| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
8 Apr 2003 : Column 151—continued
Mr. Letwin: If hon. Members will forgive me, I will not give way at this stage.
I am not an expert on raves—I have never attended a rave—but I rather have the impression that there are few holders of raves who seek temporary event notices under the licensing laws, and still fewer who seek premises licences.The Licensing Bill provides for premises licences but the process is lengthy and I doubt whether the average rave organiser would know how to fulfil it. If the rave does not possess a premises licence or have a temporary event notice attached to it, this Bill confers no power whatever to close it down. I admit that I am flabbergasted by that omission and we shall try to do something about it in Committee.
My favourite example—it is positively majestic—occurs in clause 42. What is the effect of that clause? It is that a person under 17 who is carrying an unloaded airgun in a case—a locked gun case—in a public place, who has a reasonable explanation for doing so and was previously legal will be illegal. That will dramatically affect the level of gun crime in this country. In fact, it will particularly affect any 16-year-old who knows how to fire an unloaded airgun without removing it from its case in a public place. That is a majestic provision.
Mr. Letwin: It would be funny were it not true.
I said that some of the Bill would be unworkable in rural areas—a point to which I hesitate to draw the attention of Labour Ministers, very few of whom have anything to do with rural areas. However, those of us who are local yokels with straw in our teeth are aware that it is the practice in rural areas for 16-year-olds to go around farmyards dispersing chickens—not raves or groups of young men—with airguns. However, under clause 43, subsection (4)(a), that will be illegal. I take it that the one policeman to be found in the length and breadth of rural England will be sent to prevent that 16-year-old from walking around his own farm dispersing chickens.
That will, of course, never happen, but much more serious is the issuing of fixed penalty notices in schools. That is an extremely important indication of the type of problem that we shall have to deal with in Committee. Clause 22 states that an authorised officer can give a penalty notice for truancy. That does not sound too bad, until one studies the definitions of "authorised officer" on page 19 where there is a lengthy process of successive approximation that I take it has been concocted to try to ensure that anyone not reading the Bill closely will not notice what is going on.
An "authorised officer" includes an "authorised staff member" and an "authorised staff member" is subsequently defined as including
- "a member of the staff".
Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk): The parenting orders in clause 25 are all very well, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the real problem arises when children are excluded from school, often for appalling behaviour, and the decision is reversed on appeal, often with the result that the credibility of the school, its governors and its head suffers enormously?
Mr. Letwin: My hon. Friend is right. That is why our hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green), the shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, has rightly proposed that head teachers should be given sole power to order exclusions and that there should be no provision for them to be overruled. That would be a serious piece of legislation. Perhaps, within the long title of the Bill, we could introduce it as an amendment.
I asserted that some of the Bill is meaningless. In clause 12, we are told something that will dizzy and appal every neighbour from hell in Britain. When they read the provisions they will be absolutely terrified. We are told that the social landlord
- "must prepare...a policy in relation to anti-social behaviour...must publish a statement of the policy"— and
"from time to time keep the policy...under review".
Finally, I asserted that some of the Bill is questionable—although not much of it. If there were so much as to be worrying, or if much of the Bill was positively counterproductive, we should have to vote against it, but that is not the case. I hope that the Home Secretary will pause to reflect on at least one aspect of the Bill, however, as it would move us in a strange direction. It relates to the widening of the powers of community support officers in parts 4, 5 and 7. CSOs are to have the powers to disperse groups, to stop cycles—I admit that is not a great matter—and finally, under clause 51, to issue fixed penalty notices for graffiti and fly posting.
In principle, there is nothing objectionable in CSOs having such powers. However, they were given one set of powers initially, yet now, not many months after the measure that established CSOs, another Bill would add to those powers. I have no material doubt that it will not be long before the Home Secretary comes along with another new Bill—indeed, many new Bills. He is a serial offender as regards the production of legislation, or perhaps I should say that he is the most energetic Home Secretary since the war—something that horrifies those of us who have to shadow him. I fear, however, that it will be worse than just more legislation; there will be more legislation that gives more powers to CSOs. What will that do? Very gradually, it will recreate something that we already know: it is called a police force. It is time for the Home Secretary to ask himself whether he really needs CSOs. Should he not admit that he is moving towards making them police officers and actually do so? We could then stop quarrelling about whether the use of CSOs is right or wrong and whether they are policing on the cheap because we would have turned them into police officers.
The Bill is a crabwise assault on that proposition and that is misleading.
Huw Irranca-Davies: Despite the right hon. Gentleman's reservations, does he agree with Henry Ward Beecher who, 147 years ago, noted that laws tend to gravitate downwards? He said:
- "Like clocks, they must be cleansed, and wound up, and set to true time".
Mr. Letwin: Yes, but the problem is that, in many respects, the Bill is like a clock that is stuck at five to one and is right only once every 24 hours—[Hon. Members: "Twice!"] I am so sorry; it is right twice in every 24 hours. Labour Members are awake—I am grateful for that.
Alas, the problem is that in order to make the Bill useful, it would need to include something really useful: people to enforce it. If there were 40,000 additional police officers, which the Conservatives are committed to providing, it would be worth paying attention to brushing up the legislation. The record of all parties over 50 years is inadequate. I do not deny that. It is time that
the Home Secretary and the Government admitted that for 50 years we have failed to notice what Civitas revealed last weekend: just after the war, there were three crimes per police officer; nowadays, there are more than 40. We have been systematically underpoliced. There should be consensus on both sides of the House that we should not be fiddling while Rome burns; what we need is not tinkering or amelioration, with little bits of legislation here and there, but a step change in the policing of this country.
Mr. Stevenson: The right hon. Gentleman is beginning to give the impression that he is enthusiastically negative about the Bill. I am listening carefully to his speech and am astounded to hear that the Opposition do not intend to vote against Second Reading. Surely he has the good grace to acknowledge that the Government have more than met their target for more police officers. During the past 12 months, we have appointed 4,500 additional police officers, which puts the Conservative record into the distant past.
Mr. Letwin: That is a charming rewriting of history. When a Government inherit a police force, diminish it, raise its numbers to just above where the previous Government left them and claim that as a world record, they are, in a literal sense, telling the truth. However, everyone in the country knows that we have been systematically underpoliced. To reply to the hon. Gentleman's earlier point, we are not voting against the Bill because it is not worth doing so. It is not a Bill that deserves to be voted against; it deserves to be slightly improved in Committee and permanently forgotten. A year from now, few people will even be able to remember that it existed.
The important point to arise from this debate—20 minutes of which was taken up by the Home Secretary before he even mentioned the Bill—and the thing that deserves to be remembered about it is the fact that the Bill is a prolonged form of legislative press release. This is a Bill designed to show that the Government are doing something about antisocial behaviour. I know it is difficult to do something real—I know it is difficult to persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer to liberate the funds for the policing that we need; I know it is difficult to get young people off the conveyor belt to crime—but the fact is that tinkering with their own laws, passed not many months ago, or with other laws that are perfectly adequate, is no substitute for really tackling the problem. I would call the Bill a half measure but in fact it is a quarter measure, and I wish the Home Secretary luck of it.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |