Policing and Crime Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Richard Rosser (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I will add a few brief comments to what has been said, without seeking to repeat the arguments which have already been made. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, may have been quoting from a letter, dated 2 November, which the deputy chief constable of the Cheshire Constabulary, who is the NPCC lead for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller issues, wrote to Elizabeth Truss at the Ministry of Justice. In this, she drew attention to the amendments to the Bill which we are discussing tonight. I will give a further quotation from the letter. She says: "It is my firm belief that the lack of robust and reliable data on the Gypsy and Traveller population is a major barrier to developing a coherent understanding of these communities and their social, economic, education and welfare needs. Updating the ethnicity monitoring systems in youth justice to include Gypsies and Irish Travellers would be an integral step in helping us to address the disproportionate number of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children in both Secure Training Centres and Youth Offender Institutions" She concludes her letter to Elizabeth Truss by saying that: "I hope you and your Department are able to support the amendments" I hope that when the Minister replies she may be able to tell us what Elizabeth Truss’s response is to that request from the NPCC lead for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller issues to support the amendments that we are discussing this evening I have also got a copy of a letter which the chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales sent very recently to Kate Green MP, in response to a letter that she had written to him about the collection of data on the number of Gypsy and Traveller young people in the justice system. He says in his reply that: "The YJB currently records the ethnicity of young people in the youth justice system using the 2001 census categories, which does not include Gypsy, Traveller or Romany (GTR) as a category. Consideration has been given to changing information systems to capture the number of GTR young people but it is too costly at present to make the required changes to existing local and central case management systems to make this possible. This position will be reviewed as new IT systems are developed and implemented" I am not sure that that statement holds out a great deal of hope. Perhaps in her reply the Minister could say something about what the costs would be of making the required changes to the existing local and central case management systems to achieve the objective being sought, so that we can all form a view of whether that is too costly or not I also ask the Government to respond to one other thing. Since the position will, apparently, be reviewed as new IT systems are developed and implemented, are we talking about new systems that will be developed and implemented within the next six months, the next six years or the next 60 years? Once again, the letter does not make that clear. It is interesting that the letter from the chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales then goes on to assert that, "it is not the case that no data exists in this area" He then refers to the fact that: "The YJB and HM Inspectorate of Prisons publish an annual report, Children in Custody, based on surveys of children in Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) and Secure Training Centres (STCs)" That is an interesting observation since, as I understand it, certainly on at least one previous occasion the relevant Minister has expressed the view that, as not all young people return a completed survey, they cannot determine the actual number of GRT young people held in YOIs and STCs, or even know if the sample is representative. That would suggest that on previous occasions the Government have not regarded the data contained in Children in Custody—in those annual reports—as necessarily being particularly reliable or particularly helpful. Like others, I very much hope that the Government will be able to give a helpful response to this amendment. If the argument is going to be all about the cost of doing it, we will really need to ask the Government for a full breakdown of those costs and when they expect to rectify the situation so that we can all form an assessment of the validity or otherwise of that particular argument.