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Amendment 18 is a drafting correction to clarify the meaning of Clause 65. This confirms our intention that the prohibition on charging should apply only to courses funded by the YPLA. This ambiguity was drawn to our attention by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, whom I must once again thank for his keen analysis of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am grateful for the very elegantly drafted Amendment 18.
Lord De Mauley: My Lords, from these Benches we, too, are grateful that the Minister has listened to our concerns. We welcome the commitment that local education authorities must consult FE colleges before exercising the powers afforded to them in Clause 44, which enable them to require an FE college to provide education to certain specified individuals. There was cross-party support for our amendment on Report, so we are most grateful to the Minister for taking this on board and committing to put our rather mild and reasonable amendment in the Bill. We believe that this will help to balance the rights and powers of the FE colleges and local education authorities in this instance, and so lead to a more productive consideration of the needs of the young person. It will also help to allay the concerns of FE colleges in terms of the independence of the institution and safeguarding its staff and students. We graciously accept the amendments tabled by the Minister and extend our thanks to him.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: We on these Benches supported the amendment and so are delighted to see it in the Bill. I know that it will be a great relief to the further education colleges and to the Association of Colleges, which I believe promoted the amendment, as it had been worried that there could be a danger that difficult-to-handle young people would be wished on colleges without any consultation. It is obviously right that there should be consultation and I thank the Minister for the amendment.
Clause 50 : Persons detained in youth accommodation: further provision
17: Clause 50, page 34, line 43, at end insert-
"(6A) Subsection (6B) applies in relation to a detained person if it appears to the host authority that the person is to be released from detention in relevant youth accommodation.
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(6B) The host authority must provide to the home authority any information they hold which-
(a) relates to the detained person, and
(b) may be relevant for the purposes of, or in connection with, the provision of education or training for the detained person after the release.
(6C) The information required to be provided under subsection (6B) must be provided at such time as the host authority think reasonable for the purpose of enabling education or training to be provided for the detained person after the release.
(6D) Nothing in subsections (6A) to (6C) requires the host authority to provide to the home authority information which it appears to the host authority that the home authority already have."
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Baroness Morgan of Drefelin): My Lords, we turn to the part of the Bill concerned with the education of young offenders. Amendment 17 and the others in the group concern young people in custody and will place a duty on the host authority to ensure that information about the young person's education is shared with their home authority around the time of their release. This ensures that information about their education in custody-including, for example, about their progression-can inform their further learning.
I indicated on Report that we were minded to table this amendment, as it is absolutely right that home authorities, working with the relevant youth offending team, should have this information to make effective resettlement plans. We have also listened to the concerns of noble Lords that there should be a record of the progress that a young person makes in custody. I hope that this amendment will reassure noble Lords.
Many noble Lords, particularly-it will not surprise your Lordships to hear-the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, spoke eloquently during Report and the earlier stages about the need to screen young people in custody for special educational needs and communication difficulties. I agree absolutely with this, which is why we are supporting the Communication Trust to extend the use of screening tools and staff training across youth custody settings and to youth offending teams, during both this year and the next financial year. This work will draw on the services of experts such as Professor Karen Bryan to feed in the learning from her research and pilots in YOIs.
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We have also agreed with the Communication Trust that next year it will conduct a review of the impact of this work. This is something that noble Lords will be interested to hear more about when it has been undertaken. I look forward to debating this in the future, when we can evaluate the success of the changes introduced by the Bill.
In addition, I commit today to earmarking some training for the 4,000 extra specialist dyslexia teachers to work with youth custody and youth offending teams in the community. The Communication Trust and the Dyslexia-SpLD Trust have confirmed that they are happy to work with us on this.
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I am grateful for the emphasis that the House has put on the importance of the special educational needs and communication needs of young offenders, and hope that noble Lords will support the amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham: My Lords, I begin by expressing my gratitude to the Minister for her care and attention in listening to what has been said on the issue over some time, during the passage both of this Bill and a previous one. I also thank the Bill team for the care that they have taken. I had a most productive meeting with them last Thursday, for which I am enormously grateful.
The Government's commitment that the Communication Trust will extend the use of screening and staff training to youth custody settings and youth offending teams next year, coupled with the commitment to assess the communication problems of all children before they start primary school, indicates that at last we are addressing something that was described to me as a scourge of the 21st century that is seriously impacting on the ability and readiness of every child in the country to undertake education. If they are not ready to undertake education and communicate with teachers, the results are seen in the truancy and exclusions that follow. This marks something very serious in the attempt to enable children to take advantage of education, which has been missing for too long. It has been an extraordinary 10 years since I first became aware of the issue. I have met countless Ministers and officials, made the same arguments over and again and wondered, with the evidence from Professor Karen Bryan that has been referred to staring everyone in the face, why one has to push so hard to get a glimpse of the blindingly obvious accepted in legislation.
Mention has rightly been made of Professor Karen Bryan's important research, which starkly revealed both the urgency of the need and the ability of people such as trained speech and language therapists to do something about it. We are not looking for the cure-it is there already and should be mobilised. Professor Bryan would be the first to acknowledge that this could not have been accomplished without the foresight, generosity and funding of Lady Helen Hamlyn and her trust. It is right to draw that to the attention of the House, because Lady Helen has performed an enormous service to the nation, and in particular to all the children who will benefit from having their communication problems identified and ameliorated so that their future may be better. I hope that noble Lords will not mind me bringing this to their notice, because it is something above and beyond the call of duty that should be officially recognised.
Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, as this is probably the last occasion on which I will speak on the Bill, I thank the two Ministers for their handling of it. They have shown great patience, courtesy and thoroughness, and I hold them in no way responsible for the Bill. They did not draft it but had to pick it up, and they have done a very good job of trying to explain what it is about and to improve it. They have improved it to some extent.
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I have often been accused of making Second Reading speeches in my interventions on this Bill but I make no apology for that. In the debates on the area with which we are now dealing-that is, the transfer of the training and education of young offenders from the Ministry of Justice and the Prison Service to two local authorities-it was not made clear at Second Reading in the Commons, at Second Reading in the Lords or in Committee in the Lords how this extraordinary change was going to be worked out. It was only 10 days ago that we had any understanding of that, and I have grave misgivings about whether this is going to be the right way to do it.
Instead of one authority being responsible for the young offender, two authorities will be involved. One will be the host authority where the young offender institution is, and in a previous debate I quoted the big young offender institution in Wigan. The host authority will provide the education but the offender's home authority-let us say it is Essex-will have to decide how the young offender is educated. The offender will be given an individual learning programme devised in Essex, but it may be three or four years since the authority in Essex heard anything about him. He may have disappeared from the authority's radar but the authority will suddenly find that it is responsible for him and will have to devise a learning programme.
The amendment says that when the young offender is released, the host authority, Wigan, has to send details of his record to Essex. The record of a young offender is very extensive. It will contain, for example, details of any previous offences, psychiatric reports and reports of any persons who have interviewed him. All that will go to Essex, but the authority there will possibly have heard of this person only in the previous two or three months and the young offender may not go back there. He may go to Birmingham, London or Manchester, yet Essex will have the responsibility. I do not see how that responsibility will be discharged.
I do not believe that this system will operate effectively. The Government are going to try to operate it but I think that ultimately it will break down, which will be a great pity. The emphasis must be on the host authority where the prison or young offender institution is based. Therefore, I have grave misgivings about this matter. I do not think that the issue has been properly debated in either House, and I cannot believe that it has the support of the Home Office-or, now, the Ministry of Justice-because I do not think that it will lead to the better education and training of detained persons. Therefore, I regret it.
If you give the home authority the duty to create an individual learning programme for a young offender who is in another part of the country, that establishes a right in the eyes of the young offender with regard to that programme. Anyone who has been involved with prisons, such as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will tell you that prisoners and young offenders are very clear about their rights and they will certainly demand services that may not be available. That will lead to a great deal of conflict. It is too late now-this provision will not be changed and will go into law-but I really do not think that this system will operate effectively.
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Lord Elton: My Lords, as I said on an earlier group of amendments, I think that we are tinkering with a ship which may not float, but if it does float I am very glad that this amendment has been put into the Bill. It relates to an amendment that I tabled at an earlier stage. It is particularly important that the duty to provide a record to follow the young person when he leaves rests with the host authority, which knows where he is, and not with the home authority, which, as my noble friend said, may not have heard of him before and may have forgotten him before he comes out of custody.
We had discussions in Committee and again on Report about the nature of records, and I repeat my anxiety: there should be a uniform system of keeping, as well as of transmitting, records between concerned authorities. If that is not done, the result will be chaos, with lost documents and lost learning paths. Therefore, I trust that the duties and that method will be clearly set out in the guidance that the Minister has told us will be issued.
I join other noble Lords in welcoming the acceptance of the need to screen for dyslexia and other difficulties. I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said. He and I share the view that, if we spent a tithe of what we spend trying to deal with people when they become criminals on stopping them becoming criminals, we would save a huge amount of money and very largely increase the sum of happiness in this country.
This is a small step in that direction, and I applaud it with thanks. Also, as I do not expect to speak again in this debate, I thank the Minister for the exemplary care that she has taken of the concerns of your Lordships, and for the very effective support, often far beyond the call of duty, from the Bill team, a mixed Bill team from two departments who seem to have welded together and become very effective for the short time that they have been in the same service.
Baroness Garden of Frognal: My Lords, from these Benches, I, too, thank the Ministers and the Bill team for taking note of the concerns that have been expressed throughout our debates in respect of provision for young offenders, and welcome Amendment 17 in particular. We support the amendments moved on Report and today, and the other developments. I welcome the Minister's comments in her introductory remarks and hope to hear in due course how the measures are actually working out for the institutions-for the local authorities-and, in particular, for the young offenders that they are designed to help. Again, we express our appreciation for the amendments.
Viscount Eccles: I follow both my noble friend Lord Baker and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, because I, too, worry that the system is not going to work. It strikes me as a pig in the middle system. The young offender institution is the pig in the middle and the ball is thrown over its head from a host authority, which of course will be identifiable, to a home authority, which will not be so easily identifiable. Very likely, as with my grandchildren, the ball will fall to the ground. May we have an assurance that there will be ex post evaluation of a proper statistical kind that clarifies all the problems that arise with the identification and the duties of the home authority?
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, very briefly, I, too, thank the noble Baroness for what she has achieved. I know that there are differences of opinion about the whole business of transferring responsibility for education to the local education authority. No doubt there are strong reasons why those who are experts in the field are worried about that. I have expressed a slightly different opinion on that on the basis that at least local education authorities will now have to pay for the education, whereas before it was all too easy to pass the whole business of difficult young people's education onto the budget of the Home Office.
Like other noble Lords, I particularly applaud the fact that more attention will be paid to testing young people for special educational and communication needs, that in the very difficult financial situation that we all know and are concerned about, there will be some support, and that specialist dyslexia organisations, and so on, will be involved. What I am sorry and sad about, alas, is that I do not think that there has been movement on, when they come out of prison, assessing how far they have progressed in the education provided within the prison. Perhaps that is altogether a step too far in the current climate, but it could have been the basis for a great deal more knowledge about how we should proceed.
I very much thank the noble Baroness for what she has achieved, and the Bill team, because I know that a lot of time has gone into our consideration. Attention has been paid to the many comments and expert views from all around your Lordships' House because here, as in so many other areas, we have people who have done it, who know what the situation is and can comment on it. Anyhow, my limited but nevertheless warm thanks go to the noble Baroness, the noble Lord and the team.
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Lord Lucas: My Lords, history has paid a great deal of attention to the talents of Alexander the Great, but not much to the talents of the people who created the Gordian knot. With this Bill, we can perhaps begin to understand a little of that talent. I urge my noble friends on the Front Bench to unsheathe their sword about this time next year and hack at this construction with the aim of reaching something clear and simple as a solution. I urge my noble friend Lord Baker and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to spend the next few months educating our Front Bench about what should replace this Bill because I am sure their wisdom can be put to good effect by a Government more attuned to simplicity than complexity.
Lord De Mauley: My Lords, these government amendments address the concern, which has been raised many times during our debates in this area, that the education given to young offenders must be joined up and allow for progression and advancement through and after custody. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friend Lord Elton whose efforts on the Bill not only, but especially, in this area have been so beneficial to it.
Part of the original intention behind our Amendment 124B, which was agreed in Committee because of support from around the House, was that
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We accept that there is a potential risk of too much assessment. It therefore seemed sensible to look for another way that would ensure that note was taken of progress made, consistency could be achieved when a young person was released back to the home authority and there was not too much assessment. In these terms, it seems that the Minister has risen to the challenge. Notwithstanding the broader concerns of my noble friends Lord Elton, Lord Baker and Lord Lucas about whether the ship will float, we welcome these amendments as far as they go and hope that they will help to alleviate some of the problems of a potentially disjointed approach. We look forward to hearing more in due course about the further developments with the communications trust, to which the Minister has alluded.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their remarks in this important debate as we come to the closing parts of the progress of the Bill through this House. Over many months, we have developed a helpful, positive and constructive understanding about what needs to be done to the Bill and more widely than the confines of the statute. We have also developed an understanding about the work that we can do with the charity sector in the real world to take forward and address the concerns that noble Lords have raised in this House.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, for his remarks and for being very constructive in helping us to identify a practical way of dealing with the concerns expressed in Committee about assessment on exiting detention. I can reassure the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that the Bill will be subject to post-legislative scrutiny and that Ofsted will be responsible on an annual basis for monitoring the effectiveness of education in custody. As I understand it, that will reach into the role of the host and the home education authorities.
Lord Ramsbotham: The Minister mentioned that Ofsted will be responsible for assessment. May I remind her that Ofsted inspects education in young offender institutions with Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons only to make certain that education is looked at in the context of prisons? In view of our concerns about the responsibility for education being passed away from
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: I thank the noble Lord for that insight. I am sure that, with his experience of these matters, he is absolutely right.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for his very kind remarks. I was very interested in his third Second Reading speech, which we were able to enjoy today. I listened very seriously to his remarks. I remember education in the youth justice system featuring very highly on the list of noble Lords' concerns at Second Reading, and it was examined in depth in Committee. This House has done a very good job of scrutinising the youth justice parts of the Bill, and because of that we can table amendments, such as those before us now, that further refine the proposals before us.
The objective of the Bill's provisions is to bring young people in custody under primary legislation on education for the first time. Signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in which this House has a great interest, have repeatedly called for that. We wanted to ensure that young people in custody receive education that is overseen and delivered in accordance with the education that they could expect if they were in the mainstream education system. This has to be the right way to go.
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