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Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South): May I put it to the Home Secretary that the measures that he has announced will be especially welcomed by those parts of our community where law-abiding people's lives are made miserable by out-of-control youths? Will he confirm--he touched on this earlier--that the strategy is not meant to be seen in isolation, and that the best way of stopping youngsters going into anti-social activity is to provide them with a purpose in life? That requires investment in sports facilities, training and education, and, ultimately, in getting them into work. What progress has been made on setting up secure training units, a subject much announced by the previous Government but on which we have not so far seen results?
Mr. Straw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those questions. He is right about the importance of giving youngsters a purpose in life. This morning, the Prime Minister and I saw the excellent mentoring programmes run by the Dalston youth project in Hackney, which deals with young offenders. To pick up a point made by the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire, it is
about getting youngsters at risk of drifting into offending away from crime at an early stage and providing them with mentors--adults who are willing to give them advice and guidance. One of the terrific things that mentors told us was that it has not only been important to youngsters subject to it but added something to the lives of those who provide it.
I have already announced the establishment of a secure training unit at Cookham Wood. The contract for that has been let, and it should be running next year. I have agreed to have a competition for the contract for the other four, which will all go ahead.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed):
We welcome the emphasis on prevention and the new statutory duty, but does the Home Secretary recognise that the agencies with most to offer, especially the youth service, are under the greatest threat from local government cuts?
In a paper endorsed by Sir Stephen Tumim last year, we called for the less adversarial youth justice system that brings together offenders, families and victims. We warmly welcome the steps that the right hon. Gentleman has announced in that direction. Does he accept the Audit Commission's recommendation that savings achieved by improving the youth justice system should be ploughed back into prevention projects and positive opportunities for young people?
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that, while it is right that the courts should have the power to ensure that young offenders can be remanded in secure local authority accommodation, 15-year-olds should never be sent to adult prisons? If they need to be detained, it should be in accommodation suitable for their age group.
Does the Home Secretary recognise that some measures, especially the curfews, in this generally useful package look a little like gimmicks, and that even the parenting orders will not work if the problem is criminality in the home background or if parents are at their wits' end, having tried everything to stop their youngsters offending? It would be a pity if gimmicks obscured the good features of the package of proposals that he has announced.
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful for the two cheers from the right hon. Gentleman. Of course, it is de rigueur for a Liberal spokesman--it is always a man, by the way--to call for more spending. He never says where it is to come from.
My answer to the right hon. Gentleman is to refer to the Audit Commission report. It pointed out that more and more was being spent on dealing with fewer and fewer offenders. We are spending £1,000 million. I have accepted the need for some more spending, which should be carefully targeted, but the existing system is not only ineffective and replete with delays but inefficient. We have to get people working together. The reason why it is important to have a single statutory aim for everyone is that we must ensure that they are all focused on the common objective of reducing offending.
For example, social workers believe that their objective is the welfare of the child and that the welfare of the child is not necessarily dealt with by punishing the child. That is not a view I take, but it is their view. We have to break that view.
The right hon. Gentleman said that 15-year-olds should never be sent to prisons. I greatly regret that adult prisons have to be used for 15-year-old boys. We intend to ensure that they are not used for 15-year-old girls. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Ms Quin), the Minister responsible for prisons and probation, has already announced a series of major improvements in the way in which 15 and 16-year-old boys will be dealt with within the prison system. We shall set up new regimes specifically for them in the light of the report of the chief inspector of prisons.
The right hon. Gentleman described the proposals for curfews as gimmicks. If he had been to the places that I have been to, such as Yardley in Birmingham, Redditch, and Hamilton in Scotland, and many other places where young children under the age of 10 are out at 11 or 12 o'clock at night without adult supervision, he would not think that curfews were gimmicks. He would think that they were sensible and straightforward, and would wonder why they had not been imposed before.
Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North):
I welcome the proposals that my right hon. Friend has brought to the House. May I draw his attention to the work of the Burslem youth consultative panel, which has just reported on offending and what young people want? My right hon. Friend talked about how different agencies came together. Will he look at crime prevention? If the views of young people can be brought in at local level through the Burslem youth consultative panel, perhaps we can learn nationally from the work that the panel has done.
Mr. Straw:
I will certainly take that on board. I do not have direct knowledge of the consultative panel to which my hon. Friend refers, but I know of some others. I know that excellent results have been achieved. Where young people are brought in and offered responsibility, they typically take it with open arms.
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Faversham and Mid-Kent):
The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as anyone that in many cases one of the root causes of offending among young people is the fact that they have no self-esteem outside that provided by their peer group. Does he have any proposals to ensure that some of the gangs that roam the streets are directed towards more constructive purposes? It can be done. There is no doubt that the areas in which such gangs rampage suffer most from their activities. It is interesting that, almost without exception, those at a national conference of gang leaders in the United States asked for some way of getting themselves back into the legitimate system.
Mr. Straw:
The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. On visits to young offenders institutions and adult prisons, once one has cut through the bravado, one sees young people who lack any sort of self-esteem and often lack much in the way of formal education. That is why, despite the Prison Service's best efforts, the number of suicides in prison remains at a worrying level. Youngsters who, outside, would have been cocky beyond belief get inside and realise that they have thrown their lives away.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that programmes aimed at targeting some of those youngsters and moving them away from criminality can be effective. There is a project in my constituency in exactly the sort of area he
describes: it is highest crime area in the constituency, and the poorest area. It also has the highest levels of unemployment. A project called Youth Works has specifically targeted four or five known young offenders; that work has helped those young offenders, but--much more important--it has ensured that the level of property crime has dropped dramatically. The costs to one of the housing associations of repairing houses has been reduced from £400,000 to £100,000 in a year.
Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East):
I welcome the Home Secretary's statement today and I am sure that my constituents will, too. However, I am sure he is aware that social services departments across the land are expressing concern about an increasing minority of young offenders being placed in expensive secure accommodation. Will he comment, if not today, on a future occasion, about the resulting increase in costs, for which social services departments cannot budget?
Mr. Straw:
There is a problem with social services secure accommodation, because it costs more than £2,000 a week, whereas a place in a young offenders institution costs a quarter of that, at £500 a week. One reason for setting up the national board for youth justice is to ensure much more effective planning and management of the secure estate, and, as part of the comprehensive spending review, we are conducting an audit of such accommodation. Although we have to maintain high standards of quality in secure accommodation, there must be opportunities for savings--after all, it costs £100,000 a year to keep one youngster in such accommodation--and we hope to achieve that. We are also looking at the charging arrangements.
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