| Crime and Disorder Bill [Lords]
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O' Brien): I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. Truancy is a significant problem in all our constituencies Figures based on school registers show that at least 1 million children take at least one half day off from school a year without authority. However, a confidential survey makes it clear that in many ways the problem is worse than that. According to one survey, nearly one in 10 15-year-olds truant at least once a week. Truancy is closely associated with crime. According to the Audit Commission, a quarter of school-age offenders have truanted significantly. A Metropolitan police study found that 5 per cent. of offences were committed by children in school hours. The Government are determined to make it clear that truancy is unacceptable. It is intolerable for youngsters to congregate on street corners or in shopping centres, causing a nuisance and losing out on education, when they should be in school. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced a package of measures to tackle school exclusions and truancy when he launched the school exclusion unit's report on 11 May. As part of that package, we are giving the police an additional power to remove truants. In many areas the police already co-operate with schools and local authorities to tackle truancy, but they lack explicit powers to do anything when they find a child out of school. The new power will enable a police officer to take truants back to school or another place designated by the local authority. It is not a power of arrest or detention, nor does it make truancy a criminal offence. Parents already commit an offence if they let their child stay off school. The objective is not to criminalise the child, but to deal with the problem and tackle mischief. The new power will be used once the local education authority has designated a place or places for the purpose of the new provision and has notified the chief constable in that area. It will be used in support of local multi-agency efforts to tackle truancy in which the police, schools and local education authorities identify and discuss local problems and draw up strategies to deal with them. The power will be exercisable only with the authority of a police officer of superintendent rank or above. It will not be exercisable by constables or sergeants who happen to be passing and see a child who is not at school. A senior officer will have to authorise use of the power. That senior officer will authorise the area in which and the period during which truants may be picked up. In coming to that judgment, he or she will obviously take account of the results of discussions with schools and with the local authority. The power will be to remove the child to his or her school or to the designated place, at the discretion of the constable. In exercising that discretion, the constable will have to take account of the arrangements agreed between the police, schools and the local authority and the circumstances of the case. The power will be exercised on the basis that the constable has reasonable cause to believe that the child is of compulsory school age and is absent from school without lawful authority. A child's absence from school will be taken to be without lawful authority unless it falls within section 444(3) of the Education Act 1996, which refers to leave, sickness, unavoidable cause or a day set apart for religious observance. The child must be in a public place when picked up. That includes private premises, such as shopping centres and arcades, to which the public have access and where truants tend to congregate and make a nuisance of themselves. The Association of Chief Police Officers has welcomed the new power to support a multi-agency approach to the problem. The new provision will extend only to England and Wales. The police in Scotland already have adequate common law powers to deal with truants. I hope that the Committee will endorse the Government's view that truancy needs to be tackled effectively and that the new clause will do that. Mr. Malins: I am not quite the only representative of the Opposition here at the moment. I am most grateful for the support that is behind me. The Opposition accept that truancy is a serious and growing problem. The Minister's figures suggest that an unacceptably high percentage of young school children play truant. Something must be done about that. Therefore, I express a cautious welcome to the new clause. I hope that it works well in practice. Truancy is not a modern phenomenon, but it is increasing. It is especially noticeable in inner-city high-crime areas. It is not unknown for children from deprived backgrounds, who attend schools that are not of a high standard, to find school life so intolerable that they play truant. Mischief then starts. When young people with time on their hands and nothing to do gather together, crime may result. I understand why the new clause has been introduced and the general principle behind it. It recognises the problem of truancy and the Minister is right to try to tackle it. However, I want to refer to two general principles that might be slightly troublesome and that require explanation. First, although the new power does not involve a power of arrest, it involves the power of detention. Someone can be detained against his will when he has not committed a criminal offence. The second matter is the question of resources, and I shall come to that later. A more specific concern has been raised with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere and with me. It relates to the position of children who are educated at home. Many people do not realise that several thousand families in this country choose to take personal responsibility for the education of their children in accordance with section 7 of the Education Act 1996. Many thousands of children are educated outside the state and private systems and by their families at home. I do not criticise that, because that freedom exists and many parents argue not without force that their children achieve as much, if not more, than those who go through the formal school system. Some of those parents have raised concerns about their children. They point out that many of them spend some hours outside their homes during what we would describe as normal school hours. Normal school hours vary considerably in different parts of the country. It is not a 9-to-5 system. Many schools start very early and there has been a move towards that. I regret it because it means that children are let loose from school early in the afternoon. If both parents are working, that creates problems for13 and 14-year-olds who leave school at 2.30 pm. There is no consistency in school hours. Although it is normal for a child to attend a day school from 8.30 am to 5.30 or 6 pm for five days a week, it is also normal nowadays for children to go to school from 8 am till 2 pm.
12.15 pmParents who educate at home make the point that their children are often outside the home during school hours. The may be in libraries, or walking to and fromthe libraries, museums, theatres or sports clubs. The Government should tackle the anxieties of those parents. They are worried that children who are properly educated at home, and are lawfully strolling around the streets, might be picked up by the police for pursuing normal activities. The position of children at private boarding schools often differs from that of children who attend day schools, because boarding school pupils lawfully wander around outside school during some parts of the day. The police will probably not act in a specific locality unless they have been told by a school that its pupils regularly truant. They are unlikely to provoke action under the new clause; they will respond to anxieties expressed by an authority. Therefore, my fears may be unwarranted. However, the police will have to make important decisions. If they ask a child why he is wandering around, and receive the reply, "I go to so-and-so school, and I'm on my way from A to B" , or, "I'm being educated at home and I'm going from A to B," they will have to make a judgment in sensitive circumstances. They may need extra skills to deal with such circumstances. Will more resources be required? A confident young person could easily see the police off with some cock-and-bull story. I want to move from children who are educated principally at home to a point of principle. The Minister rightly emphasised that the new clause does not create a power of arrest or detention. However, it enables a policeman to deprive a juvenile under 16 of his or her liberty. I assume that a policeman who formed the view that a child was playing truant from school would not be able to say that he was placing the child under arrest, or give any form of caution, and that no conviction would ensue. Nevertheless, a policeman will be able to say, "You are ordered to come with me. I have the power to insist on that." As well as the point about liberty, we should consider the relationship between young people and the police. It is terribly important to create an atmosphere in which youngsters and the police have a good and close relationship and that resentments are not built up. Is there a danger of too much resentment building up in certain localities? I must challenge the Minister on this point. He must confirm that the police have the power effectively to deprive a juvenile under 16 of his liberty when such a person has not committed any criminal offence nor attempted to do so. What happens if the child says, "You can think what you like, police officer, but by advice to you is, `Push off, I am continuing about my lawful business.'" ? Do the police have the power to use reasonable force to take him to a designated place? If so we are moving rapidly into a criminal scenario. The youngster may or may not resist. Although one does not want to suggest scare stories, how far down the line can the police go with a 15-year-old who says, "Make what you like of it, I am going nowhere" ? Do they have powers to use handcuffs, even in an extreme case, or would they back off? Do they have any other powers to constrain? There are other areas which my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest might raise, but the next area I should like to consider is the definition of designated premises. The clause states that the police will have a power to remove a person to designated premises. Will that inevitably be the child's school, that is if the child is willing to say which that is? Will it be the police station? Could it be any other place such as local authority premises? That brings me to the possible resources to be spent as a result of the new clause. It is well known that the government are taking a firm line on public expenditure. It is not so well known that the probation service faces a huge cut, year on year, in its spending throughout county after county. Yet, in this Bill alone we have seen massive obligations put upon the probation service. How it will afford them, I do not know. It is not only the probation service, and if Surrey is anything to go by, the police have also had their budgets cut dramatically. That will continue. The Minister has a duty to tell the Committee whether the clause has any impact on public expenditure, upon resources or upon money being spent. If so where will the money come from? If not, how can the clause operate when it becomes a section? Finally, the Minister was good enough to give us his definition of a public place. Certain places are clearly public such as the streets. The normal definition is places to which the public have access which would include cinemas and public swimming pools. I suspect, going slightly further down the line, that private members' clubs such as football and other sports clubs would fall within the definition of a public place. But I assume that the power does not apply to a child who, at the material time, is at home or at the home of a relative or friend, and that the police have no powers to go into such buildings. I give the clause a cautious welcome. The Opposition understand the problem with truancy but we have queries about the resource implications and the freedom of the individual and we stress the need to proceed sensitively. There are practical questions about how the police will operate and the definition of a public place and where such a child may be taken. We do not speak against the clause but ask the Minister to answer some of our points, not least those put forward with some vigour in correspondence by parents of children who are educated at home.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 1998 | Prepared 9 June 1998 |
