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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I welcome these probing amendments and the contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, to this debate. I concur that in Committee in another place our counterparts debated the possibility of introducing a statutory requirement for 30 hours of education and training in custody. My former honourable friend in the department, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, described how this would be impossible given the need for some young people in custody to participate in other activities such as drug rehabilitation. On that note, I am happy to share with the noble Lord what information we have on that question. Instead, we are concentrating on ensuring through the provisions of this Bill that every young person in juvenile custody will have access to suitable education and training that is aligned to the provision offered in the mainstream learning sector. Amendments 116A and 116B present an ingenious way of addressing the point further by taking the discussion into the question of, ""30 hours per week of purposeful activity"." That activity would include just the sort of varied support that has been described. I know it is obvious, but we cannot require a local authority to deliver the range of activities listed in Amendment 116B. Health activities are commissioned by local primary care trusts, while others are best delivered by the custodial operators themselves. What we are talking about here is education provision. We want local authorities to concentrate on education and training provision because that is what they are good at and that is what they are providing to young people in the mainstream. We want cross-fertilisation between the mainstream and the secure setting. The amendment risks confusing that focus. The amendment could inadvertently mean that a young person ends up with no education or training provision so long as they are engaged in purposeful activity. Moreover, I want to reassure noble Lords that this amendment is not necessary. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, was concerned that young people are sitting in their rooms watching television, which does neither them nor society any good. There has been huge investment in recent years in the youth justice system. The primary purpose as set out in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 is to prevent offending by children and young people. The Youth Justice Board has requirements for engagement in education, training and developmental activities. In its report for 2006-07, to which I have already referred, the average time spent in education was 26.2 hours per person per week. In YOIs, for example, performance targets are set for the time that young people spend out of their room and there are wider activities that they must participate in such as family visits, religious activities and association time. Our overriding aim in this Bill is to ensure that education and training in juvenile custody is secured by the local authority as the expert commissioner for these services. Local authorities will work with custodial operators to ensure that education and training is fully integrated into wider custodial regimes managed by the custodial operators in order to best meet young peoples’ needs, and this is much like the arrangements we already have for the provision of healthcare services via primary care trusts. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to the role of the voluntary sector and, in particular, to the voluntary education scheme in Feltham; I think that is a tremendous scheme. I would very much like to see third sector volunteers more widely involved and I welcome the opportunity to say that here. We will certainly consult third sector organisations about how best to reflect their role in the system that we aim to create. That is an important point to make. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friend Lady Blackstone spoke about the importance of continuity. The Bill is at one with that because it creates the expectation that the home local authority—which, in some ways, is an entirely new legal concept—will ensure that when a young person is released back into the community there is a formal system for picking them up and making sure that their education is continued. The host local authority must have regard to the completion of courses, which takes up the concern raised by noble Lords. I understand—people will remind me of this—that young people stay for an average of only three or four months, and not all courses are three or four months or less. It is therefore important that there is continuity; that is why the information sharing provisions are so important. I accept that these are probing amendments but I hope that I have answered the noble Lord’s questions. As I have said, I shall be happy to write to him about drug detoxification.