With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the result of an independent inquiry into complaints made by a young person about her treatment at the St. Charles youth treatment centre at Brentwood, and about management changes that I am making there today.

St. Charles is one of two Department of Health youth treatment centres. The other is the Glenthorne centre at Erdington, Birmingham. Between them, they cater for up to 70 young people convicted of very grave criminal offences, or with the most serious behavioural difficulties, whose needs cannot be met elsewhere in the child care system.

In January this year, through the formal complaints procedure available to residents in the centres, a young person made serious allegations about her treatment at St. Charles youth treatment centre, Brentwood. On instructions from my hon. Friend the Minister of Health, my Department immediately commissioned an independent professional inquiry convened by Mrs. Marian Preston, a consultant clinical psychologist. I am grateful to Mrs. Preston and to her colleagues for their scrupulous investigation. They found evidence to substantiate three of the complaints—the injection of sedative drugs without consent, and on some occasions under restraint; prolonged, and on some occasions unjustified, use of separation; and exclusion of the young person from proper participation in reviews held about her case at the centre.

A management review of the St. Charles centre by the social services inspectorate, done at the same time as the independent professional inquiry, suggests that the practices about which the independent inquiry expressed concern were not isolated. It suggests also poor management control at the centre and an inadequate discharge of its reporting obligations to my Department.

I have placed summaries of both reports in the Vote Office. Some details are excluded on grounds of medical and personal confidentiality, but the findings and recommendations are given in full.

To check whether those problems were present in the other centre, Glenthorne, which adopts a different treatment approach, I asked the social services inspectorate to scrutinise the relevant aspects of practice at that centre too. The SSI's scrutiny revealed no comparable weaknesses at Glenthorne.

The complaints inquiry team also expressed concern about the extent to which my Department had followed up the findings of an earlier 1988 SSI inspection, published in May 1989. A great many of the SSI's recommendations have been implemented, but I am arranging an urgent review to make sure that the Department acted with proper vigour and judgment.

Responsibility for the two centres is laid clearly by law on the Secretary of State for Health. I much regret that a young person had grounds for serious complaint about her treatment at one of them. I am therefore taking immediate steps to bring this specialised but important area of my responsibilities under better control, and to introduce more reliable and more open scrutiny—and am making this statement so that the House may know of those measures at once.

The House will understand that I needed to act swiftly. Uncertainty or speculation about management change would have undermined control and care, in a facility where continuity in both is imperative. The steps that I am taking are as follows. First, the director of St. Charles centre, his deputy, and another member of staff have today been suspended from their duties on full pay, pending disciplinary investigation. They have been replaced by a new management team seconded from the Glenthorne centre in Birmingham. Their prime task is to ensure the safety and the welfare of the young people.

Secondly, to ensure properly independent and open scrutiny of the care provided in both centres, I am establishing a special advisory group, which will watch over their care practices with particular regard to children's rights. Mrs. Winifred Tumim, until recently chairman of the Independent Living Fund, has agreed to chair the group, and I shall publish its periodic reports.

Thirdly, the investigations reinforce the Government's view, made public last year, that the two centres would benefit from a new and integrated management structure. That will include the appointment of a sole chief professional manager; better arrangements for advising him or her on relevant developments in the main stream of child care in conditions of security; and more explicit and reliable procedures for accountability to my hon. Friend the Minister for Health and me. That new management structure will be introduced from 1 April next year. I shall consult the new advisory group on its details, and will in due course give them to the House.

My first duty is the care of the young people in the centres, but I must consider also those directly responsible for providing that care. Their work is important and often very difficult. They must be given a stable environment in which to absorb those major changes. My hon. Friend the Minister and I therefore decided not to pursue for the time being the idea of amalgamating the two centres at the Birmingham site, even though from April next they will both be part of a unified youth treatment organisation, and both be subject to scrutiny by Mrs. Tumim's group, as soon as its other members are appointed.

I believe that the steps that I have taken represent a decisive response to problems uncovered initially by our own complaints procedure and by reports that the Department itself commissioned. I hope that they will be welcome to the House.