| The Youth Justice Board stems
out of an Audit Commission report, which I helped to do
in 1995/96, which looked at what was happening to young
offenders in England and Wales. The conclusion of that
was we were spending about , 1 billion processing people
through the criminal justice system and doing very little,
if anything, with them as a result of that. It was taking
an average of 5 months from arrest to sentence and once
they were sentenced they were supervised by social services
who were required by law to allocate resources according
to the needs of the child. The social work profession
did not see offending as a good reason for providing a
service to the child. Very little was being done. A few,
very few were falling into custody, where they were warehoused,
frankly, and there were a series of reports from the inspectorate
saying that in some of these institutions these children
had been locked up for 23 hours a day, 4 days a week and
nothing was being done with them. |
| The attitude of the Home Office,
the Lord Chancellor's Department and the Crown Prosecution
Service when we came to present the findings to them privately
was to ask the Audit Commission not to publish the report
on the grounds that there was no such thing as a youth
justice system. They said it was wrong to look at the
police alongside the probation service, alongside the
courts, alongside social services and the education service
because they were constitutionally different. The Commission
took a view, the social policy departments took a different
view and the Commission did publish. |
| The Labour Party took a lot
of the thinking behind the Audit Commission Report and
they made it Labour Party policy. One of the 5 promises
the Labour Party made the nation when it came to power
was they would halve the time from arrest to sentence,
which was like a token of importance they gave the youth
justice reforms. The Labour Party took the view that they
had to establish a public body to drive these reforms
through or they would not happen because of the attitude
of the Legal Services Departments. That is the genesis
of the Youth Justice Board. It sits at the overlap between
the Criminal Justice System, which are the police, the
Crown Prosecution Service, the magistrates' court, crown
courts, prisons and services for children, by which I
mean the education service, social services, the youth
service and other positive activities for children, including
the health service, which is very important. |
|
In the criminal
justice system the children are at the margin and in
the children services the criminal justice system is
at the margin. The job of the Board is to make both
those systems focus on those children who are offending,
both to help the children get into more positive things
and also to help potential victims as we prevent re-offending.
That is what drives the Board. The statutory aim of
the youth justice system is to prevent offending by
young children and all of the work we do is devoted
to delivering that aim. I can say a little more about
how we go about doing that if that would be helpful.
|
| The 5 statutory functions of
the Board are to give advice to the Government. We are
not part of the Government, we are a non-departmental
public body. We are not civil servants, we are public
servants. We give advice to the government. We monitor
the youth justice system. We identify and promote effective
practice. We issue grants in support of those functions.
We Commission and purchase places and secure facilities,
that was a function added after the Board started, and
we place young people in secure facilities. That is perhaps
the one executive function that we have. We do not deal
with young offenders, they are dealt with by the youth
offending teams. These are multi-agency bodies established
by social services, education, police and the health service
working together. There are now 17 youth offending teams
in Wales and around 140 in England, they deal with young
offenders in the community. |
| If they get sentenced to secure
facilities we place them in secure facilities. At the
moment in Wales there are about 12 beds in Hillside and
28 in Park, the other young people having to be placed
in England. We are actively looking for somewhere to build
a secure establishment in Wales. That is proving controversial
but it is something that we will keep looking at. I hope
that gives a brief flavour of what we do. |
|
LORD RICHARD:
Yes, thank you very much indeed. What we are most interested
in is the practical implications of trying to run a
system in both Wales, and in England and Wales on top
of it, and the extent to which the Assembly's powers
or actions influence the way in which you do your job
and indeed whether or not that needs to be looked at
and needs changing?
|
|
We are coming
at it, so to speak, from not quite the statutory side
but from the point of view of the responsibility side
as to where you come from and whether the structures
that are in place at the moment make sense. Perhaps
Viv Sugar, who knows more about this than I do, would
like to start.
|
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: I think perhaps
we ought to share with Mark and Sue why we were particularly
anxious to have you come as witnesses, we were being told
when we started taking evidence 6 months ago that this
whole area was an example of initial difficulty and that
the relationship had not got off to a good start and there
was still a lack of clarity between the responsibility
of the Board, the responsibility of the Home Office and
the responsibility of the Assembly. We would like you
to talk about what you have done to try and make it work
and to try and improve things and whether you feel that
there are still things that could be done and should be
done in order to almost be an example to other agencies
of how a United Kingdom non-devolved body can actually
work within a devolved system? |
|
MR PERFECT:
I am surprised and interested, and in another forum
I will ask a little more about that meeting. I must
address the question you put to me. I have a concordat
with the Home Office which sets out what the Youth Justice
Board does and what the Home Office does. The Home Office
gives advice on legislation and the Youth Justice Board
fills the gap between the centre and the local services.
All of the members are appointed by the Home Secretary
and most of the staff are people who have worked in
local services dealing with young offenders.
|
| LORD RICHARD: Can you give us
the date of the concordat with the Home Office? |
| MR PERFECT: The Board was established
on 30 September 1998. |
| LORD RICHARD: It was before that. |
| MR PERFECT: It was round that
time it was signed. |
|
TED ROWLANDS: Pre devolution
|
|
MR PERFECT:
Pre devolution, that is right. From the start I have
had quarterly meetings, and it is quarterly in theory,
in practice it is three times a year meetings with the
officials, first in the Welsh Office and now in the
Welsh Assembly. The purpose of those meetings is to
make sure that communications between the Board and
the Welsh Assembly are going according to plan. It also
provides a useful check of all of the things we are
doing. I do not think at any of those meetings people
have raised the relationship of the Youth Justice Board
as a matter of concern, they have always been most friendly,
most welcoming to the fact that we make the effort to
go to Cardiff and have these chats.
|
|
From my point
of view the contact point I have been asked to deal
with in the Welsh Assembly has changed fairly often.
David O'Hearn is the contact now, it was David O'Hearn
two and a half years ago, in the intervening period
it has been Norma Barry and it was somebody else before
David O'Hearn. There has been continuity at a working
level, there is a man called Richard Parry, who has
been the HEO responsible for youth justice in the Welsh
Office and throughout the time of the Welsh Assembly.
At grade 7, Peter Jones has been there a couple of years
now and the relationships are excellent with them.
|
|
At the start
when it was the Welsh Office Alun Michael was heavily
involved, he was the junior minister in the Home Office
responsible, he was a key architect of youth justice
reforms and he continues to take an interest, and has
always done so. From the political aspect there has
always been links with politicians in Wales. The one
difference with what happened under the Welsh Office
and what happened under the Welsh Assembly is whereas
I have always sought to influence the officials in the
Welsh Office and the Welsh Assembly, and to make sure
that the Welsh Office and the Welsh Assembly feel they
can influence us, I now have through the All Wales Youth
Strategy Group a forum in which I can talk with Jane
Hutt.
|
| There are some things quite rightly
and properly under devolution that Wales are doing differently
from England. There is a key point, which is round targeting.
One of the things the Board is very keen to do is make
sure that you actually engage with the children who are
most at risk of offending. This is a policy not liked
by the services that deal with children who think they
should engage with children on the basis of need. They
like dealing with the friendly children, the children
whose parents make appointments, the children who turn
up for appointments and the children who do not damage
their buildings. The children who are at risk of offending
do not have those characteristics by and large, they may
damage the building, they may not turn up for appointments,
their parents may be rude to you but they are the people
we need to get services to. In both England and Wales
there is an active dialogue to be had with the services
to encourage them to engage with that. |
| In England we have made a bit
of progress, some of the money given to the Children's
Fund has been ring-fenced in England, that has to be spent
in partnership with Youth offending teams (Yots) on preventative
work. The connexions service in England has adopted the
target of helping to get 90 per cent of young offenders
in to education and training during sentence. The equivalent
services in Wales have not chosen to go down that route.
The Welsh Assembly has taken the view that it needs to
delegate as much of its money as it can to local authorities
without conditions. The equivalent streams of money do
not have conditions about engaging with that targeted
preventive work. The Welsh Assembly officials who were
engaged did not want to go down that route. Through the
All Wales Youth Offending Group I can mention our concern
to Jane Hutt - and have done so. With the Welsh Assembly
we are currently working up an All Wales Youth Strategy
which discusses this point about how far preventive work
should be general for everyone and how far we should engage
with those and the local community concerned. That is
in draft and it is being sorted out in an orderly way. |
|
LORD RICHARD:
What happens to that? You say you are working it out
with the Assembly people, not with Whitehall.
|
| MR PERFECT: No, this is a Welsh
thing. It is not just the Welsh Assembly, the All Wales
Youth Strategy Group has been convened by Jane Hutt and
the Youth Justice Board and includes Local Authorities
the Probation Service |
| LORD RICHARD: It is under the
umbrella of the Assembly. |
| MR PERFECT: It is a joint initiative,
yes |
|
LORD RICHARD:
The All Welsh Youth Strategy produces its report, does
that then have to go back to London or is that then
Welsh and everyone says fine?
|
| MR PERFECT: That is Welsh. |
|
LORD RICHARD:
Funding?
|
|
MR PERFECT:
The funding comes down through the Barnett Formula and
each time some money is agreed for an English service
five eighty-fifths gets given to the Welsh Assembly,
who then have the freedom to decide how to use it, they
do not have to use it for the same things they do in
England, that is their choice.
|
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: When I was talking
about relationships I did not mean personal, I was talking
more about institutional relationships and the measures
you have taken to accommodate devolution, which have included
these three meetings a year with officials, it has included
helping to set up the All Wales Group and participating
in that, it has included recruiting a representative of
Wales on to the Board, it has now included the establishment
of a Welsh manager, and some of this has built up over
time, what I was trying to get you to paint a picture
of was how does a United Kingdom based agency responds
to devolution by coming up with these kind of measures,
because there could well be things you have done in the
light of experience which could apply to other organisations. |
| MR PERFECT: I am being too defensive,
sorry. I think one of the things that characterises the
Youth Justice Board is I try to apply what I learned at
the Audit Commission, classic management consultancy.
My previous experience was in the classic civil service,
the Treasury and a short time at the Home Office. At the
Audit Commission you are expected to go out and ask what
the problems are, articulate that and go back and ask
them if they have any ideas what the solutions might be. |
| As the Youth Justice Board goes
about its business we aim to go out to the areas dealing
with young offenders, including Wales, and ask them what
the problems are, articulate that and ask them if they
have any idea what the solutions are. We are staffed by
people who worked in those services. I believe whatever
area of policy I work in I would apply this approach.
You need the staff who have worked in local services because
they have the contacts, they speak the same language as
the people you are trying to influence. That influencing
role is vital to getting buy-in to the policy. The Government
has lots and lots of policy but the implementation of
them is very patchy. I believe we are successful in the
implementation of the policy because we have people like
Sue who have worked in the service, who have the contacts.
Building up the role of Sue comes from a dialogue with
the Welsh Assembly, it is not just a matter of sitting
in a room and thinking about the theoretical model and
applying it, it comes from conversations, ie asking the
Welsh Assembly what they have and responding to it. |
|
VIVIENNE SUGAR:
That is describing the relationship with the Welsh Assembly
Government, what about the relationship with the Assembly?
One of the things we are interested in is how the Assembly's
committees scrutinise the work of non-governmental bodies,
have you had the experience of going before an Assembly
committee?
|
| MR PERFECT: No, but I would be
happy to do so if asked. When Alun Michael was taking
a keen interest he often gathered enormous numbers of
officials and he took away the things very keenly. Currently
it is Jane Hutt who chairs it, I have talked with Jane
Hutt but I have not yet got to the stage of probing how
she is dealing with the Assembly. |
|
MS WILLIAMS: It is not something that
we have ever done, again it is something that I would
be quite happy to do if asked.
|
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: Perhaps I can
come back later. |
| TOM JONES: What about the funding
issue, did you say it was the Barnett Formula split you
had? |
|
MR PERFECT: Our two main streams of money
are for funding grants to youth offending teams and
payments we make to secure facilities. For the funding
for youth offending teams we take five eighty-fifths
of the money.
|
| TOM JONES: What is five eighty-fifths? |
| MR PERFECT: This is the Barnett
Formula, which goes back to Joel Barnett. |
|
TOM JONES: I understand that. Why not
5 per cent? Is this a top-slicing element?
|
|
MR PERFECT:
The Barnett Formula which was in the 1970s was originally
based on population. Every now and again the Treasury,
the Welsh and Scottish Assemblies have looked at revisiting
it and they have decided not to. In order to avoid controversy
I have just taken a general formula which the Government
use and applied it to this.
|
|
TOM JONES: Before
you distribute any funds or allocate any funds do you
take out a top slice for your head quarters, your head
office work? Where does your salary come from, is that
from the core staff budget or is that part of the Wales
allocation?
|
|
MR PERFECT:
No, it is the grant to Yots which I treat in that way.
My other monies are payments to secure facilities and
a lot of that money is going to England because there
are very few in Wales. We are actively trying to build
a secure facility in Wales. We found a site at Glynneath
and having looked at 40 sites we have ended up on consultation
on that. I have other streams of money, our running
costs are about 3 per cent of our spending, a small
research budget, a small programme for learning and
development, which covers Wales, and we employ some
national supporters to help people, they work in Wales
as well.
|
|
TOM JONES: Board
members, you say that you go along as a staff member
to meet your counterparts in the Assembly, do any other
board members take any strategic interest in Welsh interests?
|
|
MR PERFECT:
They do.
|
| TOM JONES: Is he the token Welsh
person on the board or do all board members share an interest
in Wales? |
|
MR PERFECT: We have 12 board members
and Howard Williamson takes the lead on Welsh issues-
he would be representing the Youth Justice Board today
but he is travelling to Lithuania, so he sends his apologies.
Should we ever fail or bring advice to the Board which
fails to take account of the Welsh perspective Howard
would have a word with me and would say. It is
different in Wales, remember that, and I take that point.
|
|
The Chairman
of the board, Lord Warner, took responsibility for Wales
before Howard's appointment. Appointments to the Board
are a matter for the Home Secretary. Initially we had
a member who was born in Wales but not actively working
in Wales, Janet Pareskava, who left to go to the Law
Commission. When that vacancy arose we asked the Home
Secretary to consult with the Welsh Assembly, and that
consultation did take place, and Howard Williamson was
appointed.
|
| TOM JONES: If Howard was ever
replaced or retired would you or the Home Office consult
with the Welsh Assembly Government about an appointment
from Wales? |
| MR PERFECT: We would actively
encourage that. It is a matter for the Home Secretary.
We want somebody who is seen visibly making sure we take
account of the Welsh perspective. |
|
TOM JONES: There is nothing in the concordat
that you would expect that the Home Office would automatically
consult with the Welsh Assembly Government?
|
| MR PERFECT: No, that would be
about how the Home Secretary acted and the concordat is
about how officials act and the officials deal with business.
It would be difficult for a Home Office official to constrain
that. |
| TOM JONES: There has been no
change pre devolution to the current state, no recognition
in that process of the Assembly's existence? |
| MR PERFECT: In practice there
has, when the vacancy arose we wrote to the Home Secretary
and asked him to take account of that, so the Board has
taken account of it in that way. The Home Secretary did
take account of that advice so you could say that he recognised
it too. |
| TED ROWLANDS: Given devolution
is there not a case for a Welsh Youth Justice Board? |
| MR PERFECT: There is a case,
it is not the Youth Justice Board's view that that should
happen. The reason is that because Youth Justice covers
so many services, the police, CPS, about 9 services in
the criminal justice system and another 9 in children's
services, we bring value because we have staff and board
members from most of those different services. If you
went for a Welsh equivalent - and we have about 140 staff
- by scale you would end up with about 8 officers, and
so they could not have the expertise of working in the
police, working in the education service, working in the
youth service, so you could not get that summation. I
do not think you would have the economies of scale to
usefully identify and promote effective practice or development
skills. If you decide to group it otherwise and say, A
okay there may not be enough youth justice experts , you
would immediately go back to the position you had before
the Board was established in 1998, where this was something
which was marginal to the main responsibilities of other
people and it would get neglected. |
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: Why could the
Children's Commissioner not take it under his wing? |
|
MR PERFECT: He could but he would be
unlikely to get into the criminal justice system. There
are two sorts of meetings I go to in Whitehall, one
has the children's services there and the other has
the criminal justice services there and we are the only
people going along to both of those sets of discussions.
Our points are very simple, in the children's services
we make the point, please target these disruptive kids,
who are actually the ones that are at risk of offending,
and in the criminal justice meeting we say 24 per cent
of offenders are young people, they have parents, they
have schools and colleges and your policies need to
reflect that.
|
| Those conversations were not
taking place before the Board was established. I think
that life could go on without having a board in Wales
or indeed in England but I think you would lose that focus,
that spotlight very quickly. |
| TOM JONES: Do you have a Welsh
language policy? |
| MR PERFECT: We have a Welsh language
policy which is to produce material which is translated
in to Welsh which may be used by Welsh offenders. In our
first annual report we produced a page in Welsh, our second
annual report was translated into Welsh but nobody sought
the Welsh version. That is how we behave. A Welsh language
order is currently being made and we are developing a
Welsh language policy under that order, we are in that
process. |
| PETER PRICE: The main focus of
this Commission is about the powers of the National Assembly
for Wales and it is with that sort of focus that I want
to follow through. I think you have an interesting, contrasting
perspective about all of this, I would like to just get
at that contrasting perspective about powers. The first
issue is, to what extent is the current division of powers
causing difficulty? The first point is, to what extent
is it causing difficulty for you? It would not surprise
me, I go on, to find that it does not really cause any
great difficulty for you because the whole nature of what
you are doing is in any event to co-ordinate a disparate
group of bodies, that is the whole point of what you are
there for, and you, to that extent, make devolution work
even better at a Welsh level by helping to bring things
together and playing a part in that. It may be, therefore,
that I need to extend my question, from your perspective
what difficulties do the participants that you are bringing
together have that that you have noticed, because their
chain of command is split between London and Cardiff?
Take the first point in case my assumption is wrong. Do
you have difficulties in the current division of powers? |
|
MR PERFECT:
I do not have difficulties but they present challenges.
We have the criminal justice services, where we have
this common system, and we have the children's services,
where we have different systems in England and Wales.
We have the same discussions, the same difference of
view with the English children's services as we do with
the Welsh children's services, it is a question about
targeting. I say targeting, they say labelling or exclusion.
That is what we hear. The tensions are the same in both.
The last time I spoke to Jane Hutt about it she wanted
more help from the Youth Justice Board in influencing
not just the Welsh Assembly officials but the Welsh
Sports Council and the Welsh Arts Council and to get
them to help with these problems. In London I have about
10 people working on policy, in Wales I have Sue, who
I am using in a dual role, both to be influencing the
Welsh Assembly policy and also to be out talking with
youth offending teams and influencing them. That is
a particular challenge for Sue. I will need to look
at my resourcing of that as time goes by and the role
gets built up. I think that that is the main difficulty
that I am conscious of.
|
|
MS WILLIAMS:
Just to echo, that it is increasingly difficult to cover
adequately the two different social policy dimensions,
they are diverging more and more. From the point of
view of how our policy meshes with that and is relevant
to it and takes the relevance of that it is becoming
increasingly difficult, I think, to cover it effectively.
|
| MR PERFECT: The two things being
targeting and general. |
|
MS WILLIAMS: Welsh social policy is diverging
as it concerns children more and more from English social
policy. It is also tends to be more universalist still
rather than targeting, and that causes some difficulties.
|
|
MR PERFECT:
This tension exists in England too, it is this tension
between believing that delegating the resources to the
local level gets the best results but actually injecting
into that drawing from academic research, identifying
and promoting effective practice frankly. As we delegate
resources down to the local level we cannot expect everyone
to be expert in what is effective practice. We think
we have developed a model that has helped reconcile
that. You will have gathered that targeting is part
of our view on that. We have not succeeded in influencing
the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh children's service
as much as English services on that.
|
| PETER PRICE: I pulled together
two questions in effect, one was about the difficulties
you had directly and the other was what you are perceiving
as difficulties that the bodies you are co-ordinating
have because of their internal splits of chain of command.
Do you perceive such difficulties or because you are dealing
with such a wide range really is that, as it were, beyond
your scope or not something that you need worry about
too much? |
|
MR PERFECT:
It particularly comes to the fore with the youth offending
teams, and the youth offending teams have a relationship
with the Welsh Assembly. Sue used to manage a youth
offending team.
|
| MS WILLIAMS: Youth offending
teams themselves are groupings of people with disparate
professional backgrounds, they are quite complicated little
organisations. Youth offending teams themselves are members
of two different systems in a way because they have to
play a part and they are governed by social policy, which
is set by the Welsh Assembly. They are also governed by
criminal justice policy, which is the United Kingdom Government.
I know this is true, because they complained to me about
it, they do experience difficulties. Their perception
at the moment is they would perceive that far more money
is being spent in England in a targeted way on their client
group to help their client group. Their feeling is they
are a little hard done by at the moment. |
| MR PERFECT: More money spent
by whom? |
|
MS WILLIAMS:
There is more money available for youth crime prevention,
which is coming from other government department funding,
rather than ours. In Wales because the nature of the
policy is more universalist it is more difficult for
them to see. They cannot see a discrete funding streams
coming to them for their client groups. That represents
their views because I know that is what they feel.
|
| LORD RICHARD: Can I come back
to the point Peter was on about divergence, you say Welsh
policy is now beginning to diverge from English policy,
does that cause great problems for you? |
| MR PERFECT: Insofar as the Welsh
youth offending teams are not getting the same help in
targeting work on young people who are likely to offend. |
|
LORD RICHARD: Help from?
|
| MR PERFECT: From the education
service, from the youth service, from the health service
in Wales. It causes a problem for us because our statutory
duty is to give advice to people on how to prevent offending
by children and young people. |
|
LORD RICHARD: If Welsh policy goes in
one direction and English policy goes in another direction
your function is not to make sure the two are close
together, your function is to help the Welsh in doing
what it is that they want to do.
|
|
MR PERFECT:
That is right. I accept that that is part of it. Our
role is to influence people and I expect to be successful
in different respects in different countries.
|
| TOM JONES: Following on from
that, in the absence of a Youth Justice Board for Wales
or a sub board within your framework which will be accountable
to the Assembly we are taking a big interest in scrutiny
of non governmental departmental bodies within the Welsh
Assembly context. There is already very close scrutiny
through the committee system, you are a non-devolved body
and a United Kingdom body so presumably the scrutiny as
far as your activities in Wales are concerned is via Home
Office scrutinisation. To what extent since devolution
are you aware that when the Home Office scrutinises your
work in Parliament that anybody at all asks you questions,
whether it is a Welsh MP an AM on committee or an official
in the Home Office? Your work in Wales is now dealing
with more divergence, you are having to have an officer
in Wales and put more resources in there, who actually
scrutinises and who should scrutinise the work that is
done in Wales? |
| MR PERFECT: In practice that
is by Jane Hutt and the other people on the All Wales
Strategy Group. Howard Williamson is a member of the Youth
Justice Board who takes the lead responsibility for that.
The All Wales Youth Strategy Group, which is jointly the
Welsh Assembly and the Youth Justice Board is providing
that function. |
| TOM JONES: Is that scrutiny in
the definition that we are talking about? |
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: It does not have
any Assembly Members on it, does it? |
| MS WILLIAMS: Jane Hutt. |
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: She is the Minister. |
|
TOM JONES: She is not reporting back
to a committee or has taken questions from a committee
into the Assembly on their behalf.
|
|
MR PERFECT:
I have absolutely no problem with Welsh Assembly Members
being on there, we have local authority chief executives,
chief police officers, it is not a government body.
|
|
VIVIENNE SUGAR:
It is not actually a scrutiny body, it is a planning,
co-ordinating and developmental body. What we are trying
to get at is how could and should the Assembly's workings
be adjusted to make sure there is accountability for
what is happening in Wales.
|
| LAURA McALLISTER: Can we go back
to the point Tom made and Ted followed through about whether
there is a need for a Welsh Youth Justice Board. In most
cases the members are appointed by the home departments
in Whitehall, which is the case in your instance, really
it is fairly unsatisfactory just to have somebody taking
a lead on Welsh affairs because by the nature of appointments
to NDPBs they have a term of office, and there is no guarantee
you would have a Welsh base or a Welsh knowledgeable member
because the Assembly is not actually appointing, is it,
it would be a Home Office decision? |
|
MR PERFECT:
From my point of view that is an interesting point,
the Welsh Assembly could seek to appoint one or two
of the members of the Youth Justice Board.
|
|
LAURA McALLISTER:
What is your feel on that?
|
|
MR PERFECT:
The Youth Justice Board is crystal clear, it would like
to have a member that has a Welsh interest and seen
to have a Welsh interest. That is the Board's view.
|
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TOM JONES: I
used to be a member of a United Kingdom body but there
is a difference between a staff member and a chief executive
actually reporting to an official and/or minister and
a board member for Wales, or in my case I was chair
of the Wales Committee, actually going to give evidence
and give a briefing to ministers. There needs to be
a development in your organisation.
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MR PERFECT:
I would be delighted if I was invited by the Welsh Assembly
to give evidence about what we are doing, I would welcome
such an invitation.
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TED ROWLANDS:
Something is rather more fundamental, I am on a learning
curve, tell me if I have it right, fundamentally at
the heart of your policy is this notion that you want
money targeted for a very specific purpose, to achieve
these offenders at risk, or these potential offenders,
and that you want that money ring-fenced and dedicated
to that particular policy objective. You are saying
that the big divergence is that it is not a view held
by Ms Hutt or the Assembly as a whole that such funding
should occur in that way, it should be put into a local
authority pot and "properly compete with other kinds
of funding". Is that right?
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MR PERFECT:
That is the big difference.
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TED ROWLANDS:
It is a central difference.
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MR PERFECT:
The single most important thing the Youth Justice Board
has done is to clarify the common objective. Nobody
took responsibility for that.
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TED ROWLANDS:
You have a Welsh view that does not support that thrust
at all.
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MR PERFECT:
People sign up to the objective but not to the means
for delivering it. Another key thing is getting people
to talk to each other. It has been done very well in
Wales, the time from arrest to sentence is better in
Wales than it is in England. I have been asked about
the difficulties and differences and you have accurately
summarised that, it is important but it is not the whole
picture.
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TED ROWLANDS: If you pursue this line
it is going to become more significant, there is going
to be a big difference. You are saying, Ms Williamson,
on the ground the local offending teams feel there is
money going to the English side and it is not coming
to them in a direct fashion. Is that right?
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| MS WILLIAMS: That is the case
at the moment. Over time they are able to see the effect
on their client group of Welsh Assembly policies. It is
just more difficult to spot where the money is going because
of differences of approach to start off with. |
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TED ROWLANDS: Are you not going to become
less and less relevant as a Board to the social policy
and the way in which the Assembly decides it is going
to go, a very different way, to tackle its problems.
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MR PERFECT:
If we did not develop a Welsh Youth Offending Strategy
there could be a danger of that. We are developing a
Welsh Youth Offending Strategy.
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| TED ROWLANDS: Is that going to
be robust enough to overcome this fundamental? |
| MR PERFECT: It is going to be
agreed with the Welsh Assembly and the local services
in Wales about how Wales are going to go about doing it.
We will use that dialogue to continue these discussions.
At the moment the draft uses the tiering system that is
used in the health service, first tier services, second
tier services, third tier services and fourth tier services.
It will discuss how far there is a need for intermediate
service, that will be a continual dialogue as long as
children offend. |
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VIVIENNE SUGAR:
Is it not the case the reason that the Assembly is able
to move forward with the idea of a Wales Youth Offending
Strategy is because it is paying 70 per cent of the
cost of this system in Wales, and because it is the
major stakeholder it is in a slightly better position
with you than it might be with some other agencies?
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MR PERFECT:
Yes. 70 per cent of the interventions in the community
are coming from the health service, the education service
and the Welsh service. Too much of our money is spent
on the secure side and over time we want to switch from
the secure side into the community. We think the community
is more effective. You are right to remind people we
are advising and influencing the handling of youth offenders
being done by the Welsh services in Wales.
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VIVIENNE SUGAR:
If I can ask about the secure estate, there was a lot
of disquiet in Wales about the lack of local provision
for a long time before the Board was able to move on
it, there is still disquiet, and it is reflected in
your paper, about the provision for female young offenders.
To what extent do you engage the Assembly in talking
about the secure estates? Is that seen purely as a Home
Office/Prison Service issue or is it part of a dialogue
and will it feature in the strategy when it is published?
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| MR PERFECT: The strategy is about
prevention. When it gets to tier 4 it may outline a bit
about what is going to happen on tier 4, and we should
encourage that. We do discuss with the Welsh Assembly
officials the possibility of sites, we have been through
40 possible sites now and we actively engaged with the
Welsh Assembly on 6 or 7 sites which look like a possibility
to us. They have been supportive and helpful in trying
to find sites. There was a moment last autumn when it
looked like the Home Office was going to take a decision
which had an adverse impact in Wales. I engaged with Jane
Hutt on that and she was very supportive, we actively
worked together to try to achieve an objective for the
Youth Justice Policy in Wales. The working relations feel
good to me. |
|
PETER PRICE:
An important part of tackling youth offending relates
to drugs. There are various drugs initiatives, to what
extent are you involved in those initiatives and to
what extent are they Home Office initiatives and to
the extent that they are how does the division of responsibility
on funding and decision taking get split between the
Assembly and the Home Office?
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MR PERFECT:
There is a major initiative in England, it is the establishment
of a special health authority called the National Treatment
Agency for Substance Abuse and it is responsible for
rolling out treatment programmes in the health service
and the criminal justice system. I have been invited
to be a member of that body and I have accepted that
invitation. The approach the National Treatment Agency
is taking is that we need so many treatment programmes,
we need so many staff and they are planning to put that
in place over a period of years.
|
| In the Welsh context we have
been seeking to engage with the Health Service and our
major dialogue with the health service in Wales has been
trying to get child and adult mental health services in
place, a problem we also have in England. |
|
Sue, my impression is that we come up
against this targeting problem, should we divert resources
to people who offend?
|
| MS WILLIAMS: We have a policy
officer in London whose responsibility is drugs, he and
I are about to meet with the relevant officer in the Welsh
Assembly on just this issue. It is complicated and I would
not say that we are totally clear at the moment about
where the split comes and how the funding works, and so
on, which is why we are becoming engaged. |
|
MR PERFECT:
The funding for the NDA is part of the health service,
that is the Barnett Formula. There is another stream
of funding, out of the last Spending Review we did get
money for substance abuse programmes in secure facilities.
In discussions with people we are trying to make sure
that some of that money is used for young people on
intensive supervision and surveillance programmes that
we have rolled out and we will be rolling out ISFPs
in England and Wales by October this year. We are trying
to take money out of the secure side and put it in to
community supervision, which does help Wales.
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LORD RICHARD:
Can I thank you very much indeed for coming. It has
been extremely useful for us. What you have done is
given us a good example of what it is like in effect
to have an England and Wales body relating both to Westminster
Parliament and the Assembly and how it fits. That has
been extremely helpful. Thank you very much indeed for
coming.
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MR PERFECT:
Thank you very much.
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