Queen’s Speech

Lord Patel of Bradford Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel of Bradford (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me the greatest pleasure to speak after the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Glendonbrook—and I pronounce his name very carefully. The noble Lord was born Michael Bishop in the village of Bowdon, near Manchester. He sought permission from the Australian Government to call himself Lord Glendonbrook, Glendonbrook being, I believe, a Hunter Valley hamlet in Australia. He first visited it in 1965 as a young child, and his father, Clive, worked as a farmer there. I am sure that his decision was a wise one. I quote him:

“I knew that I would get a lot of correspondence that was not meant for me. It would be very confusing as I would be invited to say grace or give sermons or something. I would be constantly saying, ‘I am not the bishop of Bowdon’. So I thought it would be rather nice if I took an Australian title”.

The noble Lord spoke with great humour, passion and conviction, and I am sure that his comments and views on the atrocities of war and the abhorrence of human trafficking and modern slavery have the support of all of us in the House. His paraphrasing of WS Gilbert’s lyric for Sir Joseph Porter sums up very clearly and succinctly his own illustrious career in the aviation industry. He started at the front-line check-in counter and, by the tender age of 27, was chief executive of British Midland Airways. In fact, he was knighted in 1991 for his services to aviation. His talents extend much further and I could not do justice to them today. He can be described in a multitude of ways: aviation boss, advocate for gay rights, patron of the arts and Knight of the Empire. In addition, he has been chairman of Channel 4 television and is a great philanthropist. The noble Lord will undoubtedly bring an array of views and experiences to the House, and I, for one, look forward to his further contributions to our debates.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise an issue not contained in the gracious Speech but it is one which I believe is long-standing and urgent and on which I believe the Government could act now through a simple amendment to either the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill or the Serious Crime Bill. I hope that the Minister will give this careful consideration. I am focusing on the need to do more to protect the rights and welfare of children and vulnerable adults detained or interviewed by the police. I declare an interest as the president of the National Appropriate Adult Network, a charity and membership organisation which supports the development of effective appropriate adult policy and practice. I particularly thank its chief executive, Chris Bath, for his expert advice and briefing on this issue.

By way of background, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 codes of practice, when detaining or interviewing a child or mentally disordered or mentally vulnerable adult, the police must secure an appropriate adult to protect their rights and welfare. The term “mentally vulnerable” includes, but is not limited to, people with mental ill-health, a learning disability or autistic spectrum disorder. If the police have any doubts at all about the mental state or capacity of a detainee, they may not continue with procedures such as fingerprinting, DNA swabs, intimate searches or interviews without an appropriate adult being present.

The appropriate adult role, conducted effectively, is complex and demanding. It includes a multitude of tasks but is absolutely crucial. Where parents or carers are unavailable, unsuitable or unwilling, a statutory duty requires youth offending teams to ensure the provision of appropriate adults for children, whether through paid or voluntary staff, but there is no such statutory duty to ensure the provision of appropriate adults for mentally vulnerable adults, and this is a key point that I will return to in a short while.

However, my first area of concern is in relation to children. In 2012, Joe Lawton, a 17 year-old boy, took his own life. His father found him dead and a police charge sheet at his feet. Two days earlier, he was held in a police cell overnight on suspicion of drunk-driving. In 2011, 17 year-old Edward Thornber was caught with 50p-worth of cannabis. Distraught at the thought of life with a criminal record, he hanged himself. These children were treated as adults in police custody and were not entitled to an appropriate adult. The case of Hughes Cousins-Chang, another 17 year-old, led to a judicial review. The Home Secretary, rightly, amended the PACE codes of practice without appeal, extending provision to 17 year-olds and rectifying a long-standing anomaly.

The Home Secretary’s action is welcome. However, if we are to avoid such tragedies in the future, there are three key issues which still need urgent action. First, with more 17 year-olds arrested than all 10 to 16 year-olds combined, funding is desperately needed. Seven months after the change to PACE Code C, no additional funding has been given to local government.

Secondly, the PACE Act must be amended to remove anomalies where 17 year-old boys and girls continue to be treated as adults in several critical respects, including a lack of parental consent around intimate body cavity searches and no requirement to transfer them to local authority accommodation post charge. The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill will ensure that 17 year-olds have an appropriate adult for the purposes of youth cautions and youth custodial cautions. I welcome the fact that the Ministry of Justice has moved so quickly to address this issue. It would make eminent sense for the Home Secretary and the Home Office to follow suit.

Thirdly, children across the country are too often contained in cells, contrary to Section 38(6) of PACE, which places a statutory duty on the police to effect the transfer of children unless it is impracticable for certain defined reasons. Local authorities must accommodate them under the Children Act 1989. This can cause unnecessary damage to children, puts unnecessary pressure on custody suites and increases the risk of costly remands. There are, of course, odd exceptions, but the system seems to have broken down nationwide and there appears to be no accountability. This is a cross-departmental issue, but one on which I would expect the Home Office to take the lead.

I turn to the matter of mentally vulnerable adults—and here I fear that we are heading towards a crisis which needs urgent action now by the Government. At any given time one in six British adults, or 8 million people, are experiencing at least one diagnosable mental health problem. Almost 40% of people in contact with the probation service have a current mental health condition—a number which is even higher in prisons. Up to 30% of people who offend have learning disabilities or difficulties that interfere with their ability to cope within the criminal justice system; yet as my noble friend Lord Bradley’s landmark report in 2009 noted, an analysis of 21,000 police custody records found that an appropriate adult had been used in only 38 cases. He had expected up to at least 3,000 cases. The lack of any statutory provision for vulnerable adults means that trained appropriate adults for this group are often unavailable or that provision is limited. In many areas, services are non-existent.

The Government must be congratulated on investing an extra £25 million this year into services to identify mentally vulnerable people in police stations and to ensure appropriate referrals. This will be a great support for custody sergeants, and I welcome the commitment to extend these liaison and diversion services to every custody suite in England by 2017. It is already the case that where there is no organised service, the search for an appropriate adult can make significant demands on police time. At busy times, police can be impelled not to identify an individual’s vulnerability at all. If the police are discouraged from identifying vulnerability due to poor provision of appropriate adults, it may present an unwelcome barrier to their referring to liaison and diversion. As things stand, the problem is actually set to worsen dramatically.

The non-statutory nature of appropriate adult services for vulnerable adults means that those areas with a service are defenceless in the face of budget cuts. In the short term, immediate action is needed to prevent the loss of existing services, many of which are delivered by committed volunteers. However, this cannot be at the expense of the proper solution—placing appropriate adult provision for mentally vulnerable adults on a statutory footing. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to my concerns. We need to see a clear commitment by the Government to take action within this parliamentary Session to tackle these important issues. I fear that without such action, we are heading towards crisis and placing some of the most vulnerable people in our communities at serious risk.