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12.2 pm
Mr. Hartley Booth (Finchley): The Bill has been fulsomely praised and welcomed, but that need not stop because I shall add to it by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) on his judicious choice of subject.
I should like to deal with juvenile crime and its link to alcohol. Juvenile crime is demonstrated by the criminal statistics. The peak age for a criminal offence is between 14 and 16. For females, the age is 14 to 15, while it is 15 to 16 for males. It is important to discover what is helping to cause crimes that are committed at those ages. Hon. Members have already mentioned the importance of looking at the causes of crime. At the heart of them is substance and alcohol abuse at an early age. At the heart of the mosaic that we are dealing with is this little piece--alcohol. It is perhaps important to deal not only with the detail, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) did, but with the wider links with that piece of mosaic. For instance, the culture and peer pressure help to stimulate crime by young people.
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Last week in this place, I talked to a great gentleman called Lei Lei, a famous artist from China, whose paintings have already sold for great pric. He explained how, as a young man in China--he described himself as a peasant--he was poverty-stricken. He said that young people in Britain were spoilt because they were given too much--perhaps not a thought that is often expressed by Labour Members in praise of our education system. He added that, when he was young during the cultural revolution in China, he had one pen a year. There was no paper; he could draw only on newspapers. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point was right to address what it is in the culture that leads to the problems and to say that alcohol is part of the culture of young people.
As some colleagues may know, I too have studied alcohol and drug abuse for many years. I did some research asking people what started them off on alcohol and drug abuse. I spoke to one individual who gave me seminal evidence on the subject. He explained that, when he was nine years old, at Sunday lunch, he was given a glass of alcohol--cider--and that that set him off. It gave him a buzz. He stole alcohol all through his childhood, and he soon got on to drugs.
In the process that follows the Bill, we need to consider whether five, 10, 15 or 20 per cent. of people are predisposed to addiction and are addictive personalties. It is perhaps partly a mental problem. I hope that we will consider that in future years, and that that piece of mosaic will be part of a serious analysis. We therefore need to do much more.
Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South):
My hon. Friend has talked about the need to look to the future. Does he agree that perhaps some local authorities could do what Glasgow has done and introduce byelaws that ban the drinking of alcohol by everyone in public places? Does he further agree that, in parts of the London borough of Barnet, for example, people drink alcohol in public places, take drugs and intimidate law-abiding citizens?
Mr. Booth:
I take that point. During the debate, there has been reference to the importance of byelaws. To be fair, the Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth)--I see him nodding--referred to it.
Hon. Member after hon. Member has said that there is a vast amount of evidence on the link between alcohol and crime by young people. I should like to give my own. I was a barrister too, and saw the link many times. I found out about the tragic offence, not yet known to the criminal calendar, called "bottling". One does not need to explain exactly what it is--it explains itself.
Before I entered Parliament, I studied these matters and tried to help behind the scenes in the Home Office and the Cabinet Office. In the mid-1980s, we had appalling trouble with young people drinking alcohol on the terraces of football pitches. Hon. Members who were in the House at the time know that legislation was speedily introduced in three months to ban alcohol on the terraces. It is fair to say that, during our research leading to the legislation, I and others telephoned the Scottish Office because such legislation had been introduced in Scotland in 1981.
Mr. John Marshall:
In Glasgow.
Mr. Booth:
My hon. Friend refers to Glasgow. Scotland had introduced the legislation in 1981. The
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The Conservative Government brought in similar legislation for England and Wales in 1985, and a year later statistics revealed that the number of crimes committed at football matches had dropped by 36 per cent. In all fairness, the anti-alcohol legislation was not solely responsible for that change, because the introduction of closed circuit television also had an effect. Those two principal changes were equally important. The ban on alcohol, however, was the only material change made to the law. It demonstrably proved that alcohol had been a major factor influencing crime on the terraces, and it helped to alter behaviour at football matches. There is bags of evidence to prove a link between alcohol and crime in addition to that already cited.
Since Victorian times it has been possible for licensed premises to ban children from buying alcohol, but the Bill neatly fills in a gap identified by the police and Home Office research. I praise it for doing so.
I hope that the Bill will be part of wider work on the young, and, in particular, on the attention deficit disorder, which is another major factor in bad behaviour. I hope that those at the Home Office and perhaps in the Opposition home affairs team will consider conducting research on ADD. It is another piece of the mosaic which must studied as we attempt to deal with crime in the future.
I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West because I believe that the level 2 fine is appropriate. We should not presume that the police will always impose it--in any event, the Crown Prosecution Service would suggest the appropriate fine to the court, not the police.
In Committee, I hope that we will be told that special constables and the transport police will also have recourse to the Bill.
Clause 1(1)(b) should be analysed in Committee because I believe that evidence showing that someone intended another person to drink alcohol would necessarily be tenuous. It would be extremely difficult to prove that in a court of law.
The Government have a fine record on dealing with the problem of alcohol misuse. In the 1980s, they established an interdepartmental committee under the chairmanship of John, now Lord, Wakeham to investigate each Department's approach to the problem. I gather from the gesture from my hon. Friend the Minister that that committee is still at work--I hope so.
My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point and the Government hold the problem of alcohol misuse to their heart, and I praise them for what they have done. We have heard excellent references today to the work of the police, parents and those in the voluntary sector. I commend the Bill. I hope that it will foster other work in the everlasting research and effort to ensure that our young people grow up honestly and soberly.
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Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) on promoting the Bill. As he is not in the Chamber, however, I shall reserve my remarks on his speech until the end of mine.
What a relief it is for me--taking off my party political and parliamentarian hats and going out as an ordinary member of the public--to find that a major loophole in the law is being dealt with. It is deeply frustrating to walk in high streets and other public places, or to use public transportation, and to find oneself harassed, pushed around and feeling threatened--I may not have been in danger in the example I gave in my earlier intervention, but I thought I was--and to believe that nothing is being done about the problem. This Bill would give police real powers to take clear and positive action to change the landscape, particularly in town centres, by removing the item that makes a young person misbehave.
The problem is much wider, however, than young people drinking in public. We must ask why they are drinking so much, and, more importantly, why they are out so late at night. What are their parents doing, and why cannot parents control their children and keep them at home? I do not accept the argument that young people have nothing to do, because that is nonsense; there is plenty for young people to do.
Perhaps the problem is moral poverty, listlessness and no sense of direction. Perhaps society has a role to play in helping to build more cohesive families and in promoting the traditional family structure of two parents--a man and wife committed to each other and to rearing their children in harmony. Children are far less likely to be lounging on street corners causing problems if they live in a traditional family environment.
The problem affects not only deprived inner-city areas but the entire country, and all social groups. My constituency of Sutton is a very pleasant suburban area and has many trees. People there live well. They have jobs, and they are proud--
Mr. John Marshall:
They also have excellent Members of Parliament.
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