§ Mr. MiscampbellI beg to move Amendment No. 71, in page 22, line 14, leave out from the beginning to 'when' in line 17.
This is an equally short Amendment, although I suspect that it may not be 1148 quite as successful as the last one I moved. It deals with the age of majority and it seeks to deal with the curious anomaly which arises in subsection (3) of the Clause, which states that
a care order other than an interim order shall cease to have effect—that is to say, the care order ceases to have effect at the age of 19. The subsection goes on:(a) if that person to whom it relates had attained the age of sixteen when the order was originally made, when he attains the age of nineteen"—(b) in any other case, when that person attains the age of eighteen.So one arrives at the situation that the care order can go to the age of 19 in certain circumstances and ends at age 18, which is now the currently accepted age of adulthood. Under the recent Family Law Reform Bill, that has been decided to be the age of adulthood. One appreciates that if the order is made in the seventeenth year there will be a very short time for the order to run, if it is automatically to come to an end at the age of 18, but, fortunately, one is not left in the situation that one has to acquiesce in that, because Clause 21(1) provides powers for the courts to consider whether orders ought to be continued after the age of 18.What I suggest is quite simply that we ought to recognise what we recognise in every other sphere of law, and that the order should automatically fall at the age of 18, but that a wide discretion should be given under Clause 21 to extend the care order if necessary. It seems to me that that would both keep the principle which is universally accepted and yet give the discretion which is clearly necessary.
§ Mr. Elystan MorganThose who have argued against the Bill on the ground that it is inconsistent with the new age of majority seem to have overlooked that that was not the view taken by the Latey Committee. The second recommendation made by that Committee was in these terms:
The general capacity of young people to order their own personal affairs should not affect the criminal or penal field since it is the irresponsible, the disturbed and the inadequate who become involved in anti-social behaviour and law-breaking regardless of chronological age.1149 The Government agree with this. The age of majority is not really relevant to the issues raised by the Amendment.The hon. Gentleman has asked the reason why Clause 20 provides for a care order to last until the nineteenth birthday if made at the age of 16. If the Bill did not provide this a care order made when the young person was nearly 17 would last for just over a year, and often this would simply not be long enough.
Under the present law it does not matter that a fit person order ends at 18 in all cases, since the court has the alternative of making an approved school order. The Bill removes that alternative, and in due course the care order will be the only form of residential treatment available to the courts. It is true that Clause 21(1) allows a care order to be extended to the nineteenth birthday. This can be done, however, only in limited circumstances, and such extensions would not cover the many cases where the reason why the period in care should last beyond the eighteenth birthday was simply that it did not start until the young person was over 16.
This Amendment would create a gap in the arrangements for dealing with young persons needing residential treatment and appearing before the courts at the age of 16. This gap would operate to their detriment and to the detriment of society.
§ Mr. HoggI propose to make a very short speech, and I propose to say simply this, that under the position which has now been defended by the Under-Secretary we propose to give a young man the vote but to put him in the care of the local authority, and that is the degree of absurdity which has been reached by the present Government.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ 1.15 a.m.
§ Mrs. KnightI beg to move Amendment No. 72, in page 22, line 18, at end insert:
'or three years from the date of the order, whichever is the earlier'.The Amendment proposes that a firm time limit should be placed on an order for committal to the care of a local authority. Under the Bill, a young boy or girl could have an order for committal placed upon him or her at the age of ten, and that child could then 1150 be in care for as long as eight years. Some of us feel that this is too long.I know very well that sterling work is carried out in local children's homes. It used to be part of my duties to inspect a local children's home every three or four months, and I know what a lot of work is done. I well remember when first starting this type of social work how the children's officer with whom I was working explained to me that whatever was done, however carefully it was done and however much affection was poured out in the doing of it, the local authority children's home could never be anything but a very poor substitute for the child's own home.
When a child is in care in a children's home—I agree it is slightly different if the child is fostered—that child is institutionalised, and institutions are not the best places to bring up children. Even if the home is the best type of local authority children's home imaginable, even if the child conies from what many of us would regard as a very poor home—I do not mean poor in a monetary sense but poor in the sense that was frequently mentioned in Committee—even if a child comes from a bad home in every sense of the word, it may well be that the child would be happier in that home than in a local authority children's home. Under this Clause a child could be sent even to a closed institution, and perhaps forgotten, and there would be no publicity at any stage.
In a long debate in Committee hon. Members expressed their worries on this point, and the Minister felt that there were, as he put it, twin safeguards. He said that, on the one hand, there was the initiative of the parents of the child or of the young person and, on the other hand, the initiative of the local authority with its obligation to review the case every six months. I want to press the Minister on this, because I do not think that it bears too much examination.
I agree that there is provision in the Bill for the parents to apply for the child to be discharged, but I am puzzled at the notion that a child or young person can do this himself. I cannot imagine for one moment that a child in a local authority children's home would know sufficient of the law, and of this law in particular, to trot along and submit a case for his discharge from a children's 1151 home. It is in no way realistic to imagine that a child is capable of applying for his own discharge.
The parents may apply for a discharge for their child, but it may be that they are travelling around, or that they are not very good parents. I am not happy about that, but I am less happy about the local authority obligation to review the case. I have read most carefully Clause 25(4) which provides for this, and again I find an element of unreality creeping in. With all the other duties already laid on the children officers, and with the vast extra burden laid upon children officers by the Bill, I cannot believe that this bi-annual shuffle through the case papers will be thoroughly done.
I wonder whether the House has considered what this would mean in a local authority area of, say, 100,000 souls. It would be a conservative estimate to assume that it would have as few as 200 children in care—fostered and in remand and other homes. Arithmetic is not my strong point, but with at least 200 children in care and with meetings every month except one, if all 200 cases are to be reviewed twice a year, each monthly meeting of the children's committee will have to consider 36 cases. That is assuming that it is the children's committee which will look at case papers, because I cannot think that the Minister would say that the work should be done completely within the office walls. My knowledge of children's committees leads me to suppose that the job would be laid as a duty on the committee.
As one who has sat through many children's committee meetings, some of which last a very long time, I wonder whether the Minister appreciates the burden placed on local authorities if children's committees have to go through 36 case papers each month. Surely it would be infinitely better to have a definite period of three years so that a committee's examination was not done in a cursory fashion, after which a child should not be kept in care unless a good case was made for it.
I was interested to hear the Home Secretary making great play earlier in the debate of the desirability of having uniformity of treatment. He made a powerful case and said that none of us 1152 would wish to encourage any kind of system where there was no uniformity in meting out justice. Here we have a perfect example where there will not be uniformity if the situation is left in this haphazard state with the duty thrown on the local authority to scan cases every six months.
The right hon. Gentleman said that guidelines should be set, and I am trying to set them. Without them, I cannot feel that children will be as well served as they would be if it was recognised clearly that a period of three years was sufficient time for a child to remain in care without the authority having to show why that child should not remain in care.
§ Mr. CallaghanI am afraid that I cannot recommend acceptance of the hon. Lady's Amendment. She exaggerates the amount of work which would be required to be done by these committees. She assumes that all children are in care for three years, whereas 50 per cent. of them remain in local authority homes for less than six months. To start with, therefore, she has to halve her figures.
The real test is that it is going on now. For the last 36 years, there has been in existence the fit person order, under which children are committed to the care of the local authority as a fit person and remain in its care unless and until there are revocations or the local authority decides to review cases. This is giving it statutory authority.
The hon. Lady said—and I disagree with her profoundly—that she cannot believe that the review will be thoroughly done. She says that she knows about children's committees. So do I. It is one thing that I do know about. I have considerable family and personal connections with the work of children's committees. I know what goes on. I have seen the papers spread over the dining room table. I can assure the hon. Lady from personal knowledge that voluntary workers do a great deal of work in reviewing these cases very thoroughly.
The hon. Lady has not shown us that, among the 20,000 children who are now committed under fit person orders at present, whose cases are exactly analogous with those on whose behalf she is speaking, there are any complaints 1153 about the procedure. So why does the hon. Lady seek to alter the procedure?
§ Mrs. KnightDoes not the Home Secretary think it is faintly possible that the experience of having papers spread over the dining room table, while extremely valuable, is not so valuable as having been a member of a children's committee for ten years and known from the inside how it works?
§ Mr. CallaghanI am sure that the hon. Lady knows from the inside how it works. I am claiming to know how it works, too. What the hon. Lady as failed to demonstrate in her eloquence is that the 20,000 children now committed without any time limit being set on the period for which they are committed have suffered in any way. She has not produced any example. The hon. Lady is seeking to alter a system which has stood the test of time for the last 36 years without producing any reason why we should do so. At any rate, the hon. Lady has produced a lot of theoretical reasons based on statistics which are suspect, but she has not produced a really genuine case about it.
We are seeking to give statutory authority to what the best authorities already do; namely, that they should be required to review these cases conscientiously and thoroughly every six months. Apart from that, it is always open to the parents, or anybody else, to apply for revocation of the order. It is open to the young person himself to apply for revocation if he feels it is appropriate to do so. Some of them can do that at the age of 16 or 17. I am sure that the hon. Lady has seen these children in children's homes. I certainly have. They know what they can do under these provisions. They are very well versed in them. The hon. Lady dismisses that, but is is not unimportant. They or their parents can secure revocation of the order. In the case of those in more secure accommodation, there will be certain regulations which I propose to make in due course under Clause 40.
Despite the hon. Lady's great experience of children's committees, she is arguing purely on theory and not by reference to the practical difficulty that has emerged in the care of the 20,000 children in children's homes without any three-year or other limit placed on them. 1154 I recommend to the House that the system which exists, is well tried, and is working successfully, should continue. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Lady will not press the Amendment.
§ Mr. HoggI feel that the Home Secretary is a great deal too complacent about this matter. He overlooks the fact that a great many more children will certainly be placed in this position than have been in the past. I do not think that is in dispute.
I do not want to under-estimate either the personal experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) or that of the Home Secretary in seeing the papers spread out over his dining room table, which is the kind of folksy way he approaches these subjects. The fact remains that, whether the papers are spread out over his dining roam table, the child can be placed in care at the age of ten and, under the Clause, will or can go on to the age of 18—eight years, if my arithmetic at this hour of the morning serves me.
Of course the order can be revoked. At the age of 16 or 17, or whatever it is, the young person, as he is by that time, can himself apply for its revocation.
1.30 a.m.
That is all very well, but it would be much more like common sense that after about three years, which my hon. Friend mentioned as an appropriate period, the local authority itself should justify the continuance of the child under such an order. There should be a limit of time during which a child or young person can be subjected to this kind of supervision and constraint. If the situation after this period justifies a renewal, the renewal will obviously take place.
I am unimpressed by the Home Secretary's conservatism. Conservatism is a good thing in due measure, at the right time, and in the hands of the right people. The Home Secretary as a convert has all the excess of enthusiasm from which converts usually suffer. The system may have been working to his satisfaction for 36 years. There is probably a little more latent unease than he is aware of, however. Whether there is or not, it would be more commonsensical to put a limit on these things than to leave it to the operation of time, which 1155 might in theory be as much as eight years—from 10 to 18—to bring it to an end in due course.
The Home Secretary has been much too complacent. Many people with experience of a particular administrative system allow their enthusiasm for that administrative system to outrun their discretion. I suspect in this case that the papers spread over the Home Secretary's
§ dining room table have proved a snare and a delusion which has led him into error, prejudice, and a sort of rigid conservatism which he is beginning to show in more directions than one.
§ Question put, That the Amendment be made:—
§ The House divided: Ayes 93, Noes 135.
1157| Division No. 238.] | AYES | [1.33 a.m. |
| Astor, John | Hastings, Stephen | Pink, R. Bonner |
| Balniel, Lord | Hiley, Joseph | Pounder, Rafton |
| Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos. & Fhm) | Hill, J. E. B. | Prior, J. M. L. |
| Berry, Hn. Anthony | Holland, Philip | Pym, Francis |
| Biffen, John | Hordern, Peter | Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James |
| Biggs-Davison, John | Hornby, Richard | Rees-Davies, W. R. |
| Black, Sir Cyril | Howell, David (Guildford) | Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon |
| Boardman, Tom (Le'cester, S. W.) | Hunt, John | Ridley, Hn. Nicholas |
| Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward | Iremonger, T. L. | Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey) |
| Brinton, Sir Tatton | Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford) | Russell, Sir Ronald |
| Brown, Sir Edward (Bath) | Jopling, Michael | Sharples, Richard |
| Buck, Antony (Colchester) | King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.) | Shaw, Michael (Sc'h'gh & Whitby) |
| Burden, F. A. | Kitson, Timothy | Silvester, Frederick |
| Campbell, B. (Oldham, W.) | Knight, Mrs. Jill | Sinclair, Sir George |
| Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn) | Lane, David | Speed, Keith |
| Clark, Henry | Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry | Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. |
| Clegg, Walter | Longden, Gilbert | Taylor, Frank (Moss Side) |
| Cunningham, Sir Knox | MacArthur, Ian | Temple, John M. |
| Dance, James | McNair-Wilson, Michael | |
| Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford) | McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest) | Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John |
| Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton) | Marten, Neil | Waddington, David |
| Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.) | Maude, Angus | Walters, Dennis |
| Eyre, Reginald | Miscampbell, Norman | Ward, Dame Irene |
| Fortescue, Tim | Monro, Hector | Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William |
| Glover, Sir Douglas | Montgomery, Fergus | Wiggin, A. W. |
| Grant, Anthony | More, Jasper | Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro) |
| Grant-Ferris, R. | Morrison, Charles (Devizes) | Woodnutt, Mark |
| Grieve, Percy | Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh | Worsley, Marcus |
| Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds) | Murton, Oscar | |
| Hamilton, Lord (Fermanagh) | Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael | TELLERS FOR THE AYES: |
| Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury) | Onslow, Cranley | Mr. Humphrey Atkins and |
| Harrison, Brian (Maldon) | Page, Graham (Crosby) | Mr. Bernard Weatherill. |
| Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye) | Percival, Ian | |
| NOES | ||
| Alldritt, Walter | Dempsey, James | Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.) |
| Armstrong, Ernest | Diamond, Rt. Hn. John | Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West) |
| Ashton, Joe (Bassetlaw) | Dobson, Ray | Kenyon, Clifford |
| Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.) | Dunnett, Jack | Lawson, George |
| Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham) | Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e) | Leadbitter, Ted |
| Bagier, Gordon A. T. | Eadie, Alex | Lipton, Marcus |
| Barnett, Joel | Edwards, William (Merioneth) | Loughlin, Charles |
| Bidwell, Sydney | Ellis, John | Luard, Evan |
| Binns, John | English, Michael | Lyon, Alexander W. (York) |
| Booth, Albert | Evans, Fred (Caerphilly) | Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.) |
| Bray, Dr. Jeremy | Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley) | Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson |
| Broughton, Dr. A. D. D. | Fernyhough, E. | McBride, Neil |
| Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan) | Fletcher, Ted (Darlington) | McCann, John |
| Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.) | Fowler, Gerry | McGuire, Michael |
| Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & F'bury) | Fraser, John (Norwood) | Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen) |
| Buchan, Norman | Freeson, Reginald | Maclennan, Robert |
| Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn) | Gregory, Arnold | MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles) |
| Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James | Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside) | McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.) |
| Carmichael, Neil | Hamilton, James (Bothwell) | McNamara, J. Kevin |
| Coe, Denis | Hamling, William | Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.) |
| Coleman, Donald | Harper, Joseph | Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg) |
| Concannon, J. D. | Harrison, Walter (Wakefield) | Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.) |
| Conlan, Bernard | Haseldine, Norman | Manuel, Archie |
| Crawshaw, Richard | Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret | Marks, Kenneth |
| Dalyell, Tam | Howell, Denis (Small Heath) | Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert |
| Davidson, Arthur (Accrington) | Howie, W. | Mendelson, John |
| Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford) | Huckfield, Leslie | Millan, Bruce |
| Davies, Ifor (Gower) | Hughes, Roy (Newport) | Milne, Edward (Blyth) |
| Dell, Edmund | Jackson, Colin (B'h'se & Spenb'gh) | Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test) |
| Molloy, William | Rees, Merlyn | Tinn, James |
| Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire) | Roberts, Albert (Normanton) | Varley, Eric G. |
| Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe) | Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.) | Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley) |
| Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw) | Rodgers, William (Stockton) | Walker, Harold (Doncaster) |
| Moyle, Roland | Roebuck, Roy | Wallace, George |
| Newens, Stan | Ross, Rt. Hn, William | Watkins, David (Consett) |
| Ogden, Eric | Rowlands, E. | Watkins, Tudor (Brecon & Radnor) |
| Oram, Albert E. | Ryan, John | Wellbeloved, James |
| Orme, Stanley | Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.) | Whitlock, William |
| Oswald, Thomas | Sheldon, Robert | Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch) |
| Palmer, Arthur | Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N. E.) | Wilson, Willian (Coventry, S.) |
| Parkyn, Brian (Bedford) | Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford) | Winstanley, Dr, M. P. |
| Pavitt, Laurence | Silverman, Julius | Woof, Robert |
| Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred | Spriggs, Leslie | |
| Pentland, Norman | Taverne, Dick | TELLERS FOR THE NOES: |
| Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E. | Thomas, Rt. Hn. George | Mr. Alan Fitch and |
| Price, Christopher (Perry Barr) | Thomson, Rt. Hn. George | Mr. Ernest G. Perry. |
| Probert, Arthur |