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Mr. Ainsworth: This has been a broad debate. I suppose that that is inevitable because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling rightly said, we need to consider clause 40 in the context of clause 38.
My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley and other members of the Committee are concerned that the issue may need to be revisited. Legislatively, however, it need not be. Taken together, clauses 38 and 40 provide for extending the use of fixed-penalty notices in both the directions that may be required. Clause 38 extends the provisions to 16-year-olds, but we also take the power to extend them—with parliamentary approval—down to the age of 10, if necessary.
Obviously, those are decisions for the future, but the powers are available in secondary legislation. There is no need for further primary legislation to extend the provisions to young people who are creating problems. Parliament can take legislative steps quickly if it decides to do so.
Clause 40 gives us the ability to extend the range of fixed penalty notices in a flexible way, giving some powers to issue them to accredited persons, some to CSOs and some exclusively to police officers, so that,
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legislatively, we are covered. This debate, and some of our previous debates, have shown that we are being pushed in two different directions. We heard the Liberal Democrats speaking to amendments that urged us not to go ahead, or at least to evaluate before going ahead, and I accept that there is a lobby that reflects that view. Some people are also concerned about the extension of fixed penalty notices.
There are also the views of our own constituents and the lobby outside Parliament—mostly the police—that have been reflected in the discussions in the Committee, and which could be summarised as, ''Don't mess around—get on with it, and give people the powers.'' [Hon. Members: ''Hear, hear.''] All I would say to my hon. Friends is that the legislation does not need revisiting, because it already enables us to do exactly that.
The Government, and Parliament, need to decide at what speed we shall extend those powers, and I know that I—and the Home Secretary and everyone else—will think seriously about what has been said in the Committee. We will, of course, listen to those outside Parliament who urge us to be cautious, but we also need to listen to those who want the powers provided because they can be so effective.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 40 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 41
Report by local authority in
certain cases where person remanded on bail
Mr. Hawkins: I beg to move amendment No. 74, in
clause 41, page 32, line 25, leave out 'seven' and insert 'twentyone'.
This is a short point. All that I want to say, without too much of a pun, is that seven days, which is what the Government have proposed in clause 41, is too short. I was encouraged in tabling the amendment, which is a serious one, by the comments of the leader and the chief executive of Surrey Heath, the main local authority in my constituency. I meet the leader and the chief executive regularly, and every time I do they say that even though the Government want to ensure that powers are given to local authorities, the difficulty is that there are costs associated with those powers, and the Government do not provide the funding to accompany the new obligations imposed on local authorities.
At this point in the afternoon, I do not want to start a huge new debate about local authority finance. When I left the Chamber earlier, there was much discussion of that issue in relation to education funding. Such a debate would not be appropriate here, and would probably be out of order. However, this matter is an example of something about which I hope the Government will have second thoughts. Even if the Minister cannot say today that he will agree to a time scale of 21 days, I hope that he will consider the suggestion seriously in the spirit in which it is put forward, and perhaps introduce it later as a Government amendment. Even 14 days—although I have suggested 21—would be better than seven.
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It is far too onerous an obligation to expect small borough councils such as Surrey Heath—and there are local authorities that are even smaller, more rural and more remote than that—to produce such a report in seven days. That is all I need to say about the amendment, but I do so in the knowledge that I have the full support of my local authority chief executive and of many other local authority chief executives and leading officers. The Government should not force local authorities to act within such a short time scale. It would be better and more flexible if the time scale were extended to 21 days.
Mr. Ainsworth: For 10 and 11-year-old offenders, the choice open to the court is either bail or remand to local authority accommodation. The local authority then has discretion over the placement of the child on remand. That measure allows the court to ask the local authority to report back within seven working days on where children will be placed should they be remanded in local authority care. That report informs the court's decision on whether bail or remand to local authority accommodation is the most appropriate option available to prevent further offending. The measure deals with 10 and 11-year-old persistent offenders, and the local authority must deal quickly with requests for reports. The local authority will be asked to undertake a preliminary investigation of a child's circumstances and tell the court where they would place the child if they were remanded to local authority accommodation. We are not expecting the local authority to produce a full assessment of the child's needs within this period.
We need to strike a balance between exploring the child's circumstances and placement options and avoiding the introduction of unnecessary delays to youth justice proceedings. A maximum period of seven working days strikes a fair balance. We expect the power to be used only for persistent serious 10 and 11-year-old offenders, so we are talking about small numbers of people.
Mr. Green: I may be able to help the Minister. The measure clearly relates to social services, so it is the county council that will bear the burden, not Surrey Heath borough council, whose chief executive will not have to worry about that extra duty.
Mr. Ainsworth: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I was just about to say that we are talking about a social services report; it is a county, not a district function. Many of the persistent offenders whom we are talking about will already be known to the social services department. I am not at all sure that in those circumstances we want to allow a delay in proceedings.
Mr. Hawkins: Obviously, I had thought about the point made by the hon. Member for Ludlow. However, the Bill does not restrict the measure to county councils, it just refers to a local authority. There is good reason for that: as the Minister and the hon. Gentleman will know, under powers recently introduced, some areas are now unitary. Next door to me in Surrey Heath we have Bracknell Forest and Woking, which are small unitary authorities. I campaigned—successfully, as it turned out—for my
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previous constituency, Blackpool, to become unitary. In those cases, we are talking about local authorities that are much smaller than counties. Although I accept the point that because we still have a two-tier system in Surrey, Surrey Heath might not have to operate that measure, the Bill just says ''local authority'', and there are small unitary authorities to which the same point applies.
Mr. Ainsworth: Let me repeat that we are talking about young people—10 and 11-year-olds—who are persistent offenders. There will not be a huge number of them. We are also talking about a criminal justice system that we have done a lot to try to speed up. It is not in the interests of justice to allow unreasonable delays to remain part of the system. Seven days is sufficient to give what is not a full assessment but a report to the court on what it will mean for the child concerned if the court takes a certain decision.
Mr. Clappison: Will the Minister say a little about whether social services will be expected to report back to the court on the accommodation that they have available, and whether it will involve the 10 and 11-year-olds mixing with older young people?
Mr. Ainsworth: As I said, at the moment the court has no way of knowing of the consequences of its decision. It takes a decision either to remand the person to local authority care, which could mean fostering, or to release the person on bail. We are seeking to inform that decision, so that the court can ask, ''Do we release this individual on bail or remand them to the care of the local authority? If we remand them, this is what the local authority says it is going to do with them.'' That should surely help the quality of the court's decision. We do not think that seven days is an unreasonable period within which to ask a local authority to give such a report.
4 pm
Mr. Hawkins: I echo the helpful intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere. May I suggest a compromise to the Minister? Rather than saying seven days with no exceptions, he and his officials might at least consider whether there could be a Government amendment specifying 14 days, but with guidance saying, ''If possible, do it more quickly.'' For there to be no exceptions to the seven-day provision would be another burden. When there is a scandal in a social services department, we often hear Ministers saying, ''Some social services departments are terribly hard pressed and short of staff.'' We have only to consider some of the conclusions of the Climbié report: we heard about how short-staffed some social services departments were. There should not be such a restrictive requirement in the Bill, and I hope the Minister will say that he will keep it under review.
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