I am aware of the hon. Lady's long-standing interest in these issues, which goes back over many years. She speaks with considerable experience but, like me, she will have learnt not always to trust press speculation about the terrible things that the Government might be about to do. She mentioned the possibility of privatisation in respect of our future provision for juveniles on remand. When we publish our plans in the very near future, she will see that much of what she has read in the newspapers amounts to speculation.

The Criminal Justice Bill is currently being considered in Standing Committee. Indeed, I spent most of today in that Committee. In the Bill, we are making provision to put out to tender the new establishment at Everthorpe, which will actually be called Wolds. It will be a remand prison for adults, not for juveniles. I hope that I have cleared that point up to the hon. Lady's satisfaction. I was anxious to deal with those two matters at the beginning of my speech, as they materially affect the tone of what I am about to say.

The situation should be seen against the background of the fact that the number of juveniles sentenced to custody in this country fell from approximately 8,000 in 1982 to just over 2,000 in 1990. By anyone's standards, that is a considerable reduction. It is to be warmly welcomed, in the sense that it was not paralleled by a rise in juvenile crime. On the contrary, juvenile crime dropped during the 1980s. I think that there is considerable agreement between the political parties that one of the best forms of crime prevention is, if possible, to stop young people going into detention in the first place—in other words, criminal prevention is very much better than crime prevention—except in the case of those very narrow categories of people who, for public protection, have to be in custody.

I should like to deal briefly with that matter before considering the hon. Lady's specific points about remand. There are only limited circumstances in which sentenced juveniles can be held in adult prisons. Most of those still held will be awaiting allocation after having been given a sentence of detention under section 53 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. The hon. Lady is very familiar with the workings of that Act and will realise that those young people will have been convicted of the most serious crimes—very often, homicide. Otherwise, the power to hold juveniles temporarily in adult prisons is used very rarely indeed.

The concern of the hon. Lady and of the public, quite rightly, has focused much more on unsentenced juveniles. The hon. Lady may be aware that, in the Criminal Justice Bill that is now being considered in Committee, we are abolishing the sentence of detention of 14-year-olds in young offender institutions. That is another step forward along the road that the hon. Lady and other hon. Members would wish us to take. Concern is not so much now about sentenced juveniles in detention as about unsentenced juveniles in detention and about the conditions in which those juveniles are held. The public are rightly concerned about this, as am I.

The main category of unsentenced juveniles who may be held in prison department custody are 15 and 16-year-old boys refused bail who are certified by the court as being too unruly to be safely remanded to local authority care—the unruliness certificate procedure. In addition, convicted juveniles of both sexes may be remanded in custody to await sentence at the Crown court, but their numbers are small. As with sentenced juveniles, the number of remanded juveniles held in prison department custody is coming down. In 1987, in England and Wales, there were about 1,900 people in that category, and in 1989 about 1,500. I do not yet have the 1990 figures, but I expect that when they are published they will show a further decline. The drop is encouraging, but no one —least of all the Government—wants unconvicted 15 and 16-year-olds to be locked up in adult prisons.

It is a matter of regret that juveniles have to be locked up at all. However, I am afraid to say that, with some juveniles who have been charged with very serious offences or who otherwise pose a risk to the public, it is necessary to have some secure containment before they come to trial. The hon. Lady will argue that a certain amount of secure containment is available under the child care system. As she knows, standards of security vary a lot around the country. Such accommodation can be used for remanded juveniles, but there are problems. There is limited accommodation. Understandably, local authorities do not have large holdings of vacant accommodation and there are compelling demands on it from within the care system. In addition, under the present law, the courts' power in using secure accommodation is severely limited.

When a court has before it, for example, a juvenile whom it feels needs to be locked up, it has no power to direct that that juvenile should be locked up in secure accommodation. If the court wants to keep the juvenile out of prison department custody, it has to remand him in local authority care and to rely on the sensible discretion of the local authority.

Generally speaking, local authorities exercise sensible discretion. In some parts of the country, they may have erred too much in favour of not exercising the discretion to hold children in secure conditions. In those areas, sentencers have got into the habit of not using local authority accommodation, so people have ended up in prison. I do not know about the position in Swansea, to which the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) referred. I know that, in some parts of the country, there are considerable gaps in provision and we must address ourselves to that.

Under the present system, there is no alternative to a prison department custodial remand for some juveniles. We regret that. We also accept that it is undesirable, and we want to do something about it. We are committed to the objective of ending prison department custodial remand for unsentenced juveniles, as my right hon. and learned Friend the then Home Secretary's white paper pointed out when it was published last year. My right hon. and learned Friend said on Second Reading of the Criminal Justice Bill: The object is to devise a system that will not result in their going to prison".—[Official Report, 20 November 1990; Vol. 181, c. 150.] He was referring to juveniles.

In our White Paper, "Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public", we outlined proposals for amending the arrangements for the remand of alleged juvenile offenders under 17. As part of those proposals, we announced our intention to restrict the circumstances in which juveniles can be remanded to adult prisons. We promised a consultation paper, to which the hon. Lady referred; I can understand her impatience at not having seen it.

We have been working hard on developing the proposals on juvenile remand. That has not been easy. There are conflicting demands which need to be balanced. We have had to ask people from the prison department to look at the standards of security in some local authority secure accommodation and we find that security varies widely.

I do not mean that we are considering only matters of containment; we are considering the issues of suicide and self-injury, which can sometimes occur because someone who is contained—whether in a prison cell or in a local authority home—can find something with which to hang or damage himself. Much inspection work has been needed. It is a complex area of law and practice, which is why it has taken us so long to prepare the paper.

The paper is now almost ready, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary hopes to be able to publish it within a week or so. That will mean that it should be available for the Standing Committee on the Criminal Justice Bill in time for it to receive an initial consideration. We shall therefore meet the sole pledge given by my right hon. and learned Friend the then Home Secretary when he said that he would undertake to bring forward the consultation paper while the Criminal Justice Bill was being considered in the House.

As the White Paper made clear, we needed to look at all aspects of the arrangements for juvenile remand. I hope that the House will understand that I cannot go into the details before we publish.

In preparing the consultation paper, we scrutinised the existing framework of law and practice from the point of bail onwards. There have been some encouraging developments, such as the use of bail support schemes for juveniles. I am a strong proponent of the development of bail support schemes for juveniles, in the same way as I think that bail information schemes are valuable for adults in making sure that only those who have to be remanded in custody—there will always be those who have to be remanded in custody before trial—actually get that custody.

Bail support schemes provide a structured programme of activities for and work with young people awaiting trial under very close supervision in the community. On some occasions, that supervision is of such an intensity that it may be no cheaper, and I can imagine that, in certain circumstances, it can be as expensive as remand in prison accommodation. Several schemes already exist in different parts of the country, which show that they can deal properly with remanded juveniles in the community and reduce the need to refuse bail in all but the most serious cases.

I should like bail support schemes to be set up soon in all parts of the country, in the same way as bail information schemes for adults are set up, whereby information is conveyed to the Crown prosecution service to determine whether it is necessary for the Crown prosecution service to press for remand in custody.

We need also carefully to consider the protection of the public and the standard of security that is needed for some of the most disturbed and difficult juveniles who are charged with offences. As always, in trying to balance the public interest, one wishes to do all that one possibly can to help young people who are remanded and awaiting triald, but, at the same time, to guard the public interest. That is the difficult task that Home Office Ministers of whatever political party always have to face.

It is our intention to give effect to the proposals that will be contained in the consultation paper which will be published very shortly in the Criminal Justice Bill, by way of Amendment either in Committee or on Report, or in the other place. It will certianly be considered during proceedings on the Criminal Justice Bill, and there will be full discussion. There is the proviso that, before we can have those discussions, we must have a reasonable period for consultation, as the hon. Lady said, and consider carefully the comments that we receive.

I hope that, with that undertaking, the hon. Lady, whose frustration at not seeing the consultation paper I fully understand, will feel that the matter is not quite as bleak as it was at 11.59 pm, when we began the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty seven minutes past Twelve o'clock.