Part of Prisons and Courts Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:45 pm on 18 April 2017.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Shadow Solicitor General
4:45,
18 April 2017
I will not unduly delay the Committee on this Amendment, because I intend to speak in a little more detail on Clause 30, which relates to the same matter. None the less, we appreciate the opportunity to remark on amendment 95, which I do not intend to push to a vote. It is about removing children from the provisions allowing defendants to engage with a court in writing.
There are a number of concerns about those provisions, which I hope the Minister will acknowledge and be able to deal with to an extent. For example, there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that children’s parents or guardians will be informed about the written procedure before a child indicates their plea. Evidence seems to suggest that children are more likely than adults to enter guilty pleas for offences that they have not committed. Our concern is that indicating pleas online will make that significantly worse.
We worry about peer pressure to indicate a guilty plea, for example, in cases in which an offence is committed by a group of children and a particular child is being bullied. We are also concerned by something that came through in both the Taylor and Carlile reviews, with which the Minister will be familiar—the fact that children do not necessarily understand court proceedings and their implications.
Our real worry is about children participating in court proceedings in writing, without any real understanding of them. It is not clear how written proceedings will be intelligible to children who may be as young as 10. That is before we even consider children who offend who may have difficulties in communication, and of course one in three children in custody have special educational needs. We worry that there is a problem in children’s engagement in the criminal justice system in any event, which will be exacerbated by their involvement in written procedures. I will not go any further at this stage, because I will come back to this point on clause 30, but that is the outline of my concerns and why I commend amendment 95 to the Committee.
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