Youth Crime and Anti-social Behaviour

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad to have the opportunity of speaking immediately after the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that in this sphere my admiration for him and his commitment is unlimited, all the more so because he does not speak in theoretical and academic terms. He speaks with the authority of engagement as his record spells out. I hope that I am allowed to say that I sadly wish that I was speaking on the same side as him, rather than opposite him—but if I go down that road, I will have problems with quite a number of people who at present sit opposite. Having said that, I know that it is their choice, and I must respect it even if I think that it is a profound mistake.

We should also place on record real appreciation to the commission. What is important about the commission’s work—and I am struck by it—is that it really has listened to the young. It has not just theorised about the young; it has listened to the young.

I have one nuance that I should like to discuss rather than debate with the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. It is a matter of emphasis. He said that we must give primacy to the prevention of crime but then went on to argue very powerfully that we must look to the long-term cost-effective strategy and not to the short-term wasteful strategy. I am not sure that I totally settle for that. What we should give primacy to is the issue of the lives of young people being a good and positive experience. Unless we really have that commitment right, we will always to some extent be sticking fingers in a dam in which there are serious cracks. A debate such as this gives us the opportunity to make the point that we must look at ourselves as a total society—not only in our social commitments and priorities, such as housing, education, social welfare, health and so on but also in our value system. If our value system is one of greed and opportunism, it undermines our credibility when in Parliament we speak about the responsibilities of the young, because they look at us and say, “Hang on a moment, who is telling who what to do?”. We have to face up to that one very honestly.

I totally endorse the argument that it is a wasteful and irresponsible use of public taxpayers’ money to follow policies that are not effective and are failing to provide lasting solutions. I cannot begin to equal the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. However, having been for nine years the president of the YMCA in England, I came across a lot of the work being done in the front line and had the opportunity of speaking with many young people, both those engaged in the work and those with whom they were co-operating.

One has to look at the total range—housing, homelessness, and the absence of any kind of stable family background in whatever form. I am not arguing for a particular form of family. It is sometimes regarded as not very parliamentary or macho to use the word that I am about to use, but I happen to believe that it is central to the issue. There is an absence of real love—tough love, if you like, but real love—in the upbringing of children. When I met some of the young people, I often remarked to myself that it would have been quite remarkable had they not been in trouble. That is a point that I have made before in debate, and I am sure that I shall make it again. That does not mean—and I know that my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has made this point to me before in winding up debates—that the individual responsibility of the young is removed. There are many good, very powerful and moving examples, of young people who against the most awful social odds have made a success of their lives. That is something that we should recognise. But not everyone is the same, and not everyone has the same strength. We really must recognise that we must have an holistic approach that takes the whole range of issues into account.

There is not really much more that I want to say except to say that I endorse the recommendations of the report. I will not necessarily agree with every one of them. The report falls into the trap of being preoccupied with treatment and response as distinct from the social context out of which the problems arise.

I hope that all of us, wherever we are in the House and whatever our own political convictions, will take this report seriously and let it influence our analysis and approach to debate in the future. Of course it is a financial issue. Before we have lectures from those opposite about the financial stringency within which they are operating, let me say that I realise there is financial stringency, which is essential, but this is the very time to get the policies right. You simply cannot afford to go on indulgently with policies that are not working at a time of financial stringency.

We must simply have the courage in Parliament, wherever we are, to stand up to ignorance and opportunism and to the circulation mania of the popular press who pander to this. I sometimes want to get up and say, “You are helping to generate the problem. You are not solving it with your penal, sensationalist approach. You're actually making the situation worse and are undermining the whole cause of social order”. We have to have an analytical, rational, caring approach and I believe that the noble Lord has set the tone in what he said this afternoon.