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Gareth Myatt

I am grateful for this opportunity to debate the very tragic death of Gareth Myatt, to ensure that the lessons that should be learned are learned, and that Gareth’s mother, Pam, knows that other children and young people will have more safeguards. Gareth’s death was a terrible event in which a 15-year-old boy, 4 ft 10 in tall, weighing 6½ stone, was restrained by three members of staff and died. The details of what happened are harrowing. He went into Rainsbrook secure training centre in Northamptonshire on Friday 16 April 2004. He was restrained the first evening that he was there and then again on the Monday evening over, of all things, a row about a sandwich toaster. It was not just a tragedy; it was a scandal that it was possible for such a slight incident to escalate into the death of a boy. However, there is a second scandal in all this: the complete stonewalling of attempts by virtually everyone concerned about what goes on in the system to try to get some improvements made in the regime that led to Gareth’s death. I pay tribute at the outset to the organisations that have campaigned on the issue—in particular Inquest, which supported Gareth’s mother to ensure that all the details of her son’s death were set out at the inquest in Northamptonshire, and the Howard League for Penal Reform. As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have been unable to raise questions in Parliament about Gareth’s death because of the sub judice rule. There was only the briefest of official Home Office statements, and for three and a half years there has been no calling to account of the Executive over what happened to Gareth. Despite all the anxieties about the risks of the regime that led to his death, that regime has now been relaxed to lower the threshold for the use of restraint, which is why there is such anger about statutory instrument No. 1709. I want to go through some of what happened to Gareth, so that the full horror is on the record. The summing up by Judge Richard Pollard, who presided at the inquest, set out the sequence of events. Gareth was the last person to use the unit’s sandwich toaster on the Sunday evening and took exception when he was asked to clean it up. ““You clear it up,”” he told staff. He was asked to go to his room, and the CCTV footage shows him calmly waiting to go to his room, where he was locked in. Shortly afterwards, he was visited by two members of staff—a man and a woman—to discuss his behaviour. He told them to get out of the room because they had no right to be there. He was then told that, because he was not calming down, the staff needed to take some stuff out of his room, and they began doing just that. They took out a magazine, then some papers and pencils. The staff said, ““You’re not doing what we asked you, so I don’t see why should have these.”” They then took another piece of paper that had Gareth’s mother’s new mobile phone number on it, and he shouted at them—I am sure that you will stop me if this is unparliamentary, Mr. Deputy Speaker—““You’re not fucking taking that,”” and then ““Don’t take my mum’s phone number.””