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8 Apr 2003 : Column 227—continued
6.22 pm
Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre): I too commend the Government for the concern that they have rightly shown about antisocial behaviour. There is nothing more corrosive to people's quality of life, to the confidence of communities or to the well-being and happiness of individuals than some of the scenes that we all witness daily. This afternoon, we have heard about many examples of rude, ill-mannered and inconsiderate behaviour—public drunkenness; foul language; graffiti that is often obscene and invariably ugly; litter and
rubbish that no one takes responsibility for cleaning up; the unsightly and hazardous mess of abandoned and burned-out cars; noise; the sheer lack of thought and respect for others; and filthy needles dropped where children can pick them up.I am delighted with the new investment that the Government have made and with the thousands of extra police officers and community support officers. The establishment of crime reduction partnerships is of great significance. Like others, I am pleased with some measures in this Bill. I am pleased with the closure orders although, like others, I feel that they could go further; and I am pleased with the fixed penalty notices for graffiti. There are measures to control noisy premises and a strategic role for local authorities in relation to fly tipping.
I am concerned about the sense of despair throughout the Chamber. We could do a great deal more and take a more radical approach to these issues. I am not simply saying that the Bill leaves out a series of measures that I should like the Government to address—although, for example, a small proportion of people in the travelling community cause many problems in my constituency. We frankly need a massive cultural change in this country if we are to get to grips with the issues that face us.
We need not throw up our hands in despair or cast around for immediate solutions, although some of the solutions are in our hands. We have heard comments about social workers, and the Government are missing the potential of social workers and the long-standing provisions in the Children Act 1989. The Government and much of our society have lost confidence in social services and social workers, and that must be regained.
The Green Paper on children at risk that is promised in the summer will give us an enormous opportunity. It will be significant and I hope that it will bring together universal and specific measures to utilise the strengths of the community, the voluntary, public and private sectors and the family. I hope that it will allow us to break down institutionalised barriers among organisations and professions and to train people in a new pedagogy for the joined-up, wrapped-around future of dedicated children's services in this country. We should not start to deal with problems through schools, but by promoting positive parenting. We must use the Green Paper to take the opportunity to bridge the historic destructive divide between welfare and justice, and troubled children and children in trouble.
My great difficulty with what has been said and with some of the Bill's provisions is that we are in danger of reproducing the authoritarianism and punishment mentality that have failed to deal with serious problems and have caused us to have the highest figures for young people in custody of any country in western Europe. Custody does not help to reform people, but replicates problems by creating an appallingly destructive circle in which people leave prison and reoffend. Fifteen children have died in prison since 1997, so we must try to address the issues. No matter how difficult the situations caused by young people in our communities, we must try to get away from putting them in custody.
I have several concerns about some of the Bill's provisions, such as those to give education officials the power to issue fixed penalty notices. That is not a role
for any body other than an enforcement agency. Local education officers should not go to a court to secure a parenting order before the court has the chance to examine information about a pupil's family circumstances. We need a more holistic approach than that. We need a new approach to the Children Act 1989. In considering the massive problems caused by tenants, we need to utilise the resources pioneered by NCH in its Dundee project. We need, again, to have confidence in what social workers can do. I have real qualms about the new foster parent requirement, which is apparently intended to be an alternative to custody, unless those concerned are aged under 12 when it could be used anyway. That new foster parent requirement is equivalent to a time-limited care order, without the need to pursue care proceedings, and it means a spell in foster care without the representation implied in the Children Act 1989, and without access to the benefits of the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000. It replicates problems that we experienced in the past with the Children and Young Persons Act 1969.My biggest problem, however, is with clause—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Gentleman's biggest problem is that his time is up.
6.30 pm
Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire): I am almost sorry to interrupt, as the hon. Gentleman was making a remarkably rebellious speech, to which I enjoyed listening. I agreed with much that he said, if I may spoil his reputation completely.
The debate has featured a large number of speeches from Members on both sides of the House. To listen to many Labour Members, however, one would think that this was the first crime Bill of a new Labour Government, instead of being something like the 16th in six years. I suspect that many of them have not read much of the Bill or studied what came previously. All Members have rightly emphasised the importance and seriousness of antisocial behaviour, and the way in which it starts a spiral of decline, which can—although not always—lead to more serious criminal lifestyles. The Home Secretary was right when he said that the issue cannot be resolved overnight, and I want to make it clear that there is no difference between us in terms of the objective: we all want to feel able to walk around and to live our lives without fear of abuse, harassment, intimidation or attack. Regardless of our race, age or gender, that is a basic entitlement that all should expect.
The debate is not about the issue, however, but about the Government's repeated attempts to address it. Many Members have said that the Bill addresses the real problems of constituents. The long title of the Bill and the headings of some of the clauses certainly address the real problems of constituents, but a study of the contents of the Bill shows that a great deal is lacking.
A few months ago, just before the state opening of Parliament, the Prime Minister stated his belief in the importance of dealing with crime and antisocial behaviour:
- "Low-level aggression, vandalism, fights in town centres on Friday and Saturday nights, anti-social neighbours, fly tipping, abandoned cars, graffiti, truancy. They are crimes that don't hit the headlines every day, but they do hit the daily quality of life of many in our communities, often the elderly and the most vulnerable"—
Most cynically, despite the high importance given to the Bill in the Queen's Speech as one of the centrepieces of this year's legislative Session, we find that it has been delayed until the outset of the local government elections. So the Bill appears as a glorified press release. It is all very well for the Minister to laugh, but we have seen Labour's campaign documents and we know that that is the strategy that the Labour Government have been following.
As so many of my hon. Friends have rightly said, the real need is for more police officers—a number of Labour Members said that, too—because there is ample evidence that an enhanced police presence significantly decreases antisocial behaviour, even without any of the measures proposed in the Bill. Despite what the Home Secretary would have us believe, the Government's record so far on police numbers is not so good as he would wish.
The reality is that, during each of the past six years, the average increase in this country's police forces has been at a much lower rate than was achieved on average during all the previous Government's 18 years. [Interruption.] Labour Members may laugh, but those are Government figures. We often laugh at Government figures, but they should not seek to ridicule their own Government.
My hon. Friends the Members for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson), for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) and for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) all referred to the importance of police numbers and, indeed, to the reduction of police paperwork. As I have said before in the House, I have a file of what is required for a single arrest and 26 different forms have to be filled in by a police officer. Nothing that the Government have done has reduced that burden.
Yes, we need an extra 40,000 police officers, and we will pay for them by reforming the asylum system, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) has said. [Interruption.] I purposely pause to allow the Home Secretary to laugh, because the Government could make that change themselves. The Chancellor could announce that tomorrow, because the Prime Minister has said already that he will halve the number of asylum seekers by September. If he does so, he will have the saving, using the Government's own
figures, to make a very significant step towards our own targets. That is the reality using the Government's own figures.Let me turn now to one or two issues in the Bill. In 1998, the Government pledged to cut truancy by a third. In 2002, they cut the pledge because they had achieved nothing. They then pledged to reduce truancy by just 10 per cent. between 2002 and 2004. There have been parenting orders for nearly three years, but only 538 of the 3,000-odd orders that have been issued already have related to truancy; the rest were issued for other reasons and were nothing whatsoever to do with truancy.
As many hon. Members, including the Government's supporters, have said, a very worrying precedent would be set if teachers were to hand out fixed penalties. The Government will almost certainly be forced to withdraw that idea—if not by us, then by their own supporters and teachers' organisations.
Clearly, all Opposition Members support closing crack houses, as proposed in the clauses on housing. There may be marginal differences about whether antisocial behaviour must be proved, but I return to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset: the Government passed legislation to enable that to happen two years ago, in the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, but they have never implemented it. Even if they can persuade us that this method is better, they still cannot justify having done nothing whatsoever about closing crack houses for two years.
Much has been said about antisocial tenants of registered social housing owners. None of what is proposed is fundamentally wrong. There are big questions about whether the proposal will make the difference that the Government believe that it will make, but, again, it is a clear example of the Government hiving something off to get it into the Bill. As a number of hon. Members have said, the proposal leaves untouched the privately owned rented sector and, indeed, as has been said, the owner-occupied sector. We are told that at least some of those issues will be addressed in the Housing Bill. Why split them? Why not deal with them all in the Housing Bill, as ought to be the case?
As my right hon. Friend said in his opening speech, community support officers have been deployed only for a few months, so even the most enthusiastic among us must admit that the jury is still out. Although there cannot yet be any possibility of an objective assessment of their effectiveness, the Government are proposing a huge increase in their powers. Surely, the Home Secretary must realise that the more powers he gives CSOs, the more they will begin to look like substitute police.
In addition, the Bill gives many powers to accredited community safety officers that currently attach only to community support officers. Such proposals were rejected by Parliament only nine months ago, yet the Government want to renege on that decision. The current proposals include the fascinating possibility that an accredited community safety officer could charge someone with wasting police time. As such an officer would be neither a policeman nor a police employee, that provision is astonishing. It will be interesting to see how that works.
My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) and others referred to penalties. The measure would extend fixed penalties to 16-year-olds and, more seriously, the Home Secretary would be empowered to reduce that age to as low as 10 merely by affirmative order. That is a major step and it will need to be examined in Committee. The Home Secretary should not take to himself the power to impose fixed penalties on someone as young as 10 without full primary legislation that has been debated on the Floor of the House.
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