HC Deb 12 April 1961 vol 638 cc426-46

Amendment made: In page 40, line 18, column 3 [Schedule 5], at end insert: In section nineteen, in subsection (1), the words "not exceeding twelve in the aggregate".—[Mr. Renton.]

12.40 a.m.

Mr. Renton

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I should like to pay tribute to the spirit in which hon. Members on both sides have approached the examination of the Bill at all its stages, and to express the appreciation of my right hon. Friend and of myself for the valuable contributions which have been made to the Bill by the many criticisms and constructive suggestions we have received.

May I mention, without being presumptuous, the part played by the hon. Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon)? Not only does she speak with a considerable knowledge of approved schools, but she has shown tremendous diligence and application in grasping the complicated provisions of the Bill. We are grateful to her for her help. The hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) has spoken, with his great experience as a juvenile court magistrate, and his advice has been most valuable, and the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), speaking with all the authority of a former Home Secretary and a justice of the peace, has often shed kindly light upon us. My hon. Friend the Member fox Ashford (Mr. Deedes) has also made some valuable contributions, in the light of his considerable experience.

Many useful Amendments have been made on points of detail, both in Committee and on Report, but it is fair to say that the Bill preserves the broad principles which it contained when it was first introduced by my right hon. Friend in November. Very shortly, it covers a wide field, but set in the forefront, in the words used by my right hon. Friend in the Second Reading debate, is the fact that it is designed to make more effective and appropriate measures of detention and punishment for young offenders."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th November, 1960; Vol. 630, c. 562.] Some of these measures may be more severe and more restrictive than existing measures; few are likely to turn out to be less severe. It is not the intention of the Bill to make the path of young offenders any easier, and there is nothing in it to deprive courts of the power to inflict severe punishment where severe punishment is required.

The Bill will prohibit the imprisonment of young persons under the age of 16, restrict the imprisonment of those under 21, and reduce the term of a borstal sentence from three to two years. Those alone are very important changes in our criminal law. On the other hand, the minimum age for a borstal sentence is lowered from 16 to 15, and the regime of borstal training will, we hope, be more effective than in the past. There will be a wider use of detention centres and, under Clause 13, compulsory aftercare for those who have served in such centres. The maximum fines which children and young persons, and their parents, can be ordered to pay are increased, and the provisions of the law with regard to attendance centres are being strengthened.

Finally, I must call attention to the important provisions in Clause 20 and the Third Schedule, which provide for the extension of compulsory after-care for additional categories of people sentenced to imprisonment and for their supervision on release, and for their recall by order of a magistrates' court where they fail to comply with the requirements of supervision. It may be some time before these provisions can be brought fully into effect, but they are potentially of great reformative value in dealing with the everlasting problem of the recidivist. It is obvious that the implementation of the Bill depends upon the building of still more detention centres, approved schools, remand centres and prisons but, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, we have a large building programme and we are pressing on with it.

I am confident that the Bill marks a real advance and provides methods flexible enough to enable courts to deal in an approprite way with the great number of offenders who are unfortunately brought before them. The courts should now be able to deal with them in a way which will not only achieve the aim of the protection of society but also the prevention of crime and the reformation of the offender. I believe that it will strengthen the hands of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, the courts, and all those who deal with this difficult matter in such a devoted way in the various establishments where young people have to be treated.

I ask the House to give the Bill a Third Reading.

12.45 a.m.

Miss Alice Bacon (Leeds, South-East)

I was going to begin by saying that I was sorry that we were having to take the Third Reading at such an hour as this. The concluding sentence of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Joint Under-Secretary showed that he also was beginning to feel a little tired after this very long sitting.

The choice before us was either to have the Third Reading at a late hour tonight or at a late hour tomorrow night. I am very sorry that we have only this choice before us, because it means that some of my hon. Friends who, I know, would like to have taken part in this debate, are unable to be with us. Some of those hon. Friends not only sat through every moment of the Committee stage, but have taken their duties very seriously indeed and visited many of the institutions with which we have been dealing in discussion of this Bill.

I wish to thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for what he said about some of us on this side of the House. I have been under the disadvantage of being neither a lawyer nor a magistrate and I have not had the experience that that would give to deal with the Bill, although on occasion it might be an advantage in considering these matters not to be a lawyer but a layman, or should I say, a laywoman. I wish to thank the hon. and learned Gentleman and the Attorney-General for the way in which they gave us detailed explanations on points raised in Committee. We did not always agree with them and sometimes we thought that the explanations were not quite adequate, but I am sure that they did everything they could to put the details of the Bill before us.

I said on Second Reading that this was a rather disappointing Bill. In some ways it still is. There are certain provisions in the Bill which we welcome, but nevertheless, I feel that an opportunity has been missed to give us a much more far-reaching Measure. Although it has many other things in it, the main aim of the Bill is eventually to keep young people under the age of 21 out of prison. That is to be commended, but we must not forget that one of the aims of the 1948 Criminal Justice Act was also to keep young people under 21 out of prison, yet, twelve years afterwards, we have not reached that target.

One of the disappointing things in this Bill is in Clause 1. We have talked about that at some length tonight, but I still feel that the proposal to reduce the borstal age from 16 to 15 without the provision we sought to put in to ensure that young people of 15 would not be spending time on remand in prison, is to be regretted. We are very pleased to hear that there are to be more detention centres. We shall look at the speed with which they are built and the way in which they develop. Detention centres are comparatively new. They are an innovation and we shall be watching their development because in this Bill great store is set by them.

I regret very much indeed the inclusion of Clauses 14 to 19. Those Clauses deal with approved schools. This is the only part of the Bill which deals with matters which come under the jurisdiction of the Children's Department rather than the Prison Commission. Until now approved schools have never been regarded as part of a Criminal Justice Act, but as part of a Children and Young Persons Act. It might have been better to have left Clauses 14 to 19 out of the Bill altogether and to have given much more consideration to the whole question of approved schools in order to include them in some more far-reaching proposals in the further Bill dealing with children and young persons which we have been promised.

I do not much like the method of the temporary removal from the approved school. However, when I mentioned this earlier tonight I thought that the Home Secretary nodded his assent to my suggestion that he might look at the whole question again in order to see whether something more far-reaching could be done in the further Bill that is contemplated.

The right hon. Gentleman is taking powers in this Measure to give directions to the managers of approved schools and, in some ways, changing the constitution of the managements. We approve of that although, as I say, we would have preferred something more far-reaching. We very much welcome the provision about attendance centres because, as I have already said, I believe that residential institutions, particularly for young people—although it is true also of adults—create more problems than they solve. Anything that can be done to keep young people in their own homes, even if they have to undergo some kind of training, is to be welcomed.

I welcome, too, what the Home Secretary has said about the building of more remand centres. These are very important, indeed. They are not just places to which people can be sent on remand, but places where they will be observed in order to enable magistrates and others to decide what is the best course to take.

We have had a fairly lengthy discussion this evening on the Prison Commission and the proposal to bring the Commission more closely in touch with the Home Office. One thing I very much welcomed in the right hon. Gentleman's speech on the subject—although I am not sure that it could not have been done without interfering with the Prison Commissioners—was his statement that it was his intention to co-ordinate the approved school system, the borstal system and the detention centres.

There is at present a sort of artificial distinction between the approved schools and the borstals, and we were not able on Report to discuss some of the anomalies now existing in the provisions for approved schools and those for borstals. It is usually recognised that a borstal sentence is more serious and severe than is a sentence to an approved school. The changes the Bill will make to the borstals will mean that anyone sent there will be there for a shorter period than if sent to an approved school. The Bill reduces the borstal period from three years to two, but the approved-school period remains at three years. As we pointed out in Committee, it might be the desire and aim of someone in an approved school so to misbehave himself as to get sent to borstal and get out again more quickly.

I am very sorry that an Amendment by which we sought to rectify that position was not called, but I certainly welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about co-ordinating the approved school, the borstals and the detention centres. There is at present a sort of artificial division between them. When one visits approved schools—particularly the closed schools—one sees very little difference between them and the borstals—particularly the open borstals—and anything that is done to alter that situation will toe welcome.

The Bill contains important after-care provisions. I need not here stress the very great importance of after-care. An adequate system means saving an ex-prisoner from going back into prison. I believe that in this country, after-care is made much more difficult by the very nature of our prison system. I had not been into many prisons until about eighteen months ago, but since then I have visited a number, and all hon. Members get letters from prisoners.

The prisons which we have, with their artificial and enclosed atmosphere, make it much more difficult for the average prisoner to resume life in the outside world. I believe that what is needed very much is a more realistic attitude towards work for prisoners in prison: but our prisons are so constructed that it is well nigh impossible for the prisoner to undertake the kind of work which corresponds to that which he would do outside the prison. If we can get away from the one building type of prison—the grim building constructed in the last century—to an open type camp where there are adequate workshops and small factories it will be all for the good. They should be places where prisoners can work, not only for themselves, but also to help towards their own upkeep and, perhaps, in time to help to compensate for the crimes they have committed. That would be a very great advance.

The 1948 Criminal Justice Act made many provisions which have not been carried into effect even today, and that serves to show that it is not what an Act of Parliament lays down that is important but the speed with which it is implemented, the speed with which its terms are carried out. If what I have said is true of the 1948 Act, it can be equally true of this Bill after it has become law. In other words, it is not what is in the Bill which is all-important, but the speed with which we get on with providing the detention centres, the remand centres, and the other things.

We should delude ourselves if we thought tonight that thinking of the young offender was all that was needed to solve all our trouble. The main aim is to keep such a person out of trouble, and that is something for which much more is needed. We on this side support the Bill so far as it goes. We hoped that it would go further, but we look now to the Home Secretary to see that the provisions of the Bill are carried out with the utmost speed and energy. If that is done, the Bill will at least be a step forward.

12.59 a.m.

Commander Anthony Courtney (Harrow, East)

I have listened to this debate with close attention, and I spent many hours in Committee upstairs. I hope even at this hour, that I may be allowed to make two points which I consider to be of substance. First, I want to deal with the provisions in the Bill for attendance centres. We discussed that matter in Committee—perhaps not so fully or deeply as we might have wished—but we did not at that time have available the detailed report of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, nor has it since become available.

That report made a check on, I think, nine of the forty attendance centres which exist in this country at present. If we had had that opportunity I think that we might have paid more attention on the Floor of the House tonight to this particular aspect of the Bill. It is worthy of note that the statistics show that 39 per cent. of boys going through these centres suffer from lack of parental control and discipline. We all know that that is one of the basic causes of juvenile delinquency. It is perhaps, of a little more concern that no less than 90 per cent. of the boys who went through these attendance centres had received reports of conduct at school of either "Good" or "Fair". I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who, undoubtedly, has studied the report in its draft form, will bring this important matter to the notice of his right hon. Friend the Minister of Education.

I am concerned in reading that 18 per cent. of these boys incur summary punishment at attendance centres for breaches of discipline. I associate that with the fact that the greatest sanction which can be brought to bear on these boys is to increase the number of attendances by reducing the ordinary two-hour period to one hour, therefore doubling the number of Saturday afternoons on which they have to attend.

I am not sure whether we should be satisfied with the 62 per cent. success rate set out in the Cambridge report. We should ask ourselves whether the deterrent effects of attendance centres on young people, with entry now to be reduced to the age of 10, and the disciplinary powers available to officers in charge of attendance centres, are adequate.

I believe it to be true that the great majority of these centres are administered by the police under the Home Office. I should like to see a growing relationship between the local uniformed police officers and the young people in their charge in attendance centres in order, perhaps, to return to these uniformed police officers some of the respect which, we know, they have lost among young people over recent years.

My second point concerns detention centres. I maintain that the efficacy of these centres, even on the limited experience of the four which have been available for some years, as a deterrent, is as yet unproved. They have demonstrably shown no ability to counter the increase in juvenile crime with which, I presume, it is the main object of the Bill to compete. The figure of 58 per cent. success rate in detention centres is scarcely a proof of the efficacy of these centres as a deterrent to inmates from being sentenced to further periods of punishment.

When speaking yesterday, my right hon. Friend referred to rumours that the regime in detention centres has weakened. I have done some investigations into this and I believe that there has been some erosion of that "strictest possible regime" referred to yesterday by my right hon. Friend, who in his further remarks quoted assurances from the Prison Commissioners, who have been mentioned in another context, that all is in fact well.

I should like to ask my right hon. Friend two questions, one of which is specific and germane to this matter. Is it a fact that at the Goudhurst senior detention centre the practice of the inmates moving at the double between their various exercises and classes was in force for the first five—perhaps six—years of the operation of that institution, and is it a further fact that that has now been abolished? I would ask my right hon. Friend at the same time whether he considers that that is not in itself one weakening of the detention centre regime to which he referred yesterday.

My second question is whether my right hon. Friend considers that in a penal institution whose main object is deterrence, where the inmates are smart in uniform, the standards of discipline to which he and we all aspire are best maintained by a disciplinary staff in plain clothes and, from my own observation, somewhat variegated plain clothes at that. I consider, having visited Goudhurst—and I said this in a note which I sent to my right hon. Friend—that the discipline at that institution is what I as a retired naval officer would describe as sloppy. I believe, furthermore, from conversations with the disciplinary staff that the erosion to which I previously referred has perhaps extended slightly to the morale of the disciplinary staff themselves.

I would refer my right hon. Friend to a letter in The Times today which refers to a similar phenomenon in prisons. It may be said that there is no basis of comparison for a statement such as I have just made. I do not believe that that is true. There is a basis of comparison. At Portsmouth there are naval detention quarters which have been in continuous operation for over fifty years and which have evolved continuously as the most modern reformative—

Mr. Bruce Millan (Glasgow, Craigton)

On a point of order. Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman really making a Third Reading speech, Mr. Deputy-Speaker? Is he not raising details which are quite out of order on Third Reading? They are not in the Bill.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray)

I appreciate the point of order which has been raised. I myself was beginning to think that the hon. and gallant Member was going a little outside the proper scope of a Third Reading speech. Perhaps he will confine himself closely to what is in the Bill.

Commander Courtney

I beg your pardon, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and I apologise to the House for, perhaps, slightly deviating from the point, but, if I may say this in conclusion, I believe that the Bill contains many admirable provisions. I think that we must consider all these written provisions in the context of the failure mentioned by the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) to compete with the rising scale of juvenile crime. None of these written provisions will be effective until properly supervised by my right hon. Friend, and I ask him to take into consideration the points I have mentioned and to make sure that this admirable Measure is properly administered in practice.

1.8 a.m.

Mr. Alan Fitch (Wigan)

I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and hon. and right hon. Members will appreciate the quality of brevity at this late hour. I intend to be very brief. I believe that the Bill is a step in the right direction, because it is an attempt to deal in a constructive manner with juvenile crime. It contains experiments, and I believe that we must be prepared to experiment with different methods of dealing with crime.

The detention centre is one experiment, but, on the other hand, if we find that certain experiments are proving to be failures we must have the courage to scrap them. I think that the Government have shown commendable common sense in dealing with the problem of crime at the right end, that is, with the young offender, because if we can reduce crime there I believe that our battle if perhaps not won is at least well on the way to being won.

Of course, all of us who have taken part in the debates on the various stages of the Bill have our own ideas as to which part of the Bill is most important. To me, one of the most important aspects of the Bill is the provision contained in Clause 20 and in the Third Schedule, that is, the compulsory supervision or after-care. I believe that this has been the most neglected part of our penal system. At present, 90 per cent. of the people who are discharged from our prisons are outside the scope of compulsory supervision. They can receive voluntary help but, however good it is, I do not believe that voluntary help will solve the problem.

I hope that this is the first of many efforts which the Government will make with a view eventually to including all prisoners within the scope of compulsory supervision. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) said, this is a very important part of penal reform. A fair percentage of those who go to prison are there not because they are wicked but because they are weak, unstable and inadequate. In other words, they cannot cope with the problems, difficulties and temptations with which ordinary people manage to cope. Any agency which helps them to find a job and to readjust themselves in their domestic and social lives—helps them when they need it most—is doing essential work.

But this is still in its experimental stage. Can the Home Secretary give us any idea whether compulsory supervision has proved to be successful? I hope that it has, for it is an experiment worth undertaking. I do not want to go outside the scope of the Bill but I hope that it will be the forerunner of a more comprehensive after-care scheme along the lines advocated by the Pakenham-Thompson Committee.

Another aspect of the Bill which appeals to me is a Clause which we discussed yesterday which raised the penalties for those who assist in escapes from prison. The Joint Under-Secretary of State gave some startling figures. I have heard from people in authority that this sort of thing takes place on a large scale and has become almost a business; a gang leader is sometimes prepared to pay a large sum of money for the escape of a former member of his gang whom he regards as a key man. I heard of a case in which an expert safe breaker was in prison and it was estimated that his ex-leader had spent up to £1,000 in trying to facilitate his escape. This is an important matter, and we must stamp on it.

I share the doubts expressed by my hon. Friend the member for Leeds, South-East about Clauses 14 to 19. The prison welfare officer is doing a good job but—using the word in its best sense—there is room for tightening up. The situation in after-care in approved schools seems to be a little haphazard and we need a central after-care agency. I am also concerned about the composition of the managers of approved schools. Probably there should be more control over their selection.

We are engaged in a very difficult task. Before the war many of us held the view that crime was the result of poverty. We have been proved wrong, because crime is even more prevalent in an affluent society. I believe—we must be honest—that the Home Secretary and his team have done a good job, but I hope they will not rest there. I hope that this is the beginning of other constructive Measures.

I do not want to be presumptuous, but I should like to thank the Joint Under-Secretary. Today is the first time for a long while than I have seen him smile. Throughout the proceedings in Committee he has shown patience and tolerance towards some of us who may at times have aggravated him. Membership of the Standing Committee has been an experience which I have enjoyed. I am sure that I have gained in many ways from it.

1.16 a.m.

Mr. William Roots (Kensington, South)

I welcome the provisions of Clause 20, which deals with after-care. It is the first effective and positive step that we have had, and I do not believe it is possible to exaggerate its importance. Even leaving aside the philanthropic aspect, on a purely practical basis there is the waste of time and money in imprisoning people without assisting them to become useful members of society or supervising them in the changeover period. The need for such assistance must be obvious.

The Clause also shows the need for a realignment of the existing services; in other words, recognition that, while there is an official task which is commenced in the Clause, there is a very real job for the existing voluntary societies. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will recognise that it is not a question simply of criticism of them or of abandoning their efforts, because Lord Pakenham's Committee demonstrated that there is a very real part for the voluntary societies to play just as there is an important part for the officials. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to indicate that he will examine the realignment and in that way show that this is a first step in the reorganisation of a most important system.

1.19 a.m.

Mr. Deedes

I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots) has said. I have always understood that there was a rôle for the Government in respect of Clause 20 and a rôle for the voluntary organisation. I hope and believe that that scope is unchanged by the provisions of the Bill. There has been some argument about the letter of the law here. I am not sure that we have done justice to the spirit of the proposal, which the Joint Under-Secretary has described as one of potentially great reformative value.

I should like an assurance from my right hon. Friend that the scope for voluntary work is undiminished and no less welcome as a result of the provisions of Clause 20 and the Schedule. While I accept what my hon. Friend says about the need for relating the work of the two sides, Government and voluntary organisations, there is a great deal of imaginative and spontaneous work going on, such as by the Oxford Borstal Group, what was Lord Pakenham's group, which I am not sure is very easily given by any official committee. I hope that we may have some word from my right hon. Friend about the continued rôle of the voluntary societies, which is probably enhanced rather than diminished by the Third Schedule.

1.20 a.m.

Mr. MacColl

I should like to join in the expressions of appreciation of the way in which these proceedings have, at some stages at any rate, been conducted. I do not pretend to agree with everything done by the Government, or with their inflexibility in dealing with some of our proposals, but I am certain that they have been anxious to do what they could to meet what they regarded as reasonable criticisms. I complain only that their ideas and mine about what is reasonable are rather different.

I also express appreciation to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South East (Miss Bacon), under whose firm and vigorous direction I have been carrying out somewhat subsidiary duties as her lieutenant. The Standing Committee owes much to her leadership and direction in examining the Bill.

This is a Bill which everyone wants, and there has been no desire unnecessarily to protract its proceedings. If there has been any such desire it has not been on this side of the House. But it is a shocking commentary on the workings of our Parliamentary system that, despite that, we are finally disposing of the Bill, which is vital to the lives of young people, at this time in the morning. It is shameful that our Parliamentary proceedings are such that a matter such as this, where there is no question of parties being at each other's throats but instead a genuine desire to get to grips with the complicated details of this subject, should have to be dealt with in these conditions and at this length of sitting.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East, has just remarked to me that in a few moments we will have been firmly rooted to these benches, with hardly a break, for ten hours. If physical discomfort were a deterrent, I am certain that very few of us would be stupid enough to repeat the offence. There must be some other deep, psychological drive which leads people to remain in such a ridiculous position of physical discomfort in such circumstances. I do not think that it makes for good legislation to do it, however.

The Bill has a main object and what is, perhaps, a subsidiary object. The main object is that of keeping young offenders out of prison, and it must be achieved both by satisfying public opinion that it can be done and by the Home Secretary's own feelings of what is required. In order to obtain that objective, he has been prepared to make what I regard as not progressive moves but as concessions to the rough and tough school of penal treatment. The other object has been to prevent the re-introduction of flogging, and that, again, is something on which concessions have been made in order to try to draw the teeth of what I regard as the rather fanatical proponents of flogging.

The main defect of the Bill concerns the approved schools. The right hon. Gentleman has not really had any deep consideration of the problem of the future organisation of these schools. The Carlton Inquiry shook him and his Department very violently, and led to what I regard in some ways as panic action to deal with a special case. There has not been any clear and constructive attempt to think out the part which should be played by approved schools in our system, and that is one of the Bill's greatest weaknesses.

By and large, the things I like in the Bill are those which the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) dislikes, and the things he likes are those which I dislike. It is a pity, but in the face of the present rate of delinquency it is understandable, that there should be this obsession with punishment rather than with constructive treatment. Such an attitude is not a step forward.

My view about punishment and discipline and so on is that they are useful to a certain extent, but they are superficial and do not get down to the roots of the problem. To take that line is to play with the problem. The problems of delinquency are much more deeply rooted and we know very little about them and how to tackle them. The problems of the mentally disturbed and maladjusted young offender are not tackled by putting him in a uniform and treating him with naval discipline. That might not do much harm to some of them, but it will not do much good. If we believe that it will, we delude ourselves. Of that I am sure.

During the discussion of the Bill there has been a certain amount of rather coy elusiveness about detention centres, their regime and their variety. The concept of the detention centre has very much changed compared with when the idea was first conceived in 1948. It has now become an all-purpose institution which is to take the place of prison for more or less all young offenders who commit serious offences. That is not what it was originally. Originally, it was designed to deal with a certain type of offender who required rather brisk and breezy treatment.

I am concerned not so much with whether there is to be an adequate geographical covering of the country with detention centres, but with whether there will be enough of enough different types to deal with the wide variety of problems which offenders present. I am worried that, although there may appear to be enough detention centres, there will not in practice be enough places in the kind of detention centres which particular types of offender require.

For example, a boy with a rather dubious heart or a background of rheumatic fever cannot be sent to a detention centre based on the principle of a great deal of physical training in the morning and on all those other devotions to which so many people feel themselves dedicated. I wonder what will be done with that kind of person. We have never been told how the right hon. Gentleman sees the service of detention centres developing and how the system will work and what types of detention centre there will be.

The Bill is valuable and we support it and we have done our best to improve it and, for what it is worth, we wish it well.

Commander Courtney

The hon. Member has made some remarks about naval discipline. Can he explain the 76 per cent. success rate at the Naval Detention Quarters at Portsmouth compared with the 58 per cent. rate at civil detention centres?

Mr. MacColl

The Navy is a highly selective group of people chosen for what is regarded as the Senior Service of the Armed Forces. It is ridiculous to compare the Navy's problem with the kind of problem with which we are dealing when we are dealing with people who have probably been thrown out of not only the Navy, but every other Service and every uniformed youth service and everything else before reaching detention centres. This is a totally different problem and the hon. and gallant Member is kidding himself if he thinks that the brisk and breezy method which can be used for dealing with normal people can be used to deal with subnormal people, those with whom we are concerned in the Bill.

1.30 a.m.

Mr. R. A. Butler

I do not want to detain the House for too long, but I should like to answer some of the points which have been made during the debate on the Third Reading.

I should like to express my thanks to those right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in the discussions. I agree that it is a pity that we have to discuss the Bill late at night, and I thank the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) and the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South East (Miss Bacon) for accommodating the Business of the House by agreeing to take this at this hour. I think that is reasonable, otherwise it would have had to be taken tomorrow.

Mr. MacColl

It is rather like the new Clause which gave a choice of corporal punishment.

Mr. Butler

I should also like to endorse what was said by the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Fitch) about the work of the Joint Under-Secretary of State, both during the Committee stage and on the Floor of the House. Without him we could not have made proper progress with the Bill, and we are very much obliged to him, not least myself. I am also grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General for the help he gave during the Committee stage, and to my other right hon. Friend for his constant attendance, whatever subject it is.

When I look back on the preparations for the Bill, I feel modest about it. It is a Measure which I hope will carry forward a lot of reform. That takes up something which the hon. Lady said. It is not always only the contents of the Bill which matter; it is the effect of the Measure on the general stream of reform. The work, which started with an effort to follow up the Criminal Justice Act, which itself started in the 'thirties under the late Lord Templewood and was carried into effect by the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), is carried forward, one generation to another, by this Bill dealing with young offenders.

I did not know that it was such a good Bill until I listened to the Third Reading debate, and I am grateful to many hon. Members for drawing my attention to so many good points in it. It quite cheered me up at the end of our deliberations.

The Bill is a great drive forward in the establishment of detention and remand centres which will mark a considerable milestone in reform, and, in answer to the hon. Member for Widnes, I hope that we shall be able to develop the detention centres in a variety of ways. They are at the beginning, and it is impossible, from the few specimens we have, to get a full impression of what the regime may be like.

That enables me to take up another point made by the hon. Member for Leeds, South-East. I honestly believe that what I said in the speech relating to Clause 23 about the future relations of the Prison Commission and the Home Office will be found to be true by future reformers, namely, that in my opinion we are only just at the beginning of correlating and bringing together the approved schools, the open borstals, the detention centres, the closed borstals and their relation to prison and the great variety of supervision for young offenders in this country.

I do not believe that the Bill is the last word. I believe that a successor of mine will carry the work further and will build on this work, but after very querulously demanding from my advisers whether we were doing enough in the Bill I think that we have on this occasion gone far enough, and that we must carry the work further on a future occasion.

This bringing together of the treatment of the young is only in its infancy and it is backed up in the Bill by something to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Mr. Roots) referred, namely, the provisions for after-care. They were also referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes).

Clause 20 and the Third Schedule are very important, and are also the beginning of a further reform which can be carried forward in the years to come. In fact, the Bill will have in it the seeds of a great many important future developments, provided we do not sit back and take it for granted, and provided that all the provisions are built upon. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford asked about voluntary work in after-care. I cannot say sufficiently strongly—whether relating to Lord Longford's work or the work of anybody else in the voluntary sphere—that we cannot do without voluntary effort. There will always be room for it in most spheres in England, and particularly in this sphere. Indeed, as the Welfare State develops and we try to take care of the individual or the family in a variety of ways, an intense burden falls upon the population, and especially the voluntary section of the population, which will become more and more onerous as we relieve the more unfortunate people of the physical troubles of life. These personal duties, such as after-care, will assume an importance in our society which is not sufficiently realised at present. Therefore, I believe that the provisions of the Bill are of great importance for the future. I am glad we have had this debate, in order to underline the effect of Clause 20.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) drew attention to what it is in order to mention in a Third Reading debate. It is in order to stick to the contents of the Bill; therefore, in referring to the Third Schedule, I am in order. We have reformed the Third Schedule, with the aid of my right hon. and learned Friend, my hon. and learned Friend and hon. Members opposite in Committee. The objections raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) have been found to be justified, and we shall now be able to say that the Schedule is satisfactorily and constitutionally drafted.

The hon. Lady and others have referred to approved schools. I do not want to make any further comments on them at present, except to say that I believe that the powers we have taken in Clauses 15, 16, 18 and 19 in particular will enable us to form and to continue a happy relationship between the approved schools under local authorities and the approved schools under voluntary managers. Voluntary managers have a distinctive contribution to make to the schools. They have come in for a certain amount of criticism, but this is not because of the devoted work they do but because some people want to alter the general system.

I can tell the voluntary managers, on behalf of the House, that they can bring to the administration of these schools a wide range of ability and experience, and an ability to take a personal interest in their schools—and they have brought these qualities to help the individual children in their care. Voluntary management can be as efficient as management by local authority, and provides the opportunity for flexible efficiency and experiment. I am sure that we all wish the voluntary schools, in their new rôle under the Bill, a happy future.

The hon. Lady referred to prison work. We have recently received the first report of our advisory council on the employment of prisoners, and we are very much obliged to the hon. Member for Widnes for the part he plays as a member of it. We are considering its recommendations, and although it is not a matter especially affecting the Bill it was referred to by the hon. Lady and it is connected with the future of young offenders. There is no more important reform to be made in the work of our prisons than the provision of work of a healthy and constructive character for prisoners to do.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) raised several points and asked some definite questions, one of which concerned the Cambridge report on attendance centres and the 62 per cent. success rate. I would rather reply to him in a few weeks' or months' time, when we have received the next report from Cambridge and I can compare notes with him. I believe that he was referring to the previous report, which we now regard as being not quite up to date. If I can keep in touch with my hon. Friend I can compare notes with him later, when we have received the latest report.

He also referred to the Goudhurst detention centre and wanted to know why and if the regime had become softer. I have visited Goudhurst, and I can tell him from my own experience—and I have checked this—that there was never any doubling to work at that place. So there has been no deterioration in that respect.

My hon. and gallant Friend also asked about the practice of the staff wearing plain clothes. The reason why the staff at detention centres wear plain clothes is that that follows the practice in borstal where plain clothes are worn by the staff. If my hon. and gallant Friend wishes to discuss with me whether be would prefer the staff to be dressed as in the prison service, I will discuss that with him, but I am not at all sure that that would make a better impression so long as the spirit of the staff is not only strict but humane and the regime does not in any way deteriorate from what we hope will be a reformative and good method of treating the young offender.

In this Bill there are several provisions of some severity in the way of penalties. I sometimes think that some of my hon. Friends who have made critical speeches, however sincerely they feel, have underestimated the strictness of the penalties which can be applied under the Bill and have under-estimated the nature of the reforms of which the seeds are in this Bill I am quite satisfied that when reformers of the future look upon the efforts we have made as a combined House of Commons in dealing with this Bill they will find in it things which are valuable for the future treatment of crime. The present crime wave is a very serious one and one which we should all combine to combat. This Bill is by no means the sole method to use, but insofar as it has measures in it to which attention has been drawn in the Third Reading, it will be helpful.

I have been very modest about this Bill. It has raised many major issues and has been troublesome to steer through the House, but I cannot complain about the spirit in which it has been received on either side. I am grateful to hon. Members on both sides of the House who have wished the Bill well in its later stages. I hope that it will make some small further step in dealing with the terribly grave problem with which we are all faced.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.