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8 Apr 2003 : Column 165—continued
2.27 pm
Mr. Humfrey Malins (Woking): During the Christmas recess, I sat for a couple of days as a district judge in a very busy south London court. The afternoon list one day consisted of a series of parents who had been brought before the court by way of summons to face an allegation that they had permitted their children not to attend school. Such examples of misbehaviour or lack of control by parents frequently arise in south London, so when I looked at the Bill and considered the issue of parental contracts with a school, I thought that I would tell the House about my experience.
Seven mothers were due in court that afternoon. Two did not turn up, after having received a court summons. Two turned up roaring drunk and incapable of understanding what was going on. Another couple turned up and, albeit sober, were utterly inadequate and incapable of comprehending even what they were doing there. The seventh turned up and used the sort of language that we in the House would never use to each other, even on a rugby pitch. Those seven cases arose in one afternoon.
Where does that get us? It gets us to a clause saying that, although there is an existing criminal offence of not sending one's child to school, the Bill thinks that all may be cured by a parenting contract. There was not a mother in court that afternoon who would have had the
slightest idea what a parenting contract would mean. One or two could not write their names. Others might have torn up the contract and thrown it in my face.
Mr. Banks: What did m'learned judge do? We all want to know.
Mr. Malins: I was powerless. Fines were a waste of time; there is no point in imposing a £50 fine on such people. Eventually representatives of the education authority said that they were doing their best with the mothers. I adjourned the cases.
I am worried about clause 18 because contracts will not work. Such concepts are not a good idea because we have to realise that we are dealing with people who are effectively from the—I hesitate to use the word—underclass. They are desperately underprivileged and outside mainstream society.
Ms Dari Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Malins: It will cut my eight minutes, but that is probably no bad thing.
Ms Taylor: I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman's comments. My police force and local authority say that acceptable behaviour contracts between parents, the local authority and the police have been very effective so far. They say that the contracts are so valuable that they will avoid more drastic action later when the child is out of control. Why are the hon. Gentleman's local authority and police so different from mine?
Mr. Malins: If everything works so well, why is the Bill necessary? If the hon. Lady steps into the London courts, she will witness some of the problems that I encountered.
The Home Secretary's motives for introducing the Bill are good, but I wonder whether it will make a difference. In the past seven years of the Labour Government, 15 crime Bills have been introduced and the Home Secretary has produced more than 100 initiatives. They have not made a great difference: crime has increased.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) said earlier, in 1971, 17 crimes were reported for every police officer. Today, there are more than 40 crimes for every police officer. When we consider our approach to crime, why do we never focus on detection rates? Many young people who commit the sort of low-level crime that falls into the antisocial behaviour category do it because they know that they will not see a policeman and that they will not get caught and dealt with.
Let us consider previous legislation on antisocial behaviour that the Government introduced. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was not such a great success. I warned that the antisocial behaviour orders would be bureaucratic and ineffective. Instead of the 5,000 that we were promised, only a few hundred have been issued. The Home Secretary tells us that 11,000 drug treatment and testing orders have been made, and that parenting orders have been issued. However, we never know how many have been breached. Yet day after day in the courts, one comes across breaches of orders that have not been effective at all.
Graffiti, drunkenness, criminal damage and noise form the sort of low level crime and antisocial behaviour that affects our communities. Plenty of existing law would be effective if a fully staffed police force administered it properly. Sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 cover much of the sort of behaviour that the Bill describes, such as hanging around on corners and apparently posing a threat to passers-by. Further measures are unnecessary. The Criminal Damage Act 1971 already deals with graffiti; people who are responsible for graffiti and are caught are always prosecuted under that Act. What is the need for more measures?
The common factor in most antisocial behaviour is drink. Our teenagers are the heaviest binge drinkers in Europe. Eighty-eight per cent. of criminal damage offences are committed while the offender is under the influence of drink; 15 per cent. of 12 to 17-year-olds have been involved in some form of antisocial behaviour as a direct result of drinking alcohol. Our neighbourhoods and communities have to face the need to get a grip on under-age drinking. We must focus much more on the supply of alcohol.
In my constituency of Woking, antisocial behaviour is perceived as being closely connected to the sale of alcohol to under-age drinkers. One Saturday evening, 83 per cent. of off-licences sold cans of lager or alcopops to a 15-year-old schoolboy who volunteered to help trading standards officers. It is a curse in our communities that young people drink far too much. It leads them to antisocial behaviour and crime. We should examine that problem and put more police on the beat in our communities. That is the way forward, not a Bill that is barely worth voting for or against.
2.35 pm
Mr. Michael Clapham (Barnsley, West and Penistone): I listened with great interest to the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) and to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). They missed the point of the Bill, which can be used in the context of crime prevention partnerships. It will be effective because it will allow for short-term interventions alongside longer-term preventive measures.
I am surprised at the condemnation by the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The partnerships that were set up under the Act work successfully. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. If he came to Barnsley, he could see a crime prevention partnership that I chair, which has existed for almost eight years and works extremely well. The provisions in the Bill will be used to benefit the community.
I support the Bill, but recognise some of the anxieties that hon. Members have mentioned. Nevertheless, it will be successful in the context of the crime prevention partnerships. The explanatory notes do not mention the partnerships, but anyone who is active in a community knows that the provisions will be used for that purpose.
There is a need to strike a balance between enforcement and prevention. I shall give some examples from my constituency. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey referred to the difficulty of being able to tackle some problems. We
have set up the heads of agency group, which brings together people who can make immediate decisions locally and participate in longer-term decision making. That group includes the directors of housing, education and social services. They sit to consider specific cases, but they do not only examine each case on its merits, they make decisions in the context of longer-term action. For example, Barnsley operates a safer communities project in the village of Worsborough. It was initially funded by the Joseph Rowntree trust and helps to identify the risk factors that young people face. We hope that the study will result in an opportunity to roll out the project across the community. That will provide a longer-term approach to dealing with prevention, but it will run alongside the shorter term interventions provided by the Bill.Clauses 1 to 11, in part 1 of the Bill, deal with drugs. I believe that the closure orders will be effective, although I have to say to the Minister that, in my constituency, drugs tend to be a problem on the estates and can therefore also involve tenant issues that will be dealt with later in the Housing Bill. We have, however, been able to move against tenants when we have had evidence of their using their houses to distribute drugs. We have evicted such people. Only a couple of years ago, in an old mining village called Ward Green, we were able to evict tenants who were involved in distributing drugs, which was leading to antisocial behaviour.
Chris Grayling: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clapham: I am sorry, but I have only a few minutes.
We were able to evict those tenants. The difficulty was, however, that they then gravitated to an area of Barnsley in which there were already problems and it became doubly difficult to deal with the matter at that stage. I know that the Minister is aware of such issues. Perhaps some of the measures in the Housing Bill will allow us to tackle that particular difficulty.
In regard to what the hon. Member for Woking had to say earlier, I can tell him that, in Barnsley, we have established a beat team. The local authority pays for the seven officers, who work together with three enforcement officers and a legal adviser from the authority to tackle environmental issues such as graffiti and vandalism. That is working well. Their work is complemented by the tenancy enforcement wardens, and we are having some success. I believe that the measures in the Bill will be helpful to those teams.
To return to the drugs issue, we reckon that the problem drives 70 per cent. of the crime in Barnsley. We have a big heroin problem, as do lots of other mining communities, and we need to be able to deal with it in the context of the Government's drugs policy. That will involve providing much more treatment, but, at the same time, it will be helpful to be able to deal with houses or premises from which drugs are being distributed by issuing closure notices.
Clauses 54 and 55 deal with waste and litter. These measures will be helpful, because once a vicinity starts to look shabby because of litter, it becomes conducive to antisocial behaviour. Being able to deal with such issues directly, again through the crime prevention partnership, by enforcing the measures in the Bill will be
very helpful. I want to draw to the Minister's attention to an initiative that I witnessed in west Wales. As co-Chair of the all-party group on fire prevention, I was asked to visit west Wales to see some of the initiatives—
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