We have had an extensive debate, which has, arguably, lasted for five days with a short break. I have listened to hon. Members' views and it is even clearer to me now that it was last week that we are, in fact, discussing the direction that we want the youth justice system to take.

The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) underlined the binary option before us. One option is to continue in much the same vein as before. The other is to take a new approach, which regards youth offending as a symptom rather than a cause, and thus the solution as being much deeper and more profoundly connected with the treatment of the

human condition than clause 53(1) would imply. As the Minister rightly said, one can make the case that those considerations are incorporated in part 4, in which case we are arguing about a matter of emphasis, but that emphasis is crucial. If we apply the 20-year rule and ask what someone will think of the legislation in 20 years' time, I believe that they will naturally look at clause 53 to ascertain the principal intent of this part of the Bill. That is what I am asking the Committee to consider.

As I said last week, if young people are not treated fairly, with understanding and in a way that is appropriate to their age, and, worse still, if they are put into an unsuitable environment in which their educational needs are not met and their behaviour is not challenged but simply punished, I am sure that society will reap the results later and that it will cost more in the long run.

The principle underlying amendments Nos. 278 and 284, and the other amendments in the group, is that rather than giving passive consideration to such matters, one should actively commit to rehabilitation, on the assumption that it will reduce reoffending and aid the prevention of crime more effectively than discussing sentencing, as the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has just done. The emphasis in the United Kingdom has been wrong for a long time. I am sure that we would all agree that the paramount consideration is to protect the public, but I would argue that the best way to achieve that is by putting the rights of the child first and by measuring the success of our intervention from the change in crime rates.

The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter), who sadly is not here at the moment, made an interesting point. I asked the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh whether we did not want the strong propensity to offend to become a weaker propensity to offend. Yes we do want that, but putting it like that implies that we can somehow go straight to that point. We should consider the matter in another way. We want to turn a weak association with mainstream society into a strong one, so we should start at a different point and, rather than simply suppressing the desire to offend, we should nurture the desire to participate positively in society.

I return to the main point of the amendments. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough said some interesting things; he said that most crime was committed by youngsters, which is certainly an interesting statement, and that prison sentencing policy had changed. He talked a lot about sentencing, and we suggest that the kind of argument that he was making is exactly what the clause would lead Northern Ireland into. Amendment No. 278 would make us ask, instead, ''What do we have to do to stop young people from reoffending? How do we persuade an individual that he wants to play a constructive part in society?'' In that case, the requirement to suppress criminal tendencies would diminish.

The hon. and learned Gentleman said that the amendment was as useless as an early-day motion, which shows that this is not a moot debate. The

amendments are not as useless as an early-day motion, but suggest that we should handle Northern Ireland youth justice in a different way from how it is handled anywhere else.