---

Secure Training Centres

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, for arranging this debate, for her dedication in visiting the secure training centres and finding out what they are really like and, most of all, for sharing with this House her long expertise in childcare, her deep understanding of the needs of children and her clear vision from that perspective of why what has been set up and delivered through the secure training centres is so very wrong. Thanks to the heroic and persistent work of Sally Keeble MP and the very searching work done by the inquiry team led by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, we now know enough to be sure that something is deeply wrong. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, says in his introduction that the way children are treated in penal custody would in other circumstances,"““trigger a child protection investigation and could even result in criminal charges””." In its visits to STCs the inquiry found in one or other of them a lack of privacy in that staff could see the children having their showers. It found that the method of restraint used in STCs can involve the use of pain, particularly to the nose, and that restraint was used 3,289 times in 2003 for fewer than 200 children at any one time. Figures for one STC also showed that, within an 18-month period, single separation—which is a euphemism for solitary confinement—was used 285 times. STCs now use handcuffs, and Sally Keeble MP found that handcuffs were used 11 times in one month in one STC last year. This is a grim and dismal picture. This treatment is being meted out to children as young as 12—not tough, well-balanced, secure and happy children; of course not. Seventy-seven per cent of them, or nearly eight out of 10, were designated by the Youth Justice Board in September 2005 as ““vulnerable””. It may be that some observers, people on the outside who are concerned with childcare and crime prevention, are confused. They may think, ““How can this be going on when these children are placed by the Youth Justice Board, which is a very respectable body run by people well known for their knowledge in the field””. Perhaps people will think that it is not as bad as it sounds—perhaps they will think that it is alright. So it is important to say clearly that it is not alright—it is absolutely not alright. A Youth Justice Board document called Strategy for the Secure Estate for Children and Young People, refers, on page 5, under the heading ““Achievements””, to"““the expansion of secure training centre . . . provision by 144 places””." That is set out as an achievement. When we read that, we have to ask what can be guiding the board in making its decisions about the care of the vulnerable children entrusted to it. That addition of 144 places was hailed as an achievement not in a vacuum but after there had been deaths, after the information that restraints had been used in the STCs 11,593 times since 1999 and, presumably, with a knowledge of the strip searching and the use of handcuffs, as well as the knowledge of the criticisms by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Council of Europe human rights commissioner. Since then, more contracts have been signed for units to accommodate young girls, some of them with babies. A United States judge recently talked about the moral blindness creeping into the criminal justice system. Is it, we must ask, infecting the Youth Justice Board? I make it clear that that is a criticism not of the multinational security companies that provide these places but of those who contract with them. Finally, we must ask why we here in Parliament have not been more determined in our efforts to monitor what is going on and bring abuses to light. Here we face a difficulty, because information is very hard to come by. Much of the information that we have heard tonight comes not from official reports nor from inspection reports by the Commission for Social Care Inspection, but from parliamentary Questions and a Howard League inquiry. We do not have the sort of information that we have about prisons, which comes to us from reports of the Chief Inspector of Prisons. The Youth Justice Board glossy documents are not informative. On 26 January, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, wrote to the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, following up an earlier letter that said:"““The Committee’s report on compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child concluded that the level of physical restraint experienced by children in detention represented an unacceptable contravention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child””." In our subsequent letter, we said:"““Regular updates on the staffing levels Secure Training Centres, as well as on the use of restraints and non-accidental injuries (including self-harm) would enable Parliament, and the Committee, to exercise an effective scrutiny role on a matter which is significant in the protection of the human rights of particularly vulnerable children””." We went on to ask if the Home Office could report to Parliament with regularly updated information, perhaps every three months. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell the House when the Home Office is likely to reply to that suggestion and if the reply is likely to be positive, as I very much hope it will be.