilitation and public protection.
The White Paper also touches on the issue of remand in respect of young offenders. But the average number of children on remand in England and Wales at any time is now about 183, and some of those may be on remand for their own protection, so I wonder to what extent it is really a major or material issue for consultation at this stage.
The White Paper then turns to the age of criminal responsibility, and it is a concern to see that there is a specific section in the proposals on this issue and the idea that it should be a raised age. The Government state that they will consider a wide evidence base before making a decision on this important issue.
I wonder whether the intended consultation will consider the opinion of the Minister, who declared less than two months ago: “Raising the age risks removing an important safeguard in those exceptional cases where serious offending does occur”, and “setting the threshold too high may have unintended consequences, including the potential for older offenders to exploit younger children who fall below the age of responsibility”. We look forward to considering the scope of the consultation that is to follow.
The fact that this issue now appears in the White Paper inevitably raises questions about the Government’s intention. Ministers may try to present this as a neutral review of evidence, but many may recognise that this is the soft launch of yet another policy reversal. Once again, under the veil of consultation, the Government are moving further away from the important issue of accountability within the justice system.
In conclusion, of course we support the objective of reducing youth offending and preventing young people entering a life of crime—early intervention and diversion have important roles to play within any functioning justice system—but rehabilitation cannot come at the expense of accountability. This Government appear to view punishment, deterrence and public protection as outdated concepts to be eroded, rather than as essential pillars of a justice system. A system in which offenders are neither placed in custody nor monitored when out in the community, where courts themselves are the subject of constant redesign and where accountability is repeatedly softened under the language of reform is not a system in which the public will be able to retain confidence.
My Lords, the success in reducing the number of children in custody has been a great achievement, and we should still be concentrating on further bringing down that number. That success has been largely achieved through the work of the Youth Justice Board, in which my noble friend Lord McNally played a major part during the coalition. We note the commitment to reform of the Youth Justice Board, but such reform should be constructive and committed to rehabilitation and reform, turning lives around, whether or not the youth justice service is at some stage in the future housed within the MoJ.
The Statement rightly emphasises how often the criminal conduct of children and young people is the result of instability, trauma and neglect, accompanying violence, addiction and abuse among those around them. But we must also address those factors that lead to Black children being so much more vulnerable to ending up in the criminal justice system. The Statement is right about that, as David Lammy was when he did his review in 2017.
On these Benches we have long sought to address these issues, but the Government now rightly highlight new hazards facing children and young people and leading to crime: online harms, criminal grooming through social media and exposure to extremist content. The £46 million to be invested in the turnaround programme is of course welcome, and the Statement is also right to call for early and effective intervention. But the likely success of new and recent measures—including parenting orders, youth diversion orders, youth intervention courts or reforms to the out-of-court resolution service—cannot yet be assessed. All these measures will take resources, and the amount is difficult to quantify. Can the Minister say a little more about the resourcing of the reforms promised? How, for example, was the £46 million figure assessed?
In proceedings on the Sentencing Bill, now Act, we discussed the extra resources needed for the Probation Service and others, not only for extra handling of early release, tagging and post-release supervision but to improve both the quantity and quality of the supervision of offenders and the help that the Probation Service necessarily provides to the courts.
So how, we would ask, is the need for resources to be kept under review, and what extra resources may there be to meet a need that is currently unforeseen? Is there sufficient flexibility to avoid the increases in offending that inevitably follow from underresourcing? Spending in this area is largely spending to save, given the massive direct and social cost of crime, and particularly of reoffending. Annexe A to the White Paper rightly sets out eleven “golden questions” for further research, saying there are “key evidence gaps”. What plans have the Government to fill those key evidence gaps?
Finally, the age of criminal responsibility is at last to be reconsidered. I remember the noble Baroness defending the present age of criminal responsibility— I disagreed with her then, and I do now—and I note the endorsement by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, of her former views. There is also to be reform of the childhood criminal records regime, or that too is mooted and is welcome. We have long argued that to criminalise a child at the age of 10 flies in the face of all the evidence on developmental reform, and that it is inhumane and wrong. I ask, because this is an all-party and an all-public issue, how will this consideration proceed? Will there be formal public or all-party consideration? I certainly look forward to discussing these issues in depth, as I know others do.
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for the points they have made on this important issue. I will turn to the specifics of some of them towards the end of this short address.
On Monday, the Deputy Prime Minister set out in the other place a bold new approach to youth justice. We intend to build a system that intervenes early, responds more effectively and does more to turn young lives around. By doing all these things, we are fulfilling the first duty of government, which is to protect the public.
The evidence is compelling. About 80% of prolific adult offenders began committing crime when they were children. Cycles of criminal behaviour can start early, become entrenched and, if left unchallenged, become harder to break. If we fail to tackle them, we fail not only those children but the victims and communities who suffer the consequences. Every child we divert from criminal behaviour now not only saves a victim next week, next year, but possibly in our grandchildren’s generation.
Diversion for lower-level offences remains the most effective response, and we will set out plans to reform the out-of-court resolution framework later this year. This is most emphatically not us being soft on crime; rather, it is a firm, fair and consistent approach that steps in sooner and addresses the underlying causes of offending before the behaviour escalates. Where children offend, there must of course be swift and meaningful intervention. That said, short custodial sentences for children are associated with high reoffending rates. More than two-thirds of those given a short sentence offend again. Basically, by repeatedly locking these children up, we are locking them into a cycle of repeat offending, and they are highly likely to become the prolific offenders of the future.
Protection of the public is very much at the forefront of our minds. Custody will always be necessary for the most serious and dangerous offences and offenders. However, it is not just about sentencing but about where children are placed while they await trial. We know that for many children, even a short period in custody can deepen the problems that led them to offend in the first place. It breaks their contact with education, and it can break their contact with their families and cause all sorts of problems. That is why it is our ambition to cut the number of children who are remanded in custody by 25% over this Parliament.
To do that while keeping the public safe, we will invest £5 million in intensive community placements and stronger bail support. These measures are designed to protect the public and give children a genuine chance of changing course. We will also pilot youth intervention courts. We intend these to take a problem-solving approach, looking at the causes of offending by tailoring the approach to individual circumstances. These will be focused on the children who are most at risk of reoffending.
Early evidence from the similar intensive supervision courts in the adult system, upon which these are loosely based, is encouraging. We will draw on this while continuing to adopt an approach that reflects children’s needs. This will include judge-led reviews as part of a child’s sentence. Judges will play a key role in monitoring their progress. The Government appreciate that this will place additional pressure on the courts. As your Lordships are aware, we are taking action to address capacity through the Courts and Tribunals Bill.
The criminal records review is about ensuring that the system strikes the right balance between protecting the public and supporting rehabilitation. Stable employment is a crucial factor, and where individuals who have committed crimes as children have demonstrably turned their lives around, it serves neither them nor the wider public to impose unnecessary barriers to opportunity. This will be a targeted package of reforms. These may include considering how long childhood offences should be disclosed on basic checks and whether certain offences should remain disclosable for life—for example, when applying for roles working with vulnerable people.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, raised the issue of the age of criminal responsibility. My words were quoted back at me by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen. I do not resile from them. I used words such as “may” and “risk” and made the point that we would always listen and keep this under review. The review of the age of criminal responsibility is not our review but the Bar Council’s review. Nobody is suggesting that, once that review has reported, we should not look at it. We will look at it and then make a decision. We are evaluating it.
On the question of resources, the Government are committed to putting money into these matters. That is why this is a bold reform. The Government have committed a further £15 million a year for three years to the turnaround programme, which seeks to intervene upstream of criminal justice interventions. On the funding issues concerning the youth justice system and the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, I notice that in their places are the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Clarke, both of whom have had a great deal to do with these issues over the years. I am grateful to see them both.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, has ranged far and wide in his criticisms of the Government’s approach to many matters across criminal justice and other areas. We are criticised for consulting on this, but I am not going to apologise for that. This Government take an incremental approach to the reforms we are bringing in, introducing them cautiously and acting on evidence rather than on ideology or whim, so that we know that what we are doing will work before rolling it out nationally.
Regarding consulting on wider issues, I stood at this Dispatch Box on Monday and was criticised from the Opposition Front Bench by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, for introducing too much legislation. This is not legislation: it is consultation and reform, and that is why we are doing it. The bold approach this Government are taking on youth justice is about ensuring that the system intervenes earlier and more effectively. We want to get children and young people back on track so that we can protect the public. To achieve that, we are following the evidence on what works. I look forward to engaging with your Lordships over the coming months as the Government finalise their plans.
My Lords, can my noble kinswoman the Minister confirm that the Government reject the miserably pessimistic and defeatist view of the youth justice system expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen? Will she confirm that a key aim of the plan with which she is dealing today must be to provide an improved education service for the diverse cohort of children in custody that is of such good quality that they will not emerge from custody as automatic second-class citizens?
My Lords, we are taking decisive action to drive up performance in relation to the youth custody estate. The Deputy Prime Minister chairs a newly established performance taskforce to hold the system to account. It seeks very detailed information on what happens to children in custody, which includes things such as time out of room, access to education, rates of violence and staffing. As we have announced, our target is to increase the time that children spend outside their room by 50%, so that they are engaged in meaningful activities, because every hour that they are in their room they are not engaged in education, training or other purposeful activity. This is about ensuring that children who end up in custody come out as less of a risk to the public than when they went in.
My Lords, the Statement refers to the Southport murders and the lack of co-ordination between the appropriate authorities. Does the Minister accept that, when a review or inquiry is commissioned, the terms of reference should provide for the explicit incorporation of a mechanism for reviewing and monitoring the implementation of its recommendations?
That is an interesting idea. I do not think I am going to commit to it today, but I will certainly bear it in mind.
My Lords, the YJB is one of the great successes of government over the last 25 years and a great credit to those involved. I do not think the time is wrong for a thorough review of youth justice. As the Minister indicated, there is a whole range of new factors, not least the internet and online harms, since the YJB was created. What I find difficult to understand in this proposal is why, of all the various open-ended proposals and inquiries, it is the YJB that is most decisively sent to the Back Benches.
I urge the Government to appoint a full-time chair of the YJB, allow it to operate at full capacity and keep it outside the Ministry of Justice for the time being, because a lot of the matters will be judgments of the Ministry of Justice as well. I worry that this proposal is part of a long-standing ambition of the Ministry of Justice to take youth justice back into its concern, aided and abetted by the Treasury, which is looking for substantial savings by so doing. Am I being overly suspicious?
My Lords, I pay tribute of course to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and the Youth Justice Board, which deserves to be congratulated for the work it has done over the last 20 years in relation to reducing youth crime. We have no intention of abolishing the Youth Justice Board. Since it was established, it has made incredibly valued contributions to improving outcomes for children, and there are significant reductions that we can point to the Youth Justice Board for having achieved.
The noble Lord makes the valuable point that, in the years since it was established, children within the justice system now face different challenges and we need to take another look at it. Needs are now much more complex, so the plan is to refocus the Youth Justice Board so that it does what it is really good at, which is driving the continuous improvement of the services.
The Government wish to increase the democratic oversight of some aspects of what the Youth Justice Board is concerned with: funding, accountability and policy. But, as far as the delivery of that is concerned, the intention is that that will remain with the Youth Justice Board because of the excellent work the board does.
My Lords, I welcome the publication of the youth justice system reform and delivery plan. In particular, I welcome the announcement of an expanded and clearly defined role for the Welsh Government, in recognition of the fact that the context has changed considerably in Wales since the current arrangements were put in place in 1998. Does the Minister agree that the recent expansion of Senedd Cymru and the Welsh Government begins a new chapter for devolution? In relation to youth justice, currently the Welsh Government fund up to 64% of youth justice services in Wales. Is it not time to fully devolve youth justice to Wales?
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. In March, we committed to devolving youth, remand and turnaround funding to the Welsh Government for 2027 and 2028. This is part of a broader commitment, as the noble Baroness knows, between the UK and the Welsh Government to establish a clearer and stronger role for the Welsh Government in the delivery of youth justice. It is definitely the intention of this Government to try not to, as it were, empire-build by bringing more things into the centre, but to ensure that we can pool funding and expertise in regional areas, as well as in Wales, in order to ensure that local areas can deliver things for the communities that they serve.
Does the Minister recognise that the Youth Justice Board was a jewel in the crown of the 1997 Labour Government, dramatically reducing the number of young people in the juvenile secure estate while reducing youth offending and recidivism? Does she also recognise that the powers and responsibilities given to the Youth Justice Board were removed from the Home Office because the youth cohort was relatively small and often ignored, and there was a real danger in going back into the Ministry of Justice that it would be again? Finally, will she explain why the Government, having commissioned a review of the Youth Justice Service by Steve Crocker, have chosen to largely ignore the outcome of that review?
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I think he and I are looking forward to speaking to each other about this tomorrow, as I shall be answering a Question on pretty much the same subject. I repeat that there is no intention to abolish the Youth Justice Board, but there is a policy, following a Cabinet Office review of arm’s-length bodies, not just the Youth Justice Board, of ensuring that matters that we believe should be retained within various Ministries and departments in order to ensure democratic accountability are returned there. That is the reason we have taken the view that we have. As the noble Lord rightly says, the review was commissioned. Our view was that we needed to go further than the recommendations that were made.
My Lords, we welcome the focus on reducing youth crime, but I would like to ask a question. The Minister detailed a 25% reduction in the number of children who are held on remand. Where did this figure come from? If that number is reduced arbitrarily, that pain will be absorbed by the community, because it will have a number of young people in its purview whom it would not have had beforehand who could be causing some problems there.
There was a comment about the propensity of Black children to be more vulnerable to being in the system. Excuse the roughness of the comment I am about to make, but unless as white liberals you are prepared to take on Black parents to do more—they need support and challenge in equal measure to do more to make our children less vulnerable to this system—you will achieve nothing. The things most facing Black children so they end up that way are lack of school achievement, lack of graduate jobs, the high number of single parents and all those things. That is what makes Black children more vulnerable to the youth justice system. Where is the work to improve those figures?
The noble Lord makes two points, and I will do my best to answer them. As far as 25% fewer children on remand is concerned, that is not a number that we will take out on an arbitrary basis. It is a target. We are aiming to reduce by 25% the number of children who await trial in custody. The way we want to do that is by strengthening bail provisions, and there is a commitment of additional money so that we can look at things such as bail fostering arrangements to ensure that children do not go into custodial institutions, particularly for short periods, because we know what a terrible effect that can have on them, by breaking all the links I was talking about earlier with families and education.
As far as racial disparities and the disproportionate effect are concerned, it is a great anxiety to us that it remains the case that certain cohorts—normally Black and mixed-heritage children—are disproportionately represented in the justice system and in the custodial estate.
I absolutely take the point about involving parents; that is why we are exploring the question of parental orders and seeing whether we can expand them. This is not about criminalising parents but about making the point that these are children. Sometimes they look like adults, but they are children, with everything that is engaged in that. They need parents to help guide them. Certainly, I have experience of some parents in the youth court who would like to be more involved but the child in question rejects that. It may be helpful for them to be able to say to the child, “I am sorry, I am doing this because the courts told me I have to; there is a parental order in place”. We absolutely agree that these are all critical factors; that is why we are looking at diversion rather than simply locking children up all the time.
My Lords, I am disappointed by the somewhat discordant tone of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, with respect to my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench, who made some sensible points. We all agree that children should not be warehoused through crime academies, we all agree that they should be well educated and we all believe in the concept of rehabilitation, but there has to be a limit on the liberal and permissive policy in the criminal justice system.
I had the privilege of serving on the British Transport Police Authority for four years, and one of our key areas of concern was county lines. Without proper monitoring and without the possible sanction of a custodial sentence, what is the sanction to prevent criminals engaging children and young people in drugs and a life of crime going into the future if there is not the sanction of a custodial sentence for those young people? Is there not a risk that these reforms may result in more young people being drawn into that lifestyle? Is that not something that the Government should seriously take into account?
The Government are seriously taking it into account. That is why we are investing more than £34 million this year in the county lines programme, which has closed more than 3,700 county lines and led to 10,100 arrests. Absolutely, we take it seriously. The important point here is that we are tough on crime but smart on prevention of crime. There is no point continuing to do things that plainly do not work—things that do not protect the public and are bad for the children as well.
Can my noble friend the Minister talk a little more about bail fostering? In my dealings with the parents of children who were caught up in county lines, one of the biggest issues they had was getting the child away from the pernicious behaviours of the gang. Being able to foster a child outside the area and break that connection with the gang seems to be a jolly good thing, particularly given that the gangs were also very active within the institutions in which those children were placed, whether custodial or educational. Can my noble friend give us a little more detail about fostering arrangements on bail?
I am grateful to my noble friend for her support of the Government’s plans in relation to this. The point about gang involvement is very much at the forefront of the Government’s mind. One of the reasons we do not want children in the custodial estate is because that is where they end up with the rest of the gangs. We are actively involved in exploring specialist placements such as remand foster care. I will write to my noble friend to give her some more detail in relation to the arrangements.
My Lords, I welcome the announcement in the Statement that the number of young people being detained in custody has reduced significantly. There is something being done reasonably well, so I would be reluctant to change it dramatically. I would like an assurance that there is no predetermined position to change the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10. There may be some options for reasonable movements away if exceptions can be made, but I would not want to see it done automatically without the proper consultation, because we need to find a way to ensure that there are fewer young people in custody but at the same time that they abide by the law.
The reduction in the number of children involved is very good news. In fact, it is an even greater reduction than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, said. He said that there are now only about 1,400 children in custody, whereas it is actually only just over 400, so it is even better. The noble Lord will recall that a few moments ago the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, repeated back my words from when I was standing here dealing with the age of criminal responsibility before. I can certainly reassure him that we do not have any plan to change the age of criminal responsibility. We are going to let the Bar Council report and then we will look at what that report says. We know that it is fraught with risks. I can recall the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, making a powerful speech about the risk that gangs could recruit children with impunity if either the age of criminal responsibility is raised or their criminal records are wiped clean. We will bear in mind all those things when we look at this. The clue is in the word “consulting”, which is what we get criticised for doing by the party opposite.
My Lords, I welcome the plan. Will the Minister join me in recognising the role that young offender institutions play? Can she update the House on the recruitment and retention of those who serve in often very difficult circumstances in those institutions?
I certainly will pay tribute to those who work in young offender institutions—it is a really difficult job—but the custodial youth estate is fundamentally failing children at the moment. There is quite a lot of evidence that smaller units such as secure children’s homes are more effective at supporting children. It is a difficult issue. Noble Lords may have heard a rumour that we inherited a challenging financial position, and plainly we need to consider that while we are deciding what to do, but we have a youth custody transformation plan. In essence, the White Paper is the umbrella that sets out where we intend to go and three further announcements will then be made: the youth custody transformation plan in autumn 2026, the diversion from custody—the non-custodial options—plan also in autumn 2026, and the review of youth courts and the part that they play in the treatment of children in the criminal justice system, which I am sure noble Lords will be delighted to hear is being conducted by the eminent academic Professor David Ormerod KC, which is intended to report in August 2027.
My Lords, correct me if I am wrong, but I think the Government said that they will try to slash custodial remand for young offenders by one quarter. Is that correct? Surely remand should be used in response to need and not subject to arbitrary targets. That does not make any sense at all. What happens if violent youth crime and repeat offending go up? I hope to goodness they do not but, if they do, will she and her fellow Ministers stick to the targets? That makes no sense.
It is for our independent judges to decide whether somebody is given bail or remanded. All that we are looking at is whether alternatives can be offered to the courts. At the moment, you tend to have a straightforward binary choice of bail back at home where half the problem started in the first place or remand into custody in one of these institutions that we know do not work for children and where there is a huge risk of reoffending once they are released. For the most serious offences, there is no question but that children will continue to be remanded into the custodial estate. But we want to be more imaginative about this, remembering that these are not tiny adults but children, and some of them come from very difficult circumstances.
My Lords, I commend the report. I am among those who would like to see the age of criminal responsibility increased—
I am sorry, the debate has timed out.
I urge the Minister—
The time is up, I am afraid.