I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his contribution. The essential point that I am trying to make is that the reparation order provides a separate sentence—in this case, below the youth rehabilitation order—that is focused on activities that will help prevent crime and deal with some low-level, but significant, offences that young people might be responsible for, such as graffiti, minor damage or poor behaviour in the community at large. The reparation order would ensure that we focus on activities that will reinforce principles such as personal responsibility and ensuring that people learn about the consequences of their actions and accept and understand the nature of the damage that they have done.

It is important that we retain the reparation order. The Youth Justice Board and the Children’s Society indicated the same thing in their evidence to us. Our experience is that the reparation order can be effective in preventing the escalation of offending behaviour before there is a need for the court to consider whether a youth rehabilitation order should be imposed. Considering the types of reparation that young people can undertake, such as graffiti cleaning, repairing community facilities and innovative bespoke schemes—including bike renovation for people involved in bike crime and faith-based reparation in conjunction with local churches—conservation work and community art work, and considering the youth reparation order generally with regard to wider restorative justice schemes, all those things have a value in helping to prevent crime, which all Committee members are concerned about.