AMENDMENT OF PART IV OF THE CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSONS (SCOTLAND) ACT 1937 (Hansard, 17 July 1968)

§ Mr. Ross
I beg to move Amendment No. 106, in page 60, line 16, at beginning insert: (1) In section 40(1) for the words 'apparently under the age of seventeen years' there shall be substituted the words 'who is apparently a child'. Perhaps it would be convenient to discuss with it Amendment No. 107.

§ Mr. Speaker
So be it.

§ Mr. Ross
Section 40 of the 1937 Act relates to liberation or detention of children and young persons who are arrested. Paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 provides that any reference to a child or young person is to be construed as a reference to a child within the meaning of Part III of the Bill, but that is not wide enough to cover references to persons under the age of 17 years.
1564 The provisions in Part IV of the 1937 Act, as it is to be amended, will deal generally with procedure in relation to children within the meaning of Part III of the Bill who may be or are prosecuted, and accordingly it is desirable to change the references in subsections (1) and (2) of Section 40 to references to a person who is apparently a child". That is the phrase already used in the subsection (3) to be inserted in Section 40 by paragraph 3 of Schedule 1.

§ Mr. Millan
I beg to move Amendment No. 109, in page 61, to leave out lines 26 to 28.
This Amendment deletes the reference to the local authority furnishing the court with information as to the availability of residential establishments. It is not necessary to provide this now because in the case of remands and committal to places of safety the local authority will select the place where the child is to be detained, and in the case of detention imposed by the court the Secretary of State shall choose the place at which the child should be detained. Therefore, it is not necessary to provide the court with this information.

§ Mr. Millan
I beg to move Amendment No. 110, in page 61, line 31, to leave out from 'section' to the end of line 37 and insert: '46(1) for the words "child or young person", in both places where these words occur, there shall be substituted the words "a person under the age of seventeen years"'.

§ Mr. Speaker
We may take, at the same time, Government Amendments Nos. 113, 112, 166 and 186.

§ Mr. Millan
All these Amendments relate to the enactments dealing with the prohibition of publicity about young people brought before a court. The 1565 Scottish provisions relating to this are Sections 46 and 54 of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act, 1937, and Section 57 of the Children and Young Persons Act, 1963. The original intention was to repeal Section 57 of the 1963 Act and to amend the 1937 Act appropriately, but we have found that this is rather less satisfactory than what we are now providing for in this series of Amendments, which keeps Section 57 in force for Scotland. The subsections which we propose to add to Section 46 of the 1937 Act are not now necessary as the appropriate modifications are made by Section 57 of the 1963 Act, which we are retaining.
In the case of children who come before a court we are retaining the status quo in the sense that the age limit for questions about publicity will remain 17, although we have made certain other changes in age limits from the point of view of children who should be brought before the children's hearings or the courts. It is right, in all the circumstances, and particularly as 17 will continue to apply south of the Border, that on questions of publicity we should retain the age of 17.