TUESDAY 25 MARCH 2003

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Members present:

Mr Chris Mullin, in the Chair
Mrs Janet Dean
Bob Russell
Mr Marsha Singh
Mr Tom Watson
Miss Ann Widdecombe

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MR BOB AINSWORTH, a Member of the House, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, and MS LOUISE CASEY, Director of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit, Home Office, examined.

Chairman

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back, Minister. I do not think we have ever had a minister here twice within four or five day before. We all understand that you have been landed a little by the resignation of your colleague and I have asked the Committee to go easy on you! Whether they will take that request on board remains to be seen. I am sure they will. Ms Casey, welcome. Would you like to introduce yourself.

(Ms Casey) I am Louise Casey and I am the new National Director for Anti-Social Behaviour based in the Home Office.

How long have you been in post?

(Ms Casey) This is my tenth/eleventh week.

Have you been there since the inception of this Bill?

(Ms Casey) I knew I was going to do the job from the Queen's Speech onwards and I started full time some time in January. So, yes, I have been in charge of the White Paper and the Bill since then.

And before that you were dealing with homelessness, I believe.

(Ms Casey) I have been dealing with homelessness for the Government for the last three-and-a-half years.

Then if I may begin with some general questions. Minister, how would you distinguish between anti-social behaviour and criminal behaviour?

(Mr Ainsworth) Chairman, may I begin by thanking you for the introduction. I was enormously pleased when I took responsibility for this Bill at the back end of last week to learn that I was appearing in front of you at the start of this week! I do feel somewhat ill-prepared for the Committee by comparison with that which you would expect. If my honourable friend the Member for Southampton Itchen was here, the father of many of these proposals, he would be able to give you a far deeper understanding of the Bill and I am sure that will be to your loss as well as mine. Anti-social behaviour often runs into criminality at the bottom end. The definition is where people are behaving in such a way as to create fear among people living in their neighbourhoods. I think what we mean by anti-social behaviour is well understood. I am not sure that I could give you a script with defined -

Why is there the urge to tackle this problem now?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not think there is an urge to tackle the problem now, I think there is a degree of frustration that has built up over a period of time, not by the Government but by all of us in this House who represent our local communities. We have seen over a period of time now measures to tackle criminality being introduced, categories of crime falling and some categories of crime falling very substantially, but we do not see a comparative improvement in the feeling that there is in our communities of safety and a feeling of assurance in our communities and I think we all know from dealings with our constituents that it is low level criminality, it is anti-social behaviour, it is graffiti, slovenliness and all of those other problems that are undermining the confidence of our communities and hence there is a frustration to get on and to start to seek to tackle those root causes. Often, if you allow them to fester, then they lead to criminality almost inevitably. These are not going to be easy issues to drive back. There are attitudes that have become fairly ingrained within our society over a generation or so. Are we prepared to allow them to continue or are we determined to bring in measures that are going to do something about it? We stand on the latter; we are determined to start to tackle these issues.

Several of the organisations we have consulted have complained about the lack of consultation in relation to this Bill and the speed at which it is being brought in and the short period between the publication of the White Paper and the Bill. Why the rush?

(Mr Ainsworth) Not all of the measures in the White Paper are being rushed. Some of them were already flagged and are included in other measures that were already going through the House. Some of the measures have been lifted out and put into an anti-social behaviour Bill and will be brought in front of the House in fairly short order. I am sorry that we have not been able to consult widely. We will try to listen to people as extensively as we can as the Bill passes through the House and to take on board comments that are made. I do not think that consultation is going to bring us to agreement with all of the groups who are making representations on this. We do have some issues where we have quite distinct opposition to policies we are proposing. We will obviously continue to listen and seek to refine those measures, but there is a need for action and I do not think that it can just be left on the table to fester and to continue.

(Ms Casey) The other thing to bear in mind is that with my three-and-a-half years working for the Civil Service running homelessness and being in and amongst housing departments a great deal, a lot of the ideas contained within the White Paper have actually come out of local authority housing departments who feel that we need to act a lot faster on pushing some of these measures through in order that they actually have the tools that they need to do the job. In the last ten weeks, I have spent two days a week outside London predominantly in local authority areas meeting both residents and members of the public but also practitioners and a great deal of what is contained within the White Paper and a lot of the measures that are contained within our Bill are actually quite practical workmanlike measures in order to try and get things pushing forward, things like trying to tackle the private rented sector and landlord abuse of that, things like trying to bring together some of the good stuff that has happened on anti-social behaviour orders and consolidate that as well as more general things on noise which plagues people and people become frustrated when they do not have everything that they need. It is really quite a workmanlike approach to the Bill and also the White Paper and I myself, having come from the voluntary sector before coming into government, feel very strongly that it is important that whatever we do is actually based on the reality of what is happening outside and that we are going to be entirely dependent, particularly the unit in the Home Office, in delivering all of this and we will be dependent very much on the police and also on local authority people and community groups to help us push this agenda forward and therefore the White Paper and the Bill reflect a great deal of what their views and opinions were during that process. I can literally pick out parts in here and think that so-and-so had said that over and over and over for the last year or so and it is now in here, it is done, we are going to be get it through Parliament, they will be able to use that tool and we will crack on with the job.

(Mr Ainsworth) Let me take a specific point to illustrate. The measures on crack houses. The actual measures we are proposing are relatively new on the scene, but the issue has been kicked around for a very long time. We have consulted on alternatives. We have tried desperately to give the police the power they need to close crack houses and to close them in short order. The issue is not new; the issue has been around for too long in many ways and we do need to move on.

It is fair to say that many of the housing proposals are not going to be in the Bill that is published later this week, they are going to be in a Housing Bill published when?

(Ms Casey) I think that is due in the course of the summer.

During "the course of the summer" sounds a little dodgy to me!

(Ms Casey) I will check the detail.

I think we shall want to give this Bill a little pre-legislative scrutiny and we would therefore hope it turns up when the House is sitting.

(Ms Casey) I am sorry, Chairman, I have just been told that it is being drafted over the summer and will be in the House in September. The anti-social behaviour social tenants are contained within the anti-social behaviour White Paper and the Bill. The measures to tackle the private rented sector, selective licensing and more wide licensing, is going to be in the Housing Bill because they are complicated and we need slightly more time, so they are in the White Paper.

It may not be a job for this Committee, it may for some other Committee, but I am sure that Parliament will want to have an opportunity to scrutinise this Bill in advance and they will not have the opportunity to do so if it just turns up as this one did.

(Mr Ainsworth) I saw your eyes light up, Chairman, and the point you made about your desire to give pre-legislative scrutiny is well made and we will check it out and come back to you.

I hope you will send word. Some of the critics of this Bill have argued that the thrust of Government policy is to stigmatise young people. How do you respond to that?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not believe that is so. We obviously do not want to stigmatise young people, but there are problems with the behaviour of certain young people and with what happens within certain families. It is other young people who suffer from that kind of behaviour and it is other families who wind up suffering from that behaviour. We need to tackle those issues. People cannot just say that because we need to tackle issues that are at the root of some of the problems that exist in many of our neighbourhoods, we are seeking to stigmatise a whole class of people. We are certainly not seeking to do that. How can young people grow up within an environment where norms are being set and expectations are being given to them that are totally outwith what we would want to see within our society? Unless we are prepared to clamp down on the bad behaviour, then we should not be at all surprised if that bad behaviour begins to spread to other sections of young people. Setting standards is not an attack on young people in my opinion.

You are effectively calling for a cultural change, are you not? You are calling for communities to become more willing to take a stand against anti-social behaviour.

(Mr Ainsworth) I hope this is the start of precisely that. I do not think that the measures in this White Paper taken alone or the measures in the Bill taken alone are going to achieve what we need to do. We have seen some trends in society, as I have said, over a long period of time where we can just sit back and accept that they are the inevitable consequences of the modern structure of our society and say, "Well, there is nothing we can do." However, it is not the role of Government to do that. It is the role of Government to start to try to turn back some of those trends and to make some differences in the behaviour that has become so ingrained in some areas and which is causing such problems.

I am sure you will agree that such changes cannot be achieved by legislation alone. How can people as a whole be encouraged to play the sort of role you envisage in challenging anti-social behaviour?

(Ms Casey) The first thing is just by the very fact that we have published a White Paper and we are doing a Bill and putting some urgency into that has actually been welcomed certainly by the places I have been to in the last few weeks. We think that the Government are putting this subject squarely on the map for the voiceless victims, which is what the people who suffer anti-social behaviour are. They feel that they do not have a voice and that no one is supporting them though they sometimes feel that the local authority housing department or a certain police officer will step in a help. What we will do on the back of the Bill and the White Paper is literally roll forward a programme to encourage people and to say that we are on their side and that we do not expect people to sit in silence any longer having fireworks put through their front door letterbox or having noise played night after night or being racially intimidated day in and day out, and that there are things which we need to get right everywhere. In some places, there are people who can tackle that very well now and, in other places, they are not tackling very well and my job working for ministers and working for the taxpayer is to actually shift a gear up and say, "We are going to do something about this and we can do something about it." On the youth issue, I feel very strongly, having at one time been a volunteer for Centrepoint, that young people are the victims of crime, if you look at the statistics, as much as the perpetrators. In fact, you are more likely, if you are a young man, to be beaten up than you are to beat up somebody else and I think it is really important that the White Paper and what we are doing on anti-social behaviour is about standing up for their rights as young people to live in a society where they are free of being intimidated and bullied and that we are on their side in all of this. What this does is back up the phenomenal, in my view, work that people like Sure Start and also the Youth Justice Board with the whole raft of money that is going into Splash Schemes and all sorts of things, the Children's Green Paper, and all that sort of stuff. We are there for the youth but, as Bob says, there is a line and, at the moment, we do not think that the line is defined clearly enough within the community where people know that, if they step over it, there are going to be consequences and we will support and support and support people up to the hilt in order to try and get families in communities back on track but if young people or their parents or anybody steps over that line, they need to know that the community is going to be supported in taking action against them.

Bob Russell

Minister, would you agree that one of the problems is lack of pride in the community where many of these young people live? Do you think there is a role there for the voluntary sector and the voluntary youth movements in particular? If there is, do you think it would be money well spent if there were financial incentives given to the voluntary youth movements to set up shop in such areas?

(Mr Ainsworth) There is no doubt that there is a lack of pride, and there is a lack of respect and a lack of respect for people's neighbours and the communities within which people live for collective provision. People do not respect public property to anything like the degree we would want them to do and the costs of that are absolutely phenomenal. The costs of just cleaning up street furniture and neighbourhoods, even to the standards that we manage to achieve, is completely and absolutely astronomical. So, yes, we need to turn back some of those issues. Yes, we do need to engage young people positively and give them things to do but, make no mistake about it, we do need to give guidance about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable and we need the support of the community in order to do that. We cannot just have the Police Service on its own trying to do that job. We need the whole of the community to be able to move to a situation where they can begin to input again themselves. They are restricted in their ability to police their own communities because of some of the attitudes that have grown up over a period of time. The attitude towards people who complain about other people's children and the behaviour of other people's children is a lot different to that which it perhaps used to be some time ago. People's confidence to actually engage themselves and people's confidence to try to make a difference has been undermined and undermined over a long period.

To come back to the point, would you not agree that investment in the youth infrastructure, if I can use that term, by either the voluntary sector or the statutory sector, would be money well spent, investing in young people rather than catching up after all the damage and anti-social behaviour has been caused?

(Mr Ainsworth) We need to input early both positively and in terms of setting guidelines of what is acceptable behaviour - I accept that - because people then move on to create bigger problems and to get into criminality; they move from anti-social behaviour into criminality. So, early intervention is absolutely essential.

(Ms Casey) The answer in the White Paper is that we are going to do both. There is £530 million going in and I could sit here and cite chapter and verse of the new money over the last few years that is going into things like the Youth Service - I think £0.5 billion went into the Youth Service last year - and money going into Connections and all those sorts of things. What we both feel is that, even if you put that money in, you still need to know where the enforcement line is. I was in Wythenshawe with one of my colleagues sitting on the back row a couple of weeks ago. We went out with something called Operation Garden City. That is fantastic; it has had money through Splash and through the Youth Service and they have produced this great idea where, every single night of the week in Wythenshawe, there are youth clubs and youth services available - the voluntary sector and church groups as well as the statutory sector. It is not a huge amount but there is something to do in the locality every night. It stands and falls on the fact that the police go out every single night of the week during half term - they do it over Easter and they will be doing it over the summer - and they work in partnership. So, the police go out, approach kids and say, "How come you are here? What time of night is this to be out and about? What are you doing? Have you not been to this tonight? Do you want us to drop you round there?" It works hand-in-hand. Amazingly, crime drops, anti-social behaviour drops and the youth clubs are busy. We visited some of the youth clubs and they are not just helping kids who are committing crime and who are at risk of crime, they are helping kids who are not caught up in anything at all. The Government strategy on youth and the Government strategy on crime therefore is saying that we need to make sure that we are getting the money, the resources and the policy right on youth overall, but we have to make sure - and it is my job and Bob's job to make sure - with anti-social behaviour that we are sorting out the worst excess and that we do make sure that the people at risk of doing it are brought back into line. So, it is the doing of both that is the answer.

Mrs Dean

Minister, what is the estimated number of cases per year in which intensive fostering or fostering on remand will be deemed appropriate?

(Mr Ainsworth) Twenty-six.

(Ms Casey) In the pilots. This a relatively new innovative idea that the Department of Health are leading on. Frankly, I think it is just fantastic if what it does is ensure that families are put back together and kids are basically stopped from committing crime. The idea is to pilot it in about four areas and initially the Department of Health will be funding approximately 26 places. Obviously this is quite a new approach; it is one of the matters in which I am certainly very interested in terms of trying to put top-end support into families and kids. It does not sound a lot but, if we get it right, that will be really, really fantastic.

So that is 26 between the four ...?

(Ms Casey) The four pilot areas.

Do you see any danger in not getting sufficient volunteer foster parents?

(Mr Ainsworth) There is a problem. There is a gap. At the moment, we are approximately 8,000 short of what we need in terms of foster parents nationally. So, yes, we need to grow the number of people who are prepared to do this work for us and we need quality people who are prepared to do this work for us as well if fostering is going to make the contribution that potentially it can.

(Ms Casey) I think the irony is - and I say this as somebody who knows people who are teachers and foster carers - that they would be quite interested in becoming involved in something that is so unusual which is trying to help actually quite damaged individuals and bring them back from the brink and most people in public service get a huge kick out of that. My reading of it is that the irony is that we will probably be okay with the 26 placements. It is if the project gets bigger and bigger and where you are going to need more volunteers. You are quite right to identify a deliverability issue, but let us cross that bridge when we come to it. There is no point in not trying something if we think it will work.

Presumably some of those who are already specialist foster carers will be the ones you would want to recruit to this new scheme.

(Ms Casey) Absolutely.

What is the training and cost implications?

(Ms Casey) It costs around £2,000 a week to foster somebody in this situation. I do know that the Department of Health are doing this very, very carefully, want to make sure that it is done properly and will be very thorough about it.

Chairman

Two thousand pounds a week?

(Ms Casey) Yes.

How is that spent?

(Ms Casey) It is a phenomenally intensive programme. It is probably running the whole four pilots and that is the total average.

(Mr Ainsworth) It is for infrastructure and backup as well as the individual foster.

Two thousand pounds per week per head with 26 cases?

(Ms Casey) I have to say that that is still cheaper than local authority secure units and it is still cheaper than probably other places that you could think of. If we get this right, I know it seems like a lot of money but I could look the taxpayer or a donor for a charity in the eye and say, "If this works, it will be worth it." Think of the investment you are making in the longer term if you keep them out of all those institutions, you get them into jobs and you let them get on with their lives. We have to cut the cycle between people growing up in awful circumstances and going out and doing awful things and we have to try some things.

(Mr Ainsworth) If the root of the behaviour is in the home, then what alternatives do we have? We either leave those people in that home environment, put them into some kind of secure accommodation or we try alternatives like this. In those cases where the root of the behaviour is clearly in the home, why not seek these kind of fostering measures? We are talking about the hardest end of the job here. We are not talking about the kind of job that many foster parents are able to undertake on a regular basis. People will have to be capable of taking on the duties that they are taking on with these kind of individuals about whom we are talking.

Mrs Dean

I think we can understand the value of it, it just seems difficult to understand how the £2,000 is put together.

(Mr Ainsworth) Shall we provide you with some details afterwards as to how we see the costs panning out on this?

Mrs Dean: Yes, that would be useful.

Miss Widdecombe

Are you able to tell us now what part of that is the fee to the foster parents?

(Mr Ainsworth) No, I am sorry.

Chairman: We will come to that later. Mrs Dean has the floor.

Mrs Dean

How will pupils who truant benefit from their parents being fined or imprisoned?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not think we can accept a situation continuing where parents effectively condone - and some do - ongoing truancy. There is a very high incidence of people who are found in the community with their parents who are absent from school without permission. That is something that has grown up and it has to be turned back. Where does the responsibility lie? It does not lie with the child, it lies with the parent, and the parent has to accept the responsibility. There is a duty on the parent to send the child to school when there is not good reason for the child not being at school. There are facilities for schools to allow people time off appropriately, but people just take time off without any consultation and without any notice, sometimes alarmingly often with their parents' consent and approval.

Is it not likely that it will further alienate parents from schools?

(Ms Casey) Again, if you look at what we are trying to do here, the first start is to try and find out why this is happening. So, throughout the White Paper, what we are talking about is parenting contracts, trying to talk to parents about what is going on, trying to offer them support if they need it and getting them to enlist into a contract. We are promoting those very, very strongly at every single stage because the idea of saying, "Yes, I will sign up to getting my kid into school ..." I have met a parent only recently who said that being on a parenting contract made her be able to say to her son, "Listen, I have signed up for this. You are going to get there tomorrow morning. There are no excuses." That is the first start and, at every single level, we are going to try and promote the idea that actually it is better that they just get their kids to school because school is important and, if they do not get to school, they are not going to get on in life. It is very straightforward stuff. They sign up to a contract and move towards parenting orders if that does not happen. Again, it is the line and we think we need to take a stand. Fifty per cent of truants discovered on the street in truancy sweeps all over the country are discovered with adults. So, we know that some of this happening because actually their mothers are lonely or their parents are lonely or feckless, one or the other, and they end up wandering about the day and we cannot let that happen. I know it is unpalatable to some people. There was publicity surrounding a particular case of a woman and her kids going on national TV - I could not believe it - and saying, "If I had not been imprisoned, then I would never have got the message." Actually, in that particular parenting class, they were all talking about that. As somebody who works in the public sector, I do not like that those things have to happen in that way, but if the message gets out that we will take action against people who do not get their kids to school, then I think that tightens things up because tightening things up is what we have to do with this thrust on anti-social behaviour in order that it is understood that there will be consequences for people in society who break the rules and people need to know what those consequences are. So, we will put the support in place and we will put the contracts in place. We are encouraging those all over the place. There are already 4,000 parenting orders that other officials and other ministers and other lives are responsible for that are working very, very well. The Youth Justice Board thinks that parenting classes are the best thing that ever happened. Most of the people who go on these parenting classes say, "I wish you had asked us to do it before. If you had not forced us to do this, we would never have done it." The success rate is phenomenal. It is fine but we need to draw the line and if there are a few FPNs or a few more serious things happen, then we will have to live with that because we need to get the message out that this is not going to happen anymore.

(Mr Ainsworth) And where are we now with truancy? The only deterrent at the end of the day involves tying up the courts' time. The availability of fixed penalties may well bring about effective enforcement in this area and a lot more preparedness to become involved in enforcement than there has been to date.

Are teachers going to be willing to take on the responsibility?

(Mr Ainsworth) We have consulted with people regarding these powers. There is a desire to have easily accessible ability to enforce measures like school attendance and we are not going to get to that situation if people are talking about having to take a case to court. There is not going to be as early intervention as there is going to be if we make fixed penalty notices available and such measures as that. So, I would have thought it would be an aid to people doing their job rather than a deterrent for them doing it.

You mentioned earlier about youth services and the need to provide extra facilities for young people. How much new money is going to be made available for a programme of summer activities and also for the evenings during term time?

(Mr Ainsworth) There are a number of programmes available and I think Louise gave the Committee a figure on the amounts of new money that have gone into programmes over the last couple of years. What we need to ensure is that those programmes are engaging people effectively and engaging the people who are potentially a problem in our community as well. They are sometimes not as well targeted as they ought to be.

Do you have any details of the breakdown of those figures?

(Ms Casey) From April this year, £8.5 million is going into what is now being called positive activities for young people, which is actually trying to bring together - it is one of the joined-up bits - the Department of Education and Skills money, the Home Office money and the Youth Justice Board money. All the different pots that were available to people to undertake youth and summer activities are being brought together into one single pot to make it easier for local authorities and community groups to apply for that money. This is called positive activities for young people and, after April, it will be £8.5 million. In 2003/2004, £513 million has gone into youth services and into local authorities. So, they are quite significant funds in my view.

In terms of looking at sanctions for the most serious cases of youth offenders, in the relatively rare cases where parents refuse to take any responsibility for the behaviour of their children under the age of 16, is it not likely that the family environment is severely dysfunctional?

(Mr Ainsworth) Yes, of course it is. What do you want me to say other than to agree with you?

You have answered the question. If so, is punitive action not likely to make the relationship even worse?

(Mr Ainsworth) If the punitive action is put in place alongside support, then I do not accept that that is so. The alternative is to just allow those situations to continue. What we have to make sure of is that we are not only seeking to punish people but that there are effective measures to help them get over the problems that have developed over a period of time. If they flatly refuse to engage with any of those, then, yes, there has to be a punitive side. I would suggest that there have often been the support mechanisms there and available but the kind of families at the most severe end about whom we are talking are just not prepared to engage and they are not prepared to pick up the services that are there and available for them. So, we need both. We need the support mechanisms to be available, but then we need powers to oblige people to become involved with them. If, at the end of the day, they are not prepared to do so under any circumstances, then action needs to be taken rather than just to allow a situation to continue.

Bob Russell

Minister, I understand that the existing powers for dealing with excessive noise give local authorities the power to issue a fixed penalty notice of £100. I wonder whether, although that obviously will be warmly welcomed, local authorities will be given the resources and financial support to undertake that additional work because one assumes that there will have to be officers available in the evenings and in the early hours of the day.

(Mr Ainsworth) We have been talking to local authorities about these powers and they are powers that local authorities want in themselves. Obviously they would like moneys to go with them and we are still considering with DEFRA what moneys are attached to these powers, but the powers in themselves will make a local authority's job more effective and make local authorities able to respond to the needs of their community.

Who will get the fine money?

(Mr Ainsworth) The fine money is for ...?

The fixed penalty of £100 for late night noise? Who will actually get the money when the fines are imposed?

(Mr Ainsworth) This is a matter that is still under discussion at the moment.

Would you not agree with me that unless local authorities are given the financial resources to implement this, this will be nothing more than just a headline-grabbing statement and that there will not be anything there of substance?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not accept that. There are local authorities who want effective powers to be able to apply their priorities in dealing with their communities. Local authorities are local government; they are not local administration. They can apply their resources where they see fit within certain statutory requirements that there are upon them to meet local needs. So, they want the powers themselves but, yes, we would like to see incentivisation of the use of these powers by local authorities and others and that is an issue that we are discussing with the Government.

I sincerely hope that there will be additional financial resources because otherwise I do not think that many local authorities would be able to go down that path other than by cutting something else.

(Ms Casey) At the moment, 80 per cent of local authorities already provide out-of-hours noise nuisance services of one kind or another. Obviously we would like to close that gap but 80 per cent is not bad. The streamlining of what we are doing in the White Paper will make it quite clear that there is a ten minute warning and, if you do not do it, then a fixed penalty notice will be issued. Discussion is taking place as to who will keep the money from those fixed penalty notices. Obviously DEFRA and ourselves are keen that local authorities retain that money or at least some of it, but the main thing is to have a clear process that is simple, effective and straightforward and certainly some of the environmental officers who do this think this is probably no bad idea.

(Mr Ainsworth) Local authorities can only use the powers that we have given at the moment where they are providing a round-the-clock service. That was put in place in order to try and encourage them to do that, but it is not appropriate for every local authority the length and breadth of the country to provide such a service. In the White Paper, what we are doing is giving them the powers even where they do not believe that it is appropriate to provide such a service. So, potentially we are saving money for local authorities in that area. There is no requirement on them to provide that round-the-clock service and yet have access to the kind of powers to shut down places that are emitting noise.

I appreciate the answers and certainly the measures will be welcomed but it is the implementation that we will have to watch and see how it happens. If I may now move on to fireworks. What is the problem with the current regulatory regime dealing with fireworks?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not know what your postbag has been like over the last few months from 5 November going right through to Christmas, but there is a deep dissatisfaction with the level of regulation that is in place with regard to fireworks. We have given a commitment to support the measures that are in the private sector Bill at the moment and I hope that they will bring about tighter regulation. We believe that they are justified and we believe that they will be widely welcomed.

Certainly, Minister, my postbag would support that statement. What is the timetable you are looking at in the year when fireworks would be permitted?

(Mr Ainsworth) We have not worked up the detail of that. Obviously we do not want to restrict different communities who have different occasions which they celebrate. The obvious one that springs to mind is Diwali which usually falls fairly close to 5 November, so there is no problem there. We do not want to restrict different cultural activities, but what we do want to do is to relieve people from the constant noise 24 hours a day and throughout the year.

Again, I think that is a move that will be welcomed. Minister, the current Fireworks Bill is a Private Member's Bill. Should that not proceed, is it the Government's intention to take on the measures that are contained in that Private Member's Bill?

(Mr Ainsworth) We totally support the Private Member's Bill and will do everything that we can in order to put it on the statute book.

Moving on to airguns, a subject on which the Chairman is particularly keen, as indeed I am and that has nothing to do with the fact that, a month ago, I had an airgun pellet fired through my constituency office windows, it is just one of those unfortunate coincidences that happen -

(Mr Ainsworth) It sharpens the mind though, does it not?

It does. Minister, you propose to ban ownership of airguns by people under the age of 17. Why not a total ban on airgun ownership or at least a licensing system for all airguns?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not think that a total ban is proportionate to the problem that we have. Overwhelmingly, the anti-social behaviour that is committed with airguns is committed by young people sadly. We are talking about overwhelmingly 14, 15 and 16 year olds and that is one of the reasons for us looking to raise the age limit from 14 to 17. One of the other reasons is just to try and simplify the regulations in this area. We have a situation where people are allowed to purchase an airgun at 17 and are allowed to own one at 14. I have yet to hear any kind of an argument that would convince me that somebody in their own right should be allowed to own what is potentially a lethal weapon at the age of 14. Nobody has put such an argument to me, so I think we can simplify the age range and lift the age at which someone can own an air rifle to 17. It is not the only measure we propose to take. We ruled out a licensing system on the recommendation overwhelmingly of the police. I know that there are police officers in localities who have campaigned such a registration/certification system for air rifles, but that is not the view of the police when you talk to them and I have talked extensively with APO over the late summer on this issue. They are hugely worried about the costs of an effective regulation system. If we had some kind of a light touch regulation system, what are we achieving? We are putting something in that gives us comfort politically that says we brought a registration scheme in but we are not effectively controlling who has an air rifle, in what circumstances they are keeping it and whether or not they are using it in the correct way. If we put the kind of regime into place that exists for firearms, shotguns and the like, then we are talking about a lot of police time and potentially a great deal of bureaucracy. We estimate that there are around four to six million air rifles in this country. So, the police pushed/encouraged us down the line of, let us try to deal with the abuse rather than the use, and that is what we are trying to do. At the moment, the police actually have to catch somebody in the act of firing an air rifle in order to be able to do anything about it. That discourages them from trying to do anything in this area and it is so difficult for them. So, by giving the police the power to take action against people who are in possession of an air rifle in a public place, by giving them a usable tool, they ought to be able to deal with some of the problems we see in our neighbourhoods.

On the assumption that the misuse is more of an urban problem than a rural one - and you have just used the term "public place" and, as I understand it, the terminology is "without lawful authority or reasonable excuse" - first of all, what is the definition of a public place and how are you going to define reasonable excuse?

(Mr Ainsworth) The reasonable excuse is, in the first instance, whether or not a constable can be persuaded that the person has an air rifle in the circumstances in which they have it with good reason. If they are on the way to a shooting event or if they have just bought the rifle from a shop up the road, then they have good reason to have it. If they are out in the neighbourhood and they are unable to explain where they are going or why they have a rifle with them, then clearly they have not. Subsequently, if the constable chooses to take action, it will be a matter for the courts to decide whether or not the confiscation and the arrest that took place was reasonable. It keeps on getting thrown up that we are dealing with an urban problem here. I do not believe that we are dealing with an urban problem here. I may represent an urban constituency, but I live on the edge of the city and let me tell you that problems with airguns in rural situations are pretty strong. People going round shooting wildlife, frightening the living daylights out of other people and often taking potshots at them as well are all too common, I am afraid. So, these occur in rural areas as well as urban areas. This is not simply an urban problem. Some of the most horrendous circumstances that have been highlighted in the press have been in urban situations.

What would be the definition of a public place, in a farmer's field?

(Mr Ainsworth) Private land is private land. A public place is anywhere which can be accessed by the public. So, public footpaths, public rights of way, canal towpaths, streets, common land, all of that is a public place.

Is there anything in the existing legislation or in your proposed legislation which deals with a person firing out of their back bedroom window in a terraced neighbourhood area?

(Mr Ainsworth) That is already an offence. Anybody who fires an air rifle outside the curtilage of the private property commits an offence.

But, if they are firing at cans at the bottom of their garden, that is within their own private property.

(Mr Ainsworth) It is.

So that would not be an offence.

(Mr Ainsworth) Let me be honest with the Committee. This is the most difficult area where we find the interface between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. There are circumstances where people would be firing on private land where really we do not want to impose the law in those circumstances. It would be very good to be able to find some kind of way that we could bring nuisance and fear into that situation, but it is very difficult to do so. If people are endangering others and if they are intimidating others, then they are already committing an offence. Whether or not you want to bring that further to cover the situation where someone is firing at tin cans at the bottom of the garden, if it is entirely within their own private land and they are not causing a nuisance or frightening anyone else, then I would not want to take action. It is whether or not we could actually bring nuisance into that situation and that is the interface between what we want to effect and what we do not want to effect and to see how we could legislation that area is most difficult.

I will leave it there, Minister, and ask that perhaps your colleagues look to see whether something could be looked at because I think that is where one of the major problems happens in an urban neighbourhood where the neighbourhood is rightly concerned even though the shooting is allegedly being confined within that person's back garden.

(Mr Ainsworth) What we do not want to do or what I do not want to do - other people may well take a different view - is to stop people from using air rifles on private land where they are not creating a nuisance to anyone else. I do not want to do that.

I will move on to my final question which is, why have you opted for a complete ban on the import, sale and manufacture of self-contained air cartridge systems rather than simply imposing an effective licensing regime?

(Mr Ainsworth) We have not done this lightly. We have been working on this issue for some time now. We have been working with the manufacturers as well. I have no criticism to make of the manufacturers but the self-contained airgun system is of the kind of construction that is very easily convertible into a full-blown firearm and I am afraid all the evidence is that too often these weapons are converted. The manufacturers have been working and we have had the Forensic Science Service trying to find a way of rendering this system usable without being convertible and I am afraid that we have not been able to do that. With the manufacturers' assistance, we simply have not been able to do that. The incidence of problems that we have had are quite substantial. The converted Brococks have been used to commit between 50 and 60 unsolved murders and attempted murders since May 2001 and ten solved murders and attempted murders where the Brococks was the weapon that had been used. So, overwhelmingly, conversions that were legal in their unconverted state are this system. There are other conversions around; they are illegal prior to conversion; they have been illegal imports. The legal import that is creating the most problem in terms of being converted and then used in crime is the Brococks and we simply have not been able to put, with the help of the Forensic Science Service, a technical fix into that.

Mr Singh

Minister, you have mentioned the Fireworks Bill in very positive terms. I expect it to the a DTI measure or to come under the DTI and, in that context, what input is the Home Office having into that Bill and, secondly, are there any freestanding measures in this Bill in any case which would deal with the problem of nuisance caused by fireworks?

(Mr Ainsworth) There are no proposals within the anti-social behaviour Bill to deal with fireworks. Obviously, if we ran into difficulties with the Private Member's Bill, then we would have to find ways of enacting the powers that there are within that. Yes, it was sponsored by the DTI but the anti-social behaviour White Paper makes it clear that we want to support the measures that are in the Bill and that we will give it our full support. Hopefully, it will be given passage through the House in its current form or some amended form in Committee that improves it. I think that it does have widespread support in the House on all benches, so hopefully we will not have to bring it within Government legislation and it will go through as a Private Member's Bill.

Given the experience that the Home Office has of anti-social behaviour and the consultation that has been taking place on this, will we get the right measures in that Bill that are regulatory rather than specific?

(Mr Ainsworth) If there are proposals for amendments, we will obviously be looking at them and having our input into them and try to assist in any way that we can.

(Ms Casey) The whole topic of fireworks is a huge issue for us in the anti-social behaviour unit in that it is a cause of an enormous number of complaints and actually quite a lot of fear from the public, particularly people having fireworks thrown at them which is already a criminal offence. We have been promoting the use of FPNs, which is not new and therefore is not in the Bill but it is in the White Paper.

Chairman

Just spell out what an FPN is.

(Mr Ainsworth) A fixed penalty notice.

(Ms Casey) A fixed penalty notice as an effective way for dealing with the low-level throwing of fireworks, but we are going to look at that again. Ministers were very, very clear, as Bob said, that we need to make sure that the Fireworks Bill goes through and, if it does not, we need to take action and make sure that we get what we need because it is going to be quite an important part of what certainly I feel responsible for in the next couple of years and we have to crack this whole fireworks topic. They are amazingly annoying to the public and people feel very frightened of them. They are 50 pence a shot to make a phenomenal amount of noise at the moment and we need to stop that now. So, we are absolutely clear that it is a major priority for us to get this sorted.

Chairman: There was a major fireworks display in my street just after midnight on Saturday.

Miss Widdecombe

Can I turn now to crack houses and your proposal to close down crack houses within 48 hours and then indeed to seal the premises for six months. I am delighted to see that the police are at long last going to be able to do with crack houses what they have been able to do with opium dens for some years. Nevertheless, there are obviously very practical considerations. The first is how you are going to identify those houses and the second is, what are the grounds of proof that you are going to require that Class A drugs have actually been sold or used there?

(Mr Ainsworth) I think it is reasonable grounds to suspect by a senior police officer, not by a constable. It is a senior police officer - I think it is an inspector - who has reasonable grounds to suspect that there is dealing in Class A drugs.

So he does not have to have proof, he has to have reasonable grounds to suspect and he can then close it down.

(Mr Ainsworth) He has to have reasonable grounds to suspect to issue the notice in the first place. Obviously, he has to go before the court within 48 hours and justify it.

You are then going to seal it up for six months. If you consider what very often happens with crack houses, which is that vulnerable people find their premises taken over and they are intimidated into going along with it, sealing up those premises is obviously going to have very grave consequences for them. Secondly, we know that an awful lot of this dealing, certainly not exclusively but an awful lot of it, takes place in council estates and you would effectively be sealing up a local authority home for six months which I do not think would go down terribly well. Can you just comment on that.

(Mr Ainsworth) I think it is going to be a problem but nothing like the problem that is caused by the existence of these premises in the first place. I have seen circumstances - and, by the sound of things, you are aware of circumstances as well - where the existence of a crack house can cause total mayhem in practically empty half the street or a large part of a block of flats because of the nuisance and the mayhem that emits from it. What is needed is swift, effective measures. We can take measures against crack houses but they take far too long to enact. Substantial amounts of money can be made in these endeavours over relatively short periods of time and what the police have been after for a long time is quick, effective measures to take over premises, to close them down, to prevent the dealing and to prevent the profit making that is going on. So, yes, there are consequences and we will have to be able to pick up circumstances of homelessness that may arise as a result of that, but the benefit to the immediate neighbourhood that would result from swift measures will far outweigh the problems that will arise as a result of having to deal with - and you are right - often vulnerable people who have sometimes been driven out of their house by the people who are making money.

Sealing up premises for a certain period of time I do not disagree with. I just wonder whether six months is a sensible period in some circumstances.

(Mr Ainsworth) It is up to six months; we can always review it. If people can be satisfied that it is not going to reopen ... Half of the problem of what we have at the moment is that people take effective measures and, a couple of days later, the same activities are going on in the same premises.

That was the point I wanted to come to. Would it not be better to concentrate on dealing with the users and the sellers rather than dealing specifically just with the premises because, you are quite right, if you take action against premises and then you move out, another lot of dealers and users come in, but that would give you your opportunity to tackle them as well. What is going to happen if you simply close off the premises is that those dealers and users will go somewhere else. I am really trying to ask you if you are focusing on the dealers and users or just on the premises.

(Mr Ainsworth) We have no desire to let up on the dealers at all, but practical policing difficulties in actually shutting down crack houses are quite severe. They dispose of evidence. There are security measures that are taken on the premises themselves and, by the time the police manage to gain access, it is impossible to identify who is the user and who is the dealer. This is not seen as an alternative to getting the addicts into treatment, it has to be denying the market to the dealers and taking effective action against the suppliers of the drug. It seems complementary to those and I do not want anybody to believe that we ought to be letting up in any way in taking action against the dealers or getting the users into treatment.

They way they tackle this in New York, if I may be so bold as to mention New York, is that they take out the dealers and the users. They know that they will be replaced in very short order. They take out the replacements and they take out those replacements five or six times - you are right, it is police intensive but it is worth it at the end of it - and, in the end, the message goes out that that area is too hot to deal with. So, not only then do those very specific premises get left alone but the area actually tends to get left alone. What I am really trying to press you on is, do you not think that might be a better way to tackle this?

(Mr Ainsworth) I think that is a highly appropriate way of tackling it and that is what we tried to do over last summer with a high degree of success in the Lambeth area in London where the police really got their act together and shut a large number of crack houses in that immediate vicinity over a period of some months and sent the very clear message out to the dealers, "Do not come into this area if you want to deal in crack cocaine." I do not want to discourage that kind of operation at all. That in itself is not a solution because there can be a tendency to displace, so we need to work across boundaries and we need to try to identify the layers of traffickers who are supplying the frontline dealers as well, but we do need to have effective measures that bring relief and quick relief to people who are suffering the kind of mayhem that these establishments can bring to their locality. So, I want it to be complementary. I do not want it to be an alternative to the kind of effective policing that you are encouraging us to stay engaged in.

If I can move on to graffiti and litter. I am going to ask a question which sounds almost too simplistic but it is really to explore the feasibility. Why not ban the sale of spray-paints outright except to individuals who need them for specific and proven purposes?

(Mr Ainsworth) There are many uses for spray-paints and I do not think we would feel that a total ban on spray-paints to include adults as well was proportionate to the problem that we had. Although it is a very significant problem, spray-paints are one of the most commonly-used tools in the kind of graffiti that we are all trying to clamp down on. It is just the proportionality of it, I think.

I thought you would say that. Did you look at doing it that way?

(Mr Ainsworth) Having taken responsibility for the Bill last week, I could not really say. Did we look at at?

(Ms Casey) The Government published their Living Places, Powers, Rights and Responsibilities in October. They looked at all these things. I think the main thrust for us in anti-social behaviour is that it is our job to tackle the abuses, not necessarily the uses of lots of things. So, for us, it is, who is abusing the use of spray-paint and who is abusing, something you were talking about earlier, fireworks, guns and firearms? It is for us to tackle the abuse and not necessarily to wade in and say that we are stopping this. That is why we are interested in this particular aspect because we know the people who abuse it, we know what we therefore want to do about it and we are therefore putting a measure in place to try and sort it out.

Can we move from spray-paint to litter. What about sanctions against local authorities who fail in their duty to tackle litter, specifically inner cities and, for that matter, along the verges? What about other countries, many of which do not seem to have this problem? How do they tackle it?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not know what we looked at in terms of other jurisdictions.

Did you take a look at Singapore?

(Ms Casey) I too have come relatively early to this. DEFRA have looked very thoroughly and they have produced a very comprehensive document and they are consulting and the consultation finished relatively recently. Our view is that, on the whole, local authorities around the country are fairly inspected, fairly audited and there are lots of mechanisms in place to see whether they are doing a good job or not and actually, at the end of the day, people vote for their local councillors as to whether they think they are doing a good or bad job. They look at what is happening on their streets in terms of litter and they make up their minds whether the local authorities are doing a good or a bad job. At the moment, local authorities are actually clamouring to have more powers and to be able to issue more FPNs to tackle not only littering and dog-fouling but other issues such as vandalism, fly-posting and graffiti. They want these powers and they want to be able to do more in respect of these things. So, it is not as if they are sitting there saying, "We must leave it all because we cannot do anything about it", they actually want to do more.

(Mr Ainsworth) I think that we have to give them an effective suite of powers before we can start criticising them for not using them.

Nevertheless, where a local authority fails in its duty, what about sanctions? That is the question. You can tell me that they have all the goodwill in the world and that everybody has a remedy and a valid one, but that does not quite answer the question.

(Mr Ainsworth) Having listened to local authorities about what the barriers are to taking effective measures in this area and having tried to provide them with the tools to take those effective measures, that is something that maybe we would want to look at some time in the future if we saw a situation where there was no interest in dealing with the problem, but that is not our analysis of it at the moment. Our analysis of it at the moment is that we are not giving local authorities the effective tools to deal with litter and that is what we are trying to do.

Do you know why the British are so dirty when it comes to litter?

(Mr Ainsworth) I think it is an attitude that builds up accumulatively over a period of time. If a neighbourhood is clean, if its graffiti-free and if it is litter-free, then people tend to have respect for it and we do not see people doing the kind of things we are talking about. If you are the only one who is paying any respect for the local area or if it is completely strewn with rubbish and no one else appears to be the slightest bit bothered and if there is graffiti everywhere, then that undermines the values that we need in order for other people to comply with good behaviour. So, we have to get from where we are to where we want to be and where some people would say that we were some time ago.

Can we now come to fly-tipping. You want to transfer the authority for dealing with it from the Environment Agency to local authorities. Why will they be more effective? Is the level of fines sufficient? Is not the very nature of fly-tipping the fact that people do not actually do it either in the view of the local authority or the Environment Agency? Typically, a farmer will come down in the morning and find that somebody has tipped a whole lot of stuff by one of his gates overnight. That is how it is done. What is going to be the virtue - and I am not opposed to it, I just want to explore your thinking - of moving responsibility to local authorities and are they not also sometimes themselves responsible for fly-tipping because of the huge restrictions they put on for the use of municipal rubbish dumps such as height entry, for example?

(Mr Ainsworth) My understanding is that we are not seeking to transfer it; we are seeking to give them the same powers, and we are seeking to involve local authorities to give them the same ability to investigate fly-tipping and take action against it. It is a real nuisance. Local authorities do want to be involved in dealing with this problem. I see no reason in trying to engage and involve them. I think that will only strengthen our ability to deal with the problem. In terms of height restrictions and the rest, I am not at all sure. The problem I have come across is the attempt to distinguish between the commercial tipping and the private. They are looking to do that where they believe people ought to be paying for what is a business activity. There are businesses that then behave badly and abuse the environment by dumping their rubbish, but the local authorities are seeking to provide free facilities for members of the community and not necessarily free facilities in support of businesses.

Until Kent changed their rules it was the same with us. People are seeking to dump huge amounts of refuge either in Land Rovers or people carriers, or some vehicle of that sort, and find that height restrictions which are supposed to discourage small vans actually hit ordinary domestic users. So what do they do? The very responsible will pay to have it taken away and the others will find somewhere to tip it.

(Mr Ainsworth) Absolutely.

Fixed Penalty Notices - will they be applied to fly-tipping?

(Mr Ainsworth) Why not? Why only the power to go to court with all of the rigmarole where it is appropriate. Let us give people a good instant remedy.

(Ms Casey) On fly-tipping we are considering whether local authorities want or will get the fly-tipping Fix Penalty Notice. The Local Government Association in particular have pushed very, very hard to have the same power as the Environment Agency in order to go for low level small scale fly-tipping. The LGA lobbied us quite hard to include that in here, rather than wait for the outcome of all the other livability stuff.

Alongside the penalties for fly-tipping, will there be any endeavour to improve the clearing up, particularly where there is dumping on private land? There is sometimes quite a tussle between, typically, a farmer, although it can be some other owner, and the local council as to who is responsible for a completely illegal dump that can sometimes take place on an unbelievable scale.

(Mr Ainsworth) We are giving local authorities the power, where it is necessary, to clean up private land and to charge the landowner.

The landowner?

(Mr Ainsworth) Yes.

Bad luck on him!

(Mr Ainsworth) There are circumstances where there are pieces of private land which are a total and absolute tip over a long, long period of time and there is no commitment from the landowner to clear it.

(Ms Casey) I should not have moved so fast over the Living Places consultation document that came out in October. It is huge and massive, and obviously we had to pull out of that some particular issues that are related to anti-social behaviour - hence they are in the White Paper, and some of those measures will be in the Bill. There is much broader consideration given to all those sorts of issues, including the very nutty one of fly-tipping, about which there is quite a large consultation going on; and I do not think we should preempt the outcome of some of that. I wanted to get certain things in this Bill and in this White Paper which are actually tackling the abuses; but Living Places is where a lot of that debate is happening at the moment.

Mr Watson

Firstly, Minister, could I say that if you did want to apply a Singapore-style solution to litter and chewing gum in Sandwell you would have the full support of the citizens of West Bromwich - well, 99.9 per cent! Could I take you on to begging. You will not be surprised to know we have had quite a few submissions from homeless charities on this. They have said to us that, given the strong correlation between homelessness and drug and alcohol addiction in particular, there seems little point in further criminalising homeless people. What would you have to say about that?

(Mr Ainsworth) It is precisely because of that that we are taking the measures we are seeking to take in the Bill. What do we do at the moment? We have had all this press speculation about the fact that we are criminalising begging. Begging is already a criminal offence. What sanctions are there for people? We fine them. That sounds particularly productive to me. We can have a clampdown in a particular area and what do we do? We move those people to another area; and the only sanction there is to take them to the court and seek to fine them for money they have not got; or if they have got it they get rid of it in the overwhelming majority of cases. What we are proposing to do is to make begging a recordable offence so that we can keep track of the system of begging; and, where persistent begging is taking place, we can have effective interventions to actually help people. There are some incredible figures in this area - and I am not talking about alcohol - 86 per cent of begging is drug-related according to the information I have got. That is an astonishing figure. Unless we have got it as a recordable offence how can we track those people who have that problem; how can we put into place an effective sentencing regime that gets them the treatment and the help they need? We certainly do not do it under the current regime to anything like the extent that we ought to. We are at one with the people who are saying, "Yes, this needs to be dealt with and the underlying causes need to be dealt with", but the legal framework needs to be there and needs to be made available in order to allow us to get at those underlying causes.

The Chief Executive of Crisis was extremely concerned about the number of available places for people to take drug treatment. To what extent are you convinced that those places will be available immediately the courts have intervened?

(Mr Ainsworth) I cannot tell you that they are there now; but what I can tell you is what I have told lots and lots of people over a period of time, that we are growing the treatment capacity in this country as fast as we possibly can. It is not just a case of throwing money at it. There is a lot of money in the updated drugs strategy, and there is a lot of money in the treatment segment of the updated drugs strategy. We need today the quality and quantity of people; we need manpower. We are growing the treatment sector. We are seeking substantial decreases in waiting times for access to treatment. Yes, sadly, there is still the odd horror story knocking around where people are waiting for treatment for appallingly long periods of time, and that is always going to be so. There is always going to be the odd instance where people slip through where the provision simply is not there. There is a very substantial growth in treatment going on - about eight per cent a year. We are driving down those waiting times but we need the criminal justice interventions in order to encourage people to engage with that treatment as well. That is not only beggars, that is other people too; where we are seeking to use the criminal justice system to get people into treatment, yes, to coerce people into treatment; and this is just another aspect of it.

You would not foresee a situation where those chaotic drug users - who are homeless and then end up having been recorded for their offences of homelessness or aggressive begging - go through all that system and are then left without a treatment place available. Will they be fast-tracked in some way?

(Mr Ainsworth) The treatment has got to be there. What we do not want to do is to totally distort the treatment so that the only way you get treatment is by committing a offence. We need access through the criminal justice system into effective treatment, where we have got DTTOs (at the top level) as an alternative to prison. If people are prepared to engage with drug-testing and treatment orders then magistrates are able to put them into such a regime, monitor them, check on any breaches that they have, and go back to the original custodial sentence if they think it is appropriate if there is a breach. We are looking to bring in a lower level of DTTO, a community sentence that gives sentencers the ability to give people access to treatment as their punishment effectively, and monitor their engagement with treatment as part of that. Yes, it is absolutely essential that be provided.

Mr Singh

At the end of the meeting I hope somebody tells me what does happen in Singapore. Minister, I understand that if a family is evicted because of anti-social behaviour it can be regarded as intentionally homeless, and the local authority does not then have a duty to rehouse them. Given that most of these families will be highly dysfunctional and vulnerable, what happens to them? Is there any agency which takes responsibility for housing them?

(Mr Ainsworth) We do not get to that point at day one. We only get to that point having tried consistently to help, to input and, yes, to take sanctions against people. At the end of the day, while that is a very difficult situation, just leaving those circumstances to continue and sending a message to them that they can behave as they wish and nothing can be done in those extreme circumstances is not the message we are prepared to send. At the end of the day, where people have flatly refused to engage, yes, we have got to be prepared to take very tough action against them.

I understand that. I understand the motive behind that. What happens to them? Where do they end up?

(Ms Casey) Housing is my background so I can cover this. Essentially there is a process. First up, the family you are referring to is not new to a lot of the services that are involved. You are probably looking at a situation where the housing officers have already done something like taking out an injunction against them. This is not new. Anti-social behaviour contracts are in place trying to get people alongside to modify the behaviour that is not improving, and so on and so forth. You are actually talking about quite a limited number of families. The reason we decided in the Homelessness Act 2002 to tighten up on this was because a lot of people were tired of those same families just basically sticking two fingers up in the air to the authorities and then getting rehoused, knowing full well that they did not have to face any consequences for their behaviour at all. On the back of that change (and in the Anti-Social Behaviour White Paper it is flagged very hard ) what we want to do throughout all those processes is make it absolutely clear to people - from warnings, to injunctions, to acceptable behaviour contracts, to support (and that is one of the things we will have to put in place in the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit and we have mentioned it in this report and people talk about it all the time) - that here is a place called the Dundee Family Project, and there are a number of these projects around the country which basically say, "This is your point of no return. You are about to get evicted. You can get help now. We will help you. We will help you as much as we possibly can, but you have to modify your behaviour. You have to change the way you are behaving". If that does not work - if they apply as homeless and are found intentionally homeless - the local authority then has quite a lot of discretion. Advice and assistance is the minimum duty that any local authority has to a family in this situation. They can house them temporarily in a hostel, or they can discharge their duty and say, "That's it". Hence we want to look at what happens when people move into the private rented sector. What concerns us is making sure the children are okay in that process. It is making sure that the children are not facing difficulties. Everything that can be done will be done. You are talking about a very small number of families. If we left here now and went into any local authority housing department within striking distance of this building, they could probably name the families you are talking about. You are not talking about hundreds and thousands of families, you are talking about a few people where we need to get right in there with support and right in there with enforcement. We know that the consequences might be, as a worst case scenario, that some of those kids get taken into care. Again, at the moment we know if we get the enforcement right, and we get the support right, most of the time those sorts of things do not happen. It is amazing to me that the clearer people are about what happens in this scenario, the fact is when you turn up to the family with a police officer, housing officer and their social worker and say, "If this doesn't stop this is what's going to happen to you", that works most of the time. If one of those people go alone then they are played off against each other. The police officer is told, "It's a hardship case. I'm really all over the place and Social Services don't help me". Social Services turn up and they say, "The police officers are just going for my Johnny all the time. They're a complete nightmare. They're harassing us". The housing officer turns up, often the butt of no return because they are the person who has to manage the estate, and they get told everything about everything. What we have found is that the good practice authorities come together and those visits, injunctions and warnings are phenomenally powerful in reducing the number of people you actually have to take enforcement action against. We are clear in the White Paper and we are clear across government that there are consequences, and eviction is one of them.

There is a new part to demote tenants from secure tenancies to probationary tenancies. A) why do we need that measure, what is the thinking behind it? B) who decides on their demotion? C) will tenants have a right to appeal against it?

(Ms Casey) Yes, tenants have the right to appeal. My ex-colleagues in ODPM have worked very hard on this package of measures and I am enormously grateful to them for allowing us to put them in here and crack on with them, because I think they are really good. Local authorities will have to pull evidence together; to be honest, it is not that difficult to do. As with everything in local government, they can be judicially reviewed at any stage. All the homelessness decisions I referred to earlier can be judicially reviewed, and these sorts of decisions can. The reason I think it is a really effective tool is because effectively you are saying, "Look, we're now saying to you if you don't modify your behaviour you're going to go on the probationary tenancy. Going on a probationary tenancy actually means if we move towards eviction we can do it more speedily". Yes, they can be appealed at this stage, but it still speeds things up. There are too many places around the country where the public and communities have to wait for eviction proceedings to go over years. This nightmare is happening day in and day out. We are not prepared to let that go on and on unaccounted for. Again, it is a supportive measure, because it is not saying, "We're going to evict you"; it is saying, "This is the consequence of your behaviour. You're not going to lose your home if you change your behaviour. You will lose things like right to buy. It normally takes months to get you out, but you'll be on an assured short tenancy. We're not going to make you homeless, but we're putting another step in the way". We are putting another step in the way which is between, "You're in complete mess-up mode and you're going to be evicted. We're going to demote your tenancy and see how that runs. If you sort yourself out you're back on a secure tenancy again. We'll help you sort yourselves out. If you don't sort yourselves out we'll move to the next stage".

(Mr Ainsworth) In this area, and in others, warnings are often ignored. We wind up with people who have come to the end of the process. When we start dealing with them they have had heaven knows how many warnings they have not paid any attention to, and this is a warning with teeth that could maybe prevent further action.

Is it a final warning?

(Mr Ainsworth) Not necessarily, but it clears the way for eviction, for possession, far easier if further action is necessary. It is a warning with teeth, if you like, because people can see the consequences of having crossed this line.

The writing is on the wall?

(Mr Ainsworth) The writing is on the wall.

(Ms Casey) In neon lights - it is on the wall.

(Mr Ainsworth) But not in spray paint!

There is a proposal that social landlords will have to publish their policies and procedures on anti-social behaviour. The Law Society wants them to record complaints relating to such behaviour and monitor any actions they take to resolve problems. Is that something you would consider? The Law Society wants social landlords to record the actions they are taking on anti-social behaviour and not just publish their procedures?

(Ms Casey) That is absolutely right. Colleagues in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister have been involved in that and have been promoting that. I know people wonder why we think they should be published. I just think this is about getting people to be accountable. It is about them being accountable to their tenants, and their tenants being accountable for their behaviour. That is why this is critical. Given that so much council stock has been transferred out to housing associations and residential social landlords, we feel it is time to make sure that everybody is clear about what we think are the responsibilities in terms of their tenants, and how we think they should be disposed.

(Mr Ainsworth) The publishing is not just for information about those who are likely to wind up being confronted by action, it is about trying to make local authorities and social landlords accountable to the wider community. Publish what you are supposed to be doing, so that we can see what you are doing alongside what you are supposed to be doing. That is the motive behind obliging them to publish their policies.

How big is the problem of "rogue" landlords who are content, let us say, to draw housing benefits but turn a complete blind eye to the behaviour of their tenants, and take no responsibility whatsoever for it? Is that a major problem which is going to be tackled?

(Mr Ainsworth) I could say, "Ask your Chairman", who has been on this before for a very long time. Yes, it is a very real problem in many localities, where we wind up with landlords who are happy to take the rent and are not the slightest bit interested in dealing with the behaviour of the people who they rent their properties to. The blight which that can cause is huge.

That is private owners as well, not just local authorities, is it not?

(Mr Ainsworth) Yes.

The new licensing arrangements in the Housing Bill mean that in future private landlords will be held accountable for rubbish dumped by their tenants. Is that something that will be easy to enforce? I can see all kinds of difficulties in proving who is dumping rubbish, and whether it is their tenant or somebody else.

(Mr Ainsworth) It is about obliging landlords to have reasonable tenancy agreements in the first place and to expect decent and reasonable behaviour from the people they rent to, and then effectively enforcing the tenancy agreements that they have got. What we do not want is landlords in some circumstances where they just walk away from any responsibility for what goes on in property that they own, from which they are taking an income. They are not entitled to do that. The responsibility does not lie wholly and solely with the tenant; they have responsibilities too.

One problem which is not addressed in this Bill, but you may have some knowledge about it, is that we agree if areas go downhill it is likely that anti-social behaviour increases. I have been faced with a problem where on some streets there are houses which are empty, nobody knows who owns them, nobody can be held to account to repair them, those properties decay, get infected with vermin and actually bring the area down. Are there any proposals to tackle that problem?

(Ms Casey) That is why the job goes once you have published White Papers and got Bills through Parliament. Essentially, there are lots of schemes around the country, and there is one in Gateshead, where they already manage their private landlords fairly effectively, but it is voluntary. The landlords who want to be part of it take part, and they manage their tenants well and they keep on top of it. We know how that can be done. It is not hugely bureaucratic, difficult and all the rest of it. You know when landlords are on top of their property, or not. If they opt into the system it can work incredibly well. What we want to do here, using the Housing Bill, is actually give local authorities the ability to make that happen, rather than be a voluntary thing. The reason I think the Anti-Social White Paper is so important is because anti-social behaviour is everybody's responsibility and nobody's responsibility. It is one of those weird ones. Everybody has an interest in it, and a few people will sometimes be accountable for it. What we are trying to do here, and what we will do in practice on the ground, is pull this together using local authorities and the police so that they will have a view on that. For instance, the East Manchester NDC will know exactly what those properties are. What we want to do is give them the power here to be able to sort those sorts of things out. You do it on a case-by-case, area-by-area basis. Anti-social behaviour is not rife everywhere. Not everybody behaves anti-socially. You go into particular areas, you sit down with the community and they say there are three or four families creating a nightmare, or there are one or two kinds, or five empty properties with one landlord who is feckless and not keeping it in place, but the hundred other landlords are doing a damn good job. You have got to get some proportion here. What we are asking local authorities and the police to do, with our support and help, is actually look at how that is working on the ground, be on top of their area, and in some areas of the country people do it really well. It is not all bleak. There are people around the country who know how to tackle this; know how to get on top of landlords but could do with some more powers in some places. The idea of licensing actually came out of a trip when I was in Bristol just before Christmas where Bristol City Council said, "We have great landlords in our area. We're not in a low demand area, therefore we would not be in the selective licensing pilots for ODPM, but we want to get on top of some aspects of our private rented sector". We listened to that; it is in the White Paper; it will be in the Housing Bill; and we then need to make it happen outside.

Chairman

Where did you say the idea of licensing came from?

(Ms Casey) The selective licensing came out of ODPM and doing it in low demand areas, and was very much led by ODPM a long time ago. The idea of extending it - because they heard about it and knew that was happening - the idea of saying, "Could we do it in a not low demand area" Bristol City Council put forward to us very forcibly. That was one of many. This is anecdotal at this stage. This is the person who talked to me.

(Mr Ainsworth) The DETR and the year was 2000, I understand, Chairman.

Bob Russell

Minister, 25 years ago we never witnessed this large number of anti-social behaviour cases but, of course, over the last 25 years there has been a full frontal attack on the concept of council housing. Do you think the two go together?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not. I think there was anti-social behaviour 25 years ago. I do not think it was of the proportion that it is now. I think there have been a lot of changes in the structure of society that have led to the level of the problem we have got now so, yes, it needs to be dealt with. We see anti-social behaviour on other than council estates: we see it in city centre locations; we see it in commercial areas; we see it on private estates as well. It is not restricted to council estates.

I appreciate that. The point I was making is, when we had council housing which provided housing for people in need, the waiting lists and homelessness were not at the levels they are now. We also did not have the level of anti-social behaviour. I am suggesting to you that there may well be a connection between the two. You mentioned how local authorities are having to bring together the evidence of the other agencies. Would you agree with me that the problem is that magistrates and judges sometimes, too often in fact, then let down the local residents and the local council in failing to deliver on all the evidence put before them?

(Mr Ainsworth) I think that that can be a problem in some circumstances. You have seen me flag up an instance of good practice in my own city, Coventry, where we have tried to get the registered social landlords local authority and the magistrates together just to make sure that level of understanding of the consequences of some of the behaviour that leads to the request for an Anti-Social Behaviour Order is understood by the bench. Unless people are prepared to do that work and engage with the bench, the bench is not going to have a level of understanding of what is going on in the community that they need to. Some of the measures in here are designed to be able to ensure that people can make appropriate representations and can make people aware not only of the consequences on the individual who appears in front of the magistrate, but on the wider consequences that arise from any action that is taken, or failure to take action, on behalf of the magistrates. It is an issue that needs to be addressed. It is one of the issues which is being addressed.

In the spirit of joined-up government we can look to the Home Office appraising the Lord Chancellor of which of his people down in the Shires are failing to deliver?

(Ms Casey) It is a critical issue for us to make sure that we deliver on anti-social behaviour from the beginning of this White Paper to the end. The same way we are working with schools, youth groups, community groups etc to make sure we are getting the prevention right, we also need to work in the same way with the court service and with the Magistrates' Association. You will know that in the White Paper we are very keen to make sure there is consistent and effective sentencing, not only of breaches but also trying to push Anti-Social Behaviour Orders forward so that everybody knows what happens and how it happens. We need to take some responsibility for helping the Lord Chancellor's Department in doing that. I was a lay magistrate before I got this job; I understand a lot of them do a very good job, are connected with the community, and would feel very strongly about this. We need to make sure that everybody receives training and receives the right help from the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit, and works with our colleagues in the Lord Chancellor's Department to make that happen, and works directly with the Magistrates' Association in particular. The sentencing guidelines for anti-social behaviour are being reviewed and we will input into those. As Bob says, what we are looking for is consistent, effective responses from the courts. That chimes entirely with what the Lord Chancellor's Department is also seeking to achieve.

Chairman

One small issue to which you may not have the answer immediately to hand, but I would be grateful if you would let me know. Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 stipulates that individual tenants, rather than the owners of property, are responsible for rubbish, but that means in a multi-occupied property you cannot prosecute the owner of the property because you have to be able to identify the precise individual who is responsible, who in many cases may have moved away some time ago. I have seen local authorities scrabbling around in back lanes looking through rubbish for envelopes so that they can mount a prosecution. The obvious change that needs making is to give local authorities the option of prosecuting the owner of the property. I understand that is meeting some resistance. Why?

(Mr Ainsworth) I do not know, Chairman, as you predicted. I am not certain. What you are saying on the surface appears to be commonsense. I am not certain you are right that there is resistance but, if there is, I will seek to clarify the position and come back to you.

I have it on very good authority that there is resistance. It may have melted away now. There was resistance to a lot of the things we have just been discussing, although they were the most obvious and sensible things to do in the world!

(Ms Casey) I believe this is another item that was in the Living Place consultation document, and consultation on it is open. I believe that is where that is being considered. We can come back to you on that.

Chairman: I would like information on that precise point - section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act.

Mr Watson

Minister, Liberty have said that Fixed Penalty Notices "give the police quite unprecedented power ...". They say it gives police the power to be "judge, jury and executioner". I think they are trying to make a point that FPNs are a form of arbitrary justice. How do you answer that claim?

(Mr Ainsworth) Then they are obviously opposed to all FPNs where Fixed Penalty Notices are available now against motorists, for instance, or speeding offences. Unless we want to drag every one of these instances through a court procedure with all of the expense and the time that is involved in that, then Fixed Penalty Notices provide us with a good alternative road to go down. People can challenge them. They do not need to accept them. They can take the issue to court if they so desire. It is an effective way of engaging the police service and others in low level criminality and anti-social behaviour where we are not going to wind up tying up constables' time, and tying up the courts' time and, therefore, having the measures we are making available to people hugely underused. That is the choice we have got. They either remain underused, or we apply the ability to have a fixed penalty sanction. At the end of the day, people can challenge them, and they are free to do so.

Do you think that argument might hold some weight if it is proposed to extend the powers to non-police officers to carry them out?

(Mr Ainsworth) There are already powers that non-police officers have for Fixed Penalty Notices. Local authority employees have got powers.

(Ms Casey) Local authority officers have powers for dog fouling and littering already. On the disorder offences I think the Liberty question is relating to, community support officers as accredited people already have those powers. The issue here is that people can contest it, in the way they can contest anything they are charged with. The fact is the pilots so far have shown that the vast majority, 60 per cent, pay up within 21 days. It is phenomenal. If that continues and those pilots continue to work in that way, then the low level disorder offences, as the Minister has said, are not clogging up the courts, not clogging up police time. It is a straightforward issue of disorder offences and most of them pay within 21 days. Only two per cent in the pilots are ending up in court. You can judge for yourself on those statistics. That was a snapshot survey which was carried out on the pilots in January; it is the one which is in the White Paper. If that is as good as it looks then the Fixed Penalty Notices is a very powerful tool for tackling low level disorder; and it does not strip anybody of their right to contest it if they feel they are being hard done by in exactly the way the Minister said for speeding offences.

(Mr Ainsworth) Let us just say that there are certain Fixed Penalty Notices that it would be highly inappropriate for anyone other than a police constable to have access to. I do not see how people other than police officers should be dealing with people who are in a state of intoxication, for instance. Those are circumstances where we need to ensure that people with the appropriate powers and in the appropriate position are the only people who have access to Fixed Penalty Notices. We do not seek to extend them inappropriately to other people.

What kind of training do these accredited officers get when it comes to applying Fixed Penalty Notices?

(Mr Ainsworth) You have to remember, where we are talking about accreditation, that is accreditation by the local commander. It is not only accreditation of the individuals who are involved and being given those powers; it is an accreditation of the scheme itself. The local police commander will have a lock on whether or not a particular category of employee has access to these kinds of powers in his accreditation scheme. He will then have the ability to refuse access to each individual in those schemes. He can dictate the reason for the scheme in the first place, the reason for its existence, as well as the training and the standards that are required.

Is there concern for the personal safety of accredited officers when they are applying Fixed Penalty Notices for behaviour?

(Mr Ainsworth) If we put them in circumstances that were inappropriate for them to use then, yes, those issues would arise. That is why we must not give them powers to apply Fixed Penalty Notices inappropriately. There are certain circumstances, as I have said, where we should be talking about a police officer, and we should be talking about the police constable and nobody else, like dealing with drunken behaviour, for example.

Could you list a few of the appropriate cases?

(Ms Casey) Dog fouling, litter, cycling on the pavement, and confiscation of alcohol and tobacco from those under age, those are the sorts of things.

You could be drunk under age.

(Ms Casey) As the Minister has said, if they are drunk under age they are going to be very difficult. Community Support Officers only have powered to detain for half-an-hour. You are talking about a police response in those scenarios. Nobody is attempting to take that away or change because it is right and proper. Community Support Officers have, frankly, gone down a storm in many areas of the country that have them, people are very glad to see them and think they are absolutely fab. They like the fact that, if you are in a no drinking zone area, they are able to go and say, "I'll take that can away from you". It is quite a straightforward extra layer of trying to deal with disorder.

Miss Widdecombe

Minister, I share your enthusiasm for Fixed Penalty Notices, but I cannot quite resist this question: if we are to have Fixed Penalty Notices for just about everything on earth, and if drugs are a major cause of anti-social behaviour, why on earth not Fixed Penalty Notices for the possession of soft drugs? Why drunkenness and everything else on the earth but not that?

(Mr Ainsworth) To be perfectly honest with you, it is not something I have looked at. You are talking about, overwhelmingly, the reclassification of cannabis and how we deal with cannabis. We are talking to ACPO about how cannabis and Classification C is going to be policed. We still want to give them a power of arrest. They want a power of arrest for aggravated circumstances where people just flatly refuse to desist. There is evidence in some of the jurisdictions that Fixed Penalty Notices in the area of drugs have been rather difficult to enforce and that collection rates have been pretty low. I think it is stories like that which have probably discouraged us from giving thought to the introduction of fixed penalties in the area of drugs. Overwhelmingly we have tried to talk, where it is appropriate, getting people into treatment and, where it is appropriate, taking effective enforcement action against them; but we did not look in detail at Fixed Penalty Notices for Class C drugs, to be honest.

Miss Widdecombe: I am not surprised. I think the reasons may have been other than those you have given.

Chairman: That is a campaign for another day.

Mr Watson

Could you tell us about the thinking behind removing reporting restrictions in your court cases?

(Mr Ainsworth) Publicity is effective in some circumstances, very effective. I do not take the view that in every situation people are not to be exposed to that. If people have behaved in a shameful way then, where the court decides it is appropriate, why not put those circumstances into the public domain. Publicity is available for Anti-Social Behaviour Orders in other areas. It is not as if we are breaking new ground entirely in this area.

We have taken some evidence to say that there is some argument that it contravenes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Have you taken any advice on that?

(Ms Casey) We have proved this, as it were, at a policy level for those sorts of issues, and the answer is that it seems fine. As the Minister has said, in the magistrates' court if you apply for a straightforward Anti-Social Behaviour Orders for a young person there are not the automatic reporting restrictions and, where appropriate, you have to apply for them if you want to be restricted. We are simply trying to consolidate that in the youth courts. Where there is an Anti-Social Behaviour Order on conviction, for example, it is not an automatic restriction. We are just cleaning up what already exists, as opposed to anything clever or terribly new, to be honest. I wish we could say we were, but we are not.

Finally, on restorative justice, do you have any research data which shows the relative success or failure of the pilot schemes?

(Mr Ainsworth) I am not in a position to talk to you about research on this, I am afraid.

(Ms Casey) I do not have a statistic we can throw at you. We will go away and let you have that if that is helpful. What I do know from memory is that the Youth Justice Board have been doing this and it shows if people face the people in the community then it works, particularly for young people. They already have something like 5,000 lay panel members, and referring people to the Community Panel is proving successful. I cannot tell you what the statistic is, so we will let you have that separately.

If it is proving successful, is there scope for increasing restorative justice schemes?

(Mr Ainsworth) It is an area we are particularly keen to explore. Historically we have got a pretty poor attitude in this country towards community sentences of all kinds. The public think that they are soft options, even when they are not. They are effective measures of restorative justice which could build confidence among the wider community if the sentencing is appropriate. It can be a most effective, most appropriate function in many circumstances. If you have messed up the area, if you have strewn rubbish all over the place, graffiti, criminal damage and all the rest of it, why not put right exactly what you have done and do it in front of the community where you have done the damage. It is a win:win, is it not? If the community can actually see the vandal putting right the vandalism, there is a benefit on both sides.

Bob Russell

Perhaps we could bring back the stocks and pillories!

(Mr Ainsworth) The stocks and the pillories are not restorative justice, are they? In what way did putting somebody in a set of stocks put right the damage that they had done to the community in which they were living.

Humiliation was what it was all about.

(Mr Ainsworth) What are we saying here? That it is humiliating for somebody who has destroyed a part of the community in which they live to be seen fixing what they have damaged and destroyed. Where is the humility in that If there is humility in that then it is an appropriate way of humility, is it not? If they have behaved in a shameful way, why should they not be put in a shameful situation? If we are talking about them repairing the damage that they have done, I see absolutely no problem with it at all. I am fairly robust on it and am looking to develop this policy as rapidly as we can.

I fully endorse all those points you make. I was putting a provocative question to you. I have no problem with what you have said.

(Mr Ainsworth) Maybe it was a provocative answer. I do apologise.

Chairman: On that note, we shall conclude. Minister, you have impressed us all with your mastery of the Bill in such a short time. Ms Casey, thank you very much indeed. The session is closed.