Perhaps I may first wish all noble Lords involved in this Committee a warm welcome back after such a long break.

Our Amendment 124D highlights two problems in particular with the present provision of education in youth accommodation, and suggests solutions. Noble Lords are aware of the many problems facing those in youth accommodation. Education, of course, is only one way of addressing the issues faced by these young people—which include health problems, psychological concerns, substance abuse and family background difficulties—but it is important to ensure that the education provided for these young people does as much as it possibly can to make sure that the transition to life outside youth detention is as smooth as possible. To this end, it is important to find educational courses that will help those who have perhaps been excluded from school or for whom academic courses have never really sparked their curiosity or held their interest.

Subsection (1) of our amendment, therefore, would mean that sentence planning would take into account the suitability of different education or training courses, in particular in youth accommodation establishments. Education is of paramount importance, and those held in our youth detention centres are being let down.

Before the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, resumes his speech, I should inform the Committee that my noble friend Lord Barnett appears to have recovered and has been taken to St Thomas’s Hospital for checks.

Education is of paramount importance, and those held in our youth detention centres are being let down. In 2004 the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales conducted a census of all youth offending teams, gathering asset and additional data on children in the youth justice system in relation to education, training and employment. The census uncovered statistics showing that for approximately 5,000 children in the system, from 48 youth offending teams, around 50 per cent of those of statutory school age had full-time education, training or employment arranged, while 26 per cent had no provision at all. Among those above school age, 40 per cent had full-time education, training or employment arranged, while 31 per cent had none. We must ensure that these children are receiving education—and not only that, but the right education for their particular needs.

Subsection (2) follows on from the first subsection, but deals with a slightly different aspect of the problem. Many of those in youth accommodation experience problems because even if an appropriate course of training or education is initially provided, the young offender is then moved part way through the course.

In this regard, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons’ Youth Justice Board report, Children and Young People in Custody 2007-08, stated that of a sample of 2,500 young men in a YOI, 29 per cent had been held in another YOI during their current sentence. The Standing Committee for Youth Justice has told us that most children are in custody for an average of only three or four months. Surely it is sensible, therefore, that the sentence planning reflects that very short period of time, which could be crucial to the young person’s development and education. In 2004, an NAO report found that only 6 per cent of youth offending teams said that young people were able to continue education started in custody after release. Surely we must ensure that education is not disrupted because of movement during a short sentence, jeopardising the ability to slot back into the education system outside youth detention. I beg to move.

My Lords, we on these Benches are grateful to the Ministers and the Bill team for the ongoing dialogue and debate that we have had during the Recess. We are pleased to see that some of the government amendments reflect the results of that dialogue. We have considerable sympathy with this amendment and fully support the notion that all young people in custody should have the maximum opportunity to get the skills and confidence to enable them to continue their education when they go out at the end of their time in custody. If young people have to be moved in the middle of a programme of education, it should be a rarity. What provision will there be for giving credit for the learning achieved before the move, so that they may at least carry that with them to the next place? The Minister said that an Ofsted report will cover transitions. Will that aspect be addressed in that report?

My Lords, I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for the care that she has taken during the Recess to keep us informed of progress, hold meetings with us and send information. It was unfortunate that something went wrong with my computer, so that I did not receive the last document that she sent us on Friday until 20 minutes past two this afternoon. I am very glad that it is there, because it is comprehensive and large.

I very much agree with the two amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. At the risk of boring the Committee, I must once again raise the point that it is all very well laying these things down, but unless the context in which they can happen is provided, they will not happen. By context, I mean the organisation of the prison system and the youth justice system within it. These sorts of sentence plans have not only to be made but have to be passed around the system to enable the young people to take advantage of them.

This problem goes right back to 1990 and the recommendation that prisons should be grouped regionally so that people never leave their region and therefore the people who are responsible for delivering the programmes, the education, the work training, the medical treatment, the drug treatment and so on are the same people who will be looking after them when they come out of custody and therefore there is some hope of transitioning from one to the other. One of the problems of having a nationally run system, as at present, is that people are sent higgledy-piggledy all over the country, not for reasons of programming but for reasons of empty bed spaces. If you look at current programmes, you will find far too many of them are interrupted because people are moved at the wrong time, before they are completed. The worst example I came across was a boy who was moved the night before he took A-levels, for which he had prepared for 18 months.

We are very glad that, at last, we seem to be getting some coherence in delivery but, as I have mentioned before on the Floor of the House, there are two key words in this: “what” and “how”. Somebody has to lay down what is to happen everywhere and make certain that it does. The “how” is left to people on the ground to deliver it appropriately with the people and the resources they have. There is an awful lot of “how” about at the moment. “How” is going down in minute detail, but nobody is delivering the “what”. Suggesting that governors of prisons should be responsible is absolutely the wrong solution because governors change and when a new governor comes in, he changes all the programmes. Until and unless someone is made responsible and accountable for what happens in all young offender institutions all over the country, including the programming, what is provided and its content, none of this will come to pass. There are far too many people with individual responsibilities not working towards a coherent whole, and we need a coherent whole in which all these things can happen. Yet again, we are discussing a Bill that is being put forward by one ministry but we are really aiming at another. I hope that the messages being transferred to the Ministry of Justice will somehow get through because it is its responsibility to see that all these things that we are talking about can happen.

My Lords, there is a third monosyllable to be added: “who”. Throughout the National Health Service, we have never known who is responsible. There is a bit of that in the Prison Service, and I hope that it can be cleared up.

My Lords, first, I thank all noble Lords who co-operated with us during the Recess in trying to ensure that we resolved as many issues as we possibly could. It was much appreciated.

I agree that we must aim to ensure a learning experience for young people in custody that is as consistent as possible. We are building a system where education is given the priority it deserves, where, when young people are moved, they do not go back to square one in their education. The education they were receiving and the knowledge and understanding of their needs that have been built up about them will move with them. Let me explain in detail how this will happen.

New Section 562E places a duty on local authorities to provide on request any educational information that they hold which a receiving local authority needs in order to perform its new duties. Importantly, if a receiving authority requests that information, the previous authority must provide it.

On the question of ensuring that the information is distributed around the system as quickly and effectively as possible, I am sure noble Lords will be pleased to know that the national rollout of the eAsset electronic system was completed in March 2009. So this is not now a paper system chasing young offenders; the information should now be on this national electronic database. That ought to improve efficiency and prevent papers getting sent to the wrong place or getting lost, and is a useful, practical step towards resolving what is after all a complex problem.

Alongside this, new Section 18A provides that in securing suitable provisions for persons in juvenile custody, local authorities must have regard to the desirability of enabling persons to complete programmes of study or training which they have already begun. This will help to ensure that, wherever possible, young people will be able to continue with education programmes which they have already started, and we will make this clear in guidance.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked how we will achieve this. One of the things that we hope will occur at the moment is the reduction of moves in custody. The reduction in the under-18 custodial population in recent months means that young people no longer have to be transferred to free up places in establishments operating at full capacity. This means that where transfers still take place, they are for reasons connected with the needs and circumstances of the individual young person. Again, we hope that that will also assist the situation.

Young people are not moved around the system without good reason. When they move—I am sure many noble Lords are aware that they do move—a range of factors based on the person’s needs must be taken into account. This already includes education needs alongside other factors—such as the young person’s age, any identified risk factors and closeness to home—in determining the best placement for the young person. However, we will work with the Youth Justice Board to see whether the existing requirements in relation to the potential impact on the person’s education can be strengthened in the transfers protocol.

The provisions in the Bill will help to raise standards of education across the secure estate, so that, where transfers occur, the person will not lose out on their education. Ofsted inspections of provision in custody will ensure that this happens, and its annual report to Parliament covers the whole of its remit, including a section on young offender education. In the longer term, we are also working to reduce the number and frequency of moves needed across the secure estate.

I want to ensure that I have covered all the points. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, asked about credits for work that has been completed. That ought to take place with the updating of the individual learning plan, and now that we are conveying this in an electronic fashion I hope that that will indeed be the case.

I hope, with those assurances, that noble Lords will feel able to withdraw their amendment. We all share exactly the same objectives: to ensure that the vital educational needs of young offenders are met, and that when they return to their local authority—whichever one that is—those needs continue to be met.

My Lords, I am not sure that I recognise the prison system as the Minister portrays it. He seems to think that by waving some political magic wand he can make things happen. He seems to think that an electronic system will automatically make people behave in some way or another—as if you can treat people in an educational system as automata that you can switch. Could he imagine switching his own child to another school, even with the best information provision possible, and not disrupting that child’s education? That does not happen. There are friendship groups to re-form; there are different teachers; the children are at a different point in the curriculum. It is an immensely disruptive procedure.

If the noble Lord has a magic wand, as he seems to think he has, there is an easy way to apply it. There should be an instruction that someone undergoing a course of education cannot be moved until it is completed. That would set out the priorities. It is simple and can be effected.

I do not think that the Minister addressed the other part of my noble friend’s amendment. The courts should have some knowledge and understanding of the available educational provisions in particular establishments so that they can make a reasonable decision of where a young person should be sent, under what conditions and the length of sentence. I am terribly disappointed that the Minister did not address that fundamental issue. We have these kids for only three or four months. If they are sent somewhere at random before we find out what they need, there will be the disorganisation, chaos and lack of education that we find all too commonly at the moment. There has to be progress in making this an integrated function to set these kids back on the right road. It is crucial that the courts should have access to assessments of a young person’s requirements when the first decisions are made about their educational needs. I hope that the Minister is able to address that part of my noble friend’s amendment.

My Lords, I do not think that I suggested I have a magic wand. I sometimes feel that I am not much bigger than Sooty who did. We have tried to ensure that it is responsibility of the Youth Justice Board to facilitate the placement of remanded children and young people into juvenile custody, including the placement of the most sentenced children, and that it is managed nationally. The Youth Justice Board has a range of criteria on which placement decisions are made. The priority factors for a person’s placement are their age, vulnerability and closeness to home. Obviously, closeness to home will help in terms of education.

Will the Minister repeat the criteria because I did not hear educational criteria in that list?

The noble Lord is correct. The priority factors for a person’s placement are their age, vulnerability and closeness to home, which is where usually a person would receive their education. No one likes to move people. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked me to address two things. The first is the importance of the first placement, with which we would agree and which is one of the factors. His second point is what happens when you have to transfer a young person.

Of course, as a parent, that is the last thing you ever want to do, but there are occasions on which it happens; for example, when the safety of the young person or the young person’s behaviour makes it a requirement that they have to move. In considering those moves, the Youth Justice Board follows a protocol which covers all transfers made across the entire secure estate for children and young people, and prescribes a process for each type of transfer. There are four main types of transfer; namely, vulnerable and at risk, discipline, planned and overcrowding. Now that the young offender institutions are not so full, we hope that overcrowding will not be such a problem.

Other types of transfers include emergency transfers, mental health transfers and transfers within the individual case management process protocol where the person is being particularly disruptive.

As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, education is not mentioned in those criteria. Although I am sure the Committee accepts that where there is a mental health problem or a danger to the young person, that should have a certain priority in decisions about moving the young person, I think that the issue of completion of education should come higher up the list than overcrowding. In a case of overcrowding, the governor will have some discretion as to which young people will be moved. Surely, education and the stage a young person has got to in his or her course should be in that list of criteria. I would point out to the Minister that the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, simply asks that regard should be had to that.

The noble Baroness makes a valid point and I shall address what we are doing to improve the situation. We will work with the Youth Justice Board to see whether the existing requirements regarding the potential impact on a person’s education can be strengthened in the transfers protocol. The point will be taken into account. We will also deal with these issues when the guidance for England is published for consultation before we reach the Report stage. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for their support, and in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for continuing to emphasise what he calls the “what”. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Elton who raised the idea of the “who”, and I thank the Minister for his response. As my noble friend Lord Lucas said, one hopes that the national electronic database will work in the way the Government intend. The Minister says that it ought to solve the problem, but while of course it ought to do so, we look to the Government to ensure that it does.

The Minister also said that guidance will be forthcoming to give effect to continuity of training and education. Every effort should be made to show us at least a draft of the guidance before the Report stage; it would be extremely helpful if that was possible. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for his request for a response on the sentence planning aspect, as well as to my noble friend Lord Elton and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for their interventions. We will need to think carefully about the Minister’s response, but until the Report stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

This amendment seeks to leave out a sub-paragraph. In the third paragraph of the letter sent by the Minister last Friday evening to interested Peers, she wrote that the reforms set out in this Bill to make local authorities responsible for the education and training of young people in youth custody,

“are central to ending the disapplication of education law for young people detained in youth custody”.

Currently, young offenders in youth custody are excluded from education law, and this Bill will change that. The purpose of my amendment is to try to make the change complete. Perhaps I may explain.

In the Bill as drafted, new Section 18A(1) set out in Clause 47 requires local authorities to provide education to those aged under 19, while new Section 18A(7)(b) restricts the requirement so that it applies only if the young people are being held in what is described as “relevant youth accommodation” in their area. In Clause 48(3), new Section 562(1A)(b)(ii)—if your Lordships can follow me—specifically excludes accommodation used “wholly or mainly” to hold people aged 18 or over. In a letter dated 6 October, the noble Baroness quoted the Youth Justice Board as having reported that in the year to April 2008, only one under 18 year-old was moved to young adult accommodation, and only four months before his 18th birthday. Even if there were no more than one or two of these cases a year, a principle is at stake here, one almost certainly recognised by the European Court of Human Rights, so there is some backing to the case. But it is stronger than perhaps noble Lords imagine because the reassurance given by the noble Baroness relates only to young adult accommodation as described in the YJB letter, while the accommodation I am concerned about is all of that subject to the exemption in Clause 48 which I have just described. It seems inescapable that that would include not just those places built specifically for young adults, but the whole of the adult estate into which, as some of us remember all too well, not tens or scores but on occasion hundreds of young people of this age were decanted when a real pinch was felt through the pressure on accommodation.

In her letter the Minister said that she was considering an amendment to address the plight of the rare birds of passage that she is planning for. After she has considered what I have said, will she confirm that she will table an amendment to agree that the Bill should make provision for the much larger, possibly non-migratory flocks, that I fear we may be destined to see perched in adult accommodation in the future? I beg to move.

My Lords, I should like to add to my noble friend’s comments about the gratitude we feel towards noble Lords who have been generous with their time over the past few weeks to help us in focusing our work in preparation for Committee. I am grateful to noble Lords across the House for the help that they have given us.

In response to the noble Lord’s remarks, I understand his concern. As I said in my letter, which he has described clearly and carefully to the Committee, it is a rare event for a young person aged under 18 to be held in the young adult prison estate. As the noble Lord explained, the Youth Justice Board report for April 2008 pointed out that only one young person under the age of 18 was moved from juvenile custody to young adult custody.

I should like to think about the noble Lord’s concern about a future situation in which large numbers of under-18s could be decanted into adult accommodation. This is not something that we on these Benches would envisage—I hope it is not something that anyone on any Benches around the House would envisage—but I shall explore what guidance we can give to the chief executive of Skills Funding and how we can work with Welsh Ministers to produce that guidance. I shall happily continue the dialogue with the noble Lord between now and Report to ensure that we can provide the reassurances necessary to meet his concerns. With that, I hope he will consider withdrawing his amendment.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I echo my thanks to her for the time that she has spent and, more particularly, the time that her Bill team have spent, some of them on Saturday mornings, which is far beyond the call of duty. It is much appreciated.

I also assure the noble Baroness that no one envisages doing these things; they suddenly find themselves forced to do it. It is a force majeure and we have to prepare for it before it happens.

Having said that and in the light of what the noble Baroness said—understanding that she has taken on board that we are talking about more than just one or two a year when the shoe pinches—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 128, 133 and 134. The first amendment seeks simply to make local authorities apply the same standards and supply the same support to detained young persons as they do to other persons of the same age. Amendment 134 is designed to ensure that any existing knowledge about the special educational needs of a detainee is known to the host authority and acted on by it at the earliest possible time.

The whole group, in fact, has been largely overtaken by the lengthy letter that the Minister sent us over the weekend, so I need not elaborate on the detail of this except in one respect: Amendment 128 is less of a probing amendment than the rest because it requires that there should be a standard format in which information about a child’s or young person’s educational progress is kept and transmitted. The noble Lord mentioned the e-Asset system; I would like to know whether that is uniform not only throughout England but also in Wales. I am aware that there are transfers of prisoners across the Severn as well as between regional boundaries, and it is important that the same format of document should come with the arriving inmate from wherever he has come and to wherever he is going, so that everyone knows what to look for where. I have set out a system for doing this that is perhaps simplistic but that I think none the less would work. So far as I am concerned, it could be electronic, on hard copy or both. I would advise that it was not put into service until the system for transferring, electronically or otherwise, was uniform throughout England and Wales—also, ideally, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but we will leave that aside for the moment. I await the Minister’s reply.

My Lords, I put my name to these amendments because, as with so much of the Bill, there is a read-across to an aspect contained in another Bill that is linked with the intention of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I refer to the Health and Social Care Act, on which we had long discussions about the role of the social workers who were responsible for children in care who went into custody. Those social workers had the duty of being in loco parentis, overseeing all the programmes that were planned with and for that young offender during their detention and training order in custody, as well as overseeing the resettlement or rehabilitation plan that was made at the end.

Education is but one part of that process, but it reinforces the need for the local authority to be responsible for ensuring that, wherever that child comes from—whether they come from a home where a parent can carry it out or whether they need someone else, such as a care officer, to do it—someone is responsible for seeing that these programmes are overseen and are carried out. It is therefore essential that the provision should be made clear in every responsibility that is now being passed on to local authorities.

My Lords, I take the opportunity, given what my noble friend has just said, to thank the Minister for the recent meeting on the Bill, particularly for what was said in that meeting about the social workers who have been appointed to young offender institutions. As my noble friend has said, they play a vital role in ensuring that our most vulnerable children make a smooth transition back to their local authority when they move from the prison.

As the Minister knows, and as I have expressed before in Committee, there is concern that for a long time there has been uncertainty among social workers employed in these settings about their contracts; they have had short-term, one-year contracts and their current funding is uncertain. I am grateful to him for recognising that this is a matter of concern. I recognise that it is the local authority’s responsibility. I am grateful that he has said that he will write to me, updating me on the current situation. I would be grateful to hear in his response how many of the 25 posts for social workers are currently filled. I wanted to take that opportunity to thank the Minister for such a positive response on this issue.

My Lords, I also take this opportunity to thank Ministers and, indeed, the team for the time that they have given. It has certainly been helpful. Like my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, I have had problems with my computer. I hope that we will all catch up in due course.

I am attracted by this duty to establish and maintain a learning programme. It sets out exactly what should be happening. The problem is that none of us really believes that it is happening, or that it will happen satisfactorily in future, even with e-Asset coming in. Apart from the idea of people being in prison for three months or less, which immediately makes one think of how completely pointless it is to send anyone to prison for three months, it is essential that it should happen within a reasonable length of time. That worries us on every aspect of this Bill. Is it going to happen within a reasonable length of time, preferably as soon as the plan for someone to be moved goes into action? I should be grateful for a little more reassurance.

My Lords, it would be helpful to do a note to the Committee on the role of the corporate parent in this. We are placing duties and responsibilities on home local education authorities that are also the corporate parents. It would be helpful to have a note for the Committee on that matter. There are some real benefits to the approach that we are adopting, in being clear about the responsibilities of the home local education authority. I am very sorry that Members of the Committee are having problems with their computers, because we rely on the expert work of our House of Lords computer team. They are fabulous, and they usually do a great job for us.

I offer noble Lords some reassurance about the important amendments that we are discussing. I shall take some time to address some of the concerns that have been expressed. Amendment 126, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, seeks to ensure that local authorities work to identify young people in juvenile custody in their area for whom it is necessary to make special educational provision.

Our guiding principles in these reforms have always been to ensure consistency between provision in and out of custody. However, it is not always practical to replicate the assessment and statementing regime for children and young people in custody. The population in custody is highly mobile, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and young people generally spend only a short time in a particular institution, which would not allow time for the statementing process. I know that noble Lords have been concerned about that.

The Bill as drafted requires that authorities will use their best endeavours to ensure the delivery of appropriate special educational provision. This will be provision corresponding as closely as possible to the provision in the statement. That is the thrust of what we are trying to achieve. The statement will be the starting point; there will be consideration of whether the provision that it contains remains appropriate and how much of it can be delivered within the time the young person is due to spend in the institution. The Bill also imposes obligations upon the home authority to transfer a copy of the person’s SEN statement to the host authority, in which the YOI institution is located, to enable the host authority to determine appropriate special educational provision. That transfer of information is absolutely key, as noble Lords have suggested. It is important that that is timely.

We have also made provision to ensure that a child’s statement of special educational needs, which was maintained before the person's detention, must be reinstated or reviewed on their release. That relates to the concern about young people returning to their home environment and whether the provision will be there for them. There are strong new duties that will benefit young people with SEN in custody. Of course, Ofsted inspections will make sure that they are applied in practice. With those reassurances, I hope that Amendment 126 can be withdrawn.

Amendment 128 would ensure that each child and young person in juvenile custody is provided with a personal learning programme. That document is key, as we have heard. Young people in juvenile custody already have individual learning plans as part of their wider sentence and resettlement plans, which are regularly updated. Those are produced very early on in the process. The information contained in the plan follows the person through custody. As my noble friend has already said, the e-Asset system is so important because it can operate in a timely way. That will continue to be the case once the provisions of the Bill are in force.

We will set out in statutory guidance—a high level of authority—that local authorities should ensure through the arrangements that they make with learning providers that all young people receive a learning assessment—again, something that the Committee has been very concerned about. That will examine literacy and numeracy skills and will include a basic screen for special educational needs and learning difficulties. It will inform decisions about how the provision is best tailored to meet their needs alongside the educational information from the home authority. It will bring together information from the home authority—the people who know the child—and put it alongside information garnered in the custodial environment.

The information will be recorded in an individual learning plan that will continue to form part of the person’s wider sentence plan. I would be happy to check the exact format of that plan—how it is laid out and so forth—because in e-Asset, that will be the standard approach. I hope to be able to share an outline version of the statutory guidance that lies behind all that with the Committee before Report.

Key to all of this is the role of Ofsted. Ofsted plans to introduce a new methodology for inspection of education in young offender institutions to look at progress being made by offenders. I appreciate the Committee's anxiety about what will really happen, but we have to have mechanisms and levers to ensure that the guidance and the duties that we place are put into action. Ofsted will be using that new methodology, which will include inspection of young people's learning assessments, individual learning plans and the involvement of tutors. It will look forensically at what really happens.

The Bill also strengthens provisions to support the person’s resettlement into the community, which is so important when people move and spend only a short time in a young offender institution. New Section 562B places a new duty on the home local authority to take steps to promote the fulfilment of the young person's learning potential while they are in juvenile custody and on their release. Where appropriate, the home authority must make arrangements for the provision of education or training on the person's release from juvenile custody. I believe that that duty will help to ensure the continuity of learning, which many have raised as a concern. With that, I hope that the amendment will not be pressed.

I would like to offer a little more reassurance on Amendments 133 and 134. I agree that it is essential for both home and host authorities to have all available information about a young person. That is why we have new Section 562E, which provides for the sharing of information connected with the provision of education or training for detained persons. That includes any information relating to a person's special educational needs.

New Section 562F provides for the transfer of copies of any SEN statements, and makes provision to ensure that the host authority is aware that a person has a statement and that the host local authority will need to ensure that it has a copy of the statement to fulfil its “best endeavours” duty in new Section 562, which is a key part of the new duty on the person’s home authority. We recognise that, with different authorities involved, this could be complex. The youth justice system’s recent development of the e-Asset programme, the secure e-mail system that we have heard about, presents new opportunities to make information transfer much simpler, more efficient and more timely. We will be clear on how information exchange should occur, particularly in the guidance that we are producing. I hope that with these and any further reassurances the noble Lords would like me to offer—I will do my best—the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

I thought at the beginning that we were wandering off course when the noble Baroness talked about statements. The noble Lord’s amendment clearly runs far wider than that. However, then she said something absolutely wonderful: that when these children come into custody they will be assessed. They will have a general assessment that will cover basic special educational needs, literacy and numeracy. Can I have some details about that? I would really like to know what this assessment is to be. Beyond anything else, it would be nice to see it introduced in schools. We have been asking for this for a very long time. I have no objection to the Prison Service leading the way in this fashion, but I would like to know the details. I would also like to know what frequency Ofsted proposes for its inspections and how quickly it anticipates getting around the estate for its first inspections when the Bill is passed.

The noble Baroness talks, quite rightly, about gathering information from the host authority. What provision is being made to encourage host authorities to put this information together before their charge arrives somewhere else, in another authority’s young offender institution? Should this process—of preparing a dossier which could go immediately to the institution—not have been started two or three weeks beforehand? There is usually, or quite often, a gap between conviction and sentencing; should the dossier preparation not begin at that point? Finally, the noble Baroness again mentioned e-Asset, which is not a system that I have come across. If she can point me in the direction of documentation on that, I should be most grateful.

I would be very happy to write in detail to the noble Lord. As he has suggested, it would be a good idea for the assessments to be undertaken and reports prepared before sentencing. That is the way it works. I will write in detail to the noble Lord about how all the assessments work and copy it to the Committee. The assessments are requirements under secondary legislation and through contractual arrangements that are entered into with providers. There are strict deadlines for assessments; they should be made within either 10 working days or two weeks. There is a lot to go through but I will furnish the Committee with that detail.

Before the amendment is withdrawn, could I ask the Minister to remind the Committee about where the flow of funds is in all this? Clearly, under these two clauses, the local education authority is now responsible for providing adequate education and training for those held in youth custody. That presumably means that it will be responsible for funding this. There are funds available in the Prison Service for this at the moment. Will those funds be reduced? If new equipment is required or if, perhaps, prisons or youth offender institutions do not have such equipment, will the local authority provide it, or will the Prison Service be expected to do so? What I am really getting at is, who is the paymaster here? Will the whole prison system regime have its funds reduced so that the local education authority takes over a function which hitherto has been the responsibility of prison governors and the Prison Service?

My Lords, the YPLA will have a key role in apportioning funds. I do not have details of the exact flows of money in my file but we are not expecting local authorities to pick up additional funds that would have been the responsibility of the Youth Justice Board. However, again, I am happy to write to the noble Lord and to the Committee giving the full detail. Even a flow diagram might be helpful.

My Lords, in response to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about inspection, I inform the Committee that since 1996 Ofsted inspectors have gone into every young offender institution not independently but as part of a prisons inspection, because the Ofsted inspectors go in with the prisons inspectorate.

My Lords, I will seek advice on what the noble Baroness has so far told us. Before we leave Amendment 128, I ask her to note that it not only sets out that a programme should be put in place but obliges the host authority to report every week on the progress made by the pupil. That information is then put together with the programme, to be sent on. It may not be enough just to say “This should be put across”, because those of us who have worked in school staffrooms know that at the end of 18 gruelling weeks either you say, “Little Johnny could try harder”, or one can give a blow-by-blow statement of his progress. What is required is the information needed by the next person to take little Johnny on, in order to be able to teach him adequately.

That brings me to SEN. I am delighted to join my noble friend Lord Lucas in welcoming the intention at last to screen all incomers. The Minister said that that will take time. It will, I think, inevitably throw up a number of cases which need statements. However, in the same paragraph that she announced that, she said that they will not be in the same place long enough for a statement to be drawn up for them. That lends great force to the point of my noble friend Lord Lucas that a regulation should require at least certain aspects of the educational programme to take priority in the list of criteria that are applied to prisoners before they are moved.

Having given good warning, I am not finished with Amendment 128 or the principles therein. Subject to what I may cull from Hansard later, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 127, which would, at page 31, line 7, leave out new subsection (1), or rather, as it appears on the Marshalled List,

“leave out lines 7 to 9”.

When I first read this measure I thought that I detected a Henry VIII clause apparently giving sweeping powers to amend legislation passed by this House, and when I read it again I had the same impression. The Minister has told me that this is not the use intended for the provision by the present Government. However, she cannot, of course, speak for the next and subsequent Governments. I was encouraged by her to bring forward an amendment to new Section 562A if I was particularly concerned about this, so all I need to do at this stage is to say that I am and to listen to what she has to say.

Despite the change of gender involved, I shall endeavour to reply. As we have heard, Amendment 127 reflects a concern about the proposed use of the power in new Section 562A—that we could make regulations to disapply many of the provisions of the Education Acts from young offenders. I can reassure your Lordships’ House that this is not the case. New Section 562A merely provides a power to modify primary and secondary legislation in their application or effect on those detained in relevant youth accommodation.

Perhaps it is also worth noting that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee was content with the power and application of the negative resolution procedure. I recognise, however, the concerns that this power may be used to disapply the specific young offender provision made by this Bill. Certainly, we would not intend the power to be used in this way. Therefore, it may be more appropriate to make it clear in the Bill that the power in new Section 562A cannot be used in relation to provisions of the Act that already make specific provision in relation to detained persons. I will take this question away, as the noble Lord requested, and see what can be done to further reassure him on Report.

My Lords, I am most grateful, and I shall table a similar amendment on Report unless the Government have an amendment that makes it unnecessary for me to do so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 131 and 135. Amendment 135 requires the host authority to give to the home authority adequate warning of the release of an inmate. I realise that the arbitrary 14 days that I have chosen may not be appropriate, but it is necessary to ensure, as my noble friend Lord Lucas and others have said, that a receiving-back home authority shall have time to get its act together and to get to know the young person—indeed, make face-to-face contact with them—before they return to their home area.

Amendment 130 applies when a host authority alerts a home authority of special educational needs or learning difficulties. The amendment would prevent the home authority saying, “Oh no, he hasn’t”, because at the moment it is required to take action to meet the conditions described by the host authority only if it seems to the home authority appropriate to do so. I should like the Minister to give some explanation of the circumstances in which there might be a difference of opinion between the host authority and the home authority on the SEN and learning difficulties of one of their charges.

In all these provisions, I hope that the Committee would be right to assume that everything said about England could be said about Wales. That is why I have included new Section 562G(6) in Amendment 130. I need say no more about Amendment 131, which is simply a belt-and-braces provision that I think the Minister will tell me is unnecessary. I beg to move.

My Lords, I very much hope that I can offer the reassurances that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, is looking for. Perhaps I may walk through the notes that I have. However, first, I agree that young people’s learning needs, including any special educational needs, must continue to be met in a consistent way on their transfer from custody back into the community. That is the rationale behind including the home responsibilities in the Bill.

The general duties on local authorities to ensure that education and training are available for all children and young people in their area under Sections 13 and 14 of the Education Act 1996 and new Section 15ZA will apply to young people on their release from juvenile detention, as they do to all young people in a local authority area. Local authorities also have a duty to meet the special educational needs of people in their area under Part IV of that Act. I am arguing that the amendments are, as the noble Lord suggested, unnecessary.

The Bill will help to ensure that no young person is missed by a local authority on their release from juvenile custody, and will help to ensure the successful transition back into education and training in the community by placing the duty on home authorities to promote the fulfilment of the person’s learning potential. I am afraid that I am coming back to the statutory guidance, but we will make it explicit in that guidance that this includes the need to have regard to any special educational needs that a person may have.

The noble Lord, Lord Elton, was concerned about possible disagreements between local authorities. I might have to think about that. A young person can only be in one place at any one time. If a home authority does not agree with what a host authority has said about special educational needs, when the person comes home the home authority’s view would, I imagine, trump the earlier view taken by the other authority. However, I am happy to think further about whether I have got that right. As I said, we will make it explicit in statutory guidance that regard must be had to a person’s special educational needs on release and return to the home authority area.

For persons in juvenile custody who had the SEN statement prior to detention, Amendment 135 would require host authorities to notify other authorities of the person’s release at least 14 days in advance, as the noble Lord explained. One has the expectation that 14 days is the latest that they would leave it. However—there is always a “however”, I suppose—there may be some exceptional circumstances in which a person’s release date is not known two weeks in advance, which would mean that the amendment would be impossible to comply with, although obviously we would see that as the exception rather than the rule. What we meant by “exceptional circumstances” would need to be picked up in statutory guidance.

Instead, we will make it clear in statutory guidance that home local authorities should be notified as soon as possible about a person’s expected release date from their custody. This is critical to enabling effective planning for the person’s education and training on their release back into the community. The information transfer provisions in the Bill and the facility of the electronic system will also help to ensure that educational information about the person is properly transferred and used to inform the longer-term education and resettlement planning. I hope that, with that reassurance, the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

Finally, the noble Lord asked whether this applies to Wales. These are mirror provisions—I think that that is the correct term—so they will apply through the Welsh Assembly Government in Wales.

My Lords, let me say just a word on the mechanism of that. The statutory guidance, whose initial drafts the noble Baroness kindly said that she would show us, will be drafted in England by the Secretary of State and in Wales by the Welsh Assembly Government. Therefore, will she be showing us two sets of drafts?

My Lords, I will make my best endeavours and undertake to ensure that I can provide the noble Lord with as much information about the Welsh Assembly Government’s approach as I can.

I am grateful for that, as nobody seems to be particularly watching the interests of the Welsh at the moment and this legislation is a big issue for them. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 136B. The Minister sent a detailed response to concerns on issues such as information exchange and continuity of learning for young offenders. We welcome assurances on the assessment of the learning needs, literacy and numeracy of young people entering custody, and on screening for special educational needs and learning difficulties and disabilities. There is great complexity in the situation—and there needs to be, because these are complex young people. The amendment focuses on a single person, office or role that might simplify the process. I recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has indicated—that the governor may not be the appropriate person, because that role may change. However, we seek to focus on a role, or person in a role, in the institution which would take responsibility to clarify and simplify the lines of authority.

As well as the consultation that the Minister has indicated will be put in place for this, we hope that this authority will be regularly evaluated to make sure that front-line staff are able to spend as much time as possible on working with young offenders rather than in time-consuming and unproductive administration, and that any deficiencies can be rectified at the earliest opportunity.

Amendment 136B confirms the role of Ofsted in monitoring the performance of local authorities with respect to educational provision for those in youth custody. As we have heard, Ofsted already inspects the insitutions, secure children’s homes and secure training centres, and so would also be best placed to include local authority provision in any monitoring and reporting role. We look forward to the Minister’s response to the two amendments, and support the direction of the government amendments. I beg to move.

I am concerned again about Wales. I see that only the Secretary of State has the power to direct here. Is it intended that equivalent pressure should be available to the Welsh Assembly Government?

My Lords, I am freshly back from a two-day visit to the Welsh Assembly, and apologise if there was any oversight—we do indeed hope that the Welsh will be included in this provision.

My Lords, the effectiveness of this kind of provision, which I wholeheartedly support—it would be wonderful if it happened in this way—depends on the issue of initial assessment. Somebody must decide what the needs of the young person are before these can be communicated. I am increasingly concerned with the question of the “who”, which my noble friend Lord Elton raised earlier. The assessment of literacy and numeracy is not an easy and straightforward task that anybody can do. Often, it involves oral testing on passages that are read out. There are flows of young people coming into custody all the time, all over the country. Where is the army of people qualified to do assessments coming from, and who will be charged with providing it? Will the assessors have to come out of local schools? Will the local authority provide them? I would appreciate the Minister’s comments on what the assessment will be and who will do it.

May I add to what the noble Baroness has said? The amendments attempt to pin down the responsibility of the local authority to make sure that it will do what the Bill sets out for it to do. Many local authorities might be dilatory in exercising these responsibilities, which are irksome and very expensive. I would like some estimate from the Government of what the cost will be of transferring to local authorities the responsibility for education and training of 16 to 18 year-olds who are held in custody. Have they estimated the costs, which will be considerable? They have to devise training plans and ensure that they are implemented, and—who knows?—a local authority might have a young offender in an offender institution at one end of the country and another at the other end of the country.

When it comes to special educational needs, as my noble friend has just said, who will bear the cost of following up the assessment? A young offender with special educational needs—for example, if they are partially blind, partially deaf or autistic—will, if they are not in custody, be in either a special school or a special unit of an ordinary school. Of course, they cannot attend those if they are in custody and will require individual tutoring in skills relating to blindness, deafness or autism. That is a truly expensive operation. Then their progress has to be measured, which is another expensive operation.

Have the Government made an estimate of the overall cost of this obligation on local authorities across the country? I think we all agree that this is an excellent duty to perform but it is an expensive extra duty, and the question is: where will local authorities get the money? Will it come from the local council tax payer or from a government grant?

My Lords, perhaps I may briefly follow what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has just said. The East Potential academy, which I have already mentioned on the Floor of this House in connection with this Bill, was recently invited to present its business case to the Secretary of State for Justice. It asked the Ministry of Justice and the Youth Justice Board for the figures relating to the cost of youth custody for both those Prison Service establishments but neither was able to produce the figures. The Youth Justice Board gave what it could and the Prison Service referred to the Freedom of Information Act. The result was that the academy staff went to KPMG and invited it to carry out an assessment of the cost of youth custody. The Government allege that it costs between £55,000 and £60,000 a year, but KPMG showed that this was much nearer to £100,000 a year, and a report to that effect was published in July and handed to Ministers for the very reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has mentioned.

If the costs of the provision of this service by local authorities merely reflect the current financial provision as alleged by government, they will be far removed from the actual costs, and local government will rightly be at least very irritated if they suddenly discover that what they are being asked to do is not financed. Where will the other finance come from or are we suddenly going to find that the system, which already does not function as well as it might, functions less well because the resources are simply not there? It is unfair to ask local authorities to make some form of compromise with all the other things that they have to do in order to provide a satisfactory programme for youth.

My Lords, like my noble friend Lady Perry, I declare sympathy for the amendments raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. They summarise concerns, well explained by my noble friend Lord Baker, that authorities may not fulfil their duties adequately, in particular because of cost, and that young people may suffer because of this. I look forward to reassurance from the Minister as to how it will be ensured that local authorities fulfil their duties and that no young person is allowed to fall through the gap between host and home authorities. Indeed, as my noble friend Lady Perry said, there is also the question of “who”.

My Lords, perhaps I may respond quickly to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, on how often Ofsted will be inspecting and what the levers for inspection are. Was that the question? Perhaps I may put the answer on the record anyway. Ofsted also inspects performance by local authorities in England and therefore there is a connection there. There is also Estyn in relation to Wales. Its functions come under Section 136 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and, for Wales, Section 38 of the Education Act 1997. I am sorry if that has not picked up the point made, but I might need to look at Hansard to check that I have answered the question fully.

On funding, I absolutely agree with the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Baker, that it is key to ensure that the flows of moneys are managed properly. I need to be clear that we are talking about the costs of delivering education; we are not talking about the wider costs of running the secure estate. The existing LSC and YJB funds for education will be redirected to local authorities and, most importantly, will be ring-fenced for this purpose. As I said earlier, I will be happy to circulate further information about how that will work, and can go into more detail if that will offer noble Lords the further reassurance that they are looking for. Noble Lords will understand that ring-fencing those funds is not a usual step for local authorities.

The Minister said that the existing funds would be transferred and ring-fenced. That makes the assumption that it costs the same to educate a child in a school of anything from five to 1,500. But educating one, two or three children on their own in a remote institution is likely to be much more expensive, is it not?

I am sorry, I was not clear. There is existing funding for education within the juvenile estate. The funding of education takes place currently through the Learning and Skills Council and the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. That will be redirected to local authorities to deal particularly with the concerns highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to ensure that the local authorities have that ring-fenced resource.

Turning to Amendments 136A and 136B, making local authorities responsible for education for young people in youth custody is central to ending what we have described as the disapplication of education law for this group of young people. We see that as the fundamental step forward. For the first time, this legislation will place clear responsibilities for a young person’s learning while they are in youth custody on local authorities—the people who know about education in their locality. This is vital for improving standards and the quality of the experience for these young people, which is what we are aiming to achieve. Giving responsibility to local authorities will help to align education inside and outside custody and facilitate the sharing of expertise and experience between the mainstream and custodial sectors, which is what we are trying to achieve. It will also create incentives for local authorities to invest in preventing young people entering custody as they will have responsibility for “their” young people in custody even if they are held in a different area. That is the joined-up thinking that on other occasions noble Lords have been keen to see.

The Standing Committee for Youth Justice has welcomed this reform, recommending that it is a significant step forward in the education of this vulnerable group. Placing an overarching duty on governors of youth custody to have overall responsibility for ensuring that local authorities fulfil their duties, which is what the amendment is about, would potentially create further confusion in responsibilities, which we are trying to avoid. I understand that the noble Baroness was pursuing this as a probing, challenging amendment, and not necessarily to see the detail enacted. I agree that we must have appropriate mechanisms in place to ensure that local authorities fulfil these duties. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that these duties must be fulfilled; we must ensure that things happen on the ground. We will be clear through statutory guidance that we expect host local authorities to develop partnership arrangements—this is important in a practical sense—with the custodial establishments fully to involve them in the commissioning process of securing learning provision in youth custody.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her very full reply. Yes, we were trying to find out exactly where the responsibilities might lie. The amendment has drawn out some wider issues on funding, as well as on the skills required. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, pointed out, the people will be required to carry out the assessment as well as the money.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for reminding us of Wales, which is obviously an important aspect. I am glad that that was clarified. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned funding, as did the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, with his rather startling assessment of the cost per young person. At the back of our mind, we always have the long-term greater cost of having a cohort of young offenders in society who might just be turned round to be young productive members of society, but obviously, in the short term, the money needs to be found to do that.

With that, I thank the noble Baroness for her reply, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.