| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
8 Apr 2003 : Column 169—continued
2.44 pm
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere): I draw to the attention of the House the entry that appears in my name in the Register of Members' Interests.
I am the first person to welcome any initiative to tackle antisocial behaviour, which is a problem for my constituents and those of other hon. Members. I share the objectives that the Home Secretary set out—indeed, I warmed to many, if not all, of the sentiments that he expressed today. The issue for me, however, is that of how well the proposals will work in practice and how much difference they will make. I want to see proposals that will make a substantial difference to what is a very substantial problem. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) was right to draw attention to the Bill being one of 15 different pieces of legislation on these matters, some of which make only marginal changes to existing legislation.
My attitude towards these issues is coloured by the fact that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), I served on the Committee of one of the first—if not the first—pieces of criminal justice legislation introduced by this Government, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. I well remember the claims that were made on behalf of that legislation, both inside the House and outside it, before it came in. Anyone who took those claims at face value would be surprised to find the House now considering not only another piece of antisocial behaviour legislation, but one that puts right some of the problems in the Crime and Disorder Act. Furthermore, it is not the first Bill that has been needed to put right some of those problems.
I remind Labour Members that the flagship provision of the Crime and Disorder Act was the antisocial behaviour order, which the Home Secretary mentioned only briefly when talking about the various orders available under the Act. The antisocial behaviour order was, however, the brave new idea of the Act, and anyone who had the temerity, in 1998, to question its practicability had their concerns dismissed out of hand by Ministers. Well, how much use have the antisocial behaviour orders been? My hon. Friend the Member for Woking is right to say that we can learn from experience. My constituents are still waiting to find out whether an antisocial behaviour order can be effective in changing behaviour because, in the almost three and a half years since they have been available, not a single one appears to have been taken out in my constituency. Only about nine have been taken out in the whole of Hertfordshire, and just a few hundred in the whole of the country.
I have put this concern to Ministers in the past, and they have sometimes argued that this was proof of the effectiveness of antisocial behaviour orders. I remember, on one occasion, a Minister argued that the fact that the orders were not being made was evidence that potential miscreants were so frightened by them
that they had stopped committing antisocial behaviour. It might be the case that there is greater legal knowledge in some quarters than we had thought, and that there are some budding legal careers in unlikely places, but the Minister's argument would tend to suggest that the problem of antisocial behaviour had got better rather than worse since 1998. My constituents could tell a different story, however.The antisocial behaviour orders that have been made have quite simply not been up to the scale of the problem of antisocial behaviour, and nor have many of the other provisions in the Crime and Disorder Act. When we consider the parenting orders, which have more to be said for them than antisocial behaviour orders, the Home Secretary said that only some 3,000 had been made over three years. That works out at about five for each of the more than 600 constituencies in this country over three years, and I think that we all know that the problem relating to antisocial behaviour orders is even bigger than that.
Simon Hughes: Does the hon. Gentleman remember the Home Secretary saying in December that he was surprised when he went round the country to find that people did not know about the powers that already existed?
Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire): Including in his own constituency.
Simon Hughes: Indeed. Is not that an argument for trying to work with measures that already exist first, rather than trying other things that have not been piloted and for which we can see no results?
Mr. Clappison: We need to ask how workable the provisions will be, which brings me to the reservations that I have about the Bill. I have already mentioned one of them in an intervention, which is the provision regarding crack houses. I welcome the idea of closure orders, but I wonder how many will be made in practice. I note, for example, that before granting an application for a closure order, a magistrates court will have to be satisfied not only that the premises in question have been used
- "in connection with the unlawful use or supply of a Class A controlled drug"
- "the use of the premises is associated with the occurrence of disorder or serious nuisance to members of the public";
- "the making of the order is necessary to prevent the occurrence of such disorder or serious nuisance for the period specified in the order."
An even worse example of potential legal overload in the Bill involves the power for the police to direct groups of youths to disperse. I know from my constituency caseload just how much of a problem some groups of youths can be.
In general I support that power for the police—indeed, I thought that in practice they had it already, and if they need more powers, I am in favour of that as well—but we should note what needs to happen before an officer can use the powers in the Bill. There must have been an authorisation for their use, and such an authorisation can be given only by an officer of the rank of superintendent or above. Authorisation can be given by that senior officer only if he has reasonable grounds for believing, first, that any members of the public have been
- "intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed"
Before any authorisation, consultation must take place with any local authority whose area includes all or part of the relevant locality. Authorisation must be given publicity through an authorisation notice contained in a newspaper circulating in the relevant locality or posted in a conspicuous place in the relevant locality. The authorisation notice must comply with all the formalities set out in clause 30(4)(a) to (c), and the authorisation from the senior officer must comply with those in subsection (1)(a) to (c).
All that sounds a bit like applying for planning permission. Only when a police officer has jumped through all those hoops is he authorised to direct a group to disperse, or "move on" as we used to say—and before he can exercise that authority he must, when he wishes to use it, have
- "reasonable grounds for believing that the presence or behaviour of a group of two or more persons in any public place in the relevant locality has resulted, or is likely to result, in any members of the public being intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed".
Moreover, the power in question relates only to youths under 16. Unfortunately, groups of youths do not always divide themselves neatly into groups of under-16s and over-16s. Whatever the Home Secretary says, that is a problem for the police in practice. It brings to mind our debates during the Committee stage of the Crime and Disorder Bill on child curfew orders, which the Home Secretary had the good sense not to mention when referring to that Act because not one has been made throughout the country—not least, I suspect, because of the problem of mixed-age groups. I hope for the sake of our constituents that the new powers turn out to be more useful to the law-abiding public than those orders.
I look forward to the introduction of measures that will make a real difference to people. I think that the provisions on antisocial tenants will need careful
consideration in Committee. I was very sympathetic to the Bill introduced by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field)—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Time is up.
2.53 pm
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead): I support the Bill without reservation, because I am happy to reflect the views of my constituents. I have represented the same part of Birkenhead—practically—since 1979, and during that time the nature of politics in the area has changed. In those early years, when I held surgeries or meetings or read letters, my constituents raised the issues that I expected them to raise: social security matters, the possibility of obtaining housing transfers, employment problems. Of course they still raise such issues, but the new politics that they raise are politics relating to behaviour. The Government are attempting to deal with that massive change.
Why do we keep returning to the issues mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison)? I call him my hon. Friend because he supported a measure to which I shall return shortly. One reason for the number of measures to deal with antisocial behaviour is the fact that it forms the basis of the new politics. It is difficult to grapple with an issue for the first time, and I do not believe that the number of different antisocial behaviour measures represents failure; I rejoice in the fact that when a measure does not work, the Government are prepared to come back, to make suggestions, and sometimes even to listen to our proposals for change.
I support the Bill because it reflects the current overriding concern of my constituents. They also want us to ask what the reasons are for the breakdown of common decencies in our society, and we should think about those in the long term. They do not, however, want us to be so academic in debating the causes of that breakdown that we do not try to enact measures aimed at preventing common decencies from collapsing still further. To what extent will the Bill help us to hold the line?
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere, as I call him, strongly supported a Bill I introduced earlier in this Parliament to deal with "neighbours from hell". There was widespread support from Members, apart from Liberal Democrats. I want to nail the untruth, peddled by the Liberal Democrats again today, that being tough on antisocial behaviour constitutes an attack on the poor. It is the poor themselves who are most damaged by such behaviour. Unlike me they have no bank balance. They cannot move away from the neighbours from hell, but must put up with them and see their children and their own lives destroyed.
I hope that the Government will consult widely on measures allowing action against private landlords who give succour, comfort and help to neighbours from hell. I hope that, if that does happen, they will go into the heart of constituencies that return Liberal Democrats, and ask ordinary voters how representative those Members are of the views trotted out in this Chamber by those who want to prevent us from taking such action. I look forward to going to the constituency of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) myself, and introducing him to some of his constituents and their views on these measures.
My hon. Friend, as I still call him, asked why we returned to all this with a sense of disappointment. It is true—we must admit it—that we had hoped to see the curfew measures used more effectively. We also wanted more antisocial orders to be used, not because we wanted to punish for the sake of it, but because we wanted to draw a line while looking in much more detail at the root causes of the breakdown of common decencies in our communities.
That is why, before this debate, I presented the Community Prosecution Lawyers Bill to ensure that in each of our constituencies the Crown Prosecution Service must establish an office, and a senior lawyer must be elected by our voters whose primary task will be to implement the Government's antisocial behaviour legislation. The CPS's role will be to ensure that that person has adequate legal training, but our constituents will decide who gains the highly paid position. My guess is that once the position has been gained, the thought of losing it as a result of failure to deliver on the Government's programme of trying to counter antisocial behaviour will serve as a way of ensuring that many more of our measures come into effect. Therefore, I hope that, when that measure comes forward, perhaps as an amendment at the Report stage of this Bill, we will gain Liberal Democrat support as well as support from those on the Treasury Bench.
In the moments that I have left, I reiterate the importance of the measures that the Government are trying to bring forward. I congratulate them when they are big enough to stand up and say that a measure has not worked as they want it to and that they are going to try to refine it. Antisocial behaviour is an evil that stalks the country. It destroys a common culture that the Labour movement was important in building. Why do we take the issue so seriously? We do it because we reflect our constituents' views and because antisocial behaviour is an attack on the common decency culture that the Labour movement had an important part in building in bringing about a significant change in the way people behaved to one another over the past 100 years.
There are now real threats to our constituents' safety and well-being. Many of my constituents, who have always put more into society than they have ever taken out, will be giving a roar. There will be a roar across the whole of the constituency, except among those few neighbours from hell who gain comfort from the Liberal Democrats.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |