I am grateful for the positive way in which the amendments have been moved by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, supported in part by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome.

Let us be clear what the amendment would do. It would remove the fostering requirement from the custodial threshold. I strongly believe that the fostering requirement retains a place as an alternative to custody provision alongside the intensive supervision and surveillance provision, on which we touched earlier this morning. The requirement is based on the Youth Justice Board’s intensive fostering pilot, which offers an alternative to custody and which is currently being examined. It may help if I outline some of the thinking behind the pilot scheme being operated by the Youth Justice Board, with a view to rolling it out if the pilot proves to be successful.

The Youth Justice Board is running small-scale pilots in Staffordshire, Hampshire and London, funded by a grant of £1.5 million per year. Young people involved in the pilot are sentenced to the intensive fostering supervision order under section 88 and schedule 2 of the Anti-social  Behaviour Act 2003. Individuals are put in a foster placement for approximately nine months, although it could be up to a year, with potentially further time spent with a family after that.

At the moment, we are funding 13 placements on the pilot in those three areas. So far, 36 young people have been sentenced to intensive fostering. We are monitoring the pilot. Again, this is a generic provision in the Bill—we are trying to prepare legislation in the event of successful roll-out. The pilot is due to end in October 2008. It is being evaluated by York university and the interim results show a very positive impact on the young people involved, including a reduction in reoffending rates among those who have been through the intensive fostering process.

I have to put in the caveat that only a very small group have been involved in the pilot and we cannot, as yet, assess its impact. For the reasons I mentioned earlier in discussions with the hon. and learned Gentleman, there is a need for intensive fostering where the circumstances of the home situation mean that an individual needs to be taken out of that to provide all the important things that fostering can provide, such as role models, love, support, encouragement and a range of benefits that may be absent in the original family home. It is not about nationalising young people and children; it is about trying to meet the needs of what is a very small group on the pilot, bearing in mind that, if the pilot is successful, we may roll out the scheme in future.

The very important issue of resources has been raised. This morning I indicated that we needed to look at that in the round. The Youth Justice Board, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Children, Schools and Families will be accountable and responsible for setting standards, encouraging schemes and looking at those matters generally. We are discussing funding for intensive fostering with all three bodies. We have not made any final decisions yet and I cannot give the Committee any encouragement in that respect.

However, even if we did roll out the scheme nationally from the pilots, based on the legislation, only a very small number of individuals would be sentenced to intensive fostering. It is not to be confused with the normal fostering that local authorities throughout the country provide. Intensive fostering is significantly different in standard to the fostering arrangements that are for local authorities to determine as a welfare issue. Intensive fostering is based on an evidence-based model delivered by a team who work directly with the young person and, critically, with the family of origin, to try and ensure that we prevent reoffending, which is the whole purpose of the order.

A number of very important points have been made by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough in relation to the role of the local authority. Let me assure him that, to date, we have only operated a pilot scheme; we are looking at the implications of it before deciding whether to roll it out. As he mentioned, paragraph 4(3)(b) of schedule 1 says a court may not impose a fostering requirement unless

“it has consulted the local authority which is to place the offender with a local authority foster parent.”

In practical terms, that will mean that a court can impose an intensive fostering requirement only if the local authority has confirmed that a place is available. I expect that, in the event of both the pilot and the roll-out of the scheme proving successful, it would not be a question of merely consulting the local authority, but of a partnership with the local authority in which it and the court would work together, as part of a general pre-sentence report, to ensure that that place was available. It would not simply be a matter of saying to the local authority, “We intend to impose that order and you have to provide a place.” It would be about consulting the local authority to ensure that a place was available when the order was passed.