HC Deb 12 June 2000 vol 351 cc750-63
Jackie Ballard

I beg to move amendment No. 6, in page 41, line 31, leave out clause 61.

If the amendment were accepted—I am ever the optimist—it would lead to the deletion of clause 61, which increases the penalty for failure to secure regular school attendance. It more than doubles the maximum fine, and introduces imprisonment for up to three months.

In Committee, I expressed surprise that the clause had appeared for the first time in this Bill rather than in an education Bill, in which its merits or otherwise in helping parents to ensure school attendance could have been debated by colleagues specialising in education as part of a wider discussion about how to encourage parents to be responsible and responsive when their children are truanting. I hope that the Minister will not caricature my views on the clause, suggesting that I am in favour of truanting or of parents who are irresponsible about the matter. I think that the debate is about the effective way of ensuring that parents carry out their duties in getting their children to school.

It would be much better to debate the clause in an education context than in a criminal justice context. However, it is in this Bill, and I believe that increasing the penalties will not in itself help parents who are struggling to ensure that their children attend school regularly. I also think that it will have a minimal impact on those who could not care less what their children are doing between 9 am and 3.30 pm on school days.

A range of interventions, including parenting projects, home tuition and family support, are much more likely to help than draconian penalties. Many—although not all—families with difficulties, including school attendance, will be poor families with multiple problems. Doubling the fine that can be imposed will simply add to their problems. Using the ultimate deterrent and sending a parent to prison will further fracture dysfunctional families.

In Standing Committee, I asked the Minister what research evidence there was to show that a fine of £2,500 would make an appreciable difference, as opposed to a fine of £2,000 or even £5,000. The Minister had no answer to that question. It seems that the clause has been slipped into a criminal justice Bill to try to avoid the scrutiny of educationists and to enable the Government to claim that they are getting tough on truancy, without any empirical or even anecdotal evidence to show that those particular get-tough measures will help to deal with the problem in any way. They will not, and they may do much harm. That is why we wish the clause to be deleted.

Mr. John Cryer (Hornchurch)

In Committee, I expressed concerns about clause 55 as it then was; it is now clause 61. The concerns are that increasing the fines for parents of truanting children and, more particularly, jailing them will be counterproductive.

Since the Committee stage, I have contacted several charities concerned with children. They have written back to me to express their reservations about clause 61. For example, the Child Poverty Action Group said, among other things: I can certainly confirm that we would regard this as a retrograde step. Penalties of this sort, levied upon families on low incomes, seem to be based on the assumption that children will somehow be insulated from the effects of fines paid by their parents—or from the consequences of those fines not being paid. This is manifestly not so and we would hope that, given further reflection and discussion, a less punitive approach might prevail. NCH Action for Children wrote in similar vein: We do not think it is helpful to have increased sanctions against parents whose children do not attend school. The reasons why children do not attend school are many and complex and we do not think that increasing the penalties on parents is the most constructive way forward. Indeed we are concerned that this clause, whilst perhaps having a deterrent element, would actually result in more difficulties and problems for families that are already vulnerable and disadvantaged. Those were the two key responses from the two charities.

That leads me to the question that I raised in Committee. The measure would send parents to jail and put children in care. I have talked to one or two head teachers in my constituency who know children of secondary school age who are regular truants and who have younger brothers and sisters. If the sanction were used by magistrates courts, the patents would be sentenced to three months in prison. The younger children and, for that matter, the older children at secondary school would be taken into care, obviously at a hugely increased cost to the taxpayer. The measure would be counterproductive.

My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office argued in Committee that the measure would not work that way and that it was mainly a deterrent that would not, in practice, be used by magistrates; but it is not the Minister, me or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department who will be on the bench when cases come up. It may be people who have a particularly vindictive streak. There are magistrates who have vindictive streaks; I have seen them in action. They may choose to use the full sanction of the law and to jail parents for three months at a time.

That is a realistic prospect. In the light of the comments by the charities that I have mentioned and by other charities, if we pass the legislation, we will go against some of the key charities that have the interests of children at heart and that have campaigned for children's rights for a long time. They are clearly dead against the clause going through. There is much to be said for their arguments.

10.45 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes

I support the argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) and by the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer). Although I did not serve on the Committee, I should like briefly to give a few reasons why I think that the Government's intention to go down this road is misconceived.

The Government could say—I have read the Minister's comments in Committee—that the provision will give magistrates another power that they, in their wisdom, will use only when necessary, and that it will simply expand the range of options available to them. Although that statement is true, it presumes that it is acceptable or reasonable to imprison parents for three months for failure to secure regular attendance.

In recent debates, the Government have talked about the possibility of imprisoning offenders for one day, for a weekend or for other very short periods. If we really think that we are not getting through to parents on the issue, that length of imprisonment would seem to be much more appropriate as an ultimate sanction. I do not think that it is reasonable to propose a three-month removal of the type of parent who cannot manage to deliver their children to school.

The proposed response is entirely inappropriate and is not supported by any evidence that it is likely to produce a positive outcome. It is also absolutely unhelpful in trying to address the underlying issues.

Earlier in the debate, I cited the example of a relevant constituency case which, entirely coincidentally, occurred only last weekend. On Saturday, a single-parent constituent came to my front door to ask for help on finances, as her benefit cheque had not arrived. In the process of helping her to sort out the matter, I went to her home, where I discovered five children, all of whom are of school age, but one of whom was not going to school. I shall deal with that matter in the usual way. However, the point is that the girl had left in her first year of secondary school because of bullying, and no other suitable school had yet been found that would accept her.

In all my years as a Member of Parliament, my experience has been that a child who does not attend school usually fails to do so because of a problem between that child and the school, and that such problems are usually better resolved by educational welfare officers finding a better school or deciding that it is not appropriate for such children to be in a formal school setting.

Frequently, one of the reasons why parents do not ensure that their children go to school is that they are unhappy with the school. We will not solve that problem by sending those parents to prison. Parents often say to me, "I am sorry, but I am not sending my child to that school. I am not comfortable about that being a satisfactory school. The educational standards are not satisfactory; it has poor discipline; it is too far away. None of the other local children go to that school. There are no community links."

Parents' reasons for not wanting to send their children to a particular school are many and varied. Their concerns should be dealt with in various ways, but not by saying that they should go to prison. Such a response will not get the child into school any better than other actions would.

Mr. John McWilliam (Blaydon)

The hon. Gentleman seems to be talking more about the Education Act 1996 than the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill. We are talking about cases in which children who should be at school commit yet another offence. Very often, it is a matter of "yet another" offence, as the children will already be subject to orders under the 1996 Act. The hon. Gentleman does not seem to be addressing that issue.

Mr. Hughes

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber when my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton was speaking. If he was, he would have heard her say that the issue would have been dealt with more appropriately in a debate on education legislation. The issue is not about offences committed by children at all, but simply about how we respond, in criminal justice legislation, to cases in which parents do not send their children to school. Our proposal—supported, as the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) said, widely outside the House—is to delete the proposed clause which deals with a person being guilty of an offence if they fail to secure regular attendance of their children or the young person for whom they are responsible. The clause states that the penalty should be increased to a maximum of three months' imprisonment or a fine not exceeding level 4. The Bill proposes to increase both the imprisonment and the fine.

I ask the Government to think seriously about the likelihood and appropriateness of this measure ever being used and to consult more widely about whether this is not absolutely the wrong road to go down. I have never had a single experience where the threat or the actuality of the imprisonment of a parent for a non-attending school child has produced any better result.

Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington)

This feels like one of those clauses that goes through late at night without sufficient debate and which, in retrospect, is seen to be a clear mistake.

I represent a constituency in the east end of London where truancy is a serious problem. Hackney probably has higher truancy than many other areas. I am aware that truancy is serious, as being a truant is one step along the road to being involved in criminal activity. I applaud the Minister's intention to crack down on truancy, and his intention to try to reinforce positive, meaningful and responsible parenthood among parents of all ages. We must be aware of issues relating to responsible parenting and to a lack of parenting skills.

As to the clause, and whether it will achieve the results that Ministers want, I am concerned. The clause applies to parents but, with many truanting children, it is not "parents"—there is a single mother. I cannot see how it can be in the interests of the family unit to send a mother to prison for three months as, invariably, it will not just be one child but others too who will be forced into care as a consequence.

I recently visited Holloway. This country already imprisons far too many women for such offences. We imprison more women as a percentage of the population than any other country in Europe for just this type of offence. A clause in a Bill that must lead inevitably—if it is to be meaningful—to more women going to prison cannot go by unremarked. I applaud the Minister's intentions and motivation, but I do not believe that the clause has been sufficiently thought through.

I cannot believe that it will be in the interests of the truants themselves that their parents run the risk of serving time in prison. Those types of truanting children are very often beyond the control of their parents in any case. I wonder how effective the new clause will be in practice.

Mr. Dawson

I was not going to speak on this subject in Committee and was provoked into it, and the same is the case tonight. I have worked on truancy and school non-attendance issues for a long time and I do not buy a lot of the statements that have been made in the last 10 minutes.

This is a complex, distressing and difficult problem. At the heart of it are children's rights to have an education, and parents' duties to ensure that they receive it. People have referred to many of the factors that make truancy a problem. Of course there can be real and genuine difficulties between parents and schools. Of course there are millions of children with special educational needs; there are often educational needs that go unnoticed, unassessed or unrecognised for many years. We need to attend to such factors. Some teenagers, but often younger children, are palpably beyond the control of parents. Parents who do their absolute darnedest to get their children to go to school need the appropriate support.

There are a thousand aspects to the issue of school truancy and it is extremely difficult to tackle, especially when it has gone on for some time, but some people do not seem to recognise that there is also sheer parental bloody-mindedness. There are people who have no interest whatever in getting their children to attend school and will use any excuse to avoid ensuring that they get the education that they need.

One can respond to that through care proceedings. There is nothing more fundamental than breaking up families, but the clause gives us the ability to bring home to recalcitrant parents the true seriousness of the situation. If the threat of a serious fine or imprisonment is enough to bring parents to court or make them consider the issues seriously, that is a useful element.

Jackie Ballard

What evidence does the hon. Gentleman have that parents who could not care less whether their children go to school will be influenced to change their behaviour by a fine of £2,500, when they are not influenced by a fine of £1,000?

Mr. Dawson

So much depends on individual circumstances. The threat of imprisonment is a potent factor, although I sincerely believe that it would not be carried out. The spectre that people conjure up—of parents being hauled off to jail in great numbers, while the children are taken into care and the whole family explodes—is simply not credible. The circumstances in which such a tactic would be used are comparatively rare, but it is an important element in the armoury that is available.

Mr. John Cryer

My hon. Friend says that he believes that imprisonment will not be used, but it will not be he or I on the bench making the decision. If it will not be used, why put it on the statute book?

Mr. Dawson

The uncertainty about whether it will be used is important. All that I have to back this up is the experience of dealing with parents in this position—and the only way of getting them to face up to the difficulties was by laying down an extremely hard line about the consequences not to their children but to them if there was no change.

Mr. Simon Hughes

I have a simple question. Does the hon. Gentleman think that it would be acceptable for a single parent of several children to be sent to prison for between one and three months because one of the children was truanting? If not, he should not support a proposal to give magistrates courts the power to do just that.

Mr. Dawson

We have to consider the individual circumstances. I do not believe that the sort of situation that the hon. Gentleman outlined earlier would be dealt with under the existing legislation. We are talking about people who need help and support to deal with the complex problems of truancy. The provision will not necessarily apply to any of the people with whom hon. Members have been in touch, let alone all of them, but my experience tells me that it is useful to have it as a threat to hang over some parents, in some circumstances.

11 pm

Mr. John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington)

I, too, have some experience of child care: for 13 years, I was the house father of a small family unit children's home. Sometimes it was difficult to get the children to school.

The Government must recognise that legislation, once introduced, will be used. The provision allowing courts to imprison people for a lengthy period seems draconian, and there is no use arguing that it will be used in only a few cases. If it is used in only one case, a family will be broken up and children will go into care. We must make sure that the provision will have some effect on truancy.

However, all hon. Members know why families do not send their children to school. It happens largely when the system has failed both parents and children. The cycle of deprivation means that parents do not appreciate the importance of education or of sending their children to school. However it has been noted already that other legislation—education Acts and social legislation—provide that children can be taken into care.

In this respect, the Bill is worse than a sledgehammer used to crack a nut. It is a very uncreative way to tackle a problem with which most hon. Members are familiar. This month, I have had discussions in my constituency with the organisation Homestart, and I have been involved with groups of head teachers in establishing a truancy centre. I have also been working with social services officers on individual cases to try to build support in the community and families, and ensure that children are sent to school.

The introduction of a power to imprison parents who refuse to send their children to school cannot be ameliorated by saying that it will be used only as a last option and probably not at all. Can we have confidence in the courts that the provision will not be used? I know the local magistrates in Hayes and Uxbridge, and I am sure that many of those wonderful people would not touch the power with a bargepole. However, I am not so confident about magistrates elsewhere.

I want the powers in any legislation that I am involved with to be so valid that they are used. In this instance, the Government are flying in the face of the experience of all hon. Members. The work that we do in ensuring that parents send their children to school must be based on an understanding of families' problems, not on retribution.

I gave up the opportunity of visiting a constituent in prison today. I wanted to deal with clause 61, although I did not realise that we would come to it so very late at night. I am amazed that the clause has been included in the Bill, as it is so incongruent with the other provisions. It seems that the Government have taken another opportunity to pander to readers of the Daily Mail by cracking down on parents who do not send their children to school.

Will my right hon. Friend the Minister say who has been consulted on this matter? What support has been found among teaching organisations, social work professionals and others? What is the international experience of imposing on parents fines and prison sentences of this length? More creative means of tackling the problem exist. We cannot want to deprive children of their parents simply because the system has failed to inculcate in families the benefits of sending children to school.

Mr. Lidington

Somewhat unusually, I find myself in considerable agreement in this debate with the views expressed not by only the hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard), but by several Labour Members. I do not want to repeat all the arguments that have been discussed at some length already, but it seems that if a fine is to be a deterrent, one has to assume that the person subject to the fine will feel that they have a reasonable prospect of paying it. Otherwise, imposing a fine becomes completely meaningless.

In my constituency experience, I can think of cases in which parents of children who have been persistent truants are entirely reliant on social security benefits. I find it difficult to see how an increased fine could be a real deterrent in such cases when the prospect of it ever being paid is minimal.

I also agree with the points made by other critics of the clause about the power to imprison. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) said that it was fine to have the power to imprison because we would never want to use it, an argument that I found unpersuasive. It is worth having a power on the statute book only if our intention, as legislators, is that in some circumstances at least that power should be exercised by the courts. That would mean that we would have to address the issues raised most strongly by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes).

This is not a party political point, but we already know that local authority children's homes have a thoroughly bad general record in caring for people if we measure that in terms of the number of people who have been in local authority care who subsequently get into trouble with the courts, the number of young offenders in institutions such as the one in my constituency or the number of such people who go to prison when they are adults. If at all possible, I believe that it is better to keep the family together with the parents caring for their children. The idea that parents should be taken away and locked up, and that the local authority would somehow step in and put everything right by taking the children into care is at odds with experience in this country hitherto.

I hope that even at this stage, the Government will think afresh about the clause and bring forward changes in another place.

Mr. Boateng

We have had a good and extensive debate about a very serious issue. All right hon. and hon. Members will be concerned to get this measure right and to send a clear and unequivocal message from the Chamber.

We should first understand where the Government are coming from in introducing the clause, and why we oppose amendment No. 6. I well understand where the hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) is coming from. She has been very frank and upfront from the outset about her opposition to this measure, and she makes her case seriously. She is right to say that we must avoid the tendency to caricature one another's responses on issues such as this. I certainly have never caricatured her response as in any way being on the side of the truant, and I see that she is good enough to affirm that. Similarly, I would be grateful if she would not caricature our coming forward with this proposal, at this time, in the context of this piece of legislation, as being an attempt somehow to avoid serious scrutiny by educationists. The reverse is the case.

This measure was first referred to in our consultation document "Tackling Truancy Together", which was announced by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment last September/October. In response to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell), there was an opportunity for organisations to respond. The organisations that responded were largely educational, although magistrates responded too, and were largely in favour of the proposal. I will write to my hon. Friend with a detailed list of the organisations that responded and outline what they said.

The measure has been carefully thought through, and has been the subject of consultation. It is in no sense out of place within criminal justice legislation, because we have to be clear what we are talking about here. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, many such young people are at risk not only of losing their education, but of offending.

There is a direct link between the subject matter of the Bill and this clause. In government, we have shown—more than any of our predecessors—that we are trying to develop and establish a holistic approach to the matter. That has led us to fund generously organisations such as Homestart, but we realise that the issue cannot be left to teachers alone. It requires input from education welfare officers, from social workers and, indeed, from the police.

As I listened to my hon. Friend, I recalled a visit to east London when I discussed with police and social workers in Newham the joint patrols carried out by the police and education welfare and social services officers on the streets of the area. That is precisely the sort of joined-up criminal justice, education, welfare and care approach to truancy that we want to promote.

The provision should not be seen as one response alone—as a tunnel vision approach. It should be seen as one of the building blocks that we need to set up in order to provide an effective response to the problem of truancy. It stands alongside parenting classes and parenting orders. Voices were raised against parenting orders, but, when we piloted them, they were found to be extremely successful. They brought parents to court who otherwise would have continued to avoid their responsibilities; the orders obliged them to confront the consequences of their neglect. Those parents were directed towards help and support to ensure that they addressed the needs of their children and to overcome their own deficits as parents.

What does the clause do? Yes, it raises the fine above its current level, where it is the same as that for non-payment of a television licence—that is equated with not ensuring that a child attends school. It does not seem unreasonable to say that treating in the same way the non-payment of television licences and the failure to ensure school attendance does not reflect the seriousness of that neglect of a child. By raising the fine level, we send out a message about the seriousness of the offence.

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer), of course, magistrates will continue to have to take into account the financial situation of the parent when setting the fine. There is no question that someone in receipt of benefits would be required to pay the maximum fine, but it is right that the level should be raised to demonstrate the seriousness with which we take the offence. It is more serious than not paying a television licence.

The question of intention was raised: what do we plan to get out of this provision for the child? We believe that we must be able to compel the parents of truants to attend court. By making the offence punishable by imprisonment, we are ensuring that parents are required to attend court or risk arrest. Without that provision, we shall not have the power to compel them to do so—backed up by a power of arrest. That is why the offence has to be made custodial. The proposal was introduced not out of a desire to lock up large numbers of parents, but out of a desire to require parents to attend court when their children do not attend school. The Government believe that that is eminently reasonable.

Mr. McDonnell

The point has been made in the debate that the power might be used infrequently. What assessment have the Government made of the number of parents who would be imprisoned as a result of the introduction of the power?

11.15 pm
Mr. Boateng

I shall come to that point. The power will be available to the courts and we do not expect it to be used widely or often. However, it will be on the statute book to be used in the circumstances that justify it. My hon. Friend might ask me what those circumstances are; I do not expect its use to be justified, except in the most extreme cases, against a single parent with other children who might end up in care. However, when two parents have continually and habitually neglected the interests of the child, have failed to address their responsibilities and have failed to attend court, it is not unreasonable to say that parents have responsibilities as well as rights. Those responsibilities cannot be swept aside just because they are inconvenient.

Mr. McDonnell

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Boateng

No, I shall not give way again. My hon. Friend has made his point; he does not need to labour it.

With the rights of a parents core responsibilities. This clause is designed to act as a wake-up call for parents who persistently refuse to accept their responsibilities.

Mr. Simon Hughes

The Minister will understand the position as well as I do, so does he accept the point made by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington)? When families rely entirely on state benefits, a court is more likely to be driven to the imprisonment conclusion, because a fine would not be a sanction on the parents. Therefore, the power in the clause is much more likely to be used to the disadvantage of the most disadvantaged rather than for the punishment of those who have the resources and the ability to respond.

Mr. Boateng

If that were the case, our sentencing process on fines would be nonsense. The hon. Gentleman might think that it is, but we do not. When an offence is sufficiently serious to warrant imprisonment, we believe that it is right that there should be an alternative. In this case, the alternative to imprisonment is a community penalty. expect the fine to be levelled at a rate that is commensurate with an individual's ability to pay.

Mr. McDonnell

On every provision, including the parental orders, at least an estimate was given of the numbers who would come before the court as a result of it. Can my right hon. Friend tell us the estimate of the numbers who will come to court, the numbers who will be imprisoned and the number of children who will go into care as a result of this clause?

Mr. Boateng

I have answered that point and I do not intend to cover the same ground again.

The measure was introduced after consultation that has produced, in many instances, a favourable response. It is a reasoned and proportionate response to a real and pressing problem. For that reason, I urge the House to reject the amendment should the hon. Member for Taunton decide to put it to a vote.

Jackie Ballard

I am pleased that the amendment has produced a good and useful debate and I am grateful to Labour Members who spoke to it. The hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) was the notable exception, but I wish that many more of them had made similar points in Committee. We might then have been successful in deleting the clause at that stage.

Many hon. Members have referred to their own experiences of dealing with families with difficulties and of truanting children. Just for the record, I have also had similar experiences in the past as a social worker, teacher and school governor. I have had similar experiences to those of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson), but I have come to a different conclusion. The hon. Member for Hornchurch made a good point about the impact on children in families that already have difficulties in coping of increased fines and potential imprisonment: in punishing the parent, it is inevitable that the child is also punished.

I tabled the amendment to allow for debate and I know that the Minister has heard the concerns expressed, especially by Labour Back Benchers. Even the Labour Back Bencher who spoke against the amendment seemed to hope that the ultimate sanction of imprisonment would never be used. I hope that the Minister and the Government will have second thoughts on clause 61 in the other place. I shall also be interested to see the responses to the consultation document, especially from education welfare officers, social workers, teachers and others involved professionally with truanting. The Minister said that a number of those who responded supported the clause, but he did not tell us whether a majority had done so or how they broke down into groups. That information would be interesting and I hope that the Government will consult further with those who may have missed the initial consultation document.

The question is whether the increased penalty will reduce truanting—an aim that all of us wish to achieve—or help children and their families. In the hope that the Government will have a change of mind before the Bill reaches the other place, I shall withdraw the amendment, but we will—if necessary—pursue it in the other place. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Remaining Government amendments agreed to.

Order for Third Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[Mr. Boateng]

11.22 pm
Mr. Hawkins

I shall be brief, given that the Minister has moved Third Reading formally. However, it is important to make a couple of points. We have sought to adopt a constructive attitude to the Bill, because we recognise that parts of it may be helpful. We had good debates in Committee, as I am sure the Minister and other hon. Members would agree, and we have had constructive and mostly good-natured debates this evening on such important issues as domestic violence and drugs.

It is fair to say that all parties have contributed to the constructive approach. The debate on amendment No. 6 was a good example of a genuine difference of view within the Labour party. Indeed, at one stage the Minister faced an unaccustomed amount of friendly fire from behind him.

We need to recognise that the Government have described a completely different picture in relation to curfew releases in terms of the serious offences committed by those who have been released from what was originally intended by the members of the Home Affairs Committee. If the members of the Committee, of whom I was then one, had known what the Government had in mind, their report would have been very different. It was never envisaged by the Opposition, by members of the Committee or by other right hon. and hon. Members, when they considered the Government's proposals, that they would mean the early release of six attempted murderers; 53 people convicted of manslaughter; 2,767 people convicted of drug dealing and trafficking; 1,556 people convicted of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm; 811 robbers; 1,887 burglars; 23 offenders convicted of cruelty to children; 34 offenders convicted of making threats to kill; and 126 offenders convicted of causing death by dangerous driving. That is a travesty of a policy on the part of a Government who claimed they would be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. The ordinary law-abiding citizens of this country will be horrified by those figures.

The situation is especially ironic given that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) pointed out, those are the very offences in respect of which the Home Secretary proposes to apply his revised immigration rule 320(18) to keep serious convicted criminals out of the country—the so-called Mike Tyson rule. The Home Secretary's own consultation document describes such crimes as serious offences and states that protection of the citizens of this country from those who are convicted of such offences overseas is essential and appropriate. It is impossible for the Government logically to argue that the British public must be protected from foreigners who commit such offences, barring them from the country, at the same time as they let out of jail on early release thousands of British criminals who have committed the same crimes. That is the Bill's most significant weakness. We hope that the Government will consider the matter further.

Ministers have been reasonable and said that they will retain an open mind on several other issues debated in Committee and on Report. One matter that we have not be able to address on Report and on which I wish to touch during our Third Reading debate is the new name of the welfare service. The Government have called it the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, but, in Committee, the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, said: We are open to suggestions. We have not thus far been able to produce a better title than the one before us today. If the hon. Gentleman were to make further suggestions, other than the one in the amendment, we would be prepared to consider them.—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 11 April 2000; c. 109.] That was a fair concession. The hon. Lady will have noticed another suggestion on the amendment paper, albeit not selected for debate. It gets around some of the problems mentioned by Ministers when responding to our original suggestion, in that we have not replicated one of the constituent parts of the new service, but have come up with another title again. Even if that is not the right title, I am sure that the hon. Lady recognises that we are attempting to come up with a constructive alternative that will avert the danger of ridicule—which is a present danger in connection with the Government's chosen title.

The hon. Lady wrote to me and other members of the Standing Committee on other points that cropped up in debate. Her letter dated 9 May dealt with representations that Ministers had received about the intention to change the names of probation, community service and combination orders, and it enables us to contrast her remarks and those made earlier this evening made by the Minister of State, Home Office. The Parliamentary Secretary wrote: most representations were in favour of maintaining the status quo. All along, we have argued in favour of keeping community service orders and probation orders. The hon. Lady continued: the majority of these were from within the probation service. So much for the anecdotal evidence cited by the Minister of State, Home Office: the majority of the representations to the Government originated within the probation service, exactly as the trade union NAPO said. The Parliamentary Secretary added: These are professionals who are already very familiar and comfortable with the language, but she then said that the terms were not familiar to the wider public—"shurely shome mishtake," as a well-known periodical would say. There is a difference of views even between the two Ministers present tonight.

Weaknesses remain in the Government's case. I have no doubt that the Government will be forced to concede some of our points during the debates in another place.

We will not, however, oppose Third Reading, because we believe that the Bill contains sufficient that is valuable and a useful addition to the criminal justice system.

11.29 pm
Mr. Dawson

It is sadly typical that in their last contribution to the debate on the Bill, the Opposition have concentrated on reworking the argument about the name of the service, trying to draw a smokescreen over their failures in 18 years during which crime doubled and they made a hash of the entire criminal justice system.

The Bill will give us a national probation service with a new agenda for dealing with criminal behaviour and assisting the rehabilitation of offenders.

The extremely important element of the Bill, which has received no attention so far today and which received little attention on Second Reading, is the establishment in chapter II of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. I regard that as a hopeful development. Across the country, there is a manifest concern about the position of children in private law proceedings—not criminal justice or public law—when parents separate and divorce. Complex and distressing situations occur, and subtle but extremely serious issues of child protection can arise. Private law deals with issues such as residence and contact, and specific steps and concerns that might relate to individual children in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

It is a credit to the Government that they have brought together three distinct services—the guardian ad litem and reporting officer service, the court welfare services and the Official Solicitor. Those services are to be melded together, setting high standards of social work practice in a crucial area of policy.

I tabled no amendments on Report, but I moved several in Committee. I was delighted to hear from my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary a solid commitment to children's rights and their place at the heart of the new service, and an undertaking that the service would attain high standards of practice and that there would be appropriate training and professional development activity to allow that.

The Government also gave a commitment to the involvement of social services inspection in a form of partnership with the magistrates courts advisory service. We all received a letter about that at the end of the Committee stage. It is extremely important that there should be independent inspection based on high standards of social work practice in such an important service.

The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service can be a powerful force for advocacy, giving children and young people access to effective and independent representation. I have high hopes of the service. The new organisation could be a strong force for the benefit of children and a flagship for profoundly important family policy. I wish CAFCASS well and trust that it will get the on-going support, resourcing and commitment that it undoubtedly deserves.

11.34 pm
Jackie Ballard

The Bill is probably the least controversial Home Office Bill this Session. It has been given proper and constructive scrutiny in Committee and on Report. I shall therefore speak briefly. At this time of night there is no football match throughout which I have to speak.

Liberal Democrats broadly welcome the Bill, especially the clauses relating to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, to which the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) referred. I also welcome the further enhancement of powers to protect children in part II. Some useful work was done in Committee, especially on getting on record the key role of the probation service in the rehabilitation of offenders, about which we had a long debate.

However, although we broadly welcome the Bill, we have serious anxieties about a few clauses. Clause 42 deals with drug abstinence orders, but does not provide for guaranteeing treatment throughout England and Wales.

Clause 52 was not discussed on Report. It provides for testing people in police detention, and gives police the powers to test people who are charged with specific offences for the presence of class. A drugs. I expressed anxiety in Committee that that could introduce by the back door a new offence of use of drugs. The Minister assured us that that was not the case. When the Home Secretary first announced the provision, he said that it was his intention to introduce testing on arrest rather than on charge. The final provision in the clause leaves the door open for the Home Secretary to extend testing to those who have not been charged. That would have serious human rights consequences. It would also be administratively difficult for police officers to cope with the increased numbers of people to be tested when they went into the police station.

I also oppose clause 61, about which we had an useful debate earlier. I am sure that it will be discussed again in another place. I hope that the other place will consider those outstanding matters in detail.

We shall not oppose the Bill. Labour Members who have come to the Chamber late at night will be disappointed to hear that neither Opposition party will oppose the Bill and force a vote. The measure has already benefited from the scrutiny of this House; I am sure that it will benefit from further scrutiny in another place.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.