Sentencing Bill

Baroness Longfield Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to Baroness Newlove. I had the privilege of working alongside her when I was the Children’s Commissioner and she was the Victims’ Commissioner. It is a hugely sad loss, and she was a fantastic advocate. My thoughts are with her family.

I welcome and support the Bill, and I thank my noble friend for his leadership in bringing it to us. However, the changes it is making are designed for the adult system; as it stands, children and young people are excluded from these positive changes and will potentially have to spend longer in custody, with poorer results. That is what often seems to happen, and it is an example of the way that the rights of children in custody can often appear to be sidelined in a way that is less likely in the adult secure estate. While not included in the Bill, reform of the youth justice system is urgent for both the young people involved and wider society. My remarks today are about the changes that are not included but are needed.

The starting point is that there have been huge gains in the state of youth justice in this country over recent years. We should be pleased that the number of children in custody has been falling for many years; there are now—although it is of course still too many—fewer than 500 young people in custody. So let us do all that we can to make those numbers continue to come down, and to make sure that children in custody are supported to leave with options and opportunities and do not end up reoffending.

While there are now fewer children in the secure estate than there were, those who receive a custodial sentence are almost always in prison for very serious crimes of violence or harm. We need to look at why they got there, how it came about, what went wrong and whether we could have prevented it—and the answer is almost always yes, we could. When I have met young people in the secure estate, many have told me about the missed opportunities that could have diverted them from becoming involved in crime or serious violence. They talk about the experiences that made them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and put them at a higher risk of harm, and many have similar stories to tell. Over three-quarters of children in youth custody were persistently or severely absent from school, and more than half of those were out of education at least one academic year before moving into the secure estate; one-quarter of children in youth custody had been permanently excluded while at school; and over one-third of all children in custody grew up in the 10 poorest areas of the country. The signs and alarm bells are all there.

Neurodivergent children excluded from mainstream school are disproportionately likely to be in custodial settings. Looked-after children have long been overrepresented in the youth justice system, with more than half of looked-after children born in 1994 receiving a criminal conviction by the age of 24, compared to just 13% for those who had not been in care—that is 52%, a number that we should really take note of. Often, those young people are not getting the advice, support or conditions that can support them to thrive and to rehabilitate. The Covid pandemic revealed a system that is frequently not child centred, with children spending very little time out of their cells and having in-person visits stopped, and children in custody not included on the vulnerable list to be eligible for face-to-face education.

When I was Children’s Commissioner, I saw how the justice system so often focuses on adults, with young people seeming to be bolted on as an afterthought. I found that, at every stage of a child’s journey through the criminal justice system, opportunities were missed to get to the root causes of offending and to put children’s best interests at the heart of the response. We need to improve that significantly, and we should be ambitious and impatient for that reform.

There is much to do on reducing the numbers of children on remand. Nearly half of children held in custody are on remand, a figure that has doubled over the last 10 years, yet almost two-thirds of them do not subsequently go on to receive a custodial sentence. Urgent reform is also needed to the YOI system to rehabilitate, educate and reintegrate. One in three go on to reoffend, with reoffenders committing four further offences on average—the highest rate in 10 years—and the costs to the taxpayer and new victims of crime are of course high. I know that my noble friend, Minister MacAlister at the DfE and Minister Richards at the MoJ want to do everything they can to drive down these numbers, and I will support them however I can.

I hope the fact that young people are not included in the Bill means there will be other opportunities to push forward on the reforms that are urgently needed in the youth justice system across prevention, remand and rehabilitation. Otherwise, there is a risk that children will be placed at an even greater disadvantage. There are parts of the Bill that could provide springboards for reforming the youth justice system if applied. For example, the new progression measures allowing people to be released after serving one-third of their sentence if they refrain from poor behaviour should be applied. There is no reason why a child should serve more of the same sentence than an adult.

Any future measures for the youth justice system should focus on rebalancing resources from crisis to intervention; a clear plan to tackle the cumulative impact of racial inequalities—the problems set out so succinctly by the current Lord Chancellor in the Lammy review still exist and still demand action; a comprehensive, long-term strategy for keeping children safe and ensuring that custody is a last resort and that, when children are in the secure estate, their rights and dignity are not forgotten; and a greater focus on preventing reoffending through boosting skills and education in the secure estate. We cannot expect young people who have committed serious crimes to slot back into society without supporting them to succeed and tackling the root causes of their actions. After all, we are a country that believes in holding people to account for their actions while providing most with a second chance and the possibility to thrive and to be active citizens who contribute to society again. Let us not miss the opportunity to do so for those young people in the youth justice system.