Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the (a) effectiveness and (b) the potential impact on the training of appropriate adults of the National standards for the development and provision of appropriate adult schemes in England and Wales.

The Home Office part funds the National Association of Appropriate Adults (NAAN), which supports organisations providing appropriate adult services to young people and vulnerable adults in police custody. More information regarding standards and training can be found at https://www.appropriateadult.org.uk/. We regularly engage with the NAAN to discuss the provision of training to Appropriate Adults across England and Wales.

There is ongoing academic research on the detention and questioning of children and young people being carried out by the Nuffield Foundation. We await the final recommendations from this report. The Government maintains that children should only be detained in custody as a last resort and any opportunities to divert children away from custody should be taken. Detailed police custody data was published for the first time on 17 November 2022 in the Police Powers and Procedures Bulletin. This data provides more transparency on children in custody.

At this stage it does not include data on looked after children. However, we recognise specific concerns around children in custody who are recognised as a vulnerable group. We published the Concordat on Children in Custody in 2017 which clearly sets out the statutory duties of the police and local authorities and provides a protocol for how transfers of children from custody to local authority accommodation should work in practice.

The Government is clear that children should only be detained in custody when absolutely necessary and where there are opportunities to divert children away from custody, these must be considered.