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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 80: 80: After Clause 53, insert the following new Clause— ““Treatment of 17 year-olds as children for remand purposes (1) Section 23 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 (c. 54) (remands and committals to local authority accommodation) is amended as follows. (2) In subsection (12), in the definition of ““young person””, for ““seventeen”” substitute ““eighteen””.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this amendment has come to us by way of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. Its purpose is to treat under-18 year-olds as children and young people. During the final days in Committee, we debated the issue in several different guises. The argument is that the Bill fails to address the continued treatment of 17 year-olds as adults for the purposes of bail and remand. It means that at court, 17 year-olds cannot be remanded to local authority accommodation and are automatically remanded to custody if bail is denied. In their response to the consultation paper, Youth Justice—The Next Steps, published in March 2004, the Government first stated their intention to address the situation. The Bail Act 1976 applies in its entirety to children and young people and that throws up the anomaly that those who are 17 years old are still dealt with under adult provisions for the purposes of bail and remand. Therefore, when bail is refused they are automatically rendered in custody and do not have the protective buffer of the option of remand to local authority accommodation and are not subsequently looked after. That means that where the court feels that bail cannot be granted due to the risk of future non-attendance at court appearances, a 17 year-old must be remanded in custody, whereas a 16 year-old would have other options. The Youth Justice Board has supplied statistics indicating that during 2005 and 2006 there were 6,561 episodes of 17 year-olds being remanded in custody. That is a considerable number. There are also human rights considerations. In response to the UK Government’s report on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 2002, the UN committee on that convention recommended that the state party—our Government—review the status of young people 17 years of age for the purposes of remand, with a view to giving special protection to all children under the age of 18. The Standing Committee for Youth Justice points out that there are no obvious grounds for distinguishing between 16 and 17 year-olds in respect of bail and remand decisions. Therefore, the current system may well be seen to be in breach of Article 14, which requires equal treatment on the basis of age. When this issue was raised in Committee, the Minister said that the issue was not straightforward, and I can see that. He said that there was a catalogue of linking factors that our amendments at that stage did not cover. He mentioned in particular the status of 17 year-olds under police bail, which is covered by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. He felt that we would need to re-examine that as well. I accept that we do not cover all the interlinked issues. This is a very limited amendment—that is why we are keeping it as narrow as we are. Were there a Bill before us that dealt with policing issues, we would certainly raise it in that context. When such a Bill comes forward, I guarantee that we will return to these issues in that forum. The point is that where we are on this Bill is not where we might wish to be. We are trying to get the Government to accept that we need a response. It has now been a considerable length of time. I understand that it is a complex issue and that they have been looking at it, but we need to move a little further. I beg to move.