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Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (Restoration of Powers and Responsibilities) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I should begin by declaring my interest. Until March 2025, I was the lead non-executive director and chair of the agency board of HMPPS, which was responsible for youth custody services.

I very much regret that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is not with us today. I had hoped that we would be able to hear what he had to say and that I would have the opportunity to pay tribute to his remarkable, ground-breaking work in this area. I hope that he is joining us out in the ether, but if not I certainly pass on my good wishes.

I thank all noble Lords for taking part in today’s debate. This is a really important subject. We may not always agree, but this has been a very well-informed and thought-provoking debate. I thank the noble Lord,

Lord Oates, for tabling this Private Member’s Bill and giving us the opportunity to debate this today. I thank him and the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for meeting me and Minister Richards before today for what he described—and I very much agree—as a constructive conversation.

I commend the work of the Youth Justice Board. It has played an important, even ground-breaking, role in the formation and development of the youth justice system. Those of us with very long memories remember what the juvenile justice system, as it used to be known, was like. This is a remarkable transformation. The board has transformed the lives of many children and young people. It has also transformed the way the state works with children, overseeing, as noble Lords have said, a significant reduction in the number of children convicted of crime and sent to prison. I know—and I say this with some feeling—that many noble Lords played an important personal role in that. I pay tribute to their work, as well as that of the board and staff of the Youth Justice Board. I put that firmly on the record.

The youth justice system has changed profoundly since the creation of the Youth Justice Board in 1998. Today, although fewer children are entering the system than in the past, which is obviously a good thing, as a number of speakers have noted—including my noble friend Lord Rook and the right reverend Prelate—the children with whom we work are more complex and their needs are more acute, perhaps in part because of the way in which the world is changing in relation to children. Central government must be organised to be able to respond with clarity, focus and impact. I am afraid the proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Oates, to restore the previous functions does not reflect the Government’s view of the current needs of the system. The board did not want responsibility for the custodial estate in 2017 and it does not seek that now.

The structures put in place nearly three decades ago may not remain the most effective way of delivering the outcomes we need. The noble Baroness, Lady Sater, made that point, and I think we all agree on that. However, the clear position of the Government is that individual arm’s-length body responsibilities and funding should be transferred to local leaders or returned to ministerial departments unless Ministers can make a strong case for their retention. That is the Government’s view across the board, as noble Lords know, and it has been reaffirmed in the comments of the Prime Minister on rewiring the state.

The Government commissioned an independent review of the Youth Justice Board led by Steve Crocker. A number of noble Lords referred to it. This concluded that although—as he pointed out and as has been said by some—the Youth Justice Board has “lost its way”, there remains a clear need for an independent body with technical expertise in the youth justice system. Steve Crocker recommended significant reform to meet the future needs of the system, with a stronger focus on driving efficiency, continuous improvement and providing evidence of what works.

I acknowledge what the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and others have said, but we are not accepting every recommendation of Steve Crocker’s work. The

Government’s position is that we are building on his work. I want to be completely clear that we have no wish to abolish the Youth Justice Board. We want to retain an independent Youth Justice Board that is sharply focused on driving continuous improvement of local practice and capability, while responsibility for system oversight, standards, performance and funding should, in our view, rest with elected Ministers who are accountable to Parliament. Transferring responsibility for digital and IT provision to government will allow us to achieve better outcomes through linking the data on youth justice, which a small organisation such as the Youth Justice Board simply cannot achieve.

The Ministry of Justice will strengthen and support local services and strategic authorities—I will come back to the point about strategic authorities—setting clear standards and an evidence-based, proportionate national oversight framework that enables effective interventions when needed. While I note the comments that many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, made about the Ministry of Justice and its limitations, we are committed to that. We want a strong Youth Justice Board. We want professional experts to challenge the department. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, I do not mind a challenge or dissenting voices. I have had plenty of them in my short stint at the Ministry of Justice, which I hope will be a long stint. I do not accept the characterisation that we do not have or welcome dissenting voices.

We want the organisation to drive local services to improve and to achieve improved outcomes for children, particularly vulnerable children. Our intention is to allow the Youth Justice Board to focus on what we think it does best, while providing for proper democratic accountability where appropriate. The reforms would see the Youth Justice Board remain an independent, non-departmental body but with a clearer focus on improving youth justice services.

The Youth Justice Board will learn from the best and support the poorer-performing services. This will include interventions or hands-on support for struggling services, facilitating ongoing learning and peer-to-peer sharing of practice, and building the capacity and capability of staff for self-evaluation and improvement. The right reverend Prelate raised the question of restorative justice. That is exactly the kind of thing that we would like to see the sharing of learning on. It has particular application in the youth justice universe. It has much wider applications than that, but that is a good example.

The Youth Justice Board will build the evidence base on innovative new practice and retain the ability to award grants for direct research contracts and to generate evidence. This will be critical for the Youth Justice Board to identify, evaluate and share what works and provide practice-ready guidance for services to use when working with children.

The Youth Justice Board will maintain relationships to understand local variation and identify emerging issues. It will also target issues that are prevalent across the nation—such as violence against women and girls, disproportionality as respects black and minority ethnic people, and online harms—identifying causes and delivering targeted improvement to ensure that shared problems are tackled effectively.

Youth justice is already a largely locally led system. However, there are considerable opportunities to strengthen the role that strategic authorities play in preventing youth offending and supporting vulnerable children. This is an important part of our agenda on youth justice going forward. The Youth Justice Board will have a pivotal role in building capability in strategic authorities as it takes on a greater role in youth justice and youth crime prevention.

My noble friend Lord Rook gave the example of Manchester, and that is exactly the kind of thing we want to see happening in strategic authorities. I do not say that just because it is Manchester. I really hope, whatever the fate of this Bill, that the noble Lord, Lord Oates, the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, and many others in the Chamber, will work with us on the agenda for future work on youth justice in strategic authorities.

The reforms put forward today in the Bill would see an expanded role for the Youth Justice Board, with restored responsibility for youth custody, which it has not exercised, as I have said, since 2017. I want to say a few words about our plans for the Youth Custody Service. The Government have set out their intentions to publish a youth custody transformation plan in the coming months. I think we all know that we need to do something about the Youth Custody Service. The youth secure estate must be managed by the Youth Custody Service, which is a specialist organisation with dedicated staff and a clear focus—I pay tribute to those staff with whom I have worked closely for many years—and which is directly accountable to Ministers. Ascribing responsibility to the Youth Justice Board would dilute its remit and distract from its most important function: supporting youth justice services to improve.

The Bill also proposes significant changes to the governance of youth justice in Wales. The Government recognise the distinct context in Wales, where many of the services that support children, including education, health and social care, are, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, devolved. We remain committed to working closely and constructively with the Welsh Government. We are already exploring with the Welsh Government how their role in youth justice could be expanded and we are supportive of arrangements that better reflect the devolved landscape.

In answer to the question about what funds will be devolved to Wales as part of that commitment, from April 2027, funding to reduce the use of remand for children, together with funding for early intervention and prevention services, currently delivered through the Turnaround programme, will be devolved to the Welsh Government. Discussions about the arrangements in Wales continue.

Under the Government’s plans, the Youth Justice Board will remain an independent public body. It will be a strong organisation of experts that offers precisely the practical operational support that today’s system needs for today’s children and today’s challenges. A strong board offering frank, independent and, yes, critical views to the Government is something we

welcome. I look forward to debating this further when the Government bring forward their own secondary legislation later this year.

As I have said, I hope your Lordships will work with us as we take forward our work on youth justice. We are not in any sense complacent or passive in our approach to youth justice, particularly with regard to the future of the custodial state and the role of strategic authorities in youth justice, which will be priorities for myself and Minister Richards.

I am afraid the Government’s view is that the Bill in front of us would take us backwards and load up the Youth Justice Board with a broader range of functions that would be a distraction from the core purpose of driving services to improve outcomes for children and keeping our communities safe.

My final comment is on the intersection of the complex needs of children involved in the youth justice service, which a number of your Lordships talked about. For me, the biggest prize in thinking about the way we approach youth justice is in better meeting the needs of those most vulnerable children so that they live thriving and flourishing lives.

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