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Mr. Greenway: No, I do not. If I have given that impression, I apologise. It seemed that that approach was acceptable in the action plan order that was included in the Crime and Disorder Act. The order is available even if people are convicted by the court and did not plead guilty. The principles are the same. If the young offender, however he gets through the referral order--let us discuss the Government's plan--pleads guilty, is referred to the panel, agrees a contract and then breaches it, what do we do with him? What attitude do we instil in his mind as to what to expect if he breaches the contract that he willingly embraced and entered into?
Many community sentences fail; those of us who follow youth justice know that. Home Office figures show that, on a good day, the failure rate of supervision orders for 10 to 17-year-olds is 80 per cent. They fail because there is inadequate supervision and because breaches are not treated firmly and harshly enough. That was the clear conclusion of the Home Affairs Select Committee report six years ago and in the latest report, with which my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) was involved. Therefore, things have not changed.
The 1993 report recommended that breaches should result in a fresh court appearance and a custodial sentence--there was all-party agreement. We should build in the safeguards needed to ensure that the second chance does not become the norm. Word would soon get round if a second offence or breach of contract did not lead to punishment. That is why cautions were such a disaster.
However, that does not mean an unnecessarily harsh crackdown--a concern raised by the hon. Member for Northampton, North. It would affect only those who breached the conditions. Those asked to serve on youth offender panels will have an opportunity to influence for good the lives of the youngsters placed in their care. That is one reason why I am so enthusiastic about the panels. We shall want to explore in Committee their membership, as well as the need for regular contact. Significantly more contact than is common under a typical probation or supervision order will be essential. We also want to talk about the many disciplines from which members of the panel may be drawn, including the probation service, youth workers, social workers, police officers, magistrates and other volunteers. Which will be the dominant influence? That could have a marked bearing on outcomes.
There is considerable potential in the youth justice elements of the Bill, but their success depends on a more determined, more focused and more flexible approach than is apparent from the measures that have been set out. The all-too-obvious failings over enforcement that have so disastrously characterised probation and community service orders in recent years must be avoided. Programmes must be rigorously researched and evaluated from the outset, or there will be a repetition of failure. The shortcomings that are experienced must not be kept hidden or tolerated to protect failed ideologies or professional status.
My hon. Friend the Member for Woking will speak at the end of the debate about the clauses that deal with evidence. There is general agreement that special measures are justified for the giving of evidence by vulnerable or intimidated witnesses. However, as the Home Secretary acknowledged, the proposals raise some issues of principle and we shall want to ensure in Committee that the right balance has been struck between the interests of witnesses and the interests of the accused. For example, there is some concern about the use of pre-recorded evidence, to which the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) referred.
As the Home Secretary knows, at the election, both the Conservative and the Labour parties promised action to protect rape victims from extensive cross-examination in court by their alleged attackers. He will also recall that we tried to press the argument during the passage of the Crime and Disorder Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) was involved in that. The Home Secretary rightly drew attention to the provisions on the questioning of child witnesses in the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which I have referred to in relation to another issue.
We agree that the issues are complex and some of the arguments are finely balanced. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking, who has greater experience of such matters, will seek to explore whether it is right to rule out any questioning by the accused or whether there may be circumstances in which the leave of the court may be sought. This is not a partisan point. The Opposition have perhaps an even greater duty than the Government to ensure that the Bill is far reaching and properly addresses the concerns of judges and lawyers on how best to serve the interests of justice.
The other place debated at some length the provisions in chapter III of part II for the protection of complainants in proceedings on sexual offences. The need to prevent spurious references to the previous sexual history of rape victims could not be clearer. The Home Secretary referred to the cases of Edwards and Brown. Some years ago, when I was sitting somewhere near where the hon. Member for Basildon (Angela Smith) is now sitting, I urged my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) to change the rules on disclosure. I referred to the case of a teenage girl who was subjected to an appalling rape ordeal. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service abandoned the prosecution of five young men on charges of gang rape in a west London multi-storey car park because the girl had been raped before and they understandably felt that it would be unreasonable to subject her to cross-examination in court about her previous experience, which the law would have allowed. The Bill will rightly prohibit such humiliating questioning of rape victims.
The debate in the other place resulted in a change to the wording of clause 40(3)(b)(ii). The change would allow reference to be made to the previous behaviour of the complainant in circumstances similar to those surrounding the case that I have mentioned. I shall not labour the point now, but I ask the Minister to read the wording of the redrafted sub-paragraph and the wording of the explanatory notes, because the two are not the same. There is significant doubt about what the sub-paragraph is supposed to mean. The explanatory notes say on page 25:
Ms Keeble:
When the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) deals with the issue later, perhaps he will take on board the point that the proposals are strongly supported by male rape victims. I have had several letters on the subject from constituents. The example that the hon. Gentleman gave involved a woman, as most rape cases do, but we should also consider male rape victims.
Mr. Greenway:
I endorse what the hon. Lady has said.
We also welcome the changes made in the other place to the proposals on reporting restrictions for offences committed against persons under 18. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) intervened on the Home Secretary to point out that not everyone is satisfied. The Guild of Editors thinks that the clauses need further attention. We anticipate constructive dialogue in Committee as we test whether the changes meet what is required.
Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre):
I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak--especially so early--in the debate, and particularly to address some of the issues concerning children and young people. The Bill is extremely important and worthy, and my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Home Office should be proud of it. I am also pleased to hear that it will attract widespread support, which is right and proper.
There are many issues to discuss, and the Bill will provide many opportunities to air them. Moreover, the subsequent Act will provide opportunities for piloting projects, to determine how the initiatives envisaged in the Bill work in practice. Those are some of the Bill's positive elements in dealing with a very difficult aspect of life.
Some of the Bill's provisions are long overdue. Others of its provisions--such as that on restorative justice for young people, developing ways in which they might make amends that go far beyond mere punishment--are novel and hopeful. They may just give us a profoundly better way of reducing offending by young people, while assisting young people's positive reintegration into their own community.
I worked in youth justice throughout the 1980s. Today, I heard Opposition Members, perhaps naturally, claim that all the Bill's good provisions were their idea. Although they would probably also claim that they had a good youth justice system in the 1980s, it did not seem like that from my perspective then. The policy framework within which we had to operate was a shambles.
I was trained in working with young people, at Lancaster university's centre for youth crime and community, explicitly to deal with offending behaviour, to manage youth justice systems and to develop non-custodial disposals--alternatives to custody. In 1983 and 1986, I established and managed two radical projects on alternatives to custody in Lancashire, and am still proud of the fact that we had some immediate success. In 1987 and most of 1988, no young people in the Lancaster and Wyre district were sent into custody, and we reduced the very serious offending of some extremely persistent young offenders.
I have also dealt with the issue of breach, and therefore accede to many of the statements made by the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway). Although breach was sometimes a very difficult matter to deal with within the culture of a social services department, it is an essential element of a radical community-based service.
Although it is an aside, I really should say that I am completely opposed to use of Home Office custody for children--which is not to denigrate the efforts of excellent and worthy people working with young people in prisons. It should be a fundamental principle that the very small proportion of young people who are a danger to others or to themselves should go to properly appointed, high-quality, small-scale and child-centred secure units operated entirely within the principles of the Children Act 1989. Recent scandals, such as those at Medway and Feltham, will recur until we get the matter right. I very much hope that part I will prove eventually to have been a very big step in the right direction.
Although we did some excellent work and made some real progress in youth justice work--that experience should never be discounted--we did not get very many things right. We did little to reduce youth crime overall. We did virtually nothing to reduce the serious impact of offending on individuals and entire communities. As the hon. Member for Ryedale said, we deliberately relied on other sentences--cautioning, cautioning-plus, conditional discharge, attendance centres, supervision orders, community service and all the rest of it--thereby causing incoherence in the system, difficulty in targeting interventions, and real difficulty in ensuring that young people got the same explicit, positive message.
We relied on those sentences partly because we knew that social work interventions do not always work, and certainly do not always work immediately. We were also very sceptical of the youth justice system, thinking it important to include in sentencing tariffs which might result in custody and recidivism as many non-custodial options as possible. Eventually, worthy aims led us into a rarefied form of social work that was sometimes out of touch with the community, wherein problems often arose.
Too often, family problems and behaviour patterns were compounded and entrenched before considerable resources and expertise were directed towards them. That is one of the real reasons why, as I said, I have changed my mind about the way we should operate youth justice. We have to address the practical issues in trying to deal with some of the problems that the previous system allowed to become very difficult and entrenched.
The system proposed in the Bill is greatly different from, and potentially so much better than, the previous one. It is founded upon the welcome innovation of youth offending teams--joined-up youth justice--that were pioneered partly by my colleagues in Lancaster after I worked there. The Bill explicitly aims to prevent offending by children and young people. It will introduce restorative justice for young people, properly facing them with the consequences of their behaviour, and then offering them a way back into the community. The new approach is fundamentally different from the old one.
With the greatest respect to the other place and to the hon. Member for Ryedale, I think that they missed the point on referral orders--which will offer a very early opportunity to begin an inquiry, and to establish, right from the start, that offending by young people is wrong, that it should not be tolerated, and that we should face it with all the resources at our disposal. In dealing with youth offending, we should seek imaginative solutions, and bring together not only all the statutory agencies but the whole community. It is essential that they be offered to the large majority of young people who will be
appearing in court for the first time and pleading guilty, who will not be getting an absolute discharge and who will not be going into custody.
Soon after offending, young people will face a considerable intervention in their lives: a concerted investigation involving parents and other significant adults. Under the programme, young people will be challenged to make reparation to victims; to face the consequences of their actions; to work for the community; to break patterns of behaviour or friendship; to establish new patterns of behaviour or attendance; and to confront sometimes serious problems.
I have done some of that work before, although not all of it, and not at such an early and potentially significant stage. There has not been the opportunity to bring quite so many measures together in such explicit statutory guidance to young people. That is a powerful tool for working with young people. The Home Secretary is right to pilot the order and wise to allow himself the possibility of coming back to extend its range to other groups of young offenders. I hope that the Home Secretary will not be too quick to do the latter because there are major resource implications. A considerable proportion of the young offending population might be eligible for the programme. If experience in Scotland and New Zealand is anything to go by, the vast majority of those young people eventually will be available for such disposal.
The statutory attendance of at least one parent--and hopefully both--at the youth offending panel is crucial. It is vital that parents play their essential part in understanding their young person's criminal behaviour, dealing with it and being helped to deal with it. As I have suggested, I am concerned that clause 5 allows a loophole whereby courts might not require the parents of looked-after children to attend the youth offending panel that is inquiring into the criminal behaviour of their child.
Under the Children Act, at the very least, the mother retains parental responsibility, even if her child is subject to a care order. In reality, the vast majority of looked-after children are merely accommodated under section 20 of the Children Act at parental request and can be discharged from care at a moment's notice. Crucial Children Act concepts of parental responsibility and of local authorities having to work in partnership with parents are relevant here.
I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will look at the issues again to ensure that, where a child is looked after, both the parent and the representative of the local authority must attend the youth offending panel. The last parents who should be given an excuse not to come to the panel are parents who are having such great difficulty managing their children's behaviour that the children are looked after.
I have seen the suicide attempts of young people who have endured years of abuse, who have had their concepts of love and trust cruelly confused and undermined, who have found the courage eventually to disclose their plight to some adult who will listen, who have had their families reject them, their homes broken up and their education disrupted--only to find that the case collapsed when it came to court because of the often proper concern of adults that those children were too vulnerable to take on the experience of court.
There was concern that children would not be able to withstand the ordeal of living it all again in court in front of the person who abused them. I have seen the anger and despair of young people who know and regularly re-live every second of their abuse, yet who are made to feel as if they are disbelieved and as if they were responsible for what had been done to them. They are made to feel as if they contributed to their abuse and that they will be denied justice. They are made to feel utterly worthless and that no one cares, and that they might as well continue to put up with the perpetrator having their way with them.
"The issue is whether the complainant consented and the evidence or questioning relates to behaviour that is extremely similar to the defence's version of the complainant's behaviour at the time of the alleged offence and cannot reasonable be explained as a coincidence."
That does not mean the same as the wording of the amended sub-paragraph. We can explore that later. It shows the importance of examining the words very carefully. If we get the meaning wrong and the legislation is interpreted differently by the courts, we could well find that what Parliament thought that it intended is not reflected in the Bill.
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