Clause 84
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
5:45 pm
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Justice & Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
We are back to the issue of how we apply the various criminal sanctions to those who are under 18, as opposed to those who are 18 and over, and whether a difference should apply now. I feel that perhaps I am pushing a slightly open door because I have looked carefully at the Government’s amendments, which spend 50 or 60 lines moving in the direction of my simple amendment consisting of five words. Perhaps there is an element of doubt in the mind of the Minister as to whether it is appropriate to apply violent offender orders to those who are under 18 at the time of the implementation of the order. I emphasise that point because there will be some young people who have served a sentence for a violent offence, who would be subject to a qualifying offence but will have passed their 18th birthday by the time they can receive an order. I will state very quickly why it would be sensible to make the limitation.
The first point is the general case, which we have explored several times in the Committee, that there should be a different penal system for young people from that which applies to adults. The second point is about the number of people who are under 18 to whom violent offender orders would apply. In a moment I will ask the Minister to justify the existence of these orders, particularly with the further restrictions that he is proposing through the amendments, but I am advised by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which has done some work on this regarding criminal statistics, that well under 1,000 young people commit a range of offences that are eligible for VOOs. Of those, only a few dozen receive a qualifying sentence—one of 12 months or more. Of those few dozen, very few will not be over 18 by the time they are released, so the measure will apply to very few individuals, unless we get the sort of inflation that there has been in the world of ASBOs. It is a shame that the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth is not with us because he would have a lot to tell us about ASBOs and how they were never intended to apply to young people. Perhaps that is why he has been allowed a leave of absence for this afternoon’s sitting; the fact that he is unavailable to make that speech has reduced our proceedings considerably. I will presume to make the point for him, as it is one that he has made forcefully on a number of occasions.
The next point is whether a violent offender order is likely to be either appropriate or effective in the case of a young person. I accept that within the orders there are positives as well as prohibitions, and therefore there are some aspects that could be seen as of value to a young person. Having said that, there are other ways of achieving those objectives without applying a violent offender order as a mechanism.
Finally, we already have a different way of managing young people on release if they represent a risk to others. We have reporting requirements that are more stringent for young people than for adults, and we have youth offending teams, which the Government always seem to forget until they bring back a proposal and then are reminded that such teams exist—perhaps they should listen to what they have to say in respect of young people. Such teams were the invention of this Government and their role is to assess the risk of serious harm and to develop a risk management plan. That is exactly the area in which the violent offender orders are intended to work. If the risk is really serious, we are talking about multi-agency public protection arrangements as well. They are a much more stringent regime than anything that a violent offender order is likely to offer.
Whatever the justification for violent offender orders in respect of adults, it is thus hard to substantiate a case for applying them to a person under the age of 18. It is hard to read the Government’s amendments without forming the view that they have reached the same conclusion. New clause 37 sets out a long list of requirements for under-18s. Government amendment No. 212 will introduce the need to consult youth offending teams. Quite honestly, if all the Government amendments are necessary, would it not be better to say that the violent offender order does not apply to young people and that we use the youth offending teams and multi-agency public protection arrangements in the case of more serious risk? In other cases we use the apparatus that the Government have put in place, which has not been deficient in this specific area and which will do the job extremely well. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s convoluted way of justifying something that is very hard to justify.