Labour plans benefit cuts and prison for parents of young offenders
Parents could have their benefits docked or be sent to prison if their children keep offending, under plans being prepared by Labour. Justice Minister Jake Richards said the courts should be able to hold families to account, and confirmed the punishments on the table include cuts to benefit payments and custody. No amount has been put on the benefit cuts and no start date has been given.
The mechanism is not a new law but an old one. It rests on Parenting Orders, which a court can already impose and which set out steps a parent and child must follow to stop further offending. The Government says it wants these used far more often. Parents who refuse to comply can already be taken to court for it.
Who this would reach is narrower than the headline suggests. It applies to parents whose child is already in the youth justice system and where a court has made an order. Mr Richards was clear that any penalty would be a judge's decision rather than automatic, saying it would ultimately be up to the court.
The reason ministers are reaching for this tool is that it has fallen out of use almost entirely. More than 1,000 Parenting Orders were issued in 2009/10. By 2022/23 the figure was 33. Labour's Youth Justice White Paper, published in May, pledged to encourage and strengthen their use.
Mr Richards told The Times: "I absolutely think that the justice system should hold parents to account in a proportionate way for ensuring that they play their role in keeping communities safe." On the penalties, he said: "Yes, that will have some stick. It could be custodial, or docking benefits."
The Rother Valley MP said the demand was coming from voters on the doorstep in his own constituency, where he said antisocial behaviour and young people causing trouble in town centres were a persistent complaint. Alongside calls for more police, he said residents were asking what the parents were doing.
Nothing has been legislated yet. Mr Richards brought police, education, children's services and youth justice leaders together in Manchester this week as ministers work out how local services can head off offending earlier. Ministers say the wider aim is earlier intervention rather than punishment.
There is pressure to go further still. The Centre for Social Justice, chaired by former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, wants families in social housing to face eviction if a household member persistently engages in antisocial behaviour, whatever their age. The think tank said 41 per cent of adults had witnessed or experienced antisocial behaviour in 2025/26, up from 36 per cent.
For households already stretched, the detail that matters is the one ministers have not filled in. A benefit cut is not a fine that can be paid off, it comes out of money families are living on week to week, and the same household losing income is the one expected to keep a teenager on the straight and narrow. Until the Government says how much can be taken and for how long, parents have no way of knowing what they are being asked to risk.
