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Education: Young People in Custody

My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to make my maiden speech on such an important topic. I would like to see the DfES consultation lead to a new and explicit commitment to include alcohol education for young people in custody. This aspect of education is often completely overlooked or tacked on as an afterthoughtto substance misuse programmes which focus on drugs. I should first declare various interests. Until March this year I was a trustee of the Alcohol Education and Research Council, and until September 2006 was the chief executive of the Portman Group, an industry-funded body encouraging responsible behaviour by consumers and drinks producers. The Portman Group’s then charitable arm, the Drinkaware Trust, funded a project at Winchester prison where alcohol education sessions were run by the charity Alcohol Concern. The Drinkaware Trust is now wholly independent from the Portman Group, and is still funded by the industry but not controlled by it, which is the right arrangement and I was very pleased to have been associated with that development. Young people in custody need a better understanding of how alcohol affects their behaviour, because it could help to prevent them reoffending. We do not know how many young people are in custody because of alcohol-related offences. It is reasonableto assume that many of them would not be there if they had not committed offences while under the influence. The youth lifestyles survey found a strong relationship between drunkenness and offending, albeit not a causal one. A much higher proportion of offenders aged 12 to 17 were found to be frequent drinkers than non-offenders. Alcohol-related crime costs this country £7.3 billion a year. If alcohol education could help reduce the level of reoffending, those costs would begin to come down. The second reason why these young people need alcohol education, whatever their offence, is that they are likely to have missed out on it at school. It is part of the national curriculum. However, as we have already heard, one survey found that 83 per cent of boys in youth offender institutions had been excluded from school. Alcohol education is not by itself a magic solution, but it can play a vital part in helping to inform and motivate personal responsibility. The Drinkaware Trust publishes an excellent resource called Streetwise, and I understand that tentative discussions are under way to adapt it for a youth offender audience. I encourage the Department for Education and Skills to get involved in this project. My final point is that interventions on alcohol need to be specifically identified, with dedicated resources. A survey in Winchester prison revealedthat although 49 per cent said that they would like to make use of an alcohol counselling service, amazingly 37 per cent of that group were not eligible for it because they did not also have a drug problem. Alcohol misuse alone did not qualify for help. Similarly, in the school curriculum there is sometimes a tendency in PSHE lessons to concentrate on illegal drugs and forget about alcohol. ““Substance misuse”” is often interpreted as meaning drugs not including alcohol. The pendulum should not swing the other way and give alcohol undue prominence or blame. Alcohol is legal, drinking is normal and in moderation can even be beneficial. But young people in custody are more likely to come from disadvantaged backgrounds, including those with alcohol problems. Like over90 per cent of adults in this country, they too will drink, so must be given the opportunity to learn how to do so without causing harm to themselves or others. The average time that a young person remains in custody is four months. That is surely enough time for them to benefit from some alcohol education. I hope that the review by the Department for Education and Skills will take this issue on board.