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8 Apr 2003 : Column 157—continued
Lady Hermon: Actually, the people of Northern Ireland have no choice. Responsibility for criminal
justice and policing remains with Westminster, as it has for 30 years, even—and I hope that talks with my colleagues at Hillsborough are successful—if the Assembly is restored. Criminal justice was not devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly before suspension, and is not likely to be, so responsibility rests squarely with Westminster. It is disgraceful that we fall far short in Northern Ireland of the protection that we rightly deserve.
Simon Hughes: The hon. Lady argues assiduously, as she did throughout the Committee stage of the Criminal Justice Bill, that Northern Ireland electors and Members of Parliament should be treated equally in deciding what criminal justice legislation they want. I hope that Ministers will pass that on to the new Leader of the House, who has been Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who understands the issue, and may be sympathetic to the hon. Lady's representations.
Because the Bill is an antisocial behaviour measure, we look in it for a definition of antisocial behaviour but, of course, there is none. There is no consistent terminology in the Bill. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth), appeared before the Select Committee on Home Affairs and was honest in saying that he had literally picked up the brief the previous week, so was less prepared than the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) would have been had he remained in office. That is not a criticism—as the hon. Gentleman knows, I am very supportive of him. However, when he was asked how he defined antisocial behaviour, he did not have such a definition because the Government have not provided one.
The danger is that the Bill confuses things. In the past, people knew where they stood. For example, if you committed a crime you went through the court process. The police and courts were involved and you were punished and sent to prison. There was a formal process and appeal, and proof beyond reasonable doubt was required. We are now putting other things into the pot. Annoyance may attract a criminal penalty, as may nuisance, but the civil process has less protection, and there is a risk that the Government may be muddling the old criminal law with new processes which they think are necessary but which entail certain dangers.
Shona McIsaac: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Can I tell the Home Secretary that while there are some things in the Bill that clearly need to be dealt with by criminal law such as the misuse of crack cocaine and firearms, other things may not be such obvious candidates for the use of criminal law? Dropping litter is not in the same league as misuse of a firearm.
I hope that the Government will accept my next point in their cooler and more rational moments. It is important that we do not judge people so harshly that we build a society where all sorts of relatively minor antisocial behaviour becomes a serious handicap for them later in their adult life. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), when we were debating the Criminal Justice Bill the other day on Report,
pointed out that under that measure someone's previous record of behaviour could be used in evidence against them in the criminal courts. There was a danger, he pointed out, that people's opinions about someone's behaviour would mark them, making it more likely that they would be convicted of a crime. Down that road lies the big brother state. Sometimes I think that the Home Secretary is in favour of that state—[Interruption.] That seems especially so, as has just been said, when he is the big brother. I resist that move, and I hope that he will make it clear that we should have much more devolution of power, not centralised power. We should try, not to criminalise more people and lock them up, but to make sure that they behave without being criminalised, without a criminal record and without ending up in prison.
Mr. Blunkett: I just want to put on record the fact that I am not in favour of the big brother or big sister state. I am in favour of introducing measures that provide for a civilised, acceptable level of behaviour in a civilised world where people can live in peace and quiet. That would avoid a situation in which some people's response to an ever-increasing dysfunctionality in communities, disrespect and the likelihood of disorder is such that a big brother state is appealing precisely because it would do the things that the hon. Gentleman spoke about. Those people are so sick and tired of things disintegrating around them that they would turn to extremes. That is my philosophy.
Simon Hughes: I share that objective with the Home Secretary, which is why we must be careful—I am sure that he understands this—not to legislate where we do not need to. We must always look first at prevention, rather than punishment, and must always look for things like mediation—tried and tested alternatives which work on the ground—and things that, as he has rightly said, build on the excellent work of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the partnerships that have been developed and many of the pilot schemes and initiatives that he, his Government, the Youth Justice Board and local government around the country have initiated.
There is much good news out there—so much, in fact, that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East, was on the radio and television the other day working hard to persuade the nation that crime figures were going down again. I agree, and have said so. However, the Bill does not appear to be a response to the fact that those figures are going down—it appears to be a response to the fact that fear of crime is still high. Legislating because people are afraid of crime, as opposed to legislating because of things that people actually do, is a dangerous road to go down.
May I make a couple of practical suggestions to Ministers? They have contemplated in linked legislation amending the laws on begging. Begging has been a crime since 1824, but beggars have not disappeared because it is illegal. Ticket touting has been illegal for years, but ticket touts have not disappeared because it is illegal. Busking has not been permitted for years, but buskers have not vanished because it is illegal. The Home Office appears to believe that if you legislate against people they disappear. If you legislate against activity, it stops.
May I tell Ministers that that does not usually happen? It is much better to take alternative positive action on the ground.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Bob Ainsworth): Will the hon. Gentleman do himself a favour and not misrepresent the facts? Begging is already illegal, as he knows, and we fine beggars. We do not register them or check up on their behaviour or the reasons for it. We do not use that begging to get them the drug treatment that it is estimated 86 per cent. of them need. The hon. Gentleman knows that that is what we are proposing to do—why does he seek to misrepresent it?
Simon Hughes: The hon. Gentleman misunderstands me. I said that begging has been illegal since 1824. He is right that the issue is often that those people have mental illnesses, drug addiction problems and alcohol addiction problems, and are homeless. The remedy is not to make them more criminal. The remedy is both to provide treatment for drug abuse, which the Under-Secretary is working on, but which is not yet available throughout the country, and to provide the resources for housing departments that local authorities ask for so that the homeless can be housed more quickly and effectively. Local authorities are not responding to the Bill by saying, "Yes, we want all those laws," they are saying, "Give us the resources to do the things that we know we have to do." Just blaming people and giving out more criminal records is a dangerous way to go. That is the way that America has gone. In Britain, 30 per cent of adults under 30 have a criminal record. If we take up the opportunity of giving out penalty tickets and fines to 13-year-olds, what sort of future will we condemn them to? If we begin to treat young people's experiences as a problem, not as an opportunity, which is what the Bill hints at, what sort of a message are we sending them?
Simon Hughes: I want to make two more substantive remarks and conclude, so that other colleagues can get in.
There are many things that we can do. We can make sure that housing allocation policies work better, so that families and communities are kept together and not separated. We can make sure that schools are given more power to run their own show, rather than passing more laws enforcing measures from above. We can design and build housing estates that make it less easy, rather than easier, for people to commit crime.
Of course some things are difficult. We have a world where young people sit in front of computers, where they communicate less and where parents talk to them less. I was at a gun crime memorial service the other day in Peckham, and the call to families was, "Speak to your children more." The Mums against Guns were saying, "We must speak to our children more. The dads must speak to their children more. We must have more communication." We do not want young people punished, marginalised and criminalised at a young age.
The Government are going down the wrong road. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was a good thing. The youth offender teams are good things. The Youth
Justice Board is a good thing. They have all done good work, and we should build on them. We should see the evidence of what works. In my borough, there are many successful schemes. The Karrot scheme and incentives for young people work. Southwark Mediation works. Neighbourhood wardens work. Kickstart works. Splash works. More police work.I was in Watford on Sunday. The new Liberal Democrat mayor of Watford has just provided space for a skateboard park by the pyramid in the middle of town. I met some young people who said that they wanted that, to stop them getting up the nose of people in the town centre. They want to be able to do their own thing in a way that does not get them into trouble. Such schemes work.
Curfews do not work; they have never been used. Giving an 11-year-old a penalty notice will not work. Making teachers, local education authorities and education welfare officers behave like police officers will not work. It should be the police, not the teacher, the designated member of staff or the local education authority, who decide whether somebody has committed an offence. We must make sure we separate those responsible for supporting and developing young people, and those responsible for criminalising them. Unless we change the Bill significantly, there is a danger that we will yet again legislate in haste and repent at leisure.
It is sad that the Bill does not mention social services. [Interruption.] If it does it barely mentions them; there is certainly not a section on social services. There is a section on education, a section on housing, a section on firearms and a section on drugs, but the effective agency for picking up the youngsters in dysfunctional families who are liable to commit crimes are the social services departments, which are overstretched and burdened and asking for more resources.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) recently went on an official visit to Sweden, where children are normally not regarded as being capable of being put in the criminal justice system until they are over 16. They are seen as people who need help, support and educational back-up. Sweden has a much higher success rate than we do and its approach is much more effective. We must look around us and learn the lessons of other countries. [Interruption.]
The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac), who has tried to intervene about 16 times, asks what we would say. We say: nationalise the mediation process across every local authority. [Interruption.] I mean spread it across the country. I would not be against it being nationalised. We should make sure that social services and education departments have the resources that they need to do what they know works. We should make sure that community punishment is visible in the community. We should make sure we have many more youth and community workers, who can be positive role models for young people. We should make sure that we have restorative justice and schemes such as the Dundee family project, which helps families who are not very good at bringing up their children.
As was pointed out by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), we should not spend time legislating for landlords to have policies and procedures to deal with antisocial tenants, when they do not need legislation to do that. Most of them do it anyway. We do not need to legislate for parenting contracts, which are voluntary and so, by definition, do not need legislation. We certainly do not need parenting orders to be issued at the instigation of teachers and the LEAs. If disciplinary sanctions are needed, those should be exercised by the forces responsible for discipline.
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