My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, the Governor has reported on his recent visit to Pitcairn Island. During the visit, on the 11th to the 18th of June, the Governor discussed with the Island Council numerous matters of current interest and matters concerning the island's future development. These will form the subject of considered recommendations by the Council to the Governor.

My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that Answer so far as it goes, may I hope to get a little more information out of him meanwhile? In particular, may I ask him about the money? Does he remember that his noble friend Lord Trefgarne told us on 9th March that their investment portfolio now has a current market value of three-quarters of a million pounds? is the noble Lord aware that recently a consignment of supplies and equipment destined for Pitcairn Island was lost in a shipboard fire—an apparently uninsurable loss—and that when the Island Council was considering whether to apply to the Commissioner for money to replace this order they decided not to, on the grounds that they did not want to seem to "scrounge"? Can the noble Lord assure the House that the three-quarters of a million pounds really belongs to the Pitcairn islanders and they know it, and would it not be sensible to put a fraction of this—perhaps I per cent.—into a float or a petty cash fund which the Island Council could use at its sole discretion, without any fear of being thought to "scrounge"?

My Lords, the sum of money which the noble Lord, Lord McNair, has mentioned—indeed, over three-quarters of a million pounds—is in fact from income from the sale of postage stamps and has become this very substantial investment which, I confirm, is the property of the Island Council. The actual portfolio is handled by the Crown Agents. As to the specific point which the noble Lord puts to me about keeping a small float of the money ready for contingencies, I wonder whether I might look at this and perhaps take advice, and also consult the Governor and take his advice.

My Lords, does the Minister remember that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, on 9th March also told us that new telecommunications equipment was to arrive on the island early the following month; that is, April? Should we be right in assuming that it has not yet arrived, and can the noble Lord say when it will arrive and what it will do when it gets there?

My Lords, the appropriate type of radio equipment has been chosen. It is hoped to complete the tendering process by August and to place a firm order in September. When the equipment is in place it will represent a voice-to-voice instead of a Morse link between the Island Council and the administrator in Auckland, New Zealand.

My Lords, is there not a startling discrepancy between April and a tender accepted in August and an order placed in September?

My Lords, that is a perfectly fair point. We should have liked to conclude this very much more swiftly, but the type of equipment which was found to be needed cannot be bought off-the-shelf.

My Lords, could the noble Lord confirm that the recent British Nationality Act has deprived the islanders of their British nationality? How will that affect their future development? Could he also say whether there is any news about a possible extension to the landing strip?

My Lords, so far as British citizenship is concerned, the Pitcairn islanders will acquire British Dependent Territory citizenship on the commencement of the British Nationality Act. Under the Act, this will give them rights of residence in the United Kingdom; but I am bound to say to the noble Baroness that the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island do not show the slightest desire to become residents of the United Kingdom. They appear to be contented with their life on the island.

So far as the airstrip is concerned, the island has been visited—indeed I am not sure that he is not still there—by a New Zealand Army officer, Major Jason-Smith, who has been there to organise repairs to the jetty. If he has time, I am advised that he intends to look at the airstrip proposal and the possibilities of a seaplane service.

My Lords, while being most grateful for the last piece of information, may I ask whether the noble Lord is not aware that there is great disquiet and disappointment; and there have been many talks on the radio in England about the Pitcairn islanders losing their British nationality?

My Lords, I repeat that when the British Nationality Act comes into force, the Pitcairn islanders will acquire British Dependent Territory citizenship. It gives British Dependent Territory citizens rights of residence in the United Kingdom. But I repeat yet again—because the message, with respect, does not seem to have gone home—that this is not what the Pitcairn islanders require.

My Lords, may I say that on a matter of pure information there was some surprise? If the Governor does not reside on the island, can the noble Lord say where he does reside?

My Lords, the Governor is Sir Richard Stratton, who is our High Commissioner in New Zealand. He is resident in New Zealand and he paid this visit, which is in fact the first Governor's visit since 1976, from the 11th to the 18th June.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that his original reply did not tell us much more than that discussions are proceeding? Can he give us any indication when these discussions are likely to conclude, and can he say whether a statement will be made to this House when they are?

My Lords, I must apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and, indeed, to the noble Lord, Lord McNair, who asked the original Question, if I have inadvertently misled the House. The situation is that the Governor, in paying his visit had two discussions with the Island Council. As the original reply said, during those discussions numerous matters of current interest, and matters concerning the island's future development, were discussed. There is no secret about them, but these are matters primarily between the Island Council and the Governor because they will involve, in some cases, the expenditure of money. If there is anything further that I can say on these matters, I certainly wish to do so. I would not be averse, in the least, to writing a letter to the noble Lord, Lord McNair, and copying it to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, if that would help. These are not secrets, but I do not think I can add a great deal more across the Floor of the House to help noble Lords today.

My Lords, perhaps in conclusion I may ask the noble Lord about two specific points. First, on the reservoir, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware, in the last year they have had a water crisis on the island, in spite of their abundant rainfall. This is because they have no way of storing water. Does the noble Lord agree that all that seems to be needed is a simple reservoir, such as one has on many farms? Would it be possible for Major Jason-Smith, if he is still there, to advise them on how to construct this and what material to order? Lastly, is the noble Lord aware of what one might call the Henderson Island project, which involves the construction of an airstrip on Henderson Island, which is relatively near, and which would not use up all the arable land on Pitcairn Island? If the noble Lord is aware of this project, which I believe the Governor discussed with the Island Council, can he tell us whether Her Majesty's Government would regard it with sympathy if the islanders proceeded?

My Lords, as regards the important first point concerning water storage, Major Jasonsmith was asked, if he had time, to look at any other technical problems which the islanders may have. So far as putting an airstrip on Henderson Island is concerned, the only person I know of who wishes to be on Henderson Island at the moment is an American millionaire who has said that he wants to live there, and the Island Council have agreed. So I think that that point does not help with the airstrip problem.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, the f.o.b. values of woollen and worsted textiles exported from the United Kingdom in January 1981 and January 1982 were £22 million and £23 million respectively.

My Lords, I am delighted to hear that this is an increasing export, in view of the fact that exports are so vital to us. I hope that the Government will help in every possible way the production and exports of the woollen trade.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her robust support. Indeed, the Government are concerned to improve the competitiveness of British industry generally, and the wool industry in particular.

My Lords, can the noble Lord give us figures for the year, because the figures for 1979 total about £386 million, which rather suggests better exports for the year than the figures given? Are the Government satisfied that the Woollen Industry Research Association is still able to help to keep our industry competitive?

My Lords, on the noble Lord's last question, I could not answer him straight away but will write to him on that point. So far as the noble Lord's first question is concerned, I am sure he will have noticed that the two figures that I gave were for the two months of January 1981 and January 1982. We understand that, for the calendar year 1981, the total value of exports was £410 million, while for 1979 we understand that the total value was £409 million.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, this is a commercial matter for British Telecom. But I understand that their expenditure on circulars sent in the post is in the region of £750,000 a year, and therefore extremely small in relation to the number of telephone subscribers and British Telecom's annual turnover of around £4½ billion.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply. Would I be right in thinking that they actually make a profit out of the circulars which they are distributing? If that is so, why is it necessary to put up many charges, including telephone rentals?

My Lords, it is not strictly true to say that they make a profit from their circulars, but of course the sending out of circulars increases revenue in certain areas. So far as charges are concerned, I think the noble Baroness may feel that they do not relate strictly to the Question. But, so far as I understand it, it is the hope that it will not be necessary for one area of British Telecom to subsidise another. Therefore, the charges in one area might come down while the other goes up.

My Lords, do the Government think that it is fair competition for a public utility, like British Telecom or, particularly, an electricity board, which has free postal access to every household in the country, because of course it passes on the postage charge to the customer, to include with the bill a leaflet advertising appliances for sale, when it would cost the private sector of the industry a fortune in postage charges to do direct mail advertising on that scale?

My Lords, no, I do not see any reason at all why British Telecom should not send out material with telephone bills, if, in their commercial judgment, it is wise to do so. It might help the noble Lord if I say that the material which goes with bills mainly comprises private advertising, the revenue from which more than compensates for the production and marginal distribution costs.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, those living under the glide-path to Heathrow have already been afforded a measure of relief from aircraft noise by the gradual phasing out of the noisiest jets and their replacement by modern, quieter aircraft. As I am sure the noble Lord is aware, Her Majesty's Government have invited the British Airports Authority to bring forward the proposals to develop Stansted which are currently the subject of a public inquiry, and it would not be right for me to prejudge the outcome.

My Lords, I am grateful for that Answer. Is the noble Lord aware that, while there has been some degree of reduction in noise, there has at the same time been an increase in the number of aircraft? Therefore the nuisance is unabated. Will he be aware that this Question is for the purpose of strengthening the Government's hand in the matter and their resolution to stand by Stansted, and not to give way to the very heavy pressure which will be placed upon them to abandon this necessary project?

My Lords, we are very grateful for the noble Lord's support in this matter. I am not entirely sure which project the noble Lord has in mind. If it is the subject of the inquiry at Stansted, the noble Lord and, I am sure, all noble Lords will be aware that this is in two halves. The first half is now nearing completion. The second half of the entire Stansted inquiry will commence, I understand, in January of next year. While the entire project of Stansted, or not, is under discussion, it would not be right for me to speculate on the outcome.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that those of us who live in this district are praying for the day when Stansted comes into fuller operation? Is he also aware that while most of us have learned to accommodate ourselves to the noise for most of the time, if we are ill and going through a period of anxiety, or if we sit in our gardens or walk in Kew Gardens or across Richmond Park, the noise varies from the merely disturbing to the terribly distressing?

My Lords, any aircraft noise is of course distressing and disturbing. I am sure the noble Lord will be aware, from all the debates, discussions and questions which there have been in your Lordships' House, that the Government share this concern, especially in the Heathrow area and particularly on the glide path—either landing or taking off. The Government are very much aware of this and are taking steps to try to reduce the noise level, together with aircraft movement, in so far as that is possible.

My Lords, reverting to the noble Lord's earlier Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, I wonder whether he could indicate now when the Government anticipate that they will be able to give their decision on the report of the public inquiry?

No, my Lords.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he can tell us the reason for the interminable delay, which has now lasted several years, in deciding the location of a third airport for London, and whether he realises that it is now doing severe damage to the trade and commerce of this country?

My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will accept that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and my noble friend Lord Cockfield will take a joint decision on the provision of further airport capacity when they have considered the inspector's report on the Stansted and Heathrow inquiries.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the people of the London Borough of Ealing have for many years suffered appallingly from aircraft noise, both leaving and arriving at Heathrow, particularly in the Ealing sectors of Greenford and Northolt? Is the noble Lord further aware that although the building of the A.40 flyover has caused considerable concern, people have been helped by the Department of the Environment assisting them to install double glazing? Could not the Minister please inquire whether or not it is possible for those who suffer from aircraft noise to receive similar treatment? Finally, would it be possible for the Minister to inquire into whether the stacking of aircraft before they arrive at Heathrow could be so organised as to limit, so far as is humanly possible, the amount of noise?

My Lords, so far as the noble Lord's last question is concerned, it involves rather a technical point, and perhaps I could inquire briefly into the stacking procedure and write to him about it. So far as the A.40 flyover is concerned, I hope that we are dealing with transport in the air and not necessarily with motor-cars flying, or not, over other roads. I am afraid that I missed the noble Lord's first point.

Double glazing.

My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon, my noble friend Lord Elton will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement which is to be made in another place on the resignation of a Metropolitan Police officer. This will be followed by my noble friend Lord Trefgarne who will repeat a Statement, again with the leave of the House, on telecommunications policy.

It may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that dinner will be available at the usual time this evening. The Report stage of the Criminal Justice Bill will be adjourned at approximately seven o'clock for approximately one hour. During this adjournment the debate on the Eleventh Report of the European Communities Committee on Radiation Protection will be taken.

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 2, line 1, at end insert ("or make a detention centre order.").

My Lords, in support of the noble and learned Lord I would make only two points. The first point is that, as the noble and learned Lord said, there are only four "shock" detention centres. Let us at least merge the rest of the detention centres with the new arrangements, because we shall thereby achieve the most important of all advantages; closeness to family. Secondly, it seems to me perfectly clear from what the noble and learned Lord has said, and from what I myself have heard, that the experiment is not being sufficiently successful to bother about. My own advice would be to move all detention centres into the arrangements: but we should be content, and I believe that the noble and learned Lord would be too, to reserve the four experimental centres and move the rest. Having said that, I support the amendment.

My Lords, may I ask why this "short sharp shock" exercise is being resurrected? When this exercise was first mooted, I remember reading that it was considered shocking and was rejected by every person who knew something about crime and punishment. Why is it being resurrected now?

My Lords, I should like to support the noble and learned Lord on this amendment. We shall gain by pooling these various youth institutions, by the greater fluidity and the possibility, therefore, of placing more people because there are no blockages in the particular types of institutions. Moreover, there are the distinctions between borstal, for instance, and young prisoner centres. Originally, the borstal institutions were primarily training places, whereas the young prisoner centres were for more punitive cases. Those distinctions have worn out in the course of time and there is now great similarity between all the institutions of all types available to young offenders—except the four particular detention centres.

I agree with those who have already said that the "short sharp shock" detention centres have a very bad record for subsequent offences. If we left those out and brought in the other detention centres we should have a more or less flexible and homogeneous type of institution. Each institution could then mould itself in its own way, without having these rather outmoded distinctions between borstal and young prisoner detention centres.

My Lords, the claim that the unifying process which has already taken place is a good one is a claim which is irrefutable—but I would invite your Lordships to think again about the "short sharp shock" sentence. That is much more complicated in its effect than the assumption that it will probably lead to an amelioration in the character of those who are subjected to it. My own experience over many years of having something to do with young offenders is that the initial incarceration process leads to all kinds of psychological difficulties and results, and I believe that only a few of them are necessarily beneficial. The danger of the short sharp sentence is that psychologically it is unsound, and therefore should be rejected on the grounds that it does not in fact produce the kinds of result now advertised as coming from it.

My Lords, I agree with the amendment moved by my noble friend but I am not very happy about the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, that it would be a good thing to leave out the four experimental centres—what are called, but are really not, short sharp shock detention centres. After all, when the original detention centres were first set up there, they were supposed to be for a short sharp shock. I know several of them. We are having the experiment now, in four of them, but there seems to be no difference between those detention centres which are not in the experiment and those which are. What I should like to know from the noble Lord, is where does the régime in the four experimental centres differ from the régime in the other detention centres? I have a feeling that there is not much difference at all, and, if there is not much difference, there is no point in leaving these out.

I do so agree with the amendment moved, that it would be much simpler, better, more convenient all round, if we left out the whole of the detention centres. I should like to hear a little more, In my local paper, which covers one of the so-called short sharp shock detention centres, it was said by the warden some time ago that he did not see what he was going to do in addition to what was being done, and that it meant very little to call these four different in any way as regards the short sharp shock, whatever that might mean. So, if we could have a little more explanation of this, it would be very helpful.

My Lords, I think many of us approach this question of the detention centres and their new stringent régime from an empirical point of view, and are very anxious to know how the experiment is doing. The noble Lord the Minister at Committee indicated that he would try to give some information at this stage. I have had for a long time a suspicion that the Home Office computer is specially programmed so as not to be able to give information which might conceivably be helpful to anybody. If the noble Lord is able to give some information today as to how this new short sharp shock réegime is doing since it was restarted, and particularly what the reconviction rates are, it might assist many of us to make up our minds on this matter.

My Lords, may I rise briefly to disagree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Eiwyn-Jones, and others who have supported him. The Government are now trying, so far as I can see, to have a new structure for trying to persuade young people not to re-offend. It is not necessarily punishment; sometimes it is rehabilitation, sometimes trying to persuade them not to re-offend. The young people in our country today are re-offending at a great rate, and they are committing, as we all know, very violent crimes. Dealing with the detention centre, the children sent to a detention centre would be there for a minimum of 21 days and a maximum of four months, from which is deducted remission. They have remission automatically. The length of time they stay at the detention centre is governed by the warden of that centre. He decides on their behaviour within the detention centre how long they shall stay. When we move on to the youth custody centres, which are almost in place of borstal, which will now be taken out of the system, children then will be encouraged to be rehabilitated; they cannot be within three months, which is the amount of time they will be in, with remission.

I feel that this part of the structure of sentencing is very important. If we carry on with this structure and this amendment is not agreed to, or indeed if it is agreed to, who is going to decide on the allocation? The structure now is that there are two systems, in that the children stay either for a short time or for a longer time. If it is an overall youth custody system and the magistrates can only say, "We cannot deal with you outside; you have got to be in a closed environment for a short time", who is going to decide where they go? Being near to their homes, I submit, is not always a very good thing. Some of our children come from very delinquent families, and sometimes it is a good idea, even for three weeks or a fortnight, to show them another side, not as a punishment, because that is not part of it, perhaps being taught to do what they are told. I am afraid I cannot agree with this amendment. I do not know what my noble friend is going to say, but for my part I cannot support it.

My Lords, as at Committee, so on Report, the debate has veered towards consideration of the experimental new régime in four of the 19 detention centres. I should point out to your Lordships, in case you have been distanced so far from the expert introduction of the amendment by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, that the amendment refers to all sorts of detention centre orders and not just to the special régime. Having said that, I do recall the undertaking I gave, of which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, reminded me, to be more explicit on a number of aspects of the régime in these centres, and that I propose to be, as far as is possible.

To start with I should say that the régime does differ from that of other centres in that the supervision by staff is closer, the periods of association or free time are shorter, there are more parades and inspections, there are formal drill sessions, there is more physical education, and there is not a full-time training course, because that would not be appropriate to the short duration of the custody.

The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, suggested that there would be advantages in the generic sentence, if the detention centres were retained within it. Leaving aside the difficult problems of sentencing policy which would result, it would, of course, only produce the advantages of proximity to the offender's home if every centre was able to cater for every sort of offender, and the treatment given in the centres would, therefore, have to be generic as well. What we are trying to do, as I said at Second Reading and again at Committee, is to tailor the treatment to the criminal, rather than to the crime, and in this case to the young offender, and that the result of this generic treatment would be that every centre would have to give the full range of treatment, and that would not lend itself to the specialist treatment with which we are now experimenting. The question of whether the detention centre order should be retained does not turn on decisions about the particular type of régime. That was made quite clear in the White Paper which the Government published over 18 months ago. I shall not quote it, but shall refer your Lordships to paragraph 14.

The second point that I should like to make in this connection is that young offenders serving short sentences have different needs from those who will be in custody for some time. Nobody can be properly trained or reformed in a matter of days or weeks. It is no good starting someone on, for instance, a six months vocational training course if he is going to be released after two months. The great danger is that those with short sentences could become the Cinderellas of a large amorphous system. In fact, young people with short sentences are probably those with whom we should take the greatest care: they are not too far gone in crime to be retrieved and we do not want them inside the system again. That is what the detention centre order is about. It is in practice not possible to operate a full training régime in less than four months. The question then is: what can we constructively do with these offenders? That is what the pilot project is about.

I said during earlier debates that I would give your Lordships some information about the progress of the pilot project and the way in which it was shaping up in terms of re-offending. However, such information as is available at this comparatively early stage is not very helpful or revealing, in spite of what noble Lords opposite attribute to it. The pilot project with a brisker réegime now operates in four establishments. It offers 398 places; there are 2,297 places in 19 establishments in the system as a whole, and it therefore applies to 17 per cent. of that system. The project started in one senior and one junior centre in April 1980, and was extended to two more centres—one senior and one junior—in September 1981. Up to and including 8th July 1982, the four centres between them had received 4,160 trainees.

An evaluation programme is being carried out into many aspects of the project's operation and its effects. The work is being done by the Young Offender Psychology Unit of the Prison Department with assistance from the Home Office Statistical Department. I do not think that there is a computer involved and if it were I trust that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, would not feel that it was programmed by the same hand that programmes the Ministers at the Department. This programme is under the oversight of a steering committee which includes members of the Home Office Research Unit, administrators from the policy divisions concerned, and two senior independent academic members. It is intended that the programme should assess as many aspects of the project as possible, including its effect on the morale and outlook of the staff as well as that of the offenders themselves. If that aspect of the inquiry surprises your Lordships, I think that I should say with some emphasis that the success of this type of programme depends very largely, as it does in any detention centre, on the relationships established between the staff and the inmates. It is proper to realise that if what is proposed is depressing to the morale of the staff, or if they feel unfulfilled or frustrated by it, then it is bound to affect the inmates adversely as well. The steering committee is also going to look at re-conviction rates and it was on that aspect that I was so strongly pressed in Committee.

Re-conviction rates are, of course, a fairly rough measure of the success of any sentence. But if they are not to be wholly misleading comparisons have to be made between comparable sets, like sets, of statistics. The period chosen is bound to be arbitrary, but our practice is to adopt a two year re-conviction rate after release from custody. The accumulation of statistics collected on this basis provides some kind of measure; they are the best yardsticks of comparisons that we have.

The most recent figures relate to offenders released in 1977. What we need for the pilot project is comparable re-conviction figures and not just statistics in a vacuum. That means collecting figures over another two-year period and the period, of course, can only start when the first substantial batch of trainees were released, and the last figures can only come to hand as a part of a massive annual statistical exercise when it is over, and they then have to be checked and processed. So with the very best will in the world, they could not be had for a quite a time yet. This is, I recognise, very tantilising and as an interim indicator we are at present actually collecting one-year re-conviction rates. All these figures are also returned from the courts on an annual basis as part of the exercise to which I have referred. We hope that the 1981 figures will be available later this year, and that if all goes well all the processing involved will be done by the middle of next year. But let me stress again, like must be compared with like and that is only a one-year span. One obviously cannot draw firm conclusions from a comparison of the rate of re-conviction of one group one year after release, with another two years after release, and get any firm and useful conclusions.

I can assure your Lordships that the Government are, if anything, more anxious that anyone else to have concrete information about the outcome of the project in terms of re-conviction rates. The close monitoring would, of course, give us an immediate warning of any obviously adverse effect of the new régime, but so far there has been none. I hope that noble Lords opposite will accept that they now have the information which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and I have. If we want more, we shall simply have to be patient.

I apologise for having spent so long on this aspect of the matter, but I thought it right to go to some lengths to fulfil the undertakings I gave in Committee in view of the considerable interest there was at that stage and the interest which has been reaffirmed at this stage. Although it is Report stage I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, would like to speak twice and if I can facilitate him by giving him a brief interruption I shall do so.

My Lords, I do not want to speak twice but I would like to ask a question before the noble Lord sits down, with is a convention to which we all agree. Would the noble Lord agree that figures for convictions for a year, it they were twice as bad as the figures over two years, would be indicative of anything—because he speaks as if they would not be?

No, my Lords. I hoped to have given the impression that the monitoring process would set off an alarm bell if anything was going severely wrong and that, of course, would be a very loud alarm bell.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way and I promise not to make a practice of this. However, is the noble Lord really saying that in July 1982 he does not know what proportion of those who went on the stringent régime in April 1980 have been re-convicted, and how that compares with the re-conviction rates of those who in April 1980 went to other detention centres?

My Lords, what I am saying is that the retrieval of the figures in an annual event and the figures for the year 1980–81 are, therefore, only coming out of the system now. They then have to be processed. That is what I am saying. Let me remind your Lordships that the amendment itself is not addressed to the pilot schemes or to the stricter régime itself; it is addressed to the whole concept of detention orders. The Government see very good reason for retaining these orders as a distinctive sentence. The minimum sentence will now be three weeks—which will mean two weeks in custody, as my noble friend has rightly said, in most cases—and the maximum will be four months. It is simply not realistic to try to provide a training régime within that period of time, but if most offenders with these very short sentences go to separate detention centre establishments which are specially geared to cater for them, it will be possible to provide a structured régime which can operate constructively within the short time available. Our efforts will be concentrated on finding out what is the best sort of régime.

Under the provisions in the Bill the detention centre order will, on the whole, be used for those who are reasonably fit and who have little or no previous experience of custody. It seems right that they should be held in separate establishments apart from those more serious offenders who have received longer sentences. We intend also to retain the distinction between junior and senior detention centres, so that juveniles are, whenever possible, held separately from older offenders. Under a generic sentence, such as the noble and learned Lord and his supporters favour, these advantages would be lost and the courts would have no idea, when sentencing a young offender to a short period in custody, where he would go or to what sort of régime he would be submitted. That is to hand to the executive a valuable function of the courts. It is valuable for two reasons. First, the function serves to ensure that the court examines the full implications of its sentencing policy for each individual offender and, secondly, by giving to the court a reasonable degree of direction over the sort of experience the offender is to get as a result of his offence, it gives the court the confidence to use the system rather than to rely upon more traditional and inflexible sentences. Our object remains to make the sentence fit the criminal and finish his criminal career.

The Government, therefore, consider it very important to keep a separate sentence of detention. For many years now the detention centre system has not known what its fate will be. The Children and Young Persons Act 1969 contains a provision which would enable the sentence to be abolished for juveniles. During the 1970s the Advisory Council on the Penal System put forward proposals which would have merged the detention centres with the rest of the young offender system. This feature was preserved in the last Government's proposals in the Green Paper. For well over a decade those who work in detention centres have kept going without knowing whether what they were working for was likely to be abandoned or continued, and that uncertainty must be brought to a conclusion.

Detention centres are valuable, specialised establishments dealing with young, short-term offenders who need to be kept apart from the general run of hardened and serious offenders. If your Lordships accept this amendment, it will be among them that your Lordships will be throwing these youthful and still redeemable scapegraces. For many that would be to slam shut the doorway to a reasonably conducted and happy life. I ask your Lordships to reject the amendment.

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord has made out as good a case as he possibly can on this amendment and has answered a number of questions. He did not answer a question put by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and I think that the noble Lord is absolutely right when he says that for us to go ahead in this way, without having more information, is quite wrong.

We are concerned whether what is being done to and for these young people is, in itself, effective. The noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, spoke about a great many young people committing violent crimes. The point is that in seeking a solution to this we should try to ensure that what is being done is effective in dealing with the young people. If it is not, it is not only a waste of time and money, but it is extremely harmful.

My Lords, if the noble Baroness will forgive me—and I am most reluctant to interrupt her—I am not certain whether she made that point in respect of the special régime or of the whole system; but it is of material importance because the amendment relates to the whole system of detention centres, and not just to the special régime.

My Lords, yes, it does. I thought that the noble Baroness was making a general statement as a matter of fact.

The Minister referred to the experimental new régime. He also reminded us that the amendment refers to all detention centres, which is absolutely true. My noble friend Lady Wootton was, I think, absolutely right when she drew attention to the fact that what had started off as being training within the borstal system, had, in fact, disappeared. We can see that from the results: where people are reconvicted after borstal sentences, and from what is now happening in detention centres. Although the Minister referred to it in connection with all detention centres—and that is absolutely true—it would be quite impossible and wrong for the House not to be very aware of the fact that there has been a tremendous emphasis on and hope expressed in the short, sharp sentences in detention centres. It is this to which we have also to address ourselves and which we must consider when we look at this amendment. In looking at the amendment, this aspect would come into the matter as well as all detention centres generally.

When my noble and learned friend moved the amendment he referred to the report of the Prison Officers' Association. I believe that we should attach a great deal of consideration to what they have said. I do not think that anyone could accuse the Prison Officers' Association—they would be the first to refute it themselves—of being a soft organisation. In April of this year they published a document entitled The Tougher Régimes Pilot Project, which dealt with what was happening at the four detention centres—in fact, the very centres which are referred to as the experimental project. What they say is I think very relevant, and to some extent answers some of the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. For instance, they say:

"As the day itself involves the brisk changing from one activity to another, a considerable amount of time is lost in the changeover periods … without doubt the effect of chopping and changing of activities has a debilitating effect on the staff who are supervising the activities".

They go on to say:

"We believe that drill training occurs too often and for too long a period…".

Then they say:

"It has to be recognised that some staff feel that drill is a waste of time, a boring and demoralising activity and that any purpose of ensuring a rigorous activity for the trainees is lost as they prefer it to any form of work activity".

That seems to me to be a very counterproductive way of doing things.

They then say:

"We remain to be convinced that the mental ability of some trainees lends itself to being drilled in this fashion as so many are so badly co-ordinated and have such a low mental age that marching in any uniform sense is impossible to achieve. The resultant effect is that some trainees are pressurised by other trainees to improve their performance and because of their inability to do so they become frustrated during that session. This, of course, has a detrimental effect on the other activities as well …".

The document then mentions a number of other things and, finally, there is the reference to staff morale:

"The project has proved quite clearly that prison officers have found it impossible to sustain the purely negative approach to their work and now see the distinct possibility that even shorter sentences will thrust upon them an even more negative régime. This is again viewed with great dismay and prison officers, and indeed the Prison Officers' Association, are sadly moved by the prospect".

At this stage, when we are dealing with this very important Bill, I do not think that we ought to, or can, wait for the very long-delayed figures from the Minister's department. We are concerned with the working of the system and the effect on the young people, who are, in fact, going through it now. For those reasons, and for reasons which have been given by other noble Lords from different parts of the House, I hope that the House will support the amendment moved by my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones.

My Lords, in the light of the strong opinion that has been expressed, with one exception on the other side, which naturally I respect, I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will give further thought to this matter. I did intend to cover the detention centre réegime generally and I only mentioned the four special centres because I suspected that adherence to that experiment would be at the basis of the rejection of this amendment by the Minister. That is not wholly true, but I believe that the arguments that have been put forward for incorporating this part of the penal process in relation to the young, as part of a unified programme giving flexibility to those who have the responsibility for these centres, would be the best solution to this grave problem of recidivism among young offenders which present arrangements, alas! are not doing a great deal to remedy. If the noble Lord wishes me to give way, of course I shall.

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord was inviting me to think and I thought that I ought to reply. If the House would allow me to do so, I would give the basis on which I was replying. I have thought a great deal about what has been said. It appears to me that the discontent which the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has most recently referred to among those operating the régime, dates from a rather earlier time than the present. It is certainly true that there was difficulty with the fragmentation of the timetable by drill and more frequent PE sessions, but adjustments to the timetable seem to have overcome this. There have not been any unusual medical problems and I have, in fact, visited Haslar to see the régime in work. I was not aware of discontent there; I was aware of a rather good atmosphere.

Certainly, there may be some people who are less well fitted to the régime than others, but on either physical or mental grounds, it is within the powers of the Bill that they should be transferred elsewhere. I think that some people ought not to be sent to long custodial sentences, and, if they go to detention centres, the ré there should be tailored to their requirements. This is what this Bill does, and it is what the noble and learned Lord is asking us to throw out of the window.

My Lords, I am afraid that that somewhat lengthy intervention may encourage others to follow suit at the Report stage. That worries me a little. However, I did invite the Minister to apply his mind to this matter. I am disappointed with the consequence of that application and I invite the House to come to a view upon this amendment.

My Lords, before the noble and learned Lord sits down, if he wishes to do away with the detention centres, may I ask him whether he envisages that children will be sent to up to 18 months across the board and not have the opportunity of going for 21 days?

My Lords, it is not proposed to do away with the short sentence of three weeks but to embody it in the other arrangements, and, for those who are to be dealt with in that way, that will continue. The amendment is not directed against short sentences.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a Statement.

"Commander Trestrail, the Queen's Police Officer, has confessed to having a homosexual relationship over a number of years with a male prostitute. He has resigned from the Metropolitan Police.

"I have thought it right to report this to the House at the earliest possible opportunity. I shall make a further announcement in the course of my Statement on Wednesday".

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord for repeating that Statement. May I ask him whether the purpose of making it today, instead of enabling the whole matter to be considered in full context on Wednesday, is to enable Parliament to be informed of this grave development before the matter was reported in the press? I think I hear from the Woolsack confirmation of what I have suggested; I suspected that was the reason. May I therefore assume that on Wednesday this grave matter will be placed in its context in relation to the events which have caused such concern arising in Buckingham Palace? In the meantime, may I ask the Minister to say what the duties of the Queen's Police Officer are and whether there will be an immediate appointment of a successor to the officer named in the Statement?

All I would ask at this stage, my Lords, is whether it is thought there may be security implications in what has been said, because if there are no security implications we on these Benches would find it odd for this matter to be made the subject of a Statement in your Lordships' House at all.

My Lords, the Statement was made in order that your Lordships and Members of another place should have this information from my right honourable friend and myself and not from another source. The full context of what has taken place will be made apparent, I can confirm, on Wednesday. The duties of the Queen's Police Officer are to be responsible for the personal protection of Her Majesty when she attends public functions at Buckingham Palace and at all times when she is outside the palace. He also supervises the personal protection of all members of the Royal Family. The third point which arises from the noble and learned Lord's question is that Superintendent Hagon has already been appointed the Queen's Police Officer on an acting basis. I think that what I have said will indicate to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, that the Queen's Police Officer is so closely concerned with her security that this must be a matter for security concern.

My Lords, we appreciate that it is better that the noble Lord should inform us of this matter than that we should read it in the newspapers, and from this Bench we shall withhold comment until Wednesday.

My Lords, with the permission of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement being made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Industry in another place. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a Statement about the future of telecommunications in Britain.

"It is the Government's aim to promote consumer choice. Wherever possible, we want industrial and commercial decisions to be determined by the market and not by the state. We believe that consumer choice and the disciplines of the market lead to more stable prices, improved efficiency and a higher quality of service.

"Since the British Telecommunications Act 1981 received Royal Assent less than a year ago, some progress has been made in breaking the state monopoly in telecommunications. I have licensed the Mercury Consortium to provide a new telecommunications network in competition with BT. I intend shortly to issue a general licence permitting all bona fide value-added network service operators to use the BT and Mercury networks. The way is now open for the private sector to sell telephone apparatus direct to the public. Liberalisation of telecommunications has started and we intend to see it through.

"For BT, the prospect of competition and the advent of new technology are now stimulating them to provide a wider range of competitive services. I pay tribute to the way Sir George Jefferson and his hoard are transforming what was not so long ago a Government department into a commercially oriented business. Mr Speaker, we now want to take the next step.

"As a nationalised industry, BT does not have direct access to financial markets. Its borrowing is controlled by Government and counts against the PSBR. To bring inflation under control, these borrowings have inevitably to be subject to strict limits. But external finance is only part of the picture. In the past, monopoly power has allowed BT to raise prices to finance investment without doing all that could be done to increase efficiency. Around 90 per cent. of BT's investment programme, about £2,200 million this year, has been self-financed. By 'self-financed', I mean of course 'customer financed'; BT's charges to customers not only cover current running costs but are also paying for 90 per cent. of new investment. As a result, charges have risen steeply while investment is still not enough. Unless something is done radically to change the capital structure and ownership of BT and to provide a direct spur to efficiency, higher investment would mean still higher charges for the customer. The Government, BT and the general public would find that unacceptable. We need to free BT from traditional forms of Government control.

"We will therefore take the earliest opportunity to introduce legislation which, while keeping BT as a single enterprise, will enable it to be converted into a Companies Act company, British Telecommunications plc'. The legislation will allow the sale of shares in that company to the public. It is our intention, after the next election, to offer up to 51 per cent. of the shares on the market on one or more tranches.

"Once half of the shares have been sold, the Government will give up control over the commercial decisions of BT plc. BT plc will be outside the public sector; its borrowing will cease to be subject to Exchequer control, and it will look to its shareholders and the markets for its external financing. It will be for the board of the company to decide when and how much to borrow, taking account of internal factors and market conditions in the same way as any other private sector company. This will mean not only a greater flexibility for BT and less pressure on consumers and taxpayers, but also that BT will be subject to proper market disciplines. BT will be in a position to provide better services which are more responsive to customer needs, like those provided by the privately-owned telephone companies in the United States.

"BT plc will nevertheless dominate the British market for telecommunications for some years yet. The Government consider, therefore, that there will be a need for regulatory arrangements for the industry to balance the interests of those supplying telecommunications services, their customers, their competitors, their employees, their investors and their suppliers. The legislation will reform the arrangements for licensing telecommunications so as to end BT's exclusive privilege and its role in licensing. Instead, there will be a new Office of Telecommunications, modelled on the Office of Fair Trading, under a director general appointed by me. He will have powers similar to those of the Director General of Fair Trading. He will operate with the same degree of independence from Government. It will be his job to ensure fair competition and fair prices.

"The legislation will contain provisions to safeguard existing pension obligations. There will also be special provisions to ensure that those employed in BT can acquire shares in the company.

"Finally, the legislation will reform the Telegraph Acts which were passed in the last century. We need to recast the law to make it relevant to the technology of today and tomorrow. I will be issuing a consultative document on this aspect shortly.

"Because these propsals are far-reaching and will affect a lot of people, I am today publishing this Statement, with some additional background information, in the form of a White Paper.

"Mr. Speaker, these proposals follow naturally from the liberalising measures passed by the House last year. It would make no sense to stop half way. If those who work in telecommunications are to provide the range and quality of service which modern technology now permits, and if they are to do so in competition with each other, it cannot be right that BT should remain subject to the web of Government interference and controls which are the inevitable lot of an industry which enjoys the privilege of Exchequer finance.

"The quality of the service which any enterprise provides depends upon the skills, energy, and leadership of the people who work in it. We want to provide those people with the environment—market, financial, legal and structural—which will free them to give of their best.

"In the view of the Government, that is what the proposed legislation will do. I look forward to its early introduction".

My Lords, that is the Statement.

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement and to say straight away that it is not a Statement which we welcome; nor is it welcomed in the industry. The contents of the Statement have been widely predicted in the press over the last few days, and I am told that members of all the unions involved in the industry have already condemned the proposals which have been set out in the Statement. The Statement pays tribute to the progress made by BT in transforming itself into a commercially oriented business, and the last thing that it needs at present is a further period of uncertainty before it has fully adjusted itself to its current situation. Undoubtedly the morale and enthusiasm of management in the industry will suffer as a result of the proposals.

The Statement rightly points to the problems of BT's finances and the financing of its investment. The only answer that the Government can find to this particular problem is a dogmatic one; yet it would have been possible, and indeed more sensible, for the Government to have altered their public sector financing policy so that they could remove the cash limits restrictions which they impose on BT and allow BT to go to the market under its own steam. I was surprised to learn from the Statement that the Government are so cock-a-hoop about their election chances that they propose to sell 51 per cent. of the shares after the election. Let me assure your Lordships that the shares will not be sold if we win the next election. We intend to restore the integrity of the BT network and we very much regard this as an election issue. If the Government reach a situation in which they sell off 51 per cent. of BT, one wonders how they will price the issue. Are we in for another Amersham International scandal?

I should like to ask the noble Lord one or two points of detail arising from the Statement. What effect will the licence arrangements envisaged at the beginning of the Statement have on the cost of services in the rural areas? In particular, can one be assured that for those people without a telephone of their own, coin-box telephones will continue to be as widely available as they now are? I know that there is very great concern among the employees of BT about their pension provisions, and I wonder whether the noble Lord can assure employees that under the new arrangements they will be no less well off than they are now? In listening to the Statement one detects an implication that under the system that the Government propose prices will come down, and I wonder whether the noble Lord would care to comment on that point too?

My Lords, I do not think that I can follow the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, in what he has just said. I think that the intention to sell off 51 per cent. of British Telecom can at this stage be offered a cautious welcome, though I must say that for over two years some of us have contended that to inhibit British Telecom from raising investment finance on the open market has been absolutely, totally illogical, and that, provided the Government do not give a guarantee, the investment finance raised on the open market should not count against the public sector borrowing requirement. This is the illogicality of the myth of the Treasury, and we shall have this argument about other organisations that are to be privatised.

On the question of pensions, is it the intention that all the presently available benefits should be transferred to the new private company? Does that include indexation? If it does, will it not place a very heavy burden on a private company which no longer will have the Treasury behind it? We very much welcome the proposal regarding share ownership. Will shares he offered to employees not only at the beginning of the life of the private company, but also at intervals along the road? That is what gives the incentive to people, in particular newcomers, to get an organisation moving. May I also ask the Government not to take too seriously the threat from the official Opposition about making the organisation a political football. That would be horrifying.

My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for his response to the Statement. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, was less enthusiastic towards its contents. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, asked me a whole string of questions, and perhaps I may reply to those which I believe he would regard as the most important. First, with regard to rural costs and coin-box telephones, unhappily it is the case that the cost of the provision of all utilities, whether the utility be water, electricity, telephones, gas, or anything else, is much higher in rural areas—for example, to remote houses in the midst of Wales—than it is in the centre of a large town or city. However, as at present constituted, British Telecom has a certain duty, spelled out in Section 3 of the British Telecommunications Act 1981, to provide its services, save where it is,

"in its opinion, impracticable or not reasonably practicable",

to do so. It is certainly the intention of the Government that that obligation should be carried over to the new company, BT plc. Therefore I very much hope that the kind of fears which the noble Lord expressed will not be realised; indeed I believe that they will not be. Certainly British Telecom plc will continue to have an obligation to provide coin-box telephones, which was a particular concern of the noble Lord.

The noble Lord, Lord Byers, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, referred to the question of pensions. The existing pension fund of the Post Office is now being split in half in respect of the postal services on the one hand, and British Telecom, as it presently exists, on the other. The present idea is that the British Telecom pension fund should be transferred to the new BT plc. It is certainly the intention that after the transfer pensioners and prospective pensioners should enjoy the same rights as they do at present, including the indexing to which the noble Lord, Lord Byers, referred.

Both noble Lords referred to the question of British Telecom's borrowing being counted towards the PSBR. I recall that we discussed this matter in great detail at the time of the passage of the British Telecommunications Act. I fear the fact is that the borrowing which British Telecom at present undertakes, which constitutes a comparatively small part of its capital expenditure, must count towards the PSBR, because, although the Government do not necessarily have to guarantee such borrowing, the fact of the matter is that there is an inherent guarantee in any such borrowing; at least, that has been the considered opinion over a matter of years of those more learned in these matters than myself.

But the result of this proposal will be, of course, that such borrowing no longer forms part of the PSBR, which can only be to the benefit of British Telecom, its customers and, indeed, its staff. Incidentally it will have an effect on prices, which I think one noble Lord referred to (I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby) because with their greater freedom to borrow free from the shackles of the PSBR it will be possible for them not to have to make such a provision out of revenue for their capital expenditure.

My Lords—

My Lords, is my noble friend aware—

Order! Order!

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that most users of telephone services will be very happy to know that the era of ever-increasing charges, largely for the purpose of financing very necessary investment, will, as a result of the measures he has announced, be shortly brought to an end? Is my noble friend aware, therefore, that this particular Statement will go very well with the users of the telephone services? Would he tell me whether, having disposed, after the next election, of 51 per cent. of the stock in British Telecommunications, the Government intend to retain the remaining 49 per cent. indefinitely; and, if so, why?

My Lords, I certainly agree with my noble friend that the difficulties which telephone users have been subjected to in recent times, particularly the sharply escalating cost of the service, are matters from which we ought to offer them the earliest possible relief, and I am certain that this is the best way to do that. As to whether or not the Government w ill retain 49 per cent., or any other percentage, of the shares in this corporation, I should say that that is not a matter upon which we have yet reached a final decision. Speaking for myself, I see no reason why, in principle, we should retain any particular percentage of the corporation; but in the first instance we are proposing to dispose of the 51 per cent. which is referred to in the Statement.

My Lords, we up here are not against the injection of private capital into BT, even if only as a means to enable its employees to invest in it themselves directly; but the House has just heard the declaration of the next battle in the continuing frontier war in British politics between nationalisation and denationalisation, in the pledge by the Labour Party to repeal the 51 per cent. which the Government have promised to enact if they win the next election. We are for moderation and slowness in these matters.

Will the Government say anything at this stage about the maintenance of our vital national interest in telecommunications and about the public service obligation which lies upon British Telecommunications at the moment, and the related question of possible foreign ownership? Further, could the Government make clear whether or not the new "plc", after it has been fully privatised, will be a monopoly as regards the provision of the network itself, or will there be an element of competition introduced (because that would appear difficult in so small a country as ours); but if it is to be a private monopoly, in what way do the Government think things will be improved over the present condition of public monopoly?

My Lords, first of all, on the monopoly question, as I said when I repeated the Statement, a second network has now been licensed, the Mercury Consortium, and it will be open to them to provide such additional services as they feel able and as they want to do. Value-added services—that is to say, services which derive their usefulness from being attached to the network—will be generally licensed under the provisions which, again, are referred to in the Statement. On the question of employee shares, which the noble Lord raised—and I regret I did not reply to that point when the noble Lord, Lord Byers, raised it—it is certainly our intention that employees should be entitled to acquire shares. The detailed proposals have not yet been worked out, but I fancy they may well be something along the lines of the scheme we devised for British Aerospace, the Bill for which passed before your Lordships a year or so ago.

As for the question of foreign ownership, to which the noble Lord referred, that also is a matter to which the Government have given some thought, and, again, our initial thinking is along the lines of the provisions contained in the British Aerospace Bill; but I should say that we have not yet reached a final decision on that matter, and it may be that some other, more appropriate scheme will occur to us. The noble Lord also asked about the general duties of BT plc. May I again refer him to Section 3 of the British Telecommunications Act 1981, which laid certain duties upon British Telecom, as it now is. We have it in mind, in a general way, that similar duties should be assigned to British Telecom plc when that company comes into being.

My Lords, while it is perhaps too much to hope that the Government can be halted in their rush to privatise state-owned industry, can we not on this occasion, at least, be spared the empty pretence that the Government are promoting wider share ownership in privatised industry? Has the Minister seen the evidence that was before the Public Accounts Committee in another place respecting British Aerospace, to the effect that shareholdings slumped by as much as 83 per cent. in 10 months, from 158,000 shareholders to 27,000 shareholders, and in the case of small shareholders by 93 per cent.? Can we, if this present scheme goes ahead, expect a different result on this occasion?

My Lords, it is one thing to create a scheme to facilitate the purchase of shares in a company by the employees of that company—that is what we did in terms of British Aerospace, and that is what we have in mind to do in respect of British Telecom—it is another to insist that they hold on to those shares for ever and a day. Sometimes they sell them for perfectly good and justifiable reasons. Most of the schemes that are devised in this sort of area usually have a proviso that the shares have to be held for a certain period by trustees, or some such; but I think that the important thing is to make available the necessary facilities for employees in the business if they wish to acquire shares at the outset.

My Lords, I do not know whether my noble friend saw in The Times today a letter from the chairman of the British School of Motoring, explaining that his telephone bill for local charges had gone up by 37 per cent. compound per annum over the last two years, whereas the costs of international dialling, et cetera, had gone up by very little. If this scheme which my noble friend and his right honourable friend are going to produce is going to have the effect of checking the rise in local charges, which are the charges affecting most of us most of the time, then surely this is something which can be very much welcomed. How in fact is the new competition going to be introduced into the local telephone system, which is the telephone system which the vast number of ordinary people in this country use? How is that going to happen?

My Lords, as I have explained, the existing level of telephone charges is set having regard to the need, not only to provide the running costs of the network and the equipment, but also to make provision for 90 per cent., no less, of the capital investment of British Telecom in any particular year. Under the new arrangements, British Telecom will be able to borrow as they think fit on the market, and as they are able to do so, and this may well relieve them of some of these very high capital appropriations which have to be made. That is the first answer to my noble friend; but there is going to be a considerably greater degree of competition generally in the telephone service, overseen, as I have said, by a new director-general, and I am certain that that, too, will have an effect on the charges to which my noble friend referred.

My Lords, can we be assured that with the onset of the fierce new competition, the Act which safeguards the continuance of telephones in remote areas will also safeguard telephones of the elderly, the sick and lonely, some of whose telephones probably do not make any commercial sense but probably make the difference between these people continuing to live independently and having to move into institutions?

My Lords, I suspect that the fear of the noble Lord will prove to be unfounded. The telephone arrangements at present are that there is an initial fixed charge for the installation, followed by annual or quarterly rentals and then additional charges are levied in respect of each call. With a simple installation, the fixed charge is not unprofitable, and I see no reason why difficulty which the noble Lord foreshadows should arise.

moved Amendment No. 2:

Page 2, line 18, leave out from ("appropriate") to end of line 22.

My Lords, may I thank my noble friend the Minister for his explanation of that amendment. I agree with him that the criteria laid down in Clause 1(4) is not entirely satisfactory for defaults. Therefore, may I say that I should like to consider the question of criteria and perhaps reserve the right to bring this forward at a later stage.

moved Amendment No. 3:

My Lords, I wonder whether I may add one short reason in support of the amendment moved by the noble Baroness. It is this. It is not only a question of the young person—and it is not just a child but anyone under 21—hearing what the reason is. I think that it is a safeguard so that we have the court having to think very carefully about the restrictions we have imposed upon the custodial sentence and I think furthermore that it enables one to consider whether or not there should be an appeal; because one can look at the reasons given and decide whether those reasons can be argued against on appeal as being unsatisfactory.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has anticipated the point that I was going to make in support of the amendment so that I will do no more than endorse from this Bench the point that he has made.

My Lords, in Committee, the House decided that statutory guidelines incorporating the three criteria set out in the first of these amendments should be added to the restriction on the imposition of custodial sentences on young offenders.

I doubt myself whether it is actually necessary to add the criteria explicitly to Clause 2 in this way. But I would not for a moment seek to argue that there is any harm in spelling out the criteria again. If the House is content, I am content, also.

My Lords, this is rather a long-winded amendment. Can we not just say: "and give their reasons in open court"? That would be enough and is usual. It seems to me that it is inferring that the chairman of a juvenile court is somebody of perhaps very little experience. I can assure the House that they are people of wide experience who will be able to put the reasons before the parents, the children and the social workers in perhaps better language than this.

moved Amendment No. 4:

Page 3, line 1, leave out ("1(4) or (5)") and insert ("1(5)").

moved Amendment No. 5:

Page 3, line 10, after ("subsection") insert ("(3A),").

moved Amendment No. 5A:

Page 10, line 13, after ("Sections") insert ("5A,").

moved Amendment No. 6:

Page 10, line 26, after ("to") insert ("detention in").

My Lords, the House will be obliged to the noble Lord for that intimation; but it is rather late at Third Reading to put down an amendment of this kind which obviously has great import and which has to be studied very carefully. I wonder whether the noble Lord would at least do this for us: can any note on this clause reach those who are interested in the matter—it may be that everyone present is—so that at least we have ample opportunity of studying it?

My Lords, with the greatest of pleasure. I welcome what the noble Lord has said. He has recognised that this is an embarrassing difficulty. This situation has only very recently come to light; I was only aware of it today. As soon as there is a substantive amendment available, I shall see that he and the Front Benches of the other parties and the noble Baroness who speaks for the Cross-Benches have copies of it and also an explanatory note, insofar as I am able to devise one, to explain its effect and purposes of reaching that effect.

My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend will be good enough to send copies to the All-Party Penal Reform Group at the same time?

My Lords, if the noble Baroness will give me her valuable and edited address list I shall try to do that also.

moved Amendment No. 7:

Page 11, leave out lines 3 to 7.

My Lords, on behalf of the All-Party Parliamentary Group, I support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in this amendment. I do not think that it is fully appreciated sometimes by our colleagues in the Home Office what it means when a young person goes to prison. That is where they start. They make friends and they are got hold of. I have dealt with many boys who have got into trouble subsequent to being in prison and when I have asked, "Why are you mixing with this person, or that person?" they reply that it is because they met in prison and arranged to meet them when they came out. I strongly support this amendment and I support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

My Lords, I, in turn, do likewise. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I cannot think that any court passing a custodial sentence on a 15-year old would intend that he should be dumped by the prison- department in an adult prison. That cannot be the intention of the courts. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will be able to accept this amendment.

My Lords, I should like to support this amendment, but, where it reads, "aged 17 or over", I should like it to read, "aged 18 or over". Over the years I have dealt with many 17-year olds, and many of them are still maturing and are very young. After all, people get the vote at 18 and they are supposed to be adults. Seventeen-year olds are at a very in-between age and therefore I should like the age to be 18.

My Lords, it has been urged on the Government, both here and in another place, that we should not let juveniles be held in prisons for a substantial part, or the whole, of their sentences. While we are short of places we cannot make such a concession in respect of group after group of trainees, but we do recognise the strong case that the youngest should be kept out of prisons when at all possible. That is why we amended this Bill on 22nd June to make the provisions now in Clause 12. The effect of what is now of Clause 12(2) is that where a juvenile is not already subject to the training guarantee set out in subsection (1), he may be held in a youth custody centre or a remand centre but not in a prison, except in very limited circumstances. Those circumstances are specified in the subsection.

The first two of those circumstances, which are described in paragraphs (a) and (b), relate to very short sentences. If a person has time in custody on remand to court against sentence and the effect is to reduce the term below three weeks—that is, two weeks when remission has been deducted—we do not think it is practicable to provide that he should always move on from the local prison in which he was originally received after sentence to a youth custody centre. The same applies to a person sentenced to less than 21 days for breach of supervision under Clause 15. I should emphasise that our general aim will be to return such people to the establishments from which they were previously released, but, with a very short term, that will not always be practicable. We are talking of periods of a fortnight, where full remission is available.

The effect of the first of the amendments moved by the noble Lord would be to remove paragraphs (a) and (b), and hence the very limited discretion we have, to place in a prison a juvenile subject to a youth custody sentence. I have explained that that residual discretion has been retained for sound practical reasons, and its removal would place the prison system under a requirement it cannot properly meet.

The procedures for receiving, discharging and allocating prisoners are not perhaps the simple and glib operations some noble Lords may think they are. On reception, when a person is received into an establishment it is necessary to check the court documents to ascertain the conditions of his detention, to make a preliminary medical check, to check and list his property, exchange his clothing and have him bathed. He is then seen by the governor, finger-printed and photographed, given a full medical examination and interviewed about his physical and mental history. Inquiries are made about his social circumstances and his criminal background, and he is interviewed by the chaplain and the probation officers. These procedures are normally carried out in two working days. I will not elaborate on the effects of this, but if there is a move from one establishment to another, you need to have, as it were, the debriefing and the reception into the second establishment.

Your Lordships will then see the difficulties that could arise from this. Even in cases where the requirement could technically be met, it could operate to the detriment of the people concerned. It would often result, for example, in transfers for very short periods to establishments further from home, and noble Lords on the opposite Benches were anxious to bring home to me earlier this evening how important it was that that should not happen.

Then the administrative burden on staff, and hence on other offenders and on régimes in youth custody centres, of individuals passing through them in a matter of days, would also be bad. Instead of a single discharge at the end of a fortnight, there would be, first, discharge from the prison, secondly, admission to the centre, and thirdly, final discharge from the centre. That is a tripling of the administration to be done after the sentence has been passed and all of this done by staff who could otherwise be supervising out-of-cell activities. While therefore the price of the amendment might not be large, to the extent that it results in longer periods without supervising activity it will be very expensive, at least to those who pay it. The Government have already gone as far as they can to meet the case put forward on behalf of the juveniles and I hope that the proposers of this amendment will be prepared to withdraw it.

May I now turn to the second amendment. Here the noble Lord will have noted that subsection (8) is rather similar in form to the part of subsection (2) dealing with youth custody trainees. Its purpose is also specific and limited. It does not, in my view, represent a serious incursion into the principle, which we all support, that people subject to detention centre orders should actually be held in detention centres. The point of the subsection is this: the Bill creates a new range of shorter detention centre sentences, running from three weeks up to a maximum of four months. That is a change for which there has been considerable pressure for many years. I think it is fair to say that it has been given a general welcome.

The new minimum of three weeks was set on the basis of advice from detention centre managements at a level which would still enable the detention centre to operate a worthwhile régime with a properly constituted programme of activities for the inmate. Allowing for one-third remission, that minimum period again is 14 days. If a period in custody is below that, practical problems will ensue. First, the offender could spend a disproportionate part, or even the whole, of his total time spent in custody going through the reception and discharge procedures. He could even spend all of it, as I say, in that process. But these procedures are still necessary, even when people come in for a short time.

Secondly, he could, if he is sent to a detention centre in the normal way, go under police escort a very long way from home, only to be returned to his home area after a very short period. However, there will necessarily be certain exceptions to the three-week minimum sentence. One will be where time in custody on remand is counted against a sentence of 21 days or more and brings the term below 21 days. I think it is absolutely fair that the person should have the benefit of all that time.

The second would be where a very short sentence is imposed for a breach of supervision—a circumstance in which it is right for a court to have the ability to pass a very short-term sentence. The number of people in custody at any one time would probably not be great, precisely because their terms were so short; but they could prove to be the straw that breaks the camel's back in detention centres, which become very hard pressed at certain seasons of the year because of fluctuations in the level of sentencing. They could also have a disproportionate impact on the reception and discharge facilities in those establishments, as I have sought to show.

Since this Bill came before Parliament the Government have gone a very long way and done a very great deal to ensure that juveniles sentenced for periods between three weeks to five months do go to detention centres and nowhere else. We have made exceptions but they are few and they operate, in my view, to the advantage of the young people concerned. They keep them closer to home; they prevent them becoming an unpopular "spanner" in the constructive works intended for the benefit of the vast majority of that class of offender. I accept that the amendment has been moved from the best possible motives, but I think its effects will be against the best interests of the very people it seeks to serve, and I hope the noble Lord will not press it.

My Lords, if the Minister suggests that this is going to be a very large problem when he paints a picture of the enormous administrative burdens that will be laid on the staff if our views prevail, would he care to tell the House how many young people aged 15 and 16 he calculates will be sent to prison if the Government's views are accepted by the House? I think it is important that we should know precisely how many of these juveniles will find themselves in adult prisons before we leave this particular amendment.

My Lords, if I may say so, that seems to be an extremely well-taken point. The Minister can only have it in one of two ways. If, as I understand the argument to run, this will impose an intolerable strain on the prison service, then by implication the number of children in this category is going to be substantial. If, on the other hand, the numbers are going to be limited, as I assume is the position, the strain on the prison officers and the prison department establishments will be fairly small. I do not, with great respect, think that the Minister has made an altogether persuasive argument.

My Lords, I am in some difficulty as to the procedure of the House. Having been rebuked for replying at inordinate length before, I can only give a cautious estimate at this stage of the figures for which the noble Lord asked. I should not probably give them, but perhaps your Lordships will give me leave. If there are about 30 in the system at any one time, and if the length of stay in each case is somewhere between one and two weeks, your Lordships will have to do the arithmetic more quickly than I can in order to get the answer before I sit down, which I must now do.

My Lords, I am sure that the House will be grateful to the Minister for intervening in response to a specific question. He must not take umbrage at my having taken him to task a little earlier for gilding the lily.

My Lords, the Minister said a great deal in his reply, but I do not think any of it has convinced me that there is any good reason why a young person should be sent to an adult prison, even for a very short time. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, many of the objections are administrative ones which surely could be got over; and the finger-printing and so on could be done at a police station. Anything is better than having a young person in prison, even if it means going slightly further from home. If the detention régime is upset at the thought of having a youngster there for a time, may I quote what the Minister said at Committee stage, though admittedly in another context:

"… the fact is that one can accommodate oneself to a certain number of people who are not capable of taking up the full benefits of a régime, or a curriculum, without throwing out the administration for the rest."— [Official Report, 22/6/82; col. 996.]

I am unconvinced by his argument and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will press his amendment.

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady David, has said just about what I was going to say, after listening with great attention to the noble Lord. He has listed the difficulties which I anticipated he would list. I am very familiar with the allocation procedures in Her Majesty's prisons or penal establishments. I accept the difficulty about the distance from home for visits from relatives and so on, but the numbers of visits that can be fitted into 14 days under the prison rules make that argument more or less invalid.

As regards what the noble Lord described as the straw that might break the camel's back in regard to the régime in a detention centre, and the spanner that might be put into the works by having young offenders serving these very short sentences committed there when they should be committed to a youth custody centre or a detention centre, I should like to quote back to the noble Lord what he said in speaking to an amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, on 22nd June. The immediate context of that was the suitability, or otherwise, of youth custody centres for very short sentences, and he was responding to a question put to him by my noble friend Lord Hutchinson of Lullington. He said:

"… the fact is that one can accommodate oneself to a certain number of people who are not capable of taking up the full benefits of a régime, or a curriculum, without throwing out the administration for the rest."—[Official Report, 22/6/82; col. 996.]

The noble Lord will know that he was speaking from his background as a teacher. I suggest that, if that is true in his experience, it is equally true of the situation where 15 to 16 year-olds are serving less than 21 days in—if the Government have their way—a prison. There is no magic in the figure of 21. It is neither more nor less difficult to accommodate, in the noble Lord's expression, a young offender of 15 to 16 in a youth detention centre or a youth custody sentence, than it is to accommodate

"such an offender who is serving 21 days or more."

I am going to respond positively to the hopes expressed by one or two noble Lords. I really think that this is a matter which ought not to be decided on party political grounds. It is much too fundamental an objection that I am raising in this amendment. I hope that many of your Lordships will join me in promoting this amendment.

My Lords, the Contents are 83, the Not-Contents 83. There being an equality of votes, in accordance with Standing Order No. 53, which provides that no proposal to amend a Bill in the form which is before the House shall be agreed to unless there is a majority in favour of such amendment, I declare the amendment disagreed to.

moved Amendment No. 8:

Page 11, line 17, at beginning insert ("Subject to subsection (4A) below,").

My Lords, I support the amendment, but I think we must go a little further than the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, has gone and see what the alternatives are. At the moment, psychiatric hospitals and centres for young people are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Health and Social Security. I raised this matter during the Second Reading debate and I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for the letter which he sent to me about it. But it does not clear up the difficulty which I am in, and I think the noble Lord realises that it does not go as far as perhaps it ought to go.

May I go back quite a long way to the time when I was a Minister at the Home Office and dealt with some rather distressing cases of young people who were very severely mentally disturbed? The difficulty was to know where those young people ought to go. I shall describe one of those cases in a moment. Just before I left the Home Office, I mooted the idea of centres for young psychiatric delinquents. Since then, however, there have been organisational changes. Child care is now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Health and Social Security, while juvenile delinquency is still under the jurisdiction of the Home Office. Home Office Ministers are sometimes put into very difficult predicaments. Although they may want to move someone from a penal establishment, it is sometimes very difficult to get the Department of Health and Social Security to accept them. There is an impasse. I am wondering whether the noble Lord, Lord Elton, can say in his reply whether or not the position is any better today.

I shall not detain the House for long, but it is important for the House to know what has sometimes happened in the past and to ask whether it could happen now. The case I want to mention is that of a girl of 14 who was in the care of a very good local authority.

She was put into an approved school because she had been delinquent. She escaped and then attempted murder and suicide and was brought before the courts. The girl was remanded for three weeks and—as the courts can do—the court said, "This girl is too unruly to be put in any remand home". The court committed her to the only place that was available then, which was the hospital at Holloway Prison. The first I knew of this—even though I told my department always to let me know when any young person was admitted to prison, because it is usually the courts who make this order—was when I saw the headlines in some of the tabloid newspapers, such as "Scandal of Girl of 14 in Holloway". I immediately said to my officials, "Get her out". After a few hours they came back and said to me, "That is all very well, but where can we put her?" We tried to get the girl into a psychiatric hospital but were told there was no room.

The local authority concerned was that of a city which was renowned for its good child care services. They felt that as the girl was in their care, they were really her "parents" and representatives came to London to see me. They asked very reasonably whether they could see the girl in Holloway. She was in a single room in the hospital at Holloway Prison, where she was looked after day and night, 24 hours a day, for her own safety and for the safety of others. The chairman and the child care officer of the local authority came back to me and said, "Keep her there—she is safer there than anywhere else we could find for her". We tried desperately to get her into a psychiatric hospital and it was only at the last minute, before she went back to court, that, luckily, we managed to get her a place. I am pleased to say that all ended happily. A year later, I received a photograph and a letter from the city concerned. The photograph showed a very happy girl with a bicycle. She had been completely cured and had bought a new bicycle, and she was very happy.

Another case—and here I will not go into such detail—did not end so happily. The boy concerned was found dead, and it was discovered afterwards that he had been suffering all the time from epilepsy. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether things are any different from those days. If he considers that a boy or girl should be removed to some kind of psychiatric unit, does he have the power to say, "Remove this person to that psychiatric unit", or is he still dependent upon the permission of the Department of Health and Social Security? When I mooted the idea of these units, I hoped that they would be under the control of the Home Office. But things changed, and they were in fact under the control of the Department of Health and Social Security. It is said that the Home Office is not the department to run any kind of hospital, but the Home Office does run Grendon for adults and so the Home Office is in a position—and Ministers are—of transferring persons from prison to Grendon, and then from Grendon back to prison. I would like to know whether the noble Lord the Minister has this difficulty.

I suspect that he does still have this difficulty. In a letter to me he said that the difficulty is rather more apparent in the letter than in actual fact—or words to that effect. I would like this matter to be cleared up because until it is, there is no use saying that these young people should not go into prison unless there is some alternative place for them.

My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord the Minister has accepted—although I cannot find the actual quotation—that young persons of 15 and 16 should not be detained in adult prisons. Therefore, there is no argument between us on the matter of principle; it is solely a question of practicalities and of how one can keep this very small number of young persons of 17 or 18 years of age out of adult prisons when they are unfit for a detention centre. When we were last discussing this, the Minister did say that there were as many as 100 young persons who were mentally unfit at any one time, although he subsequently qualified this and went on to say that they were not only the mentally unfit but also those who had any kind of disability which made it impossible to deal with them in a detention centre—including those who had a mild ailment such as a hernia. As he rightly pointed out, these are of a different order.

The figure which was asked for at Committee stage as to the number of persons who are mentally unfit were not given. I really believe we ought to know what this figure is. If the difficulty is one of resources and that we cannot yet provide enough places to cope with the mentally unfit—and therefore we need to send them to adult prisons—then we need to see the magnitude of the problem facing the noble Lord. It is remarkable that every time I ask for a figure it is not available from the Front Bench, but has to be sought from elsewhere. One would have thought that in coming to Report stage, Ministers would be properly armed with these figures. They are of crucial importance. Every time we talk about resources we need to know about numbers.

It seems to me, if I may say so with great respect, that it is surprising that the Minister does not have these figures at his fingertips and always has to obtain them from some other source before he can tell the House. Surely this is the crux of the matter. We are talking about the resources and whether we can provide enough places, so that we do not have to send these young people to prison. I believe that the noble Lord put his finger on it when he answered my question at Committee stage, when I asked did he not think that it would provide a strong incentive to the Government and the Home Office to get on with the job of providing youth custody centres for the small number of persons concerned if the House was to pass the amendment at that stage? The noble Lord replied, Yes, indeed it would. If we tell the Government that we do not want these young persons who are mentally unfit to be sent to adult prisons they would very soon get on with finding resources.

My Lords, I would like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that I am much less concerned about the figures which he is asking the noble Lord the Minister to furnish. I am totally concerned about the very root of the matter, which is the principle; it does not matter if we are talking only single figures in terms of young people whose mental condition is such that they are likely to be sent to adult prisons. It is desirable that your Lordships should know what was said in 1980 in the White Paper on this subject, The Young Offender, in referring to those young adults who are the subject of the amendment of the noble Baroness. It stated:

"These young people will be placed as appropriate by the Prison Department"—

and it goes on to say

"They are most likely to serve their sentences in accommodation in adult prisons."

There is no basic question but that this is a scandalous suggestion. Young people whose mental condition requires them to have the best possible medical care are to be dumped, if this Bill goes unamended, into the worst conditions in our penal system.

My Lords, I must confess that when I discovered the facts—to some of which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has just referred and which other noble Lords mentioned—at Committee stage, it distressed me greatly. It seemed intolerable that young persons needing psychiatric care and suffering from some degree of mental disorder should be dumped in prisons. From what I read in an earlier report, they are sometimes dumped in the most unsatisfactory parts even of our most unsatisfactory prisons.

The noble Lord, Lord Elton, was kind enough to send a letter to me in relation to this matter, in which he said:

"Our intention is that young offenders who need psychiatric care while in custody will receive it."

His letter goes on:

"Normally, this would be in an establishment within the youth custody system, primarily in what are now the borstals at Feltham and Glen Parva."

Is the implication of that that since we last discussed the matter, arrangements are now being made so that none in this class of offender will in fact go to prison? If the noble Lord, Lord Elton, can give that assurance, then we shall be reasonably content. The letter certainly does not commit the Home Office to that degree. I think there ought to be such a commitment. Of all the people who need humane and civilised and competent medical care in custody, these are they. What is happening to them now is, I agree, a very serious scandal, and I hope that, as this led so many noble Lords into the Division Lobby in support of our last amendment, there will be even more who will rally this time to see that the Home Office must face the fact that this is unendurable and should not be tolerated.

My Lords, there is almost an explosion situation in our prisons because of overcrowding and many other reasons. Yet these unsuitable people are still being sent there. Having mentally unfit young people in our prisons is of great concern to the staff who have to try to deal with them. The worrying situation of the drugging of these prisoners is of great concern to many. Surely, my Lords, they should be in special units.

My Lords, in supporting this amendment, to which my name is attached, I would say that I, too, have had a letter from my noble friend the Minister, for which I thank him very much, in which he said:

"The Government made it clear in the White Paper on Young Offenders published in October 1980 that it did not consider the detention centre order suitable for offenders who are mentally or physically unfit."

Therefore, how much less suitable a place must a prison be for these kind of people? I am very much hoping that my noble friend the Minister will give us an assurance that people who are mentally or physically unfit will not go to prison.

My Lords, may I briefly support this amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, with her wide knowledge from the Home Office side, has hit on a very great problem, in that when we try to send somebody into medical care a different department is concerned. This has been the problem for a very long time. Not only is it a different department, but it is also a problem to try to get psychiatrists to take the children involved from a court. This has been a real problem. I shall be most interested to know what my noble friend is going to say.

My Lords, I, too, will support this amendment. I hope Her Majesty's Government and my noble friend Lord Elton will be able to say that they will find a way to agree to this. As has been said, it is not nice for the young who are fit to have to stand up to our prisons, but for those who are not fit in any way it is even worse. So I do hope Her Majesty's Government will be able to respond.

My Lords, from these Benches I should like to support this amendment and to remind the Government that being mentally ill is not in itself a crime. No doubt they will remember that for some years now we have recognised that fact, in that we refer to those who are mentally unsound as the mentally ill, and not as "lunatics", as we used to. I do hope, therefore, that this amendment will be allowed.

My Lords, I will first look at what this amendment actually does. It relates to a young offender who is ineligible for a detention centre by virtue of his mental condition and who is instead sentenced to a short term of youth custody. If it were to be accepted, such an offender could be accommodated in a youth custody centre or in a remand centre, but not, as Clause 12 at present also provides, in a prison. Perhaps inadvertently, the amendment would also have the effect of preventing a mentally unfit offender from being held in a prison even temporarily. I assume that that effect would be inadvertent, because the temporary purposes for which, inter alia, subsection (4) provides will generally be to the benefit of the offender, and welcome, I should think, to those supporting this amendment. They include allocation at the beginning of the sentence—a time when links with relatives and friends can be of particular value—and, later on in the sentence, transfers for further appearances in court, accumulated visits and compassionate reasons. I hope there is no disputes about the merits of that provision.

However, the clause as it stands also permits these young people to be held in prisons for the whole of their sentence. I agree that that does require some explanation. I was asked in the earlier debates during the Committee stage how many young people would be excluded from detention centres on physical or mental grounds and said that there might in future be up to 100; that is, up to 4 or 5 per cent. of the estimated total number of short-term prisoners. The figure is derived from our experience of operating the tougher régimes pilot project in detention centres, under which transfers are carried out by the Prison Department on account of physical or mental unfitness for that régime. Your Lordships will notice that it is the tougher régimes and not the whole of the spectrum. The figure can only be an estimate, since it relates to future use by the courts of a statutory provision which does not at present exist. If it is of help to your Lordships, I should add that, so far as the prison system as a whole is concerned, there were 320 mentally disordered offenders on 30th June last year, and that was 137 less than at the same time the previous year.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord, is that of all ages?

Yes, my Lords. It is, therefore, not strictly relevant, but I am trying to give approximations because approximations are all that I can produce. I hope the noble Lord will bear with me before he gives vent to his spleen until I have completed what I wanted to say. Well, I have just done it, in response to the noble Lord.

Most people will be excluded from the régime because of physical conditions, including relatively minor ones, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has said. Of the minority we expect to be mentally unsuitable, we would expect only a handful, probably less than half a dozen, to be mentally disordered within the meaning of the Mental Health Act 1959, which is a much tighter criterion than that which determines whether somebody is suitable to go in for this strict régime.

As to how these young offenders will be dealt with, I made it clear that the general rule, now reflected in Clause 12, will be that juveniles—that is, the under-17s—who are excluded from detention centres on medical grounds will go to youth custody centres by virtue of their age alone; that the young adults, people aged between 17 and 21, will normally go there, and that, wherever they are placed, particular account will be taken of any need for psychiatric care or oversight.

The principal facilities for young offenders with mental conditions which render them incapable of coping with normal régimes are at Feltham and Glen Parva Borstals, and at Grendon Prison. Under the new scheme, the first two will be youth custody centres and the last will have a youth custody wing. They will thus continue to be the main outlets for young offenders. But there are two particular reasons why the Government think it should be possible, as Clause 12 provides, for them also to be held in prisons. There are self-contained young offender wings, which will remain as prisons in law because they cannot meet the overall standards set for youth custody régimes but will continue to hold young offenders. The wing at Liverpool Prison, for example, will continue to provide psychiatric facilities for young offenders. Secondly, it will probably be clear from what I have already said that very few of those who are excluded from detention centres on account of their mental condition will be mentally disordered within the terms of the Mental Health Act.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, gave a dramatic illustration of the sort of problems which can present themselves to people in the position which she held and I hold. I have to tell her that it remains the case not that the Department of Health and Social Security determines whether a particular case is suitable for admission to hospital, but that the consultants at the hospital have to agree that the patient is one whom they can or will treat. That is where the difficulty arises which she experienced some years ago, and to which my noble friend has also referred.

Some of the people who are not regarded as suitable for the régime will not require full-time medical supervision at all. Some of them may have quite short periods in custody to serve. Quite apart from that, there will be cases where it is very much in the offender's own interests to spend a short period in custody in a local prison where he can be closer to his home and to the support he can receive from his family, and also closer to the outside facilities which may be appropriate to him on his release than would be the case if he were transferred.

I have spent some time elaborating my hesitation about this amendment. It seems to me that I am compassed about by a great cloud of people who disagree with me. I have noted no sudden and loud changes of opinion and gasps of gratitude for what I have said already. That being so, I revert to the suggestion that we should look at this amendment with a view to the structural weaknesses to which I drew your Lordships' attention at the start and which I trust will be found in the first paragraph of this debate in Hansard—that is to say, it appears to do some things wider than what were noted as the purposes of the amendment when it was moved. If my noble friend would be content for me to do that with some reluctance but with I trust a good grace, perhaps she will feel that she need not press the amendment at this stage.

My Lords, I find myself in a very real dilemma. My noble friend the Minister has pointed out to me that perhaps the amendment is not worded exactly as it should be, and he has agreed to take the matter back. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, has said, this is a complicated matter, because I also have had experience of trying to get a child into a mental hospital. Let me say at this stage that I do not think that the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Security have come to terms with one another as to whether treatment should be given, who it should be given by, and where. I think that I almost—and I repeat "almost" —feel like pressing this amendment in order for that to be done. But, having been given the assurance of the Minister that this matter will be looked into—

My Lords, the noble Baroness is always so courteous. I did not wish her to give away too much. I wonder whether the noble Lord the Minister could help by informing the House whether the assurance which he gave with some reluctance but nevertheless with considerable charm, is an undertaking that there will be an amendment in the spirit of the one now before the House but with certain structural defects remedied? If that is the assurance that the noble Lord the Minister is giving to the House, it might help us all, including of course, the noble Baroness.

My Lords, I am grateful for the way in which the noble Lord describes my manner; he has also got my intention right.

My Lords, as the intention is right—and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for clearing up the point—I hope that my fellow workers on the All-Party Penal Affairs Group would agree that I should withdraw the amendment until the next stage. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 10:

Page 12, line 11, after ("or") insert ("(where the offender is aged 17 or over)").

My Lords, if it is the noble Lord's intention to divide the House and silence any criticism of the amendment, at the same time forfeiting any defence of the amendment, then I am not sure that that is within the power of the noble Lord to achieve. I must repeat to your Lordships that there are cogent reasons why the first amendment was not agreed to with a majority of this House, and that is the only way in which it can be agreed to. The noble Lord has now cut off the pair of legs at one end of the table and is expecting us to address ourselves favourably to the others. I think that the table would stand flat if we cut the legs off at that end too.

My Lords, perhaps I may help the noble Lord with a different kind of surgery. Having seen that, indeed, on the last occasion this was not completely cured by the doctor who was trying very hard to cure it, is he not prepared himself to look at the way in which the doctor managed to look after the patient and help that patient by agreeing that a dead heat on a matter of this importance obviously necessitates that the Government very seriously rethink the whole matter?

My Lords, the noble Lord, who is intending to be helpful, places me in a very difficult position. I shall read the debate with the greatest care and I shall also read the Division List with the greatest care. In the light of that, I will consider what has gone before. However, the fact remains that we have discussed the merits on one occasion. Your Lordships have shown that you very nearly agreed with the noble Lord and that you very nearly agreed with me and that actually you were equally divided. But, if the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is asking me to bring an amendment to the House at Third Reading, then that is something which, at this short notice and without debate of this amendment, I could not undertake. I can undertake to read what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others have said in moving exchanges, to see whether there is anything I can do in order to go some way towards what he wants. But, on the basis of the Division as it was, it is not something as regards which I can undertake to come back with an amendment.

My Lords, I should like to begin by apologising to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, if I have pre-empted his opportunity to speak against this amendment. I realise that I was too precipitate in that regard. I should have listened to him and invited him to reconsider the opposition he had put forward to it when I was speaking to this amendment while moving Amendment No. 7. I am very sorry about that indeed.

I would point out to your Lordships that there is an essential difference, in that we are talking now about 15-and 16-year olds who are sentenced to detention centres rather than to youth custody centres. Therefore, although the principle is exactly the same, the issue is, in that respect, different. I have every intention of testing the view of the House on the proposal in the Bill for the power to be given to the Secretary of State to require that even a few 15- to 16-year old boys should, when given a detention centre sentence, serve it in an adult prison. The conditions are such that I need not repeat them again; they have been aired extremely fully. It is totally and absolutely wrong in principle. It is very important that we should have yet another go to spare at least those who are given detention centre sentences, as distinct from those given youth custody sentences, the ignomony and the damage that would be done to them by serving in an adult prison.

My Lords, with your Lordships' leave—because we were discussing whether the amendment should be put; we have now decided that it should be put, and the noble Lord has said that there are arguments in favour of it—I shall also be brief. People are apt to dismiss as irrelevant or bureaucratic arguments of administrative convenience. All I want to do is to put a gloss on what I said before—that when the time of prison officers is taken up in an operation of this kind, which is of marginal benefit and which is sometimes contrary to the interests of the people caught up in it (sometimes it is a considerable period of time extending over a number of days), and when you take these people away from their normal duties, somewhere else in the prison system someone is locked up for 23 hours a day who might be out doing other things under supervision. That is what I was trying to say. I shall not wax eloquent—if I am eloquent—at greater length on other points. I take the emotive question of the mental stress in good part; I recognise it. But when you come to the individual cases, as I have already sought to describe, I think you do little or no good to the individual concerned and you do a great deal of harm to somebody else somewhere else who has to sit behind bars for 23 hours in the day instead of having association or going to a workshop. That is the nub of the matter.

My Lords, with great respect to the Minister, that is not at all a satisfactory answer to my noble friend Lord Hunt. Prisoners will continue to be locked up 23 hours out of 24 whether or not this amendment is passed. That is the fact, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will be the first to agree. The difference that would be made in terms of lessening the pressures on prison officers has, I think, been considerably overstated by the noble Lord. I certainly recognise the problems of management, which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, put earlier. He certainly has a case there.

But I am bound to say that when he starts using arguments about people being locked up 23 hour out of every 24, he knows perfectly well that in all the local prisons of this country that is exactly the régime that exists. I know that he has visited a number of prisons since he went to the Home Office and took charge of the prison department. He, like me, has seen the conditions in which children are kept in custody. They are, in fact, wholly deplorable. They create great anxiety for the prison officers. I am sure the noble Lord will agree with me that when one is talking about the attitude of the prison service, prison officers are often deeply concerned about the conditions in which children of this age are kept in custody.

I put it to him that on an issue where the House has been evenly divided it is right for him—I hope—to get up and say that he is prepared to reconsider this matter as a question of substance before the Third Reading of this Bill. I think that it would be most unfortunate if we took a marginal decision one way or the other on this matter. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to ask the noble Lord, Lord Elton, to discuss the matter with his right honourable friend the Home Secretary, pointing out to him that, on the last occasion the matter was put to the test, the House was evenly divided, and on that basis, before the Third Reading, to reconsider whether he can meet the wishes of at least 50 per cent. of the House.

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether recently he has visited many children's custodial establishments. At those that I have visited, although they have been locked between large dormitories, they have been outside kicking balls about. They are not being treated as prisoners in any way. They are taken out of society because of the way in which they behave in society. They are not locked in small rooms for 23 hours a day, as are some of the adults. I think that, inadvertently, the noble Lord might have given the House the wrong impression.

My Lords, with great respect, with the leave of the House, perhaps I could answer that point. I have, indeed, visited a number of such establishments in the recent past. The conditions to which I referred reflect the general situation prevailing in local prisons; and some of the problems attendant on this situation of over-crowding, in fact, put the position of the prison service in a great deal of difficulty because it then has to deal with the problem of looking after teenage prisoners of this kind. It is that to which I refer.

Of course, the prison service does everything it can to minimise the damage being done to children who are being kept in adult prisons. The point which I was making in answering the noble Lord, Lord Elton, was that he appeared to be implying that in some remarkable way we were discussing whether, in fact, prisoners were or were not to be kept locked up 23 hours out of every 24. That is the situation which exists now in local prisons, and it will continue, whether or not this amendment is passed.

My Lords, at the risk of annoying your Lordships by asking your indulgence a second time for speaking more than once, I do not wish to appear curmudgeonly about this. I recognise the narrowness of the Division and I have already said that I shall look at this very carefully. I cannot anticipate the result of that look. I cannot say to your Lordships that, as we are exactly evenly divided on this, I shall come back with something which will satisfy one 50 per cent. rather than the other. But if what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said accurately expressed what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, thinks about this, I am perfectly willing to consider the whole of this debate and the Division List, and the debate that produced that Division List, with my right honourable friend before the Third Reading to see whether, in the light of that, there is a new positon that we could take. If that is of assistance to the noble Lord, I am very happy to offer it to him.

My Lords, the noble Lord the Minister has spoken with his usual courtesy and I have a very high regard for his sincerety in this matter. Undoubtedly, I can confirm that what my noble friend Lord Harris has said accords with my own feelings on this matter, and I can also say to the noble Baroness that I, too, have visited adult prisons and have seen 15- to 16-year-olds incarcerated in them. I confirm what the borstal and prison governors branch of the Civil and Public Servants Association has written, which I have quoted to your Lordships. So I know the conditions.

In view of what the Minister has said, I shall not press this amendment to a Division. I shall await hopefully—although he has not been able to offer the House much hope—the outcome of his deliberations in the Home Office between now and the Third Reading. Depending on what he is able to tell me between now and Third Reading, I shall stand ready to put both these amendments down again at Third Reading. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment

moved Amendment No. 11:

Leave out Clause 15 and insert the following new clause:

My Lords, the arguments have been fully deployed by the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench. Beyond adding that the National Association of Probation Officers are keen on this I will say no more than that I support the noble Baroness fully.

My Lords, in Committee I set out quite fully the reasons why the Government cannot accept this amendment. They were, I think, fairly substantial. The argument put forward in support of the amendment was simply that young offenders should be treated in the same way as adults. My Lords, I certainly agree that young offenders should not generally be denied any advantages which adult prisoners enjoy. That is why parole will be available for those serving youth custody. But it is not always and invariably possible to achieve exact parity because young offenders do not serve the same sentences as adult prisoners. The crucial difference is that when young offenders are released from custody, they are all under supervision. Adult prisoners are not. The arrangements we make for young offenders on parole must take account of what happens to young offenders who are not released on parole. That is what the present parole provisions do and that is what we are doing in Clause 15.

The general rule we introduce in Clause 16 is that all young offenders will be supervised until the date on which their full sentences would have expired. That can be called the "remission period". The period of supervision is therefore related to the length of the sentence but with a minimum of three months and a maximum of 12 months. We do not, however, intend that this new arrangement should interfere with a young offender's chances of being released earlier on parole. At present, young prisoners are eligible for release under the parole arrangements in the same way as adult prisoners. The only difference between the two categories is that the parole licence of a young offender runs until the end of the full term of his sentence. The parole licence of an adult is shorter. It runs until the two-thirds point of his sentence. That is the date on which he would otherwise have been released without, of course, any supervision.

This amendment to Clause 15 would abolish the existing differences between adults and young offenders released on parole. The Government intend to retain it, because it balances the general principle underlying the custody and supervision of young offenders. In general, offenders released under Clause 16 will spend two-thirds of their sentences in custody and one-third under supervision. Those released early on parole under Clause 15 might spend one half of the sentence in custody and one half on licence under supervision. That means that there is some equality of treatment as between young offenders as a class, and that is the Government's aim. If this amendment were to succeed it would make a severe inroad into this general approach to young offenders. It would also introduce a dramatic difference to the way we treat those who are released on parole and those who are not. The Government regard that as highly undesirable, and I must ask the House to reject this amendment.

My Lords, we on these Benches are deeply disappointed that the noble Lord has taken so rigid a line in relation to this matter, an attitude which is markedly different from that taken by his honourable and learned friend the Minister of State in another place who, at Committee stage, was prepared to give the matter further consideration. The basic point has been avoided by the Minister. It is not a question of giving young offenders the same benefits as older offenders. The basic point is that a young offender is on risk of recall for a longer period. He is on risk of recall to the end of his sentence, whereas the older offender is on risk only to a point in time two-thirds through his sentence; that is, the first release date. That is the difference. It is a difference that has not been justified, either today or on the earlier occasion on, I think, 28th June, when we last debated the matter in Committee. No cogent argument has been put forward for that distinction.

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan has answered the Minister's reply. He is right when he says that no real answer has been given. The noble Lord still appears to have overlooked the difference which we both stressed, between being on a licence of parole or being under supervision under a supervision order. There is a strong element of unfairness to the young offender in the way the system is working at the moment, even with the changes that have been made in the Bill up till now.

However, at this stage I do not think there is much point in pressing it to a Division. I should like to see exactly what the Minister said and read that in Hansard, and reserve our position until Third Reading. I do not know whether in between the Minister will be able to help me by letting me have any figures on how this works and how it affects a number of young people. I think it could be a considerable number of young people who will find themselves at fairly quick recall to prison and who, as my noble friend said and as I said at the outset, will be punished more severely than older offenders, and there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason for it.

I do not accept the argument about supervision because it is an entirely different sort of supervision. As has been pointed out, the type of supervision when one is on licence under parole is much more stringent than under a supervision order. Although the Minister's reply was completely unsatisfactory, at this time of the afternoon we had better leave it and move on, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 12:

Page 14, line 23, leave out ("A") and insert ("Subject to subsection (8) below, a").

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord. My gratitude is slightly tinged with disappointment because I had prepared a powerful short speech, and it was not until I read Amendments Nos. 12 and 14 that I realised there was nothing to say, except "Thank you".

moved Amendment No. 14:

Page 15, line 23, leave out from beginning to ("of") in line 24 and insert—

("(8) A person released from a custodial sentence passed under subsection (6) above shall not be liable to a period of supervision in consequence of his conviction under that subsection, but his conviction shall not prejudice any liability to supervision to which he was previously subject, and that liability shall accordingly continue until the end").

moved Amendment No. 15:

Page 17, line 6, at end insert ("where the offender is under 17 years of age, or 36 hours where the offender is under 21 but not less than 17 years of age.").

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the opportunity provided by her amendment to say a few words about the development of senior attendance centres. As was indicated in the White Paper on Young Offenders, the Government are extending the provision of attendance centres for young men aged 17 and under 21. In 1979 there were only two. There are now 14, including one which opened at Middlesbrough last Saturday, 17th July. At all these centres the usual duration of a session is three hours, which means that a young man undergoing a 24-hour order (the maximum a court may impose under existing law, and the Bill as drafted) must attend on at least eight Saturdays to complete the order. The effect of enabling courts to make orders for up to 36 hours, as proposed by the amendment, would be to require a young man to attend the centre on a minimum of 12 occasions. For young men of the age in question, at least 17 and under 21, the longer order would be compatible with the aims of the attendance centre order as we see them, which are to vindicate the law by imposing loss of leisure and to teach offenders something of the constructive use of leisure. The noble Baroness said it was a probing amendment which she would not push too hard. I hope I do not astonish her by opening the door against which she is pressing because I am disposed to accept the amendment.