I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that information.

We need to help youngsters to face the consequences of their actions and make plans for their future when it is found necessary to remand them. There must be proper recognition of the problems facing youngsters when they leave remand to return to the outside world. Many have no homes to go to, no jobs to support them and no family to fall back on. It is clearly an inadequate and short-sighted response to turn the key and with it turn our backs on their lives.

Ian McKinley was transferred from Strangeways prison to Hindley. He spent the whole seven weeks between his transfer and his death in solitary confinement. During that time, he was never assessed for suicide risks by a doctor, nor was he seen by a psychiatrist. That was clearly a completely inadequate response to his needs.

Prison officers are left to do a skilled social worker's job, keeping an eye out for the potential suicide. When things go wrong, there is no formal post-trauma counselling, although after Strangeways there are ideas afoot to formalise some form of counselling system, which is long overdue.

The Prison Officers Association quotes an example of one officer at Armley who was in trauma after cutting down the bodies of two juveniles who had hanged themselves one night. He was not even given a rest period to come to terms with what he had witnessed. Instead, he was put to work acting as letter censor, with a brief to look carefully for any signs in the letters that more prisoners might be suicidal. That is a terrible way to treat someone who had just been through that appalling experience.

Just as there are good and bad Members of Parliament, so there are good and bad prison officers. Time and again, the Prison Officers Association has argued the case for better training, clearer guidelines and more resources. It recognises that its members are neither psychiatrists nor social workers, yet skills and responsibilities associated with those professions are expected of them and when things go wrong—as we know, they can go horribly wrong —the gross insensitivity towards individual officers leaves one breathless.

There were three juvenile suicides in Hindley remand centre last year, one in February and two in June. The same two prison officers appeared at both inquests. Neither had received post-trauma counselling, or any suicide prevention training. No doubt many of the prison officers carry a great deal of guilt with them. They should not because it is not their fault, but that is what happens. The young female officer who discovered Philip Knight's body—the 15-year-old boy—was not given leave to attend his inquest. She had received no counselling, and the Prison Officers Association thought that attendance at the inquest might help her. The Home Office refused. It failed to send a representative from its prison department or anyone from senior management at Swansea. Why? What is the argument behind that?

At inquest after inquest, the same issues are raised and each time good sections of the media—newspapers and others—protest. Each time, we are told that action is in the pipeline, but it is not, and that is not good enough.

We must tackle the degrading and dehumanising regime in the remand sector and examine why youngsters are in it in the first place. That includes considering the role of social security legislation, which deprives many 16 and 17-year-olds of some form of financial support, turning them to petty crime and a life on the streets.

We must work more closely with the voluntary agencies that work with vulnerable youngsters on a daily basis. We must examine the use of the unruliness certificate and secure local authority accommodation to identify where improvements can be made. We must not be lulled into accepting privatisation as a reasonable response to the long-term needs of young people, when in reality it is a shortcut to offloading responsibility.

Almost a year ago, we were promised a consultation paper on custodial remands for 15 and 16-year-olds. The Minister of State said in the House on 13 December that we could expect sight of the paper either before Christmas or shortly after. It has yet to materialise. Proposed amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill will not now be available for tabling in Committee, and we shall not be given much time to comment on some of the Bill's more controversial aspects, such as the privatisation of secure units.

I have grave doubts about the Government's commitment to reform of this shameful sector of the prison service. Over the years, we have had brought to our notice time and again the tragedies of our young men and children—they are children—who are on remand in adult prisons. I know that in some areas—Swansea is one—there is no alternative, and we must carefully consider that.

Time and again we hear of suicides. The public are outraged that these issues are raised but nothing is done. I am personally outraged, because I believed the Government when they said at the time of Philip Knight's death that it would not happen again, that action would be taken and that proposals would be made. The Criminal Justice Bill is being considered in Committee, but reforms and changes have not been proposed. In December we were promised a consultative paper, but it is yet to materialise.

Public anxiety about remanding juveniles in custody cannot be met by proposals that will merely reduce their number, as some organisations expect to happen, but not end this unacceptable practice. Remanding boys of 15 and 16 to adult prisons is morally indefensible in a civilised society. Nothing short of a total ban on such remands will meet justified public concern. The few young people who must be detained to protect the public should be held in local authority units, not in the conditions that obtain in Victorian prisons.

I said at the beginning of my speech how we were all shocked that a young boy of 15 could kill himself and that many of the young people who have killed themselves have been very young. People on remand, whatever their age, are at their most vulnerable. They do not know what will happen to them and they are plunged into despair and misery. With the best will in the world, our prison system is not geared to coping with such misery, which needs specialist training and far more skills than we give our prison officers. It is not their fault that they do not have the skills or the wherewithal to deal with these young people.

It is important that the Government state their thinking on abolishing this misery for our young men in particular, but also some girls, and what plans they have for fundamental change so that there are no more Philip Knights, no more young men killing themselves in misery because they are remanded in conditions that cannot cope with their needs, where they feel abandoned and where, often, they should not be in the first place. They are not a danger to society. Often, they are disturbed young people with behavioural problems that need specialist training.