Further written evidence to be reported to the House
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
12:45 pm
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Justice & Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
That is a very good question and one best put to the Minister. If we have that situation, how is the court to provide for a proper disposal? It could be argued that under other legislation, such as the Children Act 2004, the local authority has a duty to provide for it. In that case, it is because it is in the interests of the child and for the prevention of harm to the child, not as part of a criminal justice sanction. That is the distinction that I am making. It is not clear that the duty falls on the local authority to make this provision under circumstances in which the duty of care does not apply. If it is to be conceived of as a duty, I think that there has to be some statutory backing for it and that is not currently in the Bill.
Last, I move to intensive supervision and surveillance orders. Again, the differences that we have with the Government are not substantial because we support the existence of such orders as a last resort. What the Minister did not tell the Committee is why the view of the Government has changed since 2004 when they brought in the orders with a very broad consensus that it was an essential level in the hierarchy. It was very clear that it should be a separate disposal for the court: one that would be used only as an alternative to a custodial sentence and not in other circumstances. It was clear that it would be the last point that the offender could come before the court without a custodial sentence being applied.
The argument in 2004 was about the separate nature of the ISSP. That distinction was an important ingredient in its nature and its potential success. Now, the Minister’s argument is that it can be subsumed within this wider category. Although it is described separately within the legislation, it nevertheless forms part of a broader youth rehabilitation order and he argues that we do not need that separate rung in the hierarchy of disposals. If the Government have changed their mind, they are perfectly entitled to do so, but they should explain why their reasoning is now so very different from three years ago and why it is so much at odds with the very broad range of interests that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough described in terms of the provenance of some of the proposals before us.
There is one further point. I do not want to overstate this, but article 37 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child comes into play here. Are the Government honouring what they signed up to in those conventions about ensuring that custody is genuinely a last resort? There is a strong argument that having an ISS order as a separate level of remedy for the courts provides for the United Kingdom to be in accordance with the convention duty, and that without it, it is not. I would be grateful if the Minister would advise me at some later stage. I asked him earlier to look at the provisions of the human rights convention; I now ask him to look at the UN convention on the rights of the child to see whether he is satisfied that this arrangement meets that requirement.
Having said all that, we have had a valuable debate. The Minister has, at various points, indicated that he will give further consideration to some of the points that we have raised and I hope that he will do so. I hope that at a later stage we will have the opportunity to return to some of those issues, but at this point I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.