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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, briefly, I endorse the brilliant speech of my noble friend Lady Linklater of Butterstone. Seeing the amendment on the Marshalled List reminds me of the film, ““Groundhog Day””. When I hear the Minister's response, that feeling may well be intensified. He must accept that we keep coming back to this issue because we know how wrong it is. I very much believe in doing what works. If we want to stop young children behaving in an antisocial way, we must do what works. All the evidence and all the research shows that you stop children behaving in that way not by humiliating them but by building up their self-confidence and self-worth, because it is the destruction of their self-worth by their experiences that has led to their behaviour. Unfortunately, ““shock, horror”” stories about 10 year-olds behaving in an appalling way is the sort of thing that the media love. I would love to see on the front page of a newspaper one of these days a wonderful, positive story about how a young person's life has been turned around by being treated in the proper way, with proper understanding, family support, analysis of the background that led to that behaviour and the support and help that they need to help them to return to the sort of behaviour that we would like and to have a fulfilling and useful life. I do not see that happening in the near future, but we need a lead from the Government. We have seen so many good things from the Government in helping children and supporting families, but they seem to have a blind spot about this issue. I promise the Government that those of us who have spoken, and many who are resisting speaking because of the late hour, will keep coming back to this matter until they take notice of all the powerful research that shows how very wrong and ineffective this policy is.