Mr Chair,

I would like to express my thanks to you, Dr Meyer, for your introductory comments, and your work as Secretary General of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

Eighty years ago, on a cold day in January, top-ranking Nazis gathered in a House by a lake on the outskirts of Berlin at Wannsee to discuss the exploitation and mass murder of Jewish people. Under the euphemism of the Final Solution, children would die alongside their parents and grandparents. No one would be spared.

Today, across the globe, there are malicious people who actively deny the historic reality of the Holocaust and seek to minimise the extent of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Second World War.

Distortion of the Holocaust comes from various sources and is not unique to one particular world-wide view. It can be found on both the right and left of the political spectrum, across religious and ethnic lines, and is also informed, in part, by a broader culture of denialism in present-day discourse.

Denying and distorting the Holocaust is a form of antisemitism; we must not stand by when others revise history to erase the horror of the mass murder of Jewish people.

Antisemitism is vile. The UK Government is clear that victims should be supported, and that cowards who commit hateful antisemitic attacks should feel the full force of the law.

We have a longstanding track-record of standing up for the rights of members of all faiths and beliefs internationally, including Jews. Through a Network of Liberty, the UK will continue to combat this abhorrent ideology in all its repugnant forms.

We must promote fact-based knowledge about the history of the Holocaust and strengthen media and information literacy.

We welcome that at last year’s Malmö Forum, countries worldwide pledged to take concrete steps to further Holocaust remembrance and combat antisemitism. That landmark conference came twenty years after the Stockholm Forum on the Holocaust laid the foundation for contemporary action on Holocaust education, remembrance and research. The UK will chair the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2024. In 2025, the UK will open a new national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre to stand as a constant reminder of why we must be relentless in the fight against Holocaust denial and antisemitism.

Mr Chair,

The UK was proud to recently cosponsor the historic UN resolution to combat holocaust denial that was brought forward by Israel and Germany. Together we must continue to stand against antisemitism in all its forms and reject any attempts to deny the facts of the holocaust.

We encourage participating States to adopt the Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.

Mr Chair,

Each year on Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust. We remember the thousands of Roma, Sinti, and other victims of Nazi persecution, including LGBT+ and those with disabilities. We remember the victims of other genocides.

It is also a day when we imagine a world free from genocide; a world which has fully recognised where hatred and intolerance, prejudice, and antisemitism can lead.

Thank you Mr Chair

The UK Government has today launched the UK Agriculture Partnership (UKAP), a new forum which will bring together stakeholders from across the UK to identify and improve collaborative working on shared issues facing the agricultural sector.

Discussions will explore topics such as on-farm water usage optimisation, the role of science and agri-tech in supporting food production, and solutions to reduce pollution and carbon emissions in the sector.

The first meeting of the UKAP will take place today (Thursday 27 January) at the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester, and will focus on water quality. Attendees will hear from a range of experts who will set out the challenges the UK is facing, and discuss solutions for improving water quality across the agriculture sector.

Sustainable agriculture has a vital role to play in helping to solve many of the most pressing issues the world faces such as biodiversity decline, meeting net zero targets and growing the food needed to feed an increasing population.

Universities, agricultural colleges, research institutes and agri-tech centres from across the UK are playing a central role in pioneering world-leading new approaches, and the UKAP will provide a platform for academics, experts, industry players and farming stakeholders to share scientific knowledge and best practice to learn from each other to identify innovative solutions to common problems.

Attendees for today’s event have been selected to include key voices from across the UK, including those who will bring new perspectives to bear on topics. They include researchers, water body representatives, farming organisations, NGOs, as well as the Northern Ireland Executive Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Edwin Poots.

Environment Secretary, George Eustice, said:

I am launching the UK Agriculture Partnership to share UK-wide best practice, ideas and innovation – and to tackle some of the common challenges we face, from enriching our soils and reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture, to how best use technology and science to boost our food production ambitions.

We are bringing together farmers, farming unions, environmental groups, agricultural colleges and associations so that we can tackle practical challenges together.

Agriculture Minister for Northern Ireland Edwin Poots said:

I would like to thank SoS George Eustice, MP for inviting me to speak today. Our agriculture sector has shared issues across the United Kingdom so I hope that this forum provides a platform for collaboration and information sharing from all parts of the United Kingdom in the future.

Wales Office Minister, David TC Davies, said:

I am delighted to be a part of the first UK Agricultural Partnership forum launched today by the UK Government.

Agriculture is a vital sector in Wales and it will only be strengthened by collaborating with experts and partners across the UK, and making sure the voice of Welsh farmers is heard. This is a great opportunity to exchange ideas and expertise and forge new partnerships, ensuring that the issues faced by farmers are tackled together.

UK Government Minister for Scotland, Malcolm Offord, said:

I welcome the launch of the UK Agriculture Partnership and look forward to it helping us lead the way in addressing challenges such as biodiversity decline, helping reach net zero targets and growing the food needed to feed the planet.

Agriculture is one of Scotland’s great success stories. The UK Government wants to bring experts, researchers, farmers and policy makers from all parts of the UK together to improve collaborative working and find innovative solutions.

Our annual youth justice statistics, published today, are the first time we’ve been able to show the impact of COVID-19.

The statistics show a youth justice system succeeding in fewer children coming into the system, fewer children in custody and lower reoffending rates, but categorically failing on every count to halt the overrepresentation of Black children throughout the system.

A system failing Black children

As a Black child in England and Wales you are more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested, held on remand, sentenced to custody and to go on to commit another offence within a year. Figures show that Black children account for 4% of the 10-17 year old population (Census data, 2011) but:

• 18% of stop and searches (where ethnicity was known)
• 15% of arrests
• 12% of children cautioned or sentenced
• 34% of children in custody on remand
• 29% of the youth custody population (increased from 18% ten years ago)

The statistics are shocking, and the disparity continues when we look at reoffending rates, which for Black children is 42.4% compared to a rate of 35.3% for White children. So, once they are in the justice system, we are still disproportionately failing to give Black children the support they need to live crime-free lives. Sadly, the statistics also show that children with a Mixed ethnicity are over-represented in most stages of the system. This includes stop and search, arrests, cautions and sentences and custody.

Address the use of custodial remand

Another area which concerns me, and is highlighted by these figures, is the unacceptable proportion of children who are in custody on remand. On average, 40% of children in custody have not been sentenced and are there on remand. This is the largest proportion in the last ten years.

Shockingly, almost three quarters (74%) of children remanded to custody did not subsequently receive a custodial sentence. This is the highest level seen on record and means many children in custody today are there unnecessarily and experiencing the trauma and stigma that brings. This is damaging to children, their relationships, their opportunities and identity, which does not improve public safety.

We must prioritise addressing the use of remand, and its disproportionate use with Black children. Our research found that after taking into account the influences of offending, demographics and practitioner factors, Black children remain less likely to receive community remand (8 percentage points) than their White counterparts. We are working with various partners to address this with haste but there must be a collective effort to find and use less damaging, more effective ways to safeguard children and communities.

Long term trends or pandemic impact?

We must approach the analysis of this 2020/21 data with some caution because of the impact of COVID-19 on the courts and policing. However, it is clear that many of the long-term trends we hoped to see continue through the pandemic, have contined. We continued to see falls in the number of children entering the justice system, the number of children who received a caution or sentence, reoffending rates have decreased again, and the youth custody population is at an all time low.

There is much here to commend, and my challenge to all is to maintain this and to dare to go further. Let’s continue to find ways to support children safely in the community, let’s invest in the important prevention and diversion work of police, youth justice partners and others, let’s invest upstream and enjoy the safer communities that thrive when we meet the needs of vulnerable children early on in their lives.

We must act

It was clear before, but these figures are a sobering reminder of the work we collectively need to do to address disproportionality, find and use alternatives to remand and to keep children out of the justice system.

We must not rely on others to fix ‘their part’ of the system. We must all make a change, and we must all stand up and do something about it. At the YJB we will continue to champion the important work of early intervention programmes, particularly for Black children, like Levelling the Playing Field. We will continue to work with the Magistrates Association on a disparity protocol. We will look deeper into the reasons behind disproportionality in the justice system. You can find more information about our work in this area through our understanding racial disparity report and our research into ethnic disproportionality in remand and sentencing.

We will continue to invest in reducing the use of remand. And we will continue to work with partners across the system and further afield to level up the opportunities open to children in and at risk of entering the justice system.

Behind the data

Statistics will only ever give us some of the picture of what is happening. Our position as the only organisation with oversight of the whole youth justice system means that we gather much more than data. We know that behind the data, there are thousands of people working in youth justice who have gone above and beyond throughout the most testing times in the pandemic. My thanks to them cannot be overstated.

Behind the data, there are also concerns that the pandemic has had a huge affect on children, particularly those who were already vulnerable. Professionals assessing children in the justice system identify multiple needs – from issues with mental health to family to accommodation to substance misuse. Reduced access to support services, increased trauma and mental illness, fewer opportunities for safeguarding and more opportunities for online exploitation all form a worrying reality for those across the sector.

We must continue to prioritise and invest in children at the earliest possible moment to ensure that children can emerge from the pandemic with a host of opportunities and support.

Above all, we must always remember that youth justice statistics are about children, their lives, their trauma and their needs which we, collectively, must meet. We must also acknowledge that it is us as adults, who have the power to create the opportunities and environment for these children to succeed, and with that, to create safer communities for all.