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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, peering through the smoke and gloom of 11 years of new Labour government, increasingly authoritarian as it is, there is a shining beacon—a light—and it was the passing of the Human Rights Act and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into English law. There is no point in having rights unless there is a means of enforcing them. Similarly, the Government have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—rights that are given to young people under the age of 18. That is useless unless the child has available the ability to enforce those rights. That is what the amendment is about. It is about making available the provision of legal aid and legal representation, which will be of assistance not just to the person before the court but to the court itself, because the magistrate or judge who is dealing with a young person wants to do the best for that young person, and wants to ensure that the sentence passed is the most constructive and the least negative one that can be achieved. That is done through informed argument and discussion by those who know something about it. To be complacent about the fact that a quarter of those entitled to legal aid do not claim it is, quite honestly, an ignominious retreat from the principles under which the Human Rights Act was made law in this country. We on these Benches wholeheartedly support the amendments. Amendments Nos. 6 to 10 are confined to the making of a YRO. That is a serious step in itself; it is not the beginning of the process of children appearing before the court. Amendment No. 86 addresses a wider issue—the right of a child to have legal aid in any criminal proceedings. Amendment No. 86 is very carefully put together. It creates a presumption that a person under 18 should have legal aid; it also envisages circumstances whereby that presumption can be rebutted in the appropriate case. Surely that is the right balance—that the young person should have a presumption in his or her favour to have proper legal representation, and only in certain circumstances, the onus of proving which lies on the other side, could that right be taken away. Hand in hand with rights granted by this Government is the need to enforce those rights. That is what these amendments maintain.