Order for consideration, as amended ( in the Standing Committee), read.

Bill recommitted to a Committee of the whole House in respect of the proposed Clause (Adjustment between local authorities of expenses of maintaining persons in remand homes) standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. H. Brooke.—[ Mr. H. Brooke.]

Bill immediately considered in Committee,

[Sir Robert Grimston in the Chair]

(1) The Secretary of State may, after consulting such local authorities or associations of local authorities as he thinks fit, by statutory instrument make regulations providing, in such cases as may be prescribed by the regulations, for the recovery, by a local authority providing a remand home from such other local authority as may be so prescribed, of such sum in respect of a person detained in the remand home as may be determined in accordance with a rate prescribed from time to time by order made by the Secretary of State by statutory instrument; and any such order may prescribe different rates for different circumstances.

(2) No sum shall be recoverable under such regulations in any case where the expenses of maintaining the person detained in the remand home are treated under section 11(3) of this Act as if they were expenses incurred by the authority as managers of an approved school or are recoverable under section 51(3) of the Children Act 1948 (which provides for the recovery of expenses where a child is removed to a place of safety); but where regulations under this section are in force, any expenses incurred by a local authority in maintaining a parson in a remand home and recoverable under the said section 51(3) shall for the purposes of that section be taken to be equal to such sum as might, but for this subsection, be recoverable in respect of that person under the regulations.

(3) Any payment by a local authority which is made or determined in pursuance of this section shall be treated for the purposes of Schedule 1 to the Local Government Act 1958 or, as the case may be, Schedule 1 to the Local Government and Miscellaneous Financial Provisions (Scotland) Act 1958 as expenses incurred in respect of remand homes (and accordingly as excluded from relevant expenditure for the purposes of general grants).

(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.—[Mr. H. Brooke.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

11.6 a.m.

11.15 a.m.

I was rather surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that in the future there might be a difficulty with regard to remand homes. He did not say very much about the present position. He has said that there are many new places in approved schools being provided and that this should lead to a falling off in

the shortages in respect of remand homes. I should like to remind him that on 14th May, during the Committee stage of the Bill, he gave the members of the Standing Committee some homework to do. I was rather surprised that he felt it necessary to ask members of the Standing Committee to do this homework, because I should have thought that through all his children's officers and all the facilities which he has, he would have been able to find out for himself the present position in remand homes rather than asking the very busy members of the Standing Committee to do the work for him. He said in the Standing Committee on 14th May:

"These stories which I hear from time to time of magistrates' clerks having to telephone all over the country to secure remand home places seem strange. I have little doubt that they were true a short time ago…but they are no longer being reported to us at the Home Office….Hon. Members would do me a service for which I should be grateful if they would check up locally to find out whether the situation is as acute as it was some months ago, or whether my impression is correct; that is, that the situation is not now so acute because of the increased number of approved school and remand home places. I attach a great deal of importance to this, and I give it a great deal of attention, and it is quite right for me to put on record that we in the Home Office are not getting complaints about this matter as we were, say, at this time last year. I want to know the facts."—[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 14th May, 1963; c. 503–4.]

If the right hon. Gentleman has not received the facts, perhaps we can give them to him now. I believe that he himself received some facts almost the same day. Indeed, I believe that one local authority immediately sent him a telegram to tell him that what he was saying was absolutely wrong in respect of its area in the North-East. I have not been doing very much homework on this. I just sat back, and the information rolled in to me. I have information here from all over the country, but I will not weary the Committee with it.

However, the fact is that there is a very serious shortage of remand home places. Just to let the hon. Gentleman see that I am not talking generally but that I have evidence of this, I will quote one or two instances. At Reading Borough Juvenile Court on Thursday, 20th January, a 13-year-old boy was remanded for full reports. The children's department made inquiries, and on the day of the hearing announced to the court that there was no vacancy at any remand home in England or Wales; but later a vacancy was found in Devon. The expense that falls on local authorities is not only that of keeping children in remand homes but that of sending children and escorts to the other ends of the country and fetching them back again to the courts for the hearings.

I have evidence here from North and South Shields, where it was necessary to go a long distance to find a place. In Kent the general position has been a little better than in the past, but only five weeks ago a boy had to be remanded on bail for a few days until there was a nearer vacancy, as the only other vacancy in the country was at Swansea. In York the girls' remand homes problem is very acute. Although it is rare that girls are sent to remand homes, the police have had to do a great deal of telephoning to find a vacancy, and remand homes many miles from York have been used. Seaham Harbour has been used more than once. In Cumberland, in May, a boy had to be sent to Swansea for a remand home place.

As I say, we welcome the Clause, but I do not think that it will have a great deal of effect in the present situation. I hope, therefore, that when the right hon. Gentleman has this new Clause he will not think he has done all he possibly could do about remand homes and will appreciate that much more drastic action needs to be taken if we are to remedy the situation which I have outlined.

It seems very strange to me that the right hon. Gentleman should make that statement in May and should not know—he genuinely did not know—what the position was in the country, when every magistrate seems to know what the position was. As we have said many times, he seems particularly ill-informed about what is happening in approved schools and remand homes.

11.30 a.m.

I should like to say, too, in view of the financial aspect that was touched upon by the Home Secretary in regard to approved schools, that in this case his Department, before he became Home Secretary and for less than a month, had on remand a young person, the father of whom, who was a member of the Forces, was charged £70. Another bill was forwarded for £10, making £80 in all. The Home Secretary assisted in the return of that money to the father and the difficulties of this family have now been resolved. But I think it very important that that case should go on record.

I want to deal for a moment with approved schools. I think that the Government are definitely responsible for the condition in which we find this almost complete lack of accommodation. The new Clause, of course, makes a slight improvement, although the Home Secretary himself, I believe, did not attach very much importance to it. I think that this, too, should be said for the record.

I do not believe that in the case of adult offenders who are put in prison there is any charge by the local authority, and yet the right hon. Gentleman mentioned that the grant in aid was on a 50–50 basis and that therefore the local authorities are expected to make a financial contribution to approved schools. I think that this might be a consideration—

11.45 a.m.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Bill reported, with an Amendment; as amended ( in the Standing Committee and on recommittal), considered.

(1) Where a local authority have, in accordance with either—

(a) section 3 (3) of the Children Act 1948, allowed any person to take over the care of a child in respect of whom a resolution under section 2 of that Act is in force; or

(b) section 13 of the Children Act 1948, boarded out with any person a child who is in their care under section 1 of the said Act or who has, by an order of any court under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, or the Matrimonial Proceedings (Children) Act 1958, been committed to the care of the authority as a fit person,

and the authority have by notice in writing required that person to return the child to the authority at a time specified in the notice (which, if that person has been allowed to take over the care of the child for a fixed period, shall not be earlier than the end of that period) then if that person fails to return the child the following provisions of this section shall apply:—

(i) the child may be recovered without warrant in any part of Great Britain and brought back to the authority;

(ii) the person failing to comply with the terms of the notice or any other person harbouring or concealing the child or preventing him from returning as required by the notice, shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two months or to both.

(2) In this section"child" has the same meaning as in the Children Act 1948.—[Mr. Charles A. Howell.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

12 noon

12.15 p.m.

The local authority may, for perfectly good and sufficient reasons, as it thinks, serve a notice to terminate the maintenance. The immediate effect of that when the notice operates is that the foster parents will cease to receive any payment for the maintenance of the child. If they wish to retain the child after that, there is at least a prima facie reason to think that they have some affection for the child, that there is a desire to serve, that it might be a good home, that they might be the people with whom the child would desire to remain. Perhaps they are the first real parents the child has known.

I do not dispute for one moment the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr. There may be other cases where provision should be made for the enforcement of the order. I suggest that at least the foster parents should have a right to be heard. The law on this matter is difficult. There is no question but that one can apply to the court for an order varying the guardianship. The real question is whether there are adequate powers to enforce it.

I myself have taken part in cases in which certain organisations—I do not want to mention reputable charitable organisations—were appealing for the restitution of children. This was in the days before the Adoption Act, when there could not be a formal legal adoption, when people who had tentatively adopted children might be the subject of this procedure, because until 1926 there was no form of legal adoption of children in this country. I have taken part in cases in which foster parents were broken-heartedly fighting to retain children for whom they had developed a very real affection.

The Clause says that in these circumstances a notice is sent and then somebody is sent to pick up the child, where-ever it may be, and take it back to the care of the local authority, tearing up all the bonds it has formed in the foster home. The child is taken away. It is removed without any further hearing. Though these provisions may be necessary in some cases, I suggest to the Home Secretary that they would be undesirable without some provision to allow the foster parents to appeal to the court and say,"We have had this child in our custody. We love the child. We do not want to have it torn away from us, from the home that it has come to know, without considering the interests of the child". Subject to that, I have little objection to the Clause.

12.30 p.m.

12.45 p.m.

Motion, and Clause, by leave with' drawn.

(1) No newspaper report of any incident contrary to decency or morality, whether or not legal proceedings are contemplated, involving any child or young person, shall reveal the name, address, or school, or include any particulars calculated to lead to the identification, of any child or young person concerned, unless in the interests of justice the publication of such particulars shall be authorised by the chief officer of police of the area in which the incident took place or the Secretary of State.

(2) Any person who publishes any matter in contravention of this section shall on summary conviction be liable in respect of each offence to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds.—[Mr. Charles A. Howell.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

1.0 p.m.

I am associated with the Association of Municipal Corporations. I am amused sometimes at the arguments which are put forward when a responsible body, with a tremendous amount of information at its disposal, comes to conclusions which are obviously not in any sense connected with vested interests. This kind of thing does not affect the vested interests of such organisations. They arrive at their conclusions in a responsible way. The Association of Municipal Corporations represents the various municipal bodies throughout the country and it makes decisions to which it believes effect should be given.

When a child or young person under 17 years is the victim of a sexual assault, and someone is arrested and charged with the offence, there are provisions for concealing the name of the victim. If the offender is tried in a magistrates' court or a higher court, Section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933, provides that

"the court may direct that no newspaper report of the proceedings shall reveal the name, address, or school, or include any particulars calculated to lead to the identification of any child or young person concerned in the proceedings,"

whether as a defendant or as a witness. There are similar provisions relating to juvenile courts in Section 49 of the same Act.

The trouble is that there is no provision about publicity in the period between the commission of the offence and the appearance in court of the offender. Sometimes it is impossible to trace the offender. An incident occurs and sometimes that is the end of the matter, because the police have not been able to charge anyone with the offence.

The Croydon case was a very good example of this. A 12-year-old Croydon schoolgirl was assaulted on 26th January, 1962, and on 1st February, 1962, a man was charged in the Croydon Magistrates' Court with raping her. The magistrates heard the prosecution's case on 7th February and the man was committed for trial at the Surrey Assizes. During the hearing on 7th February the magistrates made the usual direction in order to prevent the girl's name from being published, but on 27th January a London evening newspaper, circulating in Croydon, published a paragraph with the girl's name and address stating that she had been assaulted and that the police were searching for her assailant. Obviously, that defeated the whole purpose of the Act.

I do not suppose that there is one hon. Member present who cannot realise the effect of publishing the name of the individual who has been attacked on that person and on the family of that person. It is bad enough that the incident has occurred and that some people know about it. It takes a very great deal of doing by the victim to erase the attack from her knowledge, if it is at all possible, but to make it public is a criminal action on the part of society. I speak in strong terms because I believe that the effect which this can have on the mind of the person is such that society must do its utmost to heal the wound and not to make it possible for that wound to be enlarged.

There is only one conceivable reason for revealing the name or some particulars of the individual attacked, and that is to bring the offender to justice. Even then the matter should be considered with the greatest care. I would go very warily on this matter. Although the Clause leaves it in the hands of the chief constable to say whether this information should be published, I would say that a caveat should go from the Home Office or from the authorities to the chief constables to the effect that the name should be given only in the most extreme circumstances when they are thoroughly satisfied that that is the only way in which the offender can be brought to justice.

I do not see how the hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary of State can possibly resist this Clause. I cannot conceive of any possible excuse—it is not a question of reason—which either she or those advising her can put forward for rejecting it. I know the hon. Lady very well. She is amenable to reason. This is not a party matter. I ask the hon. Lady, in her own interests, not to expose herself to the accusation that she would not raise a finger to help those who have so much need of her help and whose case is unanswerable. We should not and we must not expose the victims of these incidents to aggravation of the terrible experience which hangs over their heads.

1.15 p.m.

This picking out of what is bad and spreading it from one end of the country to the other as typical cannot do anything but harm to schoolchildren. It makes the work of redeeming the one who has gone wrong much harder. It gives him the adventitious, unhealthy glamour that has recently made some girls, only a little older than schoolgirls, hire themselves literary agents, business managers and public relations officers. It cannot help the police. Indeed, I seriously suggest that this kind of publicity makes, in the long run, extra work for the police.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr has pointed out so poignantly, what makes it even more tragic is that in some cases the child has done no wrong whatever and is merely the victim of wrong. My hon. Friend has wisely drawn his Clause.

I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West about one thing. There are, obviously, occasions when public interest demands publicity for the offence, for the offender, for the family and for the school. A school itself may be in need of it. In the past, when some of us were persuading Dame Florence Horsbrugh, then Minister of Education, to put into operation Part III of the Education Act, which gives us tremendous power over the unsatisfactory private school, we had to call attention to the existence of bad men wandering about uncontrolled and setting up bad schools from one end of England to the other. We have remedied that by putting Part III into operation. There may be occasions when it is necessary to pillory a school, an individual, a child or a family. And so the Clause gives the authorities power, if they consider it in the public interest, to do this.

Publicity given to a crime and a criminal may be in the interest of society and it may be that some day our newspapers will give the right kind of publicity, not the glamorous publicity that they give today, but showing crime, beastliness and cruelty for the selfish and sordid things they are and giving some account of the punishment for the crimes instead of wrapping them up in glamour, as they do.

The publicity, about children and about schools, however, should be an instrument in the hands of the law, and if the law thinks that a crime should be published I would yield to the opinion of the legal authorities. The Clause would prevent senseless, cruel and often unhealthy publicity, which itself militates against all that a school is trying to achieve and all that we wish to achieve for the nation's children.

I know that my friends in the National Union of Journalists, men for whom I have profound respect, are anxious about the freedom of the Press and might regard the Clause as tampering with that freedom. I believe, with them, that the end of what they and all the best journalists, like ourselves, deplore—the end of the cheap and shoddy sensationalism and the meretriciousness of the worst parts of the Press—can be solved finally only by the journalists themselves. The code which the Union is setting up is, I believe, something which will tackle that problem.

1.30 p.m.

1.30 p.m.

the court itself gives a decision as to whether the incident is contrary to decency or morality, and everybody knows where he is. But under the Clause nobody would know where he was because all kinds of views might be taken as to whether some incident which had been reported to the news room of a newspaper was an incident contrary to decency or morality. Those words are of a general character until they have been denned and closely applied, as they can be closely applied in a court. But one is putting an impossible task on those who write and publish newspapers if one asks them to decide in advance whether an incident is contrary to decency or morality.

It is easy to see that some incidents are, and I am bound to say that in my experience the newspapers behave very well in these cases. But there is also a great no-man's-land where newspapers will know that if they publish what is genuinely news, it may nevertheless later be held by a court that the incident was contrary to decency or morality and the newspaper concerned will have committed an offence.

What I would put to the House is that in these matters of the freedom of the Press we should be as precise as we can. The right way to hit at evil in the Press is not to put words of a general character on the Statute Book which will leave people in dubiety as to whether or not a certain case falls within the prohibition. That is bad legislation. It is because I think that this would be bad legislation that I must advise the House to reject the Clause, although I am entirely in agreement with the purpose of the hon. Member.

Question put, That the Clause be read a Second time:—

The House divided: Ayes 53, Noes 82.

(1) The parent or guardian or near relative of any person detained in an approved school may apply to the appropriate court for the order under which he is detained to be revoked. The court may revoke that order and substitute for it any other order that could be made if the person was before the court under section 84 (6) of the principal Act.

(2) The appropriate court shall be the juvenile court acting for the petty sessional division or place within which the person making the application is residing.

(3) The power to revoke an order under this section shall be without prejudice to the power under section 14 of the Criminal Justice Act 1961 of the managers of an approved school to release any person and to exercise supervisory powers over him.—[Miss Bacon.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

mittee stage of this Bill, and also those hon. and right hon. Members who were in Committee on the Criminal Justice Bill, that I hold rather strong views about the whole problem of the management and control of approved schools. The reason why we on this side of the House have not put down a very far-reaching and very wide new new Clause on this occasion is not because we have in any way detracted from our views on the whole of the approved school system but rather because we thought that we would choose two points with respect to approved schools which had some chance of being accepted by the right hon. Gentleman. Therefore, we have chosen these two new Clauses, one with respect to children under the age of 13 and the other with respect to the revocation of approved school orders.

First of all with regard to the first new Clause which we can discuss, which provides that no child under 13 years of age should be committed to an approved school. At first sight this might seem a very tall order and something which is almost revolutionary, but it is interesting to note that the Ingleby Committee's Report, although it rejected this recommendation, said that many of the witnesses who came before it were in favour of what is now our new Clause—in other words, were not in favour of committing to an approved school any child under the age of 13.

We do not mean, of course, that children under the age of 13 can do as they like and get away with it and not be dealt with in some way. But there are many ways in which children under the age of 13 can be dealt with other than by being sent to an approved school. I will return to that later. I feel, and I am sure that my hon. Friends feel, and, indeed, that many people in the country feel, strongly that although we keep giving lip-service to the idea that approved schools are educational in character, nevertheless in the minds of most people in the country they are of a penal nature and give to the children sent to them a stigma which seems to remain with them all their lives.

Maybe it is not right that this should be so. Maybe the curriculum in the approved school is educational in character. Nevertheless, I am quite certain that throughout the whole of a child's life, when he or she has been sent to an approved school, the stigma remains and that it is often said of such a child that he or she is an approved school boy or girl. I believe very firmly that this ought not to occur as a result of something which has been done by a child under the age of 13.

We have at present three classes of approved schools—junior, intermediate and senior. Our new Clause would mean that we would not in future have junior approved schools, although this would not mean that such approved schools would be closed down and the teachers thrown out of work. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would agree that if he had the places thus made available in the junior approved schools he could make use of them very well indeed for those awaiting places in intermediate and senior approved schools—for those of whom he has spoken today, who spend weeks in remand homes awaiting places in approved schools.

What is the position today? An older child is sent to an approved school for a maximum of three years and the managers decide when he or she shall be released. But if a child is 12 years of age or under then the period is not only a maximum of three years. That child, if he is 10 or 11 years of age, can be kept in an approved school until a few months after school-leaving age. Therefore, the younger the child is when he goes into an approved school the likelier it is that he will spend a longer time in it.

If we look at the excellent booklet which has been issued by the Home Office, Cmnd. 2051, entitled Statistics Relating to Approved Schools, Remand Homes and Attendance Centres in England and Wales, we can see how this works in practice. Incidentally, I would remind the House that it is only as a result of our efforts on the Criminal Justice Bill that we now have these annual statistics at all. Otherwise, we should not have had the information before us at the present time. If we look at Table 10, on page 6, we see the number of months that different classes of children are kept in approved schools.

It is rather remarkable to note that in the junior approved schools, that is, the approved schools catering for those who enter under the age of 13, the children are detained for much longer periods than are those in the intermediate and senior approved schools. Indeed, I see that in 1961, the year to which the booklet refers, nine children were in junior approved schools for over 60 months, that is, for over five years. Just fancy young children going into approved schools and being kept there for this long period of time.

The reason why I believe they are kept in these junior approved schools so long is that the managers have a choice of two evils, either to keep the young child in the school until school-leaving age or to release the child, when he or she would go back to his or her own school. Such a child, having done two or three years in an approved school, would, on returning to its original school, find itself a stranger in that school, a stranger among strange people, with a curriculum quite different from the one in the approved school.

I believe that in these cases there is a tendency for a child to commit further mischief and even, perhaps, to find him-self back in the approved school once again. Therefore, I believe that it would be much better if we could get away from committing young children under the age of 13 to approved schools.

I have a feeling that the right hon. Gentleman is going to say that the result of this would be that hordes of young children of 10, 11 and 12 years of age who ought to be in approved schools would be suddenly let loose on the community. But again I am indebted to this excellent little booklet because it gives us the figures. In 1961, the number of girls under the age of 13 committed to approved schools was 46. The number of boys under the age of 13 committed to approved schools was 932, that is, some 970 boys and girls per annum in England and Wales. This number, perhaps, may sound rather a lot, but let us not forget that county boroughs and county councils together number 145, and they are pretty big authorities. If we do a bit of arithmetic and divide 970 by 145 we get the figure of six or seven per annum in each authority.

Surely we are not going to say that big authorities like county councils or county boroughs cannot find some other way of dealing each year with six or seven youngsters under the age of 13 other than by sending them to approved schools. After all, the courts can do all kinds of things. They can put a child under supervision. They can send a child who has committed an offence to an attendance centre. I should like to see a great extension of that principle, where children live at home but have each week to put in a few hours at the attendance centre.

Some of these children are, perhaps, maladjusted and could surely be found places within the education system of the local authorities for maladjusted children. I believe, too, that some of these children would be found to be mentally backward and could, perhaps, best be dealt with by the health authorities.

2.0 p.m.

There are some children who come before the courts because they are in need of care, protection and control who—not the most difficult cases, but some of them—could be taken into care. There are all these things which could be done instead of branding children for life as being"approved school" boys or girls because of something which they did when under the age of 13. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will look at this sympathetically, even though I understand the Motion is not one on which we may be called specifically to vote.

I turn now to the other proposed new Clause—Revocation of approved school orders. At present the position is that when a child is brought before the courts for an offence, or under care and protection proceedings, the magistrates who commit the child to an approved school for an indefinite length of time have no power to state a period—six months, eighteen months or two years—as in the case of an adult person who has committed a crime and is sent to prison. Children are committed to approved schools and it is left entirely to the school managers to determine when they shall leave the school.

This is unique. If a person has committed the foulest crime he usually knows how long he is to be kept in prison. If a child is made the subject of a fit person order, the parents can at any time appeal to the magistrates for the order to be revoked. But approved school children are put into the school for an indefinite tune and the parents have no right to return to the court and to tell the magistrates,"We think our Johnny"—or"our Mary"—"is now fit to come out of the school". The only thing they can do is write to their Member of Parliament, or to the right hon. Gentleman.

We have all received letters from parents who have children in approved schools. I have never yet had a case where a child has been let out from the school as a result of my writing to the Home Office. What usually happens, I suspect, is that when the Home Secretary receives a request from a Member of Parliament, he does not have any independent inquiry or send someone to the child's home to see what kind of a home it is. All that is done is to write to the managers of the school, who state that in their opinion the child ought not to come out of the school—obviously. So very much rests on the managers. Yet over half of our approved schools are run by managers who are self-appointed and responsible to no one.

Only 25 approved schools out of a total of 118 are run by local authorities. There are 30 schools which are run by voluntary bodies, such as religious organisations, and 51 are run by local committees. Perhaps a hundred years ago someone called a few people together at a village meeting and it was agreed to start a reformatory school. The school had been carried on since and when one of that little group retired or died another person was co-opted. I am not saying that there are no good managers among these people. Some are good. But that is the procedure in a number of our present-day approved schools.

A good many children in approved schools, particularly girls, have never committed a crime. They are in the school because they were in need of care and protection. I speak from memory. But I think 64 per cent. of the girls and only 5 per cent. of the boys are in these schools because they were found to be in need of care and protection. They have not committed any crime, and yet their parents have no chance whatever to go to a court and to say,"We think that our child should be released from the approved school".

There is evidence of some astounding cases. I apologise to hon. Members for referring again to the case to which I referred during the Committee stage proceedings. But I quote it again because there was an extraordinary sequel to it. A girl aged 13½ years was committed to an approved school two years ago because she was found to be in moral danger. She had good parents and a good home. She was the youngest of the family and, as sometimes happens, she was wayward and stayed out late. On one or two occasions she stayed out all night. Her parents were persuaded to allow her to appear before the court as being in need of care and protection. They thought that she would be away from home for about six months.

When the parents came to me, their daughter had been away from home for two years and was 15½ years old. It seems incredible that a girl could be shut up in an approved school for such a period. As I said to the Home Secretary during the Committee stage proceedings, if he insisted on shutting up every girl in danger of becoming pregnant he would want many more approved school places.

The parents of this girl wanted her back at home. She had come home for holidays and was all right. But when she went back to the approved school, which was run by a religious organisation, things were so strict that she had absconded and had proved extremely difficult. Then, suddenly, this girl was moved from a Lancashire town to a training school in Liverpool. Her parents still visited her regularly once every month although it was a long journey. The managers of the approved school would not allow the girl to go home. But they had the power to send her to this other establishment.

This is the extraordinary end to the story. A few weeks ago the parents went to see their daughter at the training school, and they were told that she had brought a boy to the school and said that he was her brother. Her parents told the school authorities that the boy was not their daughter's brother and that they had no son."Well," said the training school authorities,"You had better take her home because she is in moral danger so long as she stays here." And so the girl went home. I have just heard a more incredible thing still—that the man whom the girl had taken to the training school was a maintenance man employed at the approved school where the girl had been for over two years, and there she had been carrying on with him. The man has since been dismissed. Over £1,000 of public money had been spent on this girl and what good had it done in the end? Just none.

The girl's parents, who were good parents, could do nothing but appeal to me. I appealed to the Home Secretary, and all the right hon. Gentleman could do was write to the managers who refused to allow the girl to come home in the first place. All we ask, by the acceptance of this Clause, is that parents should have the right to go to a court and put their case to the magistrates, after a decent interval, to endeavour to get their children out of approved schools. I feel certain that the right hon. Gentleman will accept his very modest proposal as being an improvement in the present position relating to approved schools.

2.15 p.m.

I support what my hon. Friend said about the management of approved schools, which has such a bearing on this matter. I want to be as kind as possible to people who render service to the community. They do so with the best intentions, but we are told that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think of some of the bodies with whom I have had contact. These are staffed by most desirable people, but by the time many of them are appointed to the bodies they are approaching middle age, if they are not well into it. Their knowledge of children of this kind is very limited. They take a sort of committee pride in their work. In some cases they are very loth to think of releasing a child on licence. They act in a benevolent and charitable way, but full understanding of the problems of the child is far from their thoughts.

The fact that they are self-appointed is something which we should look at very seriously. No one has anything to do with their appointment except that the Home Secretary gives final approval. When a manager dies or retires, his colleagues get together to appoint a suitable similar type of person to take his place. This goes on in perpetuity, with the best intentions in the world, but without any regard to the correctness of the situation and the wider aspects of what a manager of an approved school ought to be doing and thinking.

It is fair to say that where an approved school is run by a local authority there is a very different situation. The choice of managers is made much more carefully. There is close contact with the local authority, which can easily drop a manager who does not measure up to the work he has to do. I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a danger in refusing the right of the parent to apply for revocation. Where schools of this nature are in operation there is a great argument that the parent should have the right of application for revocation of an order. Otherwise, in many cases children will be kept in the schools far longer than they should be.

We have had much to say about this matter in the last few weeks and new Clauses and Amendments such as these were discussed in Standing Committee at great length. We felt that we were making some impression on the Joint Under-Secretary, if we were not making it on the Home Secretary. I add my plea to that of my hon Friend that on this important question the right hon. Gentleman should come with us and not force us to take it to a Division. Let him show his power of acceptance by saying that this is a good idea and one on which he can come along with us to improve the situation in approved schools.

2.30 p.m.

2.45 p.m.

3.0 p.m.

Question put, That the Clause be read a Second time:—

(1) For the purposes of section 1 of this Act every local authority shall establish a case committee. The members of the case committee may be members of the local authority or persons specially qualified by reason of their knowledge of and interest in the welfare of children. For the purposes of subsection (3) of this section, the members of the case committee shall be an interviewing panel of whom not more than five new less than three shall sit at one time.

(2) The case committee shall exercise a general supervision over the casework of the children's officer and from time to time receive from him written or oral reports on the progress of children in care, affording to him such help and advice as they can.

The House divided: Ayes 51, Noes 82.

(3) The case committee shall delegate to the interviewing panel the consideration of the welfare of any child—

(a) referred do them by a chief officer of police, or

(b) referred to them by the chief education officer of their area, or

(c) whose parent or guardian is dissatisfied with a decision of the local authority not to receive him into care, or

(d) whose welfare, in the opinion of the children's officer, presents special difficulty, or

(e) in respect of whom the children's officer is unable to secure the agreement of the parent or guardian for the care, training or treatment, which he thinks appropriate. or

(f) in respect of whom it is proposed to assume parental rights under section 2 of the Children Act 1948.

(4) For the purposes of section 2 of this Act (which provides for children and young persons in need of care, protection or control) it shall be evidence that a child or young person is not receiving such care, protection and guidance as a good parent may reasonably be expected to give if he or his parent or guardian or both have failed to attend a meeting of the interviewing panel to which they have been called.—[Mr. MacColl.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

3.30 p.m.

That requires an intensive personal knowledge of what is happening, an acquaintanceship with the children involved and an understanding of their problems. We therefore suggest that the case committee should be separate from the children's committee. That is no reflection upon the efficiency or competence of the children's committee. It simply recognises that there is a different job to be done, and that it is desirable that the problem should be looked at from a slightly different point of view.

One of the well-known difficulties is that there is always a temptation for a local authority which is trying to place a child to balance what seems to be best for the child as an individual with the administrative desirability of filling a place in a certain school or home in order to redress a possible maldistribution of cases within the various homes which are available. There can be a slight tension between the two viewpoints. It is, therefore, desirable that the question of what is best for a child should be considered in the same kind of independent way as it is by the best juvenile courts.

We suggest that there should be a case committee, consisting either of members of a local authority or members who are co-opted for their special knowledge and interest in the problems of children. We further suggest that within this case committee there should be what is referred to as an interviewing panel. That may seem to be a rather unnecessary refinement, but we must ensure that there is a committee which can continually watch over the general problems of the casework of an authority, on the one hand, and, at the same time, a small and rather informal group of people who will sit round a table on any given occasion to talk to individual children and to hear reports from their teachers and complaints from children's officers, and generally to listen to all the problems involved and sort them all out.

We need a small body of people comparable to a juvenile court bench to do that. Just as we have a juvenile court panel and, within that panel, certain people who sit on certain occasions, so, we suggest, the interviewing panel, which will be part of the case committee, will be limited in number. We suggest that it should number not more than five and not less than three, sitting at any one time. We do not want to have a body which is too large, so that a child will have questions fired at it from odd angles by people whom it has not even noticed are in the room. We want a reasonably small group. On the other hand, we do not want it to be too small, so that it may become virtually a one-man show if a member does not turn up. We therefore provide that the quorum shall be at least three and that there can be as many as five.

What is to be the work of the case committee? Subsection (2) deals with its general responsibilities. We say that it

"shall exercise a general supervision over the casework of the children's officer and from time to time receive from him written or oral reports on the progress of children in care, affording to him such help and advice as they can."

Those words to the right hon. Gentleman will be faintly reminiscent of the rules of the probation case committee. We have actually in the probation case committee something which is comparable to this case committee. It is not an entirely novel idea to the. Legislature that bodies of this sort should exist. Therefore, we suggest that the case committee should be there to get reports from the children's officer generally, about statistical reports, reports on particular problems and particular children, a general sort of running commentary, so that the children's officer feels that there is behind him the interest and experience of a committee which is dedicated to watching over these problems, advising on them, taking an interest in them and giving backing to the children's officer, in other words, that the children's officer does not just feel, as he is liable to feel in a big local authority, that he is the only person who has to take the responsibility of coping with intractable problems.

The probation officer can always go to the magistrates, and does constantly go along to discuss cases and to take advice from magistrates on particular matters, such as on the question of employment of which a magistrate may have special knowledge. This form of exchange of ideas is an essential part of the probation work. If the children's officer is to be effective, he ought to have the same kind of backing and support from the case committee that a probation officer can expect. Therefore, we suggest that, in general, the committee is there to give advice to the children's officer on problems.

Then we come to the particular duties, and these duties, which are to deal with individual children, we suggest, should be primarily the responsibility of the interviewing panel. Subsection (3) of the Clause states:

"The case committee shall delegate to the interviewing panel the consideration of the welfare of any child."

I used the word"delegate" with intention, because I wanted to get over the sort of problems which town clerks raise when they murmur delegatus nan potest delegare—in other words, if one is given a duty delegated by the local authority, one cannot then delegate that duty to someone else. Therefore, we ought to make it quite clear that there is power within this Clause to give the interviewing panel power to make decisions and not report back to the main committee on matters requiring quick decisions.

What are the cases which particularly require this rather intensive individual attention? The first are, we suggest, those cases referred by a chief officer of police. That is, of course, to deal with the general problems of delinquency and near delinquency. In other words, if any chief officer of police feels that particular children in the area are troublesome, that he is dissatisfied with the care which they are getting, that they are in bad company, that they are playing about the streets late at night or that they have been involved in some troubles in the area, he can know that he has direct access to this committee. He does not just have to work through someone else.

Of course, it has to be"a"—not"the"—chief officer of police, because the young are mobile. They can get on their motor cycles and move quickly to another area to create their nuisance. Therefore, it is desirable that any chief officer who has worries about children should not have to say I can only deal with my own local authority. It enables him to go to any local authority. That, at any rate, is a protection for the public. The local authority cannot pretend that it does not know and, therefore, can avoid responsibility for the children who are causing difficulties in the area. It is to give a right to the chief officer of police, as the protector of the public, to bring cases to the attention of the committee.

Secondly, there is reference to cases:

"referred to them by the chief education officer of their area…"

I have in mind particularly children who play truant and are known to the education service not to be going to school regularly. These cases could be treated by the case committee. It could be responsible for taking steps to stop truancy, which is something that may bring a child into trouble not only in respect of delinquency but leading to his being taken from home to be brought before the court or placed in an institution. So if the committee is to work the provisions in the Clause there must be a realisation of the importance of truancy cases.

In many local authorities, certainly in the London authority, there is a special case committee where all the representatives of different welfare agencies consider cases referred to them by schools. There may be a particularly difficult child, perhaps one who is extremely violent or uses foul language, or who in some other way exhibits severe behaviour disorders. The committee is available to sort out these cases and advise whether psychiatric help is required and whether the child should be taken away from home. Such committees exist in progressive authorities, and so it could be the duty of the chief education officer to submit cases of this kind to the case committee.

The next case is that of a child

"whose parent or guardian is dissatisfied with a decision of the local authority not to receive him into care…"

That is important. Although it is true that the Clause is designed mainly to keep children out of care, it is possible to overdo the insistence on a child being better off at home than in care. No problem arises when a child is in care if it is a voluntary arrangement, because the parent can take the child out of care. But there is no remedy where an authority refuses to take the child into care. It may happen that a parent is desperate and is faced with the problem of what to do with the child. On the advice perhaps of some comparatively junior child welfare officer the parent may go to the police, or to the Family Welfare Association or the Citizens' Advice Bureau, and be told that the only thing to do is to take the child to court as being beyond control.

The beyond control proceedings are being abolished and there is no remedy except to appeal to the local authority. If it is proposed to keep children out of the court there must be a quick way for the parents to come to a case committee and to be able to tell the committee that they are desperately worried about their children; that there is no vacancy in the child guidance clinic; that it is impossible to keep the child at home because the parents are ill, or suffering from a nervous breakdown and they cannot accept the decision of the local authority. Then the case committee could talk to parents and the children's officer to see whether the decision could be sorted out. In that kind of case the committee could give a form of preventive service.

Finally, there is the case of any child

"whose welfare, in the opinion of the children's officer, presents special difficulty".

The committee should be available in cases where a children's officer is worried about what is happening and requires advice, or is looking for assistance from the panel about a particular child. Such an officer would be able to go immediately to the case committee.

The next case relates to a child:

"in respect of whom the children's officer is unable to secure the agreement of the parent or guardian for the care, training or treatment which he thinks appropriate…"

In other words, where a child is in care

and it is a voluntary arrangement and it would be generally agreed that it would be unfortunate to take the child out of care. The children's officer thinks that it should go to a maladjusted school, or have a certain type of training, or go to a child guidance clinic, and the parent does not agree. It ought to be possible for the children's officer to ask the parent to go with him to the case committee to discuss the matter there and for that committee to go into the problem of what is the best thing to do.

Finally, and this is a fairly simple case, there is the provision in cases where

"it is proposed to assume parental rights"

over a child in care. These cases should be referred for approval for this committee.

3.45 p.m.

We have picked out what seemed to us to be particular examples of cases likely to lead to trouble or a breakdown in the family, or likely to lead to children coming into care. These should be the direct responsibility of the case committee. What"teeth" are there in these proposals? They would not alter the law about criminal responsibility, nor about taking children into care. The law is left as it is in that respect. What we suggest is that where the child is brought before the court as being in need of care and protection or control, if the child has not come before the case committee, or the parent has not come before it, or neither of them has come before it, that would be evidence—no more than evidence—in proof that the parent was not exercising the care and guardianship which should be exercised.

It would then be possible to go to the court and to say,"We are not getting the co-operation of the parent in this case. The parent will not come and talk about it." It would then be up to the parent to justify his position. The parent may be able to do so. There may be a good answer. Then the court will find the case not proved. Making the non-appearance of the parent evidence of not fulfilling parental duties would probably be providing enough bite in the Clause to make it effective. We all recognise that the weakness of all these attempts to deal with these problems outside the court is that they are all right so long as one has the parental co-operation. The difficulty is when parents do not co operate and there is a long battle to get the problem solved.

Without necessarily saying that we accept the present rules about the age of responsibility, about approved schools and soon, and while reserving our position, we say that against the existing background this new Clause offers an effective way of making Clause 1 work. It would make it, not just something which gets on to the Statute Book and is then forgotten, but something which is a really effective instrument for doing what we all want to do and what the Bill says has to be done—keeping children out of court.

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Monday next.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[ Mr. Finlay.]

4.0 p.m.

4.10 p.m.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Four o'clock.