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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

Our Amendments 116A and 116B are also probing amendments. We suggest that a statutory minimum of purposeful activity should be required for those detained in youth custody. When this area was debated in another place the amendment put forward there proposed to insert a statutory minimum of 30 hours per week of education and skills training to be provided. That was rejected by the Minister there on the grounds that it was too prescriptive and that some people might have wider needs, such as drug detoxification or behaviour programmes. As the Minister in the other place raised drug detoxification, it would be very helpful if the Minister in this House could write to noble Lords giving some data on the numbers of those in youth custody who require drug detoxification because it is a very specific and important area. We have taken the Minister’s suggestions on board and have produced a new set of amendments. While they still prescribe a fixed minimum of 30 hours, this 30 hours could now include many different forms of beneficial work, which might be study or vocational training, psychotherapy or substance abuse treatment, or even just reading. They would all come under the 30 hours of purposeful activity. We are very concerned that those detained in youth accommodation should receive the best possible chance to improve their level of education. The Minister in the other place appeared to reject these amendments as being too prescriptive. Perhaps the Minister will correct me if I am wrong. Is it not the case that secure training centres already have a 25-hour target and for those of school age in young offender institutions the target is 15 hours? What proportion of prisoners achieve the target number of hours? In the previous debate the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned an extract from a statement by the Minister in the other place dealing with statistics from 5 November 2008 which, as he said, show a range of hours in young offender institutions, ranging from 19.8 in Werrington to 5.3 in Glen Parva. Eighteen of the 21 YOIs were not reaching the 15-hour target, some by a very wide margin. So the Minister will understand why we feel that the added strength of having this set out on the face of the Bill would be very helpful. Our concerns are perhaps exacerbated by the appalling statistics on even the basic literacy and numeracy of those detained in youth accommodation. Statistics from 2007 show that 48 per cent of prisoners had a reading age of 11 or below; 65 per cent had math skills below those of an 11 year-old; and 82 per cent had handwriting skills at the level of 11 years or below. These statistics are shocking and so I beg to move.