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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I warmly support my noble friend’s amendment, and I know how much we are all longing to get through this Bill and get home tonight. I do not propose to be very long but I must say that I remember well the debates that we had on the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill in 2003—five years ago—when we were trying to amend the Crime and Disorder Act. Now we know a bit more of the results of what was then under debate—the presumption of reporting restrictions being in place and the change from the presumption that they would not be in place, so that there was an open day for local newspapers and others to report on the affairs and events of children coming before the court charged with anti-social behaviour offences. I remind the House that we are talking about children and low-level behaviour that simply constitutes a civil offence and has nothing to do with criminal behaviour—not, at least, until an ASBO has been breached. What we know about anti-social behaviour orders being reported is not good. Back in 1933 it was understood how damaging the effects of publicity can be on children. It was argued then, and remained so until the Crime and Disorder Act, that it should be left to the court to decide whether it was appropriate for reporting to take place, and that was based on the evidence on whether it would be in the interests of the child so to do. I am grateful to see the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in his place. He knows a lot about children and that our aim at all times is to act in the best interests of the child. Unless we do so we are not acting in the best interests of our society. Furthermore, in 2005, we had the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act when reporting restrictions were then going to be lifted on breaches of ASBOs. That was when naming and shaming came into its own—the humiliation of children. It takes no one in the Chamber, let alone those outside, to know that you do not teach a child anything through humiliation. If anything you do more damage. That is the evidence. The characteristics of the child’s behaviour, their background and needs, and the information available to the court are necessarily to be taken into account or relevant when a local paper writes its story. In fact, it usually leads to complete disregard of the circumstances of the child and his offence, let alone his needs. Anyone in this Chamber who has worked with children who end up in court will know that we are almost invariably dealing with children who are already troubled. They are moving from being troubled children to being children in trouble. We know that they are more likely than not to have learning difficulties, perhaps to have disorders such as autism or mental health issues or to suffer from deprivation of one kind or another. We humiliate them by putting them on the front page or the inner pages of newspapers. In the past five years or so, we have seen plenty of evidence of what appears in the newspapers about such children, which is deeply distasteful and, in the long run, deeply damaging. It is also likely, although it has not been tested fully in the courts, that several articles of the UNCRC and possibly the European Convention on Human Rights will be breached in this process. However, we know that when such publicity occurs it is likely to cause great distress, not only to the child who is being humiliated, but to his family. Even worse, it is possible that if the damage is not distressing to the child, the damage is of a different sort; namely, it becomes a sort of badge of honour for the child who is in trouble. There is evidence of that. What good are we doing him, let alone our communities? Children in trouble need help to stop the behaviour—it is, I remind the House, at this stage still low-level—so it does not lead to a breach of the ASBO, which then turns into criminal behaviour and into the process in which we criminalise children. In the notes I had at an earlier stage, I read with interest that when this issue was being debated in the other place, Hazel Blears MP said: "““Publicity is not to punish or shame the individual””—" there was a bit of denial there already— "““but is there to let the community know that action has been taken and to engage local people in helping to monitor the conditions that have been set out in the ASBO””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 23/3/06; col. 230.]" I have never known such an example of self-deception in my life. I do not think that even Hazel Blears can have really believed what she was saying. Finally, we all now recognise that, over the past four or five years, aided and abetted by the naming and shaming and the publicity process, we are now used to the sort of language that I wish had never entered our lexicon about young people. We now talk about ““feral youth”” and ““hoodies””. We talk about troubled children and children in trouble in a most damaging and distasteful way. All of us in this House should turn our back on such behaviour and reject it on our own part to our children. I therefore support this amendment, and I hope the rest of the House does so wholeheartedly.