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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I hope that by the time I finish speaking, the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, will think that I have made the necessary statement. His amendment seeks to broaden the responsible officer’s duty to consider an offender’s religious needs to include those of the offender’s immediate family. He is again exploring whether a young person would be in breach of a youth rehabilitation order where he was prevented from meeting the terms of the order by issues which had arisen that were beyond his control. In that event, and if that was proved to the satisfaction of the relevant officer—I am not talking about formal proof—then there would be no breach. There can be a breach only if there is no reasonable excuse. If there is a reasonable excuse, as I understand it, it follows that there can be no breach. The noble Lord went on to ask whether a young person would be in breach of an order if he was dependent on his family to fulfil the terms of the order—for example, for transport—and this was not forthcoming due to the religious beliefs of his family. The noble Lord kindly mentioned the letter that my noble friend Lord Bassam wrote to him. The letter emphasised, as we have tried to do consistently in debates on YROs, that the Bill assumes that local management discretion is essential if we are to deal fairly with issues surrounding breach. We cannot say that in all cases where an offender claims that a breach of a requirement was a result of his family’s religious beliefs, the responsible officer will at once accept that as a complete answer. The responsible officer may well nearly always accept such an explanation, but there may be circumstances where it will not be appropriate to do so and the matter will have to be considered individually. It might not be acceptable where, for example, the offender and his parents have different religious beliefs or one parent has religious beliefs different from those of the other. I may be accused of being far-fetched but the far-fetched examples show that every claim cannot automatically be accepted by the responsible officer. In other words, he would have to manage such an issue. We have ensured that the responsible officer has the flexibility to deal with the full range of issues that can arise when dealing with young people. The crux of the matter is that this includes the power to assess what constitutes a reasonable excuse for non-compliance. We have deliberately placed the responsible officer at the heart of the process. He knows the young person and his family and is able to exercise his professional judgment to take into account the full range of issues which may contribute to non-compliance. He can, and will, take into account those issues which may be beyond the control of the young person. Moreover, the parents of a young person will be involved in making the arrangements for the interventions under the YRO. The responsible officer will have contacted the parents and gained their agreement where they are required to play a significant role. Of course, it is right that the religious beliefs of the young person should be taken into account in the delivery of the requirements within the YRO. That is why the responsible officer must have regard to them when delivering those requirements. However, we do not believe that we should extend, in the statute, such a consideration to include the religious beliefs of the family of the offender. It is common sense that the duty of the responsible officer is to the young person. When sentencing, the court has to take into account the young person’s family circumstances, as well as the offender’s religious beliefs, before making a YRO. In practice, we would expect the youth offending team also to have regard to the young person’s family circumstances, in so far as that is practicable. I hope that I have done enough to satisfy the noble Lord that, in practice, what he wants will happen, provided that the claim made by the offender who has not turned up—to use his example—is genuinely based on something such as his parents’ beliefs.