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The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing, and Community Safety (Ms Hazel Blears): The clauses to which the amendments are tabled form an important, significant and central part of the powers available to police in such circumstances. I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) in his analysis of the powers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) said in her passionate contribution, it is vital to take the powers, the Bill and our strategy and policy on tackling antisocial behaviour as a complete set of integrated measures. To single out the powers of dispersal as a fundamental attack on civil liberties does the hon. Gentleman no credit. If he is seriously saying to his constituents that he does not think that the powers are needed or requested by the people in his community, then I am astonished. It is yet another example of the Liberal Democrats willing the ends but not being prepared to will the means, in this case to tackle antisocial behaviour and disorder in our communities.
The hon. Gentleman knows well, as he demonstrated in his contribution, that this Government have embarked on a series of investments to ensure that young people are diverted from crime and disorder. We are engaging them in youth projects and ensuring that they have educational and leisure opportunities. The Government have spent millions of pounds setting up an infrastructure to ensure that young people in particular have access to some of the opportunities that others take for granted. The powers of dispersal are designed to deal with those circumstances in which the presence or behaviour of a hard core of individuals intimidates, alarms, distresses and harasses people in our communities.
We recognise that as the powers are important and significant, it is right that they are constrained by a series of conditions before they become operable. Those conditions are set out in clause 29(1)(a) and (b). It states that an officer has to have
- "reasonable grounds for believing . . . that members of the public have been intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed as a result of the presence or behaviour"
- "that anti-social behaviour is a significant and persistent problem in the relevant locality."
Jeremy Corbyn: I have two concerns about clause 29(1). The first is what legitimate proof of evidence is required on the persistent participation of the same people in an assembly at a particular point. The second is how a place is defined. Is it an immediate locality, a street, a neighbourhood or a whole town? That is unclear. Will the Minister explain?
Ms Blears: My hon. Friend raises important points. The provision is for a senior officer to designate a locality, which is the right thing to do. That designation triggers the powers of the constable to make directions on dispersal.
That locality could be an area covering a basic command unit, a borough or a ward. It is right that that matter should be subject to discussion with local crime and disorder reduction partnerships and community safety partnerships, as that would enable us to engage with the local community to find out where there is a problem and where the powers need to kick in. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) will notice that Government amendments Nos. 38 and 39 provide for the constable to make a direction in relation to part of the locality. If there is a problem in a parade of shops, a playground or a smaller part of the designated locality, there will be flexibility for constables, senior officers and the local community to use the provision as part of an armoury of tools. Members need to understand that this is not a one-club approach—it is part of a range of tools available to local communities to combat antisocial behaviour.
Ms Blears: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman but, as his contributions took up three quarters of an hour, I am loth to do so.
Simon Hughes: If the locality proposal is such a good idea, why has the Government's only other proposal of a curfew in a specific locality not been used anywhere at all?
Ms Blears: The aim of the Bill is to make sure that we have a straightforward way to tackle antisocial behaviour. The hon. Gentleman will know that, in relation to previous legislation, the local authority had to make an order, which had to be agreed between it and the police, then submitted to the Secretary of State for approval. That was a complex and bureaucratic way to proceed, but the Bill allows for a much simpler way to proceed, as the superintendent can designate the locality, then the constable can go in and exercise powers under the Bill. That is a much more appropriate way to proceed.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden): Is my hon. Friend aware that much of the Committee's time was spent looking at proposals that could easily be made effective? Taking on board the points made by Liberal Democrat Members, we were aware that there was a raft of legislation, but the problem was that powers under that legislation were either not being used or were not working. I am willing to do a poll in the constituency of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), and I am sure that the overwhelming majority of his constituents would support our suggestions.
Ms Blears: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who played an extremely constructive and helpful role in Committee by seeking to make the Bill's provisions effective. She has made an important point, and it is one of the reasons for the introduction of a regime of fixed penalty notices. We want to make sure that sanctions can be implemented quickly, easily and without bureaucracy so that they have an immediate effect.
I find it quite strange to be in a position where, on the one hand, the Liberal Democrats are seeking to remove all the relevant provisions from the Bill, leaving us with no powers whatsoever to tackle the congregation of groups and, on the other, the Conservatives are seeking to remove all safeguards, constraints and hurdles that we have introduced to prevent an arbitrary exercise of powers. In those circumstances, we have adopted a third or middle way, which is the correct way to implement the Bill's powers.
We need to get the balance right. The Bill deals with rights and responsibilities. It deals both with the rights of the community and the rights of individuals—that should always be uppermost in our mind. Up and down the country, communities are concerned about groups congregating and causing intimidation. I had an opportunity to read the debates in Committee, but I am afraid that I have not had the chance to visit Much Wenlock, where there is zero crime and disorder, although I hope to do so in future. However, I must tell the Liberal Democrat spokesman that his experience is very much a minority one. Thirty per cent. of respondents to the British crime survey said that groups congregating together, causing intimidation or distress, were either a big problem or a fairly big one in their communities. The Government are therefore seeking to address a significant issue.
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire): At the weekend, I went to a public meeting in Moira in north-west Leicestershire at which hundreds of people expressed serious concern about the activities of a group of adolescent youths who lived in the area. Yes, what my hon. Friend is promoting may be a useful add-on to existing powers, but the community there believe that it is the availability, visibility and sensitivity of local policing that might tackle and draw the teeth of some of the concerns that they expressed to me in a tense and heated meeting at the weekend.
Ms Blears: Many of us in our capacity as constituency Members of Parliament have attended such meetings, where people are rightly angry and feel powerless to do anything about their circumstances. Many of the powers in the Bill are designed to enable those communities to reclaim their streets and their neighbourhoods for the decent people who live in them. The massive numbers of extra police that the Government have funded, together with the community support officers who are increasingly visible on our streets and the neighbourhood wardens funded by local authorities, are providing a greater degree of visible reassurance to the people whom I represent and to many communities throughout the country. I acknowledge that the situation is not resolved, but we are making significant progress.
Matthew Green: I return to the core of clause 29. The Minister is right to speak of the hurdles that are in place when a senior officer designates an area—he must have reasonable grounds, and the antisocial behaviour must be significant and persistent. However, once the area has been designated for up to six months, and the constable
is dealing with it, the condition of significant and persistent antisocial behaviour no longer applies. The condition is only that two or more people are gathering and might alarm somebody. They may well not be the people who caused the original problem. Does not the Minister understand that? How does she seek to ensure that the police will not use the powers against people who were not the cause of the problem in the first place?
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