Clause 45
Education and Skills Bill
2:30 pm
John Hayes (Shadow Minister, Innovation, Universities and Skills; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)
No, I was riveted by the hon. Gentleman’s speech to such a degree that I was unable to pick up a single paper. I was entirely preoccupied by the sagacity of his remarks.
To return to the amendments more specifically, Mr. Bercow, you will know that at the heart of our considerations thus far has been the concern of Opposition Members, among whom I include the hon. Member for Yeovil, about the prospect of criminalising young people. According to the explanatory notes for clause 45,
“non-compliance is an offence and liable to a fine of a maximum of level 1 on the standard scale. Currently level 1 is a maximum of £200, with the actual amount in each case being decided by the court in light of individual circumstances.”
The amendment would delete the criminal elements of the Bill and translate them into civil penalties. In earlier sittings, we challenged the Minister on precisely that point, and we did so in concert with many witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee before we started our detailed scrutiny. The amendment would therefore specify that non-compliance be a civil matter, rather than a matter for the criminal law.
Time and again in the evidence sessions, we heard that young people may be criminalised by the Bill. That is of great concern to the very organisations with the most experience of dealing with challenged young people—those young people who are most typically disengaged from the system. I make no apologies for reminding the Minister, because he seems recalcitrant about the matter, of the evidence that we took from some of those experts. Martina Milburn, the chief executive of the Prince’s Trust told us that
“the bulk of the 40,000 people who we worked with last year had issues with drugs and alcohol. What do you do with a young person who is already going down the path of taking too many drugs and drinking too much and who just says, ‘I’m not going to do it’ and disappears? That happens not just in the age group that we are talking about. I was talking to a young person yesterday who started drinking at eight and who was on heroin by the time he was 11; he certainly was not in school after that time. The question is how you deal with that. Do you increasingly criminalise young people and just say, ‘Right, we’re going to lock you all up,’ or do you find some way of trying to reach them and sort out some of their issues?”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 16, Q36.]
That evidence graphically illustrates that the young people in greatest need are least likely to benefit from the Bill, particularly if it coerces them. We need an approach that is founded on the principle of encouragement of support and is sensitive to the fact that those young people might not be in a position to abide by the terms of the Bill. As the representative of the Prince’s Trust said, if someone is already in the kind of dire circumstances that she described, it is unlikely that the Bill as drafted will make much difference to them.
The Association of School and College Leaders also submitted a briefing on the Bill. It states:
“Our preferred approach to achieving full participation is by persuasion rather than coercion. In particular we do not support the potential application of criminal penalties for what is a civil matter.”
Our amendments would ensure that enforcement of the provisions of the Bill would be restricted to civil law. It is inevitable that we will oppose the Government’s measures unless the Minister can make a compelling case for criminalising young people who are disengaged from education and who are some of the most vulnerable members of society—denied a loving home, support and the knowledge and guidance of parents.
For Conservatives, and I guess for some Liberals too, from all that we have heard from the hon. Member for Yeovil, education means opportunity for all, rather than criminalising a few. Even if the Minister cannot accept the amendments today, I hope that he will reflect on the tenor of the discussions that have taken place over these past weeks. It is not the case that members of the Committee who do not share his enthusiasm for criminalising young people do not also share his enthusiasm for increasing participation; we simply do not think that the system that he wishes to put in place will work.
That is the best pragmatic argument for supporting the amendment that I can make. I hope that the Minister, in the spirit in which I have offered it, will seize it with both hands—although I have thrown him lifelines before and he has cast them aside—and get himself off the hook by translating the criminal elements of the Bill into civil matters.