Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 20 May 2026

Debate

Contribution

My Lords, we welcome the focus on reducing youth crime, but I would like to ask a question. The Minister detailed a 25% reduction in the number of children who are held on remand. Where did this figure come from? If that number is reduced arbitrarily, that pain will be absorbed by the community, because it will have a number of young people in its purview whom it would not have had beforehand who could be causing some problems there. There was a comment about the propensity of Black children to be more vulnerable to being in the system. Excuse the roughness of the comment I am about to make, but unless as white liberals you are prepared to take on Black parents to do more—they need support and challenge in equal measure to do more to make our children less vulnerable to this system—you will achieve nothing. The things most facing Black children so they end up that way are lack of school achievement, lack of graduate jobs, the high number of single parents and all those things. That is what makes Black children more vulnerable to the youth justice system. Where is the work to improve those figures?

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