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Shona McIsaac: I am pleased to be able to take part in the debate. Like the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), I believe that this is one of the most important sections of the Bill, so I am astonished that the Liberal Democrats want to delete all the provisions that give the police powers to deal with persistent and significant antisocial behaviour in our communities.
We know that antisocial behaviour is a problem the length and breadth of the country. Every day hon. Members receive complaints from their constituents about such behaviour perpetrated by gangs—except in Ludlow. The Liberal Democrat spokesman in the Standing Committee, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green), told us that there was no antisocial behaviour in Ludlow, so perhaps we should not be astonished that the Liberal Democrats want to delete clause 29. Their spokesperson told us that antisocial behaviour did not exist. Liberal Democrat councillors throughout the land who are calling for increased powers to deal with antisocial behaviour and the dispersal of groups should pay attention to those remarks. Many Liberal Democrat councils back the Government's measures on the issue.
Mrs. Brooke: Is the hon. Lady confident that all the existing powers to deal with antisocial behaviour are being used in her area?
Shona McIsaac: No, antisocial behaviour in my area is not being tackled as well as I should like; it is a persistent problem, which is why we need additional legislation to support the existing provisions. The Bill should not be considered in isolation because its powers will interlink with others; they will weave together different aspects so as to tackle that most serious of problems in our communities.
Jonathan Shaw : Does my hon. Friend agree that, in every year, under every Government, there is a crime Bill because that issue exercises our constituents? Sometimes, Governments get the measures right; sometimes, they get them wrong and some of the powers that we had hoped would work do not work in practice. However, the clause includes some practical provisions, which are certainly welcomed by the Police Federation; they will be used in moderation, in extreme cases where people want an end to horrendous and persistent yobbish behaviour.
Shona McIsaac: My hon. Friend makes some pertinent points. He is right to draw our attention to the comments of the Police Federation. I notice that the Liberal Democrats conveniently glossed over those comments. In its response, the federation stated:
- "The power to be able to disperse unruly gangs is seen by the Police Federation to be particularly helpful for situations where a Section 5 Public Order offence is inappropriate, but where loutish,
- intimidating behaviour needs to be tackled and youngsters moved on. The provision of a power to deal with such situations, in a simple manner, would not only have a positive effect in practical policing terms but also assist communities that suffer from such problems."
Jeremy Corbyn: Obviously, from time to time, every Member has problems of antisocial behaviour among groups in their constituency. However, constituents also come to us because they feel that they have been wrongly treated by the police and wrongly tarred with that brush. Is not it of legitimate concern that the powers given to the police under the clause would require no serious proof of evidence, but would allow the police unfettered control over people?
Shona McIsaac: The Bill will not give the police unfettered control. My hon. Friend is basically saying that we should do nothing about antisocial behaviour.
Shona McIsaac: That is how my hon. Friend's comments will come across to our constituents. They will think that he does not want to tackle the issue. His use of the phrase "from time to time" said it all. Antisocial behaviour does not happen from time to time; it is persistent and significant, as is stated in the Bill.
4.45 pm
It is important to be able to give people the powers to take action against such groups, which can hold whole communities to ransom and terrorise everyone, from the young to the elderly. They cause problems across the board. I have found from discussing the issue with my constituents that some of the people who are most concerned about what they call gangs are young people themselves. They are often the victims of antisocial behaviour by gangs of youths gathering outside schools and attacking each other. Young people are often the ones being bullied, harassed and intimidated. In paying attention to young people, we must acknowledge that they are too often the victims of antisocial behaviour. Antisocial behaviour should not be seen as an issue of the young versus the old, as the Liberal Democrats try to portray it.
Like all hon. Members, I support youth projects—the Splash projects and so on—that try to find meaningful activities for young people. Those projects will continue, but they do not tackle all the problems. They certainly do not tackle problems that occur at 11.30, 12.30, 1.30 or 2.30 in the morning. No one will take young people along to a football match at 2.30 in the morning, when they are jumping on car roofs, making a racket and perhaps throwing bricks into people's gardens.
We must have powers to deal with those situations when they occur, and the powers in part 4 are proportionate because of the inbuilt safeguards. The police will not be allowed to do whatever they like. The problem must be persistent, significant and occur in a
designated area. That will provide safeguards. If used, the powers will reassure our communities that action is being taken to deal with an increasing and significant problem.The Liberal Democrats have completely missed the point today. I do not know what world they live in, but most of us live in the real world. I hope that we will resist the Liberal Democrats' foolish amendments, which would delete any extra power that the police could have to deal with the significant problem of antisocial behaviour in our communities.
Mr. Paice: I almost hesitate to intervene in the somewhat heated exchanges that have started to develop. I confess to the House that, when the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) said he would be brief, I suspected that we were doomed, and my self-prophecy proved right. The hon. Gentleman wanted to ensure that we reached the other two groups of amendments today and then took more than a third of the time allocated to make his opening speech.
A large number of the amendments in this group are in my name and those of my hon. Friends. Although, as the hon. Gentleman said, one amendment has both our signatures, I hasten to assure him that that is pure coincidence because we are addressing the problem from completely opposite directions. We take the view—as we did in Committee—that it is not necessary to constrain the use of such powers in the way that the Bill proposes.
I agree that a requirement for reasonableness in people's reactions is absent. If the hon. Gentleman has read the reports of the proceedings in Committee, he will know that I moved an amendment to that effect, so that the officer could assess whether he felt that people had reacted reasonably. The Government rejected that, and we shall seek to return to the issue when the Bill progresses to the other place.
It is right that the police should have the powers to move people on and to disperse a group—not just young people under 16, as seemed to be the impression, but any group of people who are causing a nuisance. What I do not agree with the Government about is that it should be in a "relevant locality", with all the bureaucracy and paraphernalia that goes with designating that relevant locality. When there is clear evidence that a group of people are causing nuisance and annoyance and behaving antisocially in a particular location, the police should have the power, then and there, to do something about it. It is not necessary to go through all the bureaucracy of clause 30 to designate the area as a relevant locality.
The majority of amendments that I tabled—I shall not detain the House by listing all of them—are designed to get rid of the concept of a relevant locality and simply to free up the police to use their discretion as they think fit if a problem arises in a particular area. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey referred to various youth projects, many of which are notable and have been developed through Government and voluntary initiatives for a long while, and I am sure that all Members support those in their constituencies. This is not, however, an either/or issue. My right hon.
Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) has spoken vividly in public about the excellence of these projects and the need for more of them, but whatever the project, pretending that they will somehow completely prevent any group of people gathering and causing a problem anywhere is wishful thinking in the extreme. We also need the powers to back up all the excellent work that provides activities for young people as well as others.We oppose totally the Liberals' attempt to remove this clause from the Bill. We do not pretend that it is perfect—we seek to amend it to give the police far more freedom and discretion. As I said, we believe that the Bill should include a test of reasonableness, which we tried to insert in Committee and which we shall seek to do again in the other place. Speaking for the Liberals in Committee, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green) said:
- "We do not oppose the clause"—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 8 May 2003; c. 143.]
The issue of relevant locality and the need for police discretion goes beyond democracy and designating a particular locality as relevant. Our amendments seek to address the problems that will arise for areas that are not designated as relevant localities. We all know that the types of people who in many cases gather and cause nuisance and antisocial behaviour will know full well what the law is, where the relevant locality is and where it is not. The hon. Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) is nodding in agreement, so I hope that she agrees with the logic of my argument, which is to remove the provision on relevant locality from the Bill. What concerns me is that if the police officers come along, after they have gone through the paraphernalia—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stockton, South is now shaking her head; the Whips have got to her remarkably quickly. If the area has been designated through the bureaucracy of clause 30, and along comes a police officer who disperses a group of people, that group of people will immediately get wise to the fact that all they have to do is go down the road or across the street.
The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) shakes his head, but the fact is that a relevant locality could be anywhere. If he reads the report of the Committee's proceedings, he will discover that the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth) suggested that it could be just by a cash point. The concept of a relevant locality—whether it is a few square yards or a few square miles—is not defined in the Bill.
I suggest that young people, or anyone who would be affected by the provision, might well know the area of the relevant locality and continue their behaviour outside it, which might be in a different part of the borough or down the street—we do not know. It would depend on the part of the locality in which they committed the offence in the first place. The whole measure will quickly fall into disrepute if they are able to evade it, which is why I maintain that we should remove all the paraphernalia and simply give the police the power and discretion to disperse groups, subject to a test of reasonableness. Indeed, the Local Government
Association's submission—I expect that all hon. Members have received it—said that the proposals might simply displace problems from one area to another, as I have said.Although the majority of our amendments seek to address that problem, I want to speak about one or two other issues. Amendment No. 76 stands alone and does not directly relate to any other amendments in the group. In Committee, I asked about police officers' ability to remove young people aged 16 to their place of residence unless such removal would be likely to cause harm. My worry, which is why I tabled the amendment, is that it is unclear from the Bill that if an officer took a young person back to their home, the officer would have complied with the removal. If, after reaching the home, the officer believed that the young person was at risk, perhaps because a parent or step-parent might exact retribution, I am not convinced that the Bill makes it clear that the officer could take him or her away again. The amendment would provide clarification that if an officer perceived that a young person might be at risk after removal to his or her place of residence, the obligation would be removed from the officer. The amendment is an attempt not to alter the Government's intention, but to provide clarification, because I am not sure that the Bill addresses the issue.
I do not have specific concerns about the Government amendments in the group and we do not intend to oppose them. I think that they will extend slightly opportunities to use the powers and I shall be interested to hear how the Minister describes them. The provisions do not seem to be especially draconian.
I return to the fundamental proposition behind the majority of our amendments: we support the principle that the police should be able to use dispersal orders, but we do not think that they should be so constrained that they cannot use them as and when problems arise. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) told us what happens at 10.30 or 11.30 pm. If such problems arise, the police should be able to do something then and there, rather than having to decide whether they are in a relevant locality under clause 30 and saying, "Oh no, we're not. We can't do anything about it." The police might have to tell people affected that they could use dispersal powers only if the problems were occurring in the next street.
The Government have produced pretty dramatic proposals—I accept the remonstrations of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey—but they are nevertheless necessary, as I am sure the Minister will say.
However, the Government have also tried to hamper and constrain the proposals by creating the paraphernalia that surrounds the designation of relevant localities, and I fear that they will either fail to work or quickly fall into disrepute because people will find ways around them.
Amendment No. 53 is not the lead amendment, so it has not been moved, but if no other amendment in the group is put to the vote, I shall move it formally. However, if the Liberal Democrats pursue their amendments to delete the relevant part of the Bill, not only can we not support them, but we will oppose them completely because their proposals go against what most of us find in our constituencies.
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