| Crime and Disorder Bill [Lords]
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Mr. Allan: The joys of being part of the new civil liberties alliance on the Opposition Benches is that our minds are frequently in tune. Many of the questions raised by the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) were ones that I intended to raise. I shall try not to repeat his points but develop them further and throw in some of my own. We are concerned that there may be a quick-fix response. The social exclusion unit has targeted this as one of its priorities. We share the concern but are looking for long-lasting solutions rather than quick fixes. Our immediate response is that the real solution is at the school end rather than in the enforcement of truancy law. Our existing truancy framework does not work and we question how far we can go with an additional power. We do not say the power is unnecessary but there are question marks over how far the additional power of enforcement will go when we have such a track record of failure within the existing, fairly comprehensive, legislation. We also question the ability of some agencies to deliver. There are now fewer police officers than when the Government took office. There will be doubts about their ability to field the necessary officers to take part in these new initiatives. Perhaps the Minister will tell us that that trend is about to reverse. There is also the question of the multi-agency partnerships which are currently involved in youth justice and doing a sterling job in my area, involving organisations like Barnardos and NCH Action for Children. They are having difficulty coping simply with their responsibilities towards persistent young offenders. If, as I assume is the Government's intention, they are to pick up these new responsibilities and form the multi-agency partnership for dealing with truants, how will they be resourced? Most of them depend on project funding year by year from sources such as the single regeneration budget. If they are to take on this responsibility, they will be looking for the necessary resources. We have similar questions to those raised by the hon. Member for Woking about the designated premises. Who will be expected to run them in normal circumstances and what will be the regime? How long will youngsters be kept there? Assuming that they are not schools and are some form of social services establishment, will they be kept until the end of the school day and then let go? Will it, in other words, be a school-hours detention scheme? We have questions about the Minister's statement that this is not a power of arrest or detention. What happens if the youngster walks straight out of the designated premises? What if he becomes violent? Will we not effectively be asking social services staff to become gaolers of school-age children? The real answer would involve examining the whole issue of temporary or permanent exclusions, in the school context. There should be better units at the schools. What would happen to excluded pupils under the arrangements? Would those who had been excluded from school be picked up and taken to designated premises? It is difficult to see how they could be playing truant, having already been asked by the school not to attend. Excluded children do not seem to be in the list of exceptions in subsection (4) of the new clause. Excluded children are likely to be quite a large category. The road to truancy often begins with temporary exclusions and leads to longer periods away.
12.30 pmIt is also quite common for children who face extreme bullying at school to stop attending, without telling their parents. Different schools respond differently to bullying, but we should be gravely concerned about the prospect of removing bullied children back to the school from which they have sought escape, without some attempt to deal with the problems. It would be helpful if the Government would consider an amendment on Report with respect to the group of children referred to by the hon. Member for Woking those educated at home. Perhaps subsection (4) of new clause 20 could be amended to refer to section 7 of the Education Act 1996, which makes specific reference to those children. Although I am sure that the Government do not intend that they should be picked up, the parents concerned should have the reassurance that their status in the law is recognised and they are not being overlooked. They are going about their business within the law and should not be interfered with by legislation as long as they respect the Education Act 1996. We hope that the Minister will be able to agree to making that matter explicit in the Bill, and to respond to our other points. We want not to underplay the issue of truancy but to be an effective Opposition, ensuring that proposed measures have their intended effect and do not misfire. Mr. Mike O'Brien: I thank the hon. Members for Woking and for Hallam for their cautious welcome of the proposal. They made some important points. The Home Office and the Department for Education and Employment will, after consulting local education authorities and others, put forward guidance for the police and local authorities about the operation of the provisions. That will be an important safeguard. Many children are properly and lawfully educated at home and the provision would not apply to them. A child who is not a pupil at a school cannot be absent without authority from it. There is no need, therefore, for an amendment. The power is to be used only with respect to children who are absent from school without authority. Mr. Allan rose
Mr. O'Brien: The point on which I suspect the hon. Member for Hallam may be trying to intervene is how to distinguish between the two categories of children. That is what I was coming to. The power will be exercised by a constable in a specified area, for a specified period, on the authorisation of a senior officer. I suspect that there will be a fair amount of publicity before it is exercised, but I accept that some people may not see that. Things are not, as the hon. Member for Woking said, always straightforward. The exercise of the power relies on the constable's having reasonable cause to believe that a child is absent from school without lawful authority. Constables would not be able to decide that children should be taken to the designated place just because they happened to be wandering in the street. In many ways, police officers are experienced in making judgments of that nature in the light of all the circumstances. They would no doubt question the child about whether he had left school because of bullying, or was excluded. In the latter case he would not be subject to the power, because his absence would be authorised, or rather, obligatory. The power under the new clause is intended to be part of a multi-agency approach to the problem, including the sharing of information that would help officers to make judgments. The hon. Member for Woking is right to say that the power would probably arise after discussions between school and police about the perceived development of problems in an area. Mr. Allan: In the unfortunate circumstance that a child who was picked up explained that he was educated at home, but was not believed by the constable, who then made the removal, what would be the remedy? If the individual wanted to take the matter further, would there be a civil remedy similar to that available when an arrest is believed to have been wrong? Mr. O'Brien: The police would obviously be protected from civil remedies to the extent that they reasonably believed that the child was absent without lawful authority. If, however, they acted without a reasonable belief, without taking all the circumstances into account, so that a court would find that they did not act reasonably, no doubt the parent could pursue the ordinary remedies that are available in the courts, on behalf of a child who felt that he had been improperly dealt with. The police officer would be entitled to use such reasonable force as was necessary in all the circumstances. The force would have to be proportionate to the child's power and behaviour. Resistance with violence would constitute an offence of assault, and other powers would come into play. The provision establishes a clear authority for police action, without the disadvantage of criminalising truancy. The reasonable force should be proportionate to the circumstances, and in practice a court would be very unlikely to regard, say, the use of handcuffs as reasonable. Existing guidance to the police about handcuffs is not normally to use them on juveniles in any event. The designated place might or might not be a school. That is to be a matter for the local authority, on being asked to designate a place to which a police officer could take a child if there were grounds to believe that he or she was unreasonably absent from school, but the school could not be identified. Perhaps the child concerned would not say what school he attended. It is not anticipated that the designated place will be a police station. The local authority will decide on the best place: it might be a social services department, or even a school where there are suitable facilities and staff able to deal with children who might have come from other schools. Such children might be returned to their own schools at a later stage. The matter will be left to local authorities. The power to remove a child to a designated place will be exercisable only if a suitable place has been chosen by the local authority. Local authorities and the police will each have their responsibilities. Police superintendents will decide how many of their officers will be used for any survey of the number of truants in their area. They will co-operate with local authorities, but each will have a distinctive role. The hon. Member for Hallam asked who will run the scheme. The local education authority will run it and will determine how to deal with the young people. If a young person absconds from the centre, the LEA can decide to call the police, who will exercise their powers, or it can involve the parents, or it can handle the matter in another way. The authority would be in the same position, and have the same powers as a head teacher who saw a child walking out of the school premises. The issue was raised that the provisions of the new clause might place extra burdens on the police. Youngsters who misbehave when they should be in school already place a substantial burden on the police. The powers will reduce the burden by making it easier for the police to intervene earlier. In some areas, the police already work closely with schools on truancy reduction schemes, but such schemes do not have a firm legal base. For example, in Thanet some schools gave the Kent police authority the power to stop and question children who were out of school, and to return them to the school unless they had written permission for their absence. During that operation, truancy fell in the area and stayed down afterwards. The use of such power seems to have immediate and long-term effects. Even the threat of its use might have an effect; parents would ensure that their children were at school and children would think carefully before they decided to play truant. Resources will be limited because the power will be exercisable for only a specified period and in a specified area. The police would have to consider what resources they could deploy, in negotiation with the schools. Pressure on resources would be reduced. The hon. Member for Woking asked what is a public place and what would police officers do if they saw a child going into his home, but that child was not authorised to be absent from school. In that situation, the officers would not have the right to enter private premises, whether those of the child's parents or of his friends. The power extends only to areas to which the public have access. The hon. Member for Hallam made several general points. He said that he did not want to see quick fixes. That is not what the Government propose. The new clause was drawn up after considerable study by the social exclusion unit. It creates just the right balance by giving the education authority and the police the ability to intervene when specific problems have arisen. It does not introduce general, widely embracing powers that might worry hon. Members. The hon. Member for Hallam also said and the hon. Member for Woking agreed to some extent that the provision would not provide the solution to truancy. Of course it does not provide the solution. We must raise standards in our schools. The Government are committed to that and we are investing in the improvement of school standards. We need a broad approach that tackles the difficulties that cause truancy in schools and other social problems, but that also gives the police and the LEAs the appropriate powers. Finally, a question was asked about excluded children. Such children are lawfully excluded and therefore the power does not apply to them. I hope that I have been able to deal with most of the points made by Opposition Members. I hope also that they will support the new clause.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 1998 | Prepared 9 June 1998 |
