§ Mr. LlwydTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what provision he plans for the accommodation of young offenders in Wales following the decision to send offenders aged 12 years and over to secure units and to cease to send boys aged 15 and 16 years to prison; if he will make it his policy that such offenders will not be sent outside Wales; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Maclean[holding answer 11 July 1994]: Five new secure training centres are to be established for the purpose 496W of detaining those 12 to 14-year-old juveniles who may be sentenced to serve the new secure training order. The centres will hold offenders sentenced by the courts in England and Wales, but on present plans, none will be located in Wales.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has already announced a grant amounting to £5.1 million to meet the capital cost of a new local authority secure unit at Neath in west Glamorgan. In due course, it is intended that the unit should accommodate inter alios most 15 and 16-year-old juveniles residing in Wales who may in future be remanded to local authority accommodation with a security requirement instead of to a Prison Service establishment, as well as those whose detention is ordered under section 53 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and who it is decided should be held in child care establishments.