Election 2010: Party Policy Guide

JOINT WORKING

Conservatives

• Abolish the obligations on local authorities to set up children's trusts and publish children and young people's plans
• Introduce employee-led co-operatives run by public sector workers across children's services
• Social enterprises, voluntary groups and charities to play a leading role in delivering public services
• Shadow children's secretary Michael Gove has signalled that the Department for Children, Schools and Families would not continue in its current form, with a department focused purely on education highly likely

Labour

• Local children's and young people's services to continue working together through children's trusts
• Wider services such as health and children's centres to be co-located with schools
• Early intervention programmes with a proven impact to be promoted
• A multi-agency children and young people's grant for local authorities and their children's trust partners from April 2011
• Family intervention projects to work with the 50,000 most dysfunctional families
• Extended right for public sector workers, including social care staff, to deliver frontline services through social enterprises
• Creation of "hubs" in every community to help social enterprises get off the ground
• Introduction of social impact bonds to encourage private investors to support social entrepreneurs and the third sector
• An initial endowment of £75m for a Social Investment Bank, funded partly by proceeds from dormant bank accounts

Liberal Democrats

• Compulsory secondments for children's services professionals, to entrench joint working
• Duty to co-operate in children's trusts extended to housing professionals
• More transitions support for young people, particularly for those moving or leaving school at the age of 11, 16 or 18
• Encourage more integrated working between social workers and schools
• Local authorities required to provide more support to young people with particular needs, such as suitable accommodation for young people with disabilities
• Scrap nearly £1bn of central government inspection regimes on local councils
• Reduce the size of the Department for Children, Schools and Families

Commentary

Every Child Matters remains the engine that drives Labour's plans to advance joint working, with a move towards more children's services co-located and wider reaching early intervention programmes. The party also wants to stimulate the involvement of social enterprises in service delivery and introduce social impact bonds to encourage private investors to support the third sector.

The Conservatives want to reverse key aspects of integrated working they regard as bureaucratic, by scrapping the obligation on local authorities to set up children's trusts and publish children and young people's plans. They also want more employee-led co-operatives and charities running services.

The Liberal Democrats could actually advance Every Child Matters by extending the duty to co-operate in children's trusts to housing professionals. They would also introduce secondments for children's services professionals, encourage more integrated working between social workers and schools and scale back inspections.

Lauren Higgs

PLAY

Conservatives

• Combat the problem of children not playing outside and encourage children to "get out of the house"

Labour

• Continue with the Play Strategy published in December 2008
• This includes investing £235m to give families access to good recreational facilities and to create new or refurbished play spaces and adventure playgrounds
• Introduce tougher planning guidelines for local authorities to protect the use of open spaces for children's play

Liberal Democrats

• Create a new designation — similar to Site of Special Scientific Interest status - to protect green areas of particular importance or value to the community
• Aim to double the UK's woodland cover by 2050
• Will stop "garden grabbing" by defining gardens as greenfield sites in planning law so that they cannot so easily be built over

Commentary

Labour reaffirms its commitment to the Play Strategy and the £235m funding allocated for play spaces in its manifesto. While the play sector is unsurprised that the Conservative Party has not matched this, hope has been raised by shadow children's minister Tim Loughton's reported comments that it would be a false economy to cut play services.

But other than these brief mentions the issue of play has been overlooked by the other parties.

Janaki Mahadevan

CHILD POVERTY

Conservatives

• Maintain Labour's legal commitment to end child poverty in the UK by 2020
• Create a "work programme" that rewards private and voluntary sector providers for getting people into work
• Provide targeted, personalised support for people who face serious barriers to work and for under-25s out of work for six months
• Set up a range of Service Academies providing training for unemployed people
• "Three-strike" rule to deny benefits to those found guilty of repeated fraudulent claims
• Introduce "back to work" centres, where people on benefits can access help with job applications
• Recognise marriage in the tax system
• A pupil premium targeted at disadvantaged children in schools

Labour

• Guarantee that every person on benefits for more than six months would be at least £40 better off when moving back into work
• Increase the child element of the Child Tax Credit by £4 a week for families with children aged one and two, from 2012
• From April 2010, guardians who receive special guardianship payments will not see their housing benefit or council tax benefit reduced to take these payments into account
• Additional annual payments of £100 into the Child Trust Fund accounts of disabled children. Severely disabled children will receive £200 per year
• Trial free school meals for all primary school age children in some schools and widen eligibility for free school meals to 600,000 low-income working families

Liberal Democrats

• Maintain the commitment to end child poverty in the UK by 2020
• Increase the income tax threshold to £10,000
• Scrap the Child Trust Fund
• £2.5bn pupil premium for the poorest children, with payments directed at each state school for every pupil from a disadvantaged background whom they admit
• Redirect child tax credits from families earning more than £50,000 to those who need them most
• Fix tax credit payments for six months at a time so payments are stable and predictable for families

Commentary

All parties are committed to ending child poverty by 2020, but the Tories and Labour have been clearer in revealing their methods, whether through getting more people into employment, or addressing poverty in households where people are in work.

The Conservatives have been more explicit in linking child poverty to family breakdown as much as to family income. This is part of the reason why they plan to reward marriage through tax credits. The strong focus on education, and in particular schools, from both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives is illustrated in their plans for pupil premiums.

All parties recognise the benefits system needs simplifying but none has suggested any reforms to tax credits or benefits that will seriously change the landscape of child poverty.

Ross Watson

FAMILIES AND PARENTING

Conservatives

• Recognise marriage and civil partnerships in the tax system by ending the so-called "couple penalty"
• Extend the right to request flexible working to every parent with a child under the age of 18
• Extend the right to request flexible working to all those in the public sector, and in the longer term, extend the right to request flexible working to all
• Require Jobcentre Plus offices to ask employers if their vacancies could be advertised on a part-time or flexible basis
• Put funding for relationship support on a stable, long-term footing and make sure couples are given greater encouragement to use existing relationship support
• Review family law in order to increase the use of mediation when couples do break up, and look at how best to provide greater access rights to non-resident parents and grandparents
• Introduce a system of shared parental leave

Labour

• Support practitioners to involve fathers more in the early stages of a child's life
• Extend the offer of key worker support to families with disabled children from birth to 19
• Bring in statutory guidance for family and friends carers and revised minimum standards for foster carers
• Specialist relationship counselling for families with disabled children
• Comprehensive review of the family justice system
• More support sessions for separated parents
• Provide national insurance credits to grandparents who have given up work to help with childcare
• Ensure grandparents and other family members are given consideration for adoption
• Make paternity leave easier to take and consider a paternity allowance
• Training to make all public-facing services more family friendly
• Allow fathers to share the mothers' nine months paid maternity leave after six months
• Paternity leave extended from two to four weeks
• Simplify the funding for parents who need help with childcare costs while they are learning or training

Liberal Democrats

• Introduce fair pay audits for every company with more than 100 employees to combat discrimination in pay, for example against women
• Give fathers time off for ante-natal appointments
• Allow parents to share the allocation of maternity and paternity leave between them in whatever way suits them best
• Introduce a Default Contact Arrangement, which would divide the child's time between their two parents in the event of family breakdown, if there is no threat to the safety of the child
• Seek to extend the period of shared parental leave to 18 months when resources and economic circumstances allow
• Extend the right to request flexible working to all employees
• Scrap the £190 Health in Pregnancy Grant to fund more midwives and health visitors
• Provide more support and information for teenage parents and teenagers who have had abortions
• Provide relationship support in every children's centre

Commentary

The importance of marriage has become a political football in the run-up to the election. The Conservatives are championing civil matrimony as a means to ensuring more families stay together, pledging to reward marriage through tax credits.

In riposte, Labour has placed a strong emphasis on supporting families of all shapes and sizes. The government's recent green paper on families is focused strongly on relationship support and improved ante-natal and post-natal services to help families in the early stages.

All three parties are pledging to make working hours more flexible to suit families, while also clamouring for the grandparent vote.

The Liberal Democrats have proposed the largest extension of shared parental leave for the birth of the child, but cannot commit funding to the pledge.

Ross Watson

EARLY YEARS AND CHILDCARE

Conservatives

• Support free nursery care for pre-school children from a range of private and public providers
• Extend the right to request flexible working to every parent with a child under the age of 18
• Focus Sure Start on the neediest families
• Cut expenditure on Sure Start outreach services
• Support the Early Years Foundation Stage but make efforts to cut bureaucracy
• Ensure new Sure Start centres are paid in part in relation to the results they achieve
• Bring all funding for early intervention and parenting support into one budget to be overseen by a single, newly created Early Years Support Team
• Hand power to public sector staff and voluntary groups to run children's centre co-operatives

Labour

• Extend the free childcare entitlement from 12.5 hours a week to 15 hours, available to threeand four-year-olds
• Provide nursery places for 20,000 two-year-olds in the most deprived areas by 2012
• Provide more flexibility over when parents use free childcare and carry over free hours of nursery education from one year to the next
• Ensure that all schools are providing affordable childcare between 8am and 6pm by end of 2010
• Greater choice over when children start school
• Fund two parenting advisers in every local authority
• Provide two extra outreach workers for 1,500 Sure Start community support centres in the most disadvantaged areas
• Invest £305m on graduate-level recruitment and training in early years to reach target of one graduate with Early Years Professional Status in every setting by 2015
• Provide £73m to help low-income families access childcare
• Set up mutual federations of local charities, organisations and parents to run groups of children's centres

Liberal Democrats

• Twenty hours free childcare a week from age 18 months when financial climate allows
• Support efforts by childcare providers to encourage more men to work in childcare
• Extend the right to request flexible working to all, making it easier for grandparents to take on a caring role
• Eliminate rule that only parents that work 16 hours a week are entitled to childcare tax credits
• Focus resources on improving outreach services for Sure Start centres
• Replace the Early Years Foundation Stage with a slimmed-down curriculum

Commentary

The future of Sure Start children's centres has dominated skirmishes between Labour and the Tories on their respective commitments to young children.

The Conservatives are pledging to refocus centres on Sure Start's original purpose of serving the most deprived areas, leading to claims it will cease to be a universal service.

The Liberal Democrats say they support Sure Start as it is, but want more outreach workers to target those most in need.

All three parties will retain the 12.5 weekly free childcare entitlement for threeand four-year-olds, but only Labour is proposing to increase it immediately after the election.

On the issue of the governance of early years services, both Labour and the Conservatives say more power should filter down to communities. But it is the Conservatives that are the most vigorous in this pledge, offering full control to local groups of people.

Emily Watson

CHILDREN'S HEALTH

Conservatives

• Provide 4,200 more Sure Start health visitors
• Give more young people affected by rare cancers access to drugs
• Provide £10m a year from 2011 to support children's hospices
• Introduce a per-patient funding system for all providers of palliative care
• Free dental checks for all five-year-olds
• Allow parents to opt out of personal, social, health and economic education before their child is 15 and focus strategy on men and their responsibilities
• Prevent any advertising company found to be in serious breach of rules governing marketing to children from bidding for government advertising contracts for three years
• Ban companies from using peer-to-peer marketing techniques targeted at children
• Establish an online system that gives parents greater powers to take action against irresponsible commercial activities targeted at children

Labour

• Every Sure Start centre to have a named health visitor by end of 2010
• All women to have the right to a home birth, if deemed safe
• Every expectant mother to have a named midwife
• Ensure more fathers are offered single rooms if they need to stay in hospital overnight
• Expand post-natal care so that every area of the country has a Family Nurse Partnership
• A website for parents to register their concerns about sexualised products aimed at their children
• Extend local health child teams to cover children aged from five up to 19
• Expand alcohol treatment schemes
• Develop a new teenage pregnancy strategy, due to be published in July
• Compulsory sex and relationship education in schools and one-to-one sex education for 16-year-olds

Liberal Democrats

• Give fathers the right to time off for ante-natal appointments
• Help protect children and young people from developing negative body images by regulating airbrushing in adverts
• Tackle online bullying by backing quick-report buttons on social networking sites
• Introduce minimum pricing on alcoholic drinks to deter young people from binge drinking
• Compulsory sex and relationship education in schools

Commentary

All parties promise more support for expectant parents with various pledges for flexible parental leave.

Labour pledges to increase the number of health visitors, midwives and family-nurse partnerships while the Conservatives have promised to create an extra 4,200 health visitors, funded partly by scaling back the numbers of Sure Start outreach workers.

The parties agree that society's sexualisation of children needs to be checked, but the Conservatives propose the most forceful measures designed to protect children in this regard. The Conservatives also oppose Labour's proposals to make sex and relationship education mandatory, which both Labour and the Liberal Democrats believe is crucial in reducing unwanted teenage pregnancies.

Emily Watson

SCHOOLS

Conservatives

• New parent-run schools
• Independent state-funded schools inspired by Swedish free schools and the charter school movement in the US
• Any school in special measures for more than a year to be taken over by a successful academy provider
• Ofsted to inspect purely on teaching and learning
• Plans to end the bias towards the inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream school
• Higher entry requirement for taxpayer-funded primary school teacher training, requiring graduates to have at least a 2:2
• A new Teach Now programme for people wishing to switch to a career in teaching and a Troops to Teachers programme, for ex-service personnel
• Heads to have the freedom to pay good teachers more
• Teachers to have more power to remove disruptive pupils from classrooms
• Strengthened home-school behaviour contracts
• New league tables showing how schools stretch the most able and raise the attainment of the less able

Labour

• An additional 41,000 teachers and 120,000 teaching assistants
• Extension of free school meals pilot
• Pupil and parent guarantees and strengthened home-school agreements to enforce good behaviour
• Licence to practise for teachers
• School report cards providing an overall grade for a school's performance that takes into account attainment and pupils' wellbeing
• Up to 1,000 schools to be part of accredited school groups by 2015
• New co-operative trust schools governed by parents, teachers and the local community
• Duty on councils to secure takeovers of poor schools, expand good schools, or introduce entirely new provision if parents are dissatisfied with local secondary education
• Ofsted to inspect schools on special educational needs provision
• More teachers with the specialist skills to teach pupils with learning disabilities in special schools
• Existing pupil referral units to be replaced with more innovative provision
• Local pupil premium for deprived children

Liberal Democrats

• £2.5bn pupil premium for disadvantaged children and young people, to reduce class sizes and introduce more one-to-one tuition
• Guarantee of special educational needs (SEN) diagnostic assessments for all five-year-olds
• More SEN training for teachers
• New general diploma to bring GCSEs, A-Levels and vocational qualifications together
• Replace academies with "sponsor-managed schools", accountable to local authorities, not Whitehall
• Expansion of the school-based graduate teacher programme and Teach First
• Bullying prevention to be taught as part of initial teacher training
• Introduce an Education Freedom Act, banning politicians from getting involved in the day-to-day running of schools
• Set up an independent Educational Standards Authority, to oversee qualifications and the inspections system
• Merge education quangos including Ofsted and Ofqual
• Cut funding to the government's IT agency, Becta
• Reform league tables

Commentary

Labour has pledged to increase spending on schools if re-elected, though not at the current rate. More academies, chains of accredited schools and co-operative trust schools are also promised.

The party will plough on with its 21st Century Schools reforms. These include pupil and parent guarantees and the licence to practise for teachers.

The Conservatives' big idea for education is to encourage parents, charities and private providers to run new independent state-funded academy-style schools modelled on Swedish free schools and the American charter school movement. In a back-to-basics drive, they will give teachers more power to enforce discipline and remove Ofsted's duty to inspect on pupil wellbeing.

The Liberal Democrats will replace academies with "sponsor-managed schools", accountable to local authorities, not Whitehall.

They will also fund a £2.5bn pupil premium for disadvantaged children and young people, to reduce class sizes and introduce more one-to-one tuition.

Lauren Higgs

POST-16 LEARNING

Conservatives

• Colleges to be freed from direct state control
• Red tape to be cut back in further education
• Number of further education quangos to be abolished
• Funding to follow the choices of students and delivered by a single agency
• 20,000 additional young apprenticeships
• Schools and colleges to offer workplace training
• Technical academies offering vocational learning across England
• University and further education scholarships for the children of servicemen and women killed while on active duty, backdated to 1990
• Guarantee of personalised help and support for anyone under 25 not in education, employment, or training for more than six months

Labour

• Every young person guaranteed education or training until 18
• Increased participation age — all young people to stay on in learning until 18 by 2015
• "Traffic-light" grading system to give students clear information on the quality of college courses
• University technical colleges and studio schools to offer innovative provision
• Entitlement to an apprenticeship place for all suitably qualified 16- to 18-year-olds by 2013
• Up to 70,000 new advanced apprenticeship places a year
• New apprenticeship scholarships to enable the best apprentices to go on to higher education
• Paid internships for students from families on low incomes
• Guarantee of an offer of work or training for young people aged 24 and under who have been not in education, employment or training for more than six months

Liberal Democrats

• Reverse plans to raise the age of participation in education or training to 18
• All 14- to 19-year-olds to have the right to take up a course at a college rather than school
• Flexible entitlement to two years of post-16 education
• Close the funding gap that arises from providing more money to pupils in sixth forms than further education colleges
• Scrap the government's target to get 50 per cent of young people to go to university, and focus efforts instead on college education, vocational training and apprenticeships
• Increase the adult learning grant to £45 a week for 18- to 24-year-olds in further education
• 800,000 paid internships for young people
• 15,000 new places on foundation degree courses, as part of a jobs creation package

Labour says it will guarantee all 16- to 18-year-olds a place in education and training, and by 2015, require all young people to stay on in some form of learning until the age of 18. More advanced apprenticeships and studio schools are also on the agenda.

The Conservatives want to free colleges from the burden of government bureaucracy and will change the further education funding system so that cash is allocated to providers based on the choices of students. Schools and colleges will also offer more workplace training under the Tories.

The Liberal Democrats have committed to close the funding gap between pupils in sixth forms and those in further education colleges. They will also reverse plans to raise the age of participation and introduce an entitlement to two years of post-16 education instead.

Lauren Higgs

YOUTH SERVICES

Conservatives

• An initial £50m to create a National Citizen Service for 16-year-olds. The scheme will include a residential element over the summer holidays followed by further community action projects
• More services for young people contracted out to the voluntary sector
• Youth clubs to be run by community members as part of the Conservatives' plans for the "Big Society"
• Explore the possibility of combining youth service budgets with those for youth offending to incentivise councils to reduce offending
• A new Big Society Bank, financed with cash left unclaimed in dormant bank accounts, to fund small community schemes

Labour

• Use money held in unclaimed assets and dormant bank accounts to improve youth facilities
• Up to £100m of the unclaimed assets money will go towards financial capability programmes, which include schemes for young people
• Double the availability of organised youth activities on Friday and Saturday nights
• Encourage the transfer of community buildings such as youth facilities to voluntary and community groups
• Develop a National Youth Community Service, with the goal that all young people contribute at least 50 hours to their communities by the age of 19
• Reduce the voting age to 16, subject to improvements in citizenship education
• Create a European Peace Corps
• Provide homeless 16- and 17-year-olds with Foyer-based supported accommodation and training including help with parenting skills

Liberal Democrats

• Make youth services a statutory responsibility for local authorities
• Support schools and youth clubs to increase theatre visits and other live performances
• Enable more activities and support for young people
• Allow groups of young people to assemble unless they are causing public disorder
• Merge funding for out-of-school activities for young people into one easy-to-access fund and guarantee youth projects their money
• Encourage councils to draw up youth community plans to ensure there are more youth activities, and consider discounts for leisure and transport services
• Set up a cross-departmental young people's committee to inform youth issues in government
• Reduce the voting age to 16
• Task the Children's Commissioner with reviewing the wellbeing of young people in the country
• Make the minimum wage the same level for everyone
• Develop a strategic national housing programme taking account of young people's particular needs

Commentary

Labour remains committed to the delivery of its 10-year Aiming High strategy for young people.

Youth organisations are still waiting for the money promised by Labour from dormant bank accounts.

The centrepiece of the Conservatives' plans for young people is the National Citizen Service for 16-year-olds, billed as a "rite of passage" to adulthood. They also want to give community members and voluntary organisations more power in running youth services as part of their "Big Society" philosophy of empowering local communities.

In March, the Liberal Democrats produced a youth policy document Free to be Young, which has since been adopted as official party policy. The Lib Dems are the only party calling for local authority youth services to be put on a statutory footing to ensure they are not a soft target for cuts.

Ross Watson

ADVICE AND GUIDANCE

Conservatives

• Remove responsibility for careers advice from Connexions
• An £180m independent all-age careers advice service located in secondary schools
• A national database of alternative apprenticeships for apprentices who have lost their jobs in the recession
• Publish graduate outcome information so potential students can see where A-level choices and courses at universities are likely to take them

Labour

• Maintain the role of Connexions, subject to improvements in performance with a review of local authority information, advice and guidance (IAG) services
• Extend the statutory duty on schools and colleges to deliver careers advice up to the age of 18
• An "IAG guarantee", consisting of high-quality impartial advice for 15- and 16-year-olds
• Statutory guidance for local authorities on the management of their IAG responsibilities
• Taskforce on the Careers Profession to attract higher quality recruits into IAG
• Review of the skills requirements of careers specialists, to inform new qualifications for career co-ordinators
• Improve information for parents on opportunities for young people
• Develop online mentoring
• Allow 19-year-olds to choose either Connexions or adult IAG services

Liberal Democrats

• Require local authorities to run an independent career and course advisory service for young people
• Ensure that support is available at key points - particularly when you leave or move school at the age of 11, 16 or 18

Commentary

All the parties have made it clear that they want to see a truly independent careers advice service for young people, to ensure they are not cajoled into further education against their will. Labour made a number of commitments in last autumn's IAG strategy, including plans to review the skills of the workforce and to improve qualifications. It has also remained loyal to Connexions, despite former cabinet minister Alan Milburn's criticisms of the service in a report on social mobility.

The Conservatives will remove responsibility for careers advice from Connexions and create a new service in all secondary schools, which can also be used by young people who have already left school but need help getting back into education, employment or training. The Liberal Democrats have been comparatively quiet on advice and guidance services.

Ross Watson

SAFEGUARDING

Conservatives

• Eileen Munro, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, to conduct a review of social work with a brief to slash bureaucracy, review vetting and barring procedures and the role of the Independent Safeguarding Authority
• Help experienced social work practitioners stay on the frontline
• Create a chief social worker post to give the profession a public face
• Recruit top graduates to social work and offer ongoing training at all levels
• Allow more social workers to run their own practices like GPs
• Publish serious case reviews in full
• Replace ContactPoint with a signposting system for "genuinely vulnerable children"
• Encourage more volunteer social work schemes
• Review the Ofsted framework for inspecting children's social care
• Scrap the National Safeguarding Delivery Unit

Labour

• Up to nine million adults who work with children in schools, creches, clubs or community centres will have to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority under the vetting and barring scheme
• Review initial curriculum for social work students
• Establish an independent college of social work
• Publish detailed serious case review summaries, but keep full reports out of the public domain in order to protect children's identities
• Legislate to extend the income tax exemption for adopters to those caring for children under a special guardianship order
• Continue with the ContactPoint information sharing database
• Spend £200m in 2010/11 to support social work recruitment, student bursaries and practice placements, workforce development, improvement of IT in children's services, piloting of new career grades and supporting employers to remodel services

Liberal Democrats

• Create a government-led communications campaign highlighting the prevalence of child abuse and provide routes for people to report their concerns
• Ensure all members of the children's workforce have child protection training
• Scrap the ContactPoint database and use the savings to offer additional administrative and technical support to social workers
• Place a statutory duty on housing associations and "arm's length management organisations" to co-operate with children's trusts in safeguarding matters
• Ensure all children have the right to an advocate
• Make secondments between different agencies a mandatory part of social workers' continuous professional development
• Set up an expert body to consider thresholds for taking children into care
• Publish serious case reviews in full, without revealing the child's identity
• End the detention of children in immigration detention centres
• Support the objective of at least a 70 per cent reduction in child maltreatment by 2030, promoted by the international Wave Trust

Commentary

The publication of serious case reviews into when a child has died as a result of abuse or neglect has highlighted policy divisions.

The Tories and Lib Dems want reviews to be published in full so "lessons can be learned" while Labour believes this would make professionals more defensive and will risk identifying vulnerable children.

The Tories say that on safeguarding and child protection, "Labour has been about management", while the "Conservatives will be about the workers". They promise to reduce bureaucracy by giving local authorities the freedom to help professionals "get on with the job".

Labour is committed to implementing the recommendations set out in Lord Laming's review of child protection and the final report of the Social Work Taskforce. But Children's Secretary Ed Balls has made it clear that it is up to councils to work more efficiently to back improvements to safeguarding.

The Liberal Democrats have been the only one of the three parties to promise an end of the detention of asylum-seeking children. Along with the Conservatives the party is committed to scrapping ContactPoint.

Janaki Mahadevan

YOUTH JUSTICE

Conservatives

• Apply payment-by-results reforms to the youth justice system for private and voluntary organisations to rehabilitate young offenders and cut reoffending
• Give courts the power to use abstinence-based drug rehabilitation orders to help offenders give up drugs
• Grounding orders to allow the police to use instant sanctions to deal with antisocial behaviour without criminalising young people unnecessarily
• Anyone convicted of a knife crime will expect to face a prison sentence
• Introduce mobile knife scanners on streets and public transport

Labour

• Neighbourhood police teams to work closely with cadet forces, expanding spare time activities in areas where youth crime is highest
• Expand "US-style street teams" that use youth pastors and vetted ex-offenders to reach out to disaffected young people
• Introduce a preventative element for all antisocial behaviour orders for under-16s
• Expand partnerships between police and the probation service to supervise prolific young offenders after they are released from prison
• Increase use of mentors, including vetted ex-prisoners, to meet young offenders upon release "at the gate" so they don't slip back into crime
• Introduce a Restorative Justice Act to ensure reparation measures are available wherever victims approve of them

Liberal Democrats

• Make hospitals share non-confidential information with the police so they know where gun and knife crime is happening and can target stop-and-search in gun and knife crime hotspots
• Shift focus of police and court time away from "unnecessary prosecution and imprisonment" of drug users and addicts, focusing instead on treatment services
• Give people a direct say in how petty criminals and those who engage in antisocial behaviour are punished by setting up neighbourhood justice panels

Commentary

Labour is putting emphasis on nipping reoffending in the bud as young people exit prison, through more ex-offender mentors and partnerships with police.

The Conservatives' pledge to introduce grounding orders will prove controversial with civil liberty groups, particularly if penalties are attached for breaching those orders. Meanwhile, a shift towards mandatory sentences for knife crime could significantly increase the youth custodial population.

The Liberal Democrats echo Labour's enthusiasm for more restorative justice approaches, where young offenders make amends in their communities.

A focus on treatment for addicts is more traditionally liberal than their support for targeted stop-and-search initiatives.

Neil Puffett