Written evidence from the Home Office
is printed on Page EV 308
Examination of Witnesses (Questions 690-699)
9 FEBRUARY 2005
Ms Hazel Blears, , Mr John Bader, and Ms Joanna Jordan
Q690 Chairman: Welcome
to the committee this afternoon. It is a pleasure to see Assembly
officials and a Minister from the House of Commons here. For the
sake of the record could I ask you to introduce yourselves?
Ms Blears: Good afternoon, Mr
Jones, members of the committee. I am delighted to be here and
I am particularly pleased that you have chosen these subjects
for investigation. My name is Hazel Blears. I am Minister of State
at the Home Office responsible for Community Safety, Crime Reduction,
Policing and Counter-Terrorism.
Mr Bader: Good afternoon. My name
is John Bader. I am Director of the Social Justice Regeneration
Department responsible for housing, community safety, community
regeneration, equality policy and the voluntary sector, and I
have recently been given the responsibility for transfer of the
CAFCASS (Cymru) to the Assembly.
Ms Jordan: I am Joanna Jordan.
I am the acting Director of the Community Safety Unit. I am responsible
for substance misuse, youth justice, domestic abuse issues, and
I am also on a temporary basis covering the Home Office Crime
Director's post in Wales.
Q691 Chairman: We will
start with the National Policing Plan which covers England and
Wales. Can I ask the Minister what are the key drivers of current
policing policy?
Ms Blears: This is the third version
of the National Policing Plan that we have had. It is fair to
say that the policing plans have developed over the last few years
from initially being described as a very long wish list, a shopping
list with about 50 priorities in it, which was an attempt to describe
the whole policing landscape. What I have tried to do with this
latest version of the policing plan is to provide a more focused,
streamlined document that really does try and highlight what are
the priorities nationally that we are asking the police to address,
but also within that this year I hope to provide a greater degree
of local flexibility so that communities themselves are able to
populate their local plans with things which are perhaps more
relevant to local areas and neighbourhoods. That is always the
tension when you produce a national plan, how it plays out locally.
In the national plan now we have got five priorities ranging from
tackling serious crime all the way through to tackling anti-social
behaviour. I personally am delighted that anti-social behaviour
is now a strong feature in the National Policing Plan because
for every single one of us as Members of Parliament our communities
always highlight anti-social behaviour as a real threat to them.
The National Policing Plan is there to address serious crime.
We also highlight volume crime. We particularly highlight meeting
the challenge of drugs, which again is as much of an issue in
Wales as it is in the rest of the country, and, as I say, going
all the way through to anti-social behaviour. The other key part
for me of the National Policing Plan is that it is not simply
about what the police can do and that is why I am delighted today
to have officials from the Social Justice and Regeneration Department
because increasingly it is the case that making sure that partnerships
work well, of the police with local government, with businesses,
with the voluntary sector and with local people themselves is
the way that we will tackle crime. I have tried to give a flavour
in this year's National Policing Plan of a bigger emphasis on
developing those partnerships. Those are the two things I highlight:
national priorities and emphasis on partnership working.
Q692 Chairman: One of
the problems that you have touched on is getting the balance right
between low-level crime, which is a real problem for our constituencies,
as you rightly point out; this is why we are looking at it, and
serious crime which impinges very rarely upon the individual in
society. It is probably an almost impossible question to answer
but I will ask it anyway. How would you get the balance right
between those two extremes?
Ms Blears: These are absolutely
the difficult issues that we all grapple with. It will always
be a matter of striking a balance. I am not anxious to disagree
with you this early on in giving you my evidence but I would just
make a distinction that these are not entirely separate levels
of crime that we are dealing with. Quite often the police will
have an analysis that we have level one crime, which is, if you
like, the very local, anti-social behaviour and the everyday incidents
that happen in a basic command unit area, very local, neighbourhood
crime. Then they go on to describe level two crime as perhaps
the things that happen cross-border, the more serious organised
crime, the drug dealing, the money laundering that goes on, where
you need inter-force co-operation. Then they have level three
crime which can be national and international crime. That tends
to be the broad delineation. What I have always emphasised is
that I think there is a golden thread that runs through those
three levels of crime because, although, as you said, Mr Jones,
it is quite often the case that serious crime does not impinge
on communities, it may not do so directly but it absolutely does
impact on them. If you think about drugs, that can be a level
two crime, it can even be a level three crime in terms of national
and international but the fact that 70% of acquisitive crime,
robbery, burglary, is driven by people's drug addiction has a
huge impact at the local neighbourhood level. What I always try
and emphasise is that this is not about discrete policing. We
do not simply do one kind of crime. I suppose the golden thread
for me now is the national intelligence model, which is the way
in which we join up all of our policing activity. Maybe we will
come on to develop the national intelligence model a little bit
later, but that is a process of dealing with the intelligence
that is coming in—where are your hotspots, where are your
offenders, where are the crimes you are trying to tackle—and
then making sure that your police officers are tasked in accordance
with that intelligence so that you are directing your resources
at the things that really matter. One of the interesting things
(and where I think Wales is a bit ahead of the field, dare I say)
is developing those cascade mechanisms, not just within the police
but increasingly now using the same business model with their
local authorities so that they are getting local authority information
in from housing, education, about hotspots, about targeting, and
then tasking together using that joined-up information which makes
it an incredibly powerful tool to make sure all those levels of
crime are addressed at the same time.
Q693 Chairman: I do not
consider myself to be disagreeing with you, and perhaps I put
it wrongly, but in terms of the individual effects and our individual
constituents perhaps do not see the big issues but they are affected
indirectly, as you said. One of the issues that we have come across,
though, in this National Policing Plan is that there is a feeling
that maybe the policing plan is a little bit urban in its outlook,
dealing with inner city areas and that kind of crime, and that
setting the targets based on that kind of crime is having an adverse
effect on policing in rural areas.
Ms Blears: Inevitably when we
are looking at how best to use our resources we are going to direct
them into the places where crime is the biggest problem. It is
right that when the police operational commanders decide to deploy
their resources they will look at where the most serious problems
are and try and direct their resources into those areas. Again,
what I have tried to do this year is a big shift from where we
were previously, which is to provide that local flexibility. In
the past the kinds of targets we set were around specific crime
types—you must reduce burglary by so much, you must reduce
vehicle crime, you must reduce robbery. If you are in an area
where robbery, for example, is not a big problem,—and robbery
tends to be concentrated in those big urban areas; probably the
ten top street crime areas account for about 80% of the robberies—having
a specific target for robbery does not really meet your needs.
What I have done now in developing the latest set of PSA targets
is to say that there will be a target of reducing overall crime
by 15%, higher in high crime areas (and rightly so) but overall
15%. Within that 15% it is a matter for local negotiation what
the make-up is of that 15%. Some of it will involve youth crime,
inevitably, some of it will be burglary, and rightly so because
every community is concerned about burglary, urban or rural, but
what it does allow is at the edges for there to be some local
flexibility. It might be that in a particular rural area you may
have problems with attacks on farm premises, certainly a number
of robberies of farm equipment and machinery which have been highlighted
to me, and if that is a problem in your area there is now sufficient
flexibility within our PSA targets to enable you to do it. I think
this is important in terms of police planning but it is also hugely
important in terms of public confidence. If you are not able to
address the things that local people are telling you are important
then, no matter how well you do on the other targets, they will
have no sense that the police are responding to what it is they
want them to do. I hope that the new target setting regime, which
is being brokered by regional offices working together with the
Welsh Assembly in combining those targets, will be a much more
flexible regime to give that a local flavour as it comes through.
Q694 Chairman: You will
be pleased to know that several witnesses have welcomed the National
Policing Plan 2005-08 and its increased emphasis on local priorities.
A Home Office official, Stephen Rimmer, has told us, "There
is a question that the plan cannot answer: what is the capacity
that forces have to deliver local priorities over and above the
national priorities?". How would you respond to that?
Ms Blears: Again, Mr Jones, this
is about striking the balance for the police forces. They have
got a certain amount of capacity. They will always have to balance
that. It is recognised that no police force is ever going to meet
100% of the public demand 100% of the time in the way in which
people want them to do. Our task is to maximise the occasions
on which we meet the legitimate expectations of the public and
hopefully on some occasions to surpass the expectations of the
public, but these will always be difficult operational decisions
for commanders to make on the ground. What I do feel very strongly
about is that there should be a proper discussion at local level
between the police, the local authorities and the public about
what our priorities should be. In the White Paper that we issued
in November last year, Building Communities, Beating Crime,
we set out a vision of policing for the future which is about
local communities coming together, having a hard discussion sometimes
about what are the resources we have got, what are the problems
we are facing, how can we best meet them, are the police better
placed to meet some of them, is there some other agency that can
help us do this job? Some of the problems, as I say, are not necessarily
police problems. It might be about boarding up empty houses to
stop them being taken over by drug dealers, which is clearly a
problem for either the housing department or the housing association
or whatever. You have that dialogue at local level and you agree
to have certain priorities. We have now got a number of areas
up and down the country. One springs to mind, which I think is
in Preston, where they have a monthly tasking group which is chaired
by the local residents' leader who helps to task the police on
what the priorities are for that community in the next month.
They come back four weeks later and they say, "We have managed
to tackle those two drug dealers that we identified as a community.
We did not get the other two and next month we will be getting
them". You are not going to be able to do everything but
you do tackle the things that people tell you matter, and increasingly
that is a new model for policing, which is a bit of a culture
change, to say the least, but where it has been adopted the results
are pretty impressive.
Q695 Mrs Williams: I would
like to turn to tackling anti-social behaviour. Do you think that
the high numbers of ASBOs reflect success or failure of strategy
in tackling anti-social behaviour?
Ms Blears: I am aware that 114
anti-social behaviour orders have been issued in Wales, which
I certainly do not regard as a high number. First of all, we are
not in a game of league tables. I have made it very clear that
I do not regard the number of ASBOs as a kind of macho badge of
how good you are at tackling anti-social behaviour, because it
is a complex problem which needs a range of responses. We have
only issued just over 3,000 anti-social behaviour orders across
the country in five years, which again I do not regard as a high
number. I think the original take-up of ASBOs was far too slow.
They were cumbersome, they were difficult, they were bureaucratic,
it was difficult to present evidence. Personally, I am delighted
by the increased uptake we have seen in the last year. Now it
is clear to me that the police, local authorities are at long
last, may I say, listening to the legitimate demands of communities,
using the powers that we have put on the statute book and really
making a difference in some of those areas. I would urge authorities
in Wales, as I do wherever I go in the country: listen to those
communities. We have given you the powers. Use those powers to
make a difference. You have got now three action areas in Cardiff,
Swansea and Newport. They have all got different approaches. Some
places have used the ASBOs more than others. Some places have
used the crack house closures, some places have not. I notice
from Swansea, I think it is, that they have got a four-point intervention
programme, so they do much more early intervention, which is a
good thing. If you can nip anti-social behaviour in the bud that
is great. However, I am concerned if the early intervention becomes
so cumbersome that you have a four-point process and by the time
you get to your fourth point the community that is suffering gets
increasingly impatient at the lack of action being taken. I do
not regard the numbers of ASBOs as a determination of success
or failure. It should be about using ASBOs to get the disposal
powers, the early intervention, the fixed penalty notices, the
powers against graffiti. I just say action, action, action: use
it and make a difference.
Q696 Mrs Williams: As
you say, the tools are there for us to use. What do you think
are the main reasons for the low number of ASBOs, not just in
Wales but throughout the UK? Do you think it is a reluctance on
the part of magistrates to grant these orders or could it be that
there is a lack of willingness on the part of witnesses to come
forward?
Ms Blears: I think those two issues
are important. In the early days of anti-social behaviour policy
there was a lack of awareness amongst many parties, not just the
courts, about what they could do to make a difference. I think
the courts were a particular issue because sometimes they are
less engaged with local machinery than other parts of the criminal
justice system. What we did first of all was to ensure that all
magistrates now have to have three hours of face-to-face training
on the anti-social behaviour powers. We have got a number of anti-social
behaviour response courts; I think there are over 110 specialist
anti-social behaviour courts in the country. Cardiff I think is
a particular example of good practice of anti-social behaviour
response courts. That is where you have specific magistrates who
are trained, and who are dealing with these issues on a regular
basis and are familiar with what needs to be done. The third thing,
which I think is again a bit of a culture change, is a specialist
anti-social behaviour prosecutor in the Crown Prosecution Service
in every region, including Wales. That means you have got somebody
inside the judicial system who is on a bit of a mission to make
sure that the whole criminal justice system takes anti-social
behaviour more seriously. There is now beginning to be more consistency
amongst the courts about how they approach not just making the
orders but also breaches of orders, but we have still more to
do in this regard. I think in Wales there is no magistrates court
that has refused an application for a stand-alone anti-social
behaviour order, so I am encouraged by the thought that they are
taking this matter seriously.
Q697 Mrs Williams: You
may be aware that the Children's Society said in evidence to the
Home Affairs Committee that, "Every ASBO is a failure of
the council to meet a young person's needs". However, in
their evidence to this committee a Home Office official stated,
"I actually think the growth in the number of ASBOs is incredibly
heartening". Which of these positions do you agree with?
Ms Blears: I certainly do not
agree that every anti-social behaviour order is a sign of a failure
to meet children's needs. What I do think is that we have tried
to have a twin-track approach with anti-social behaviour. I have
said that on virtually every occasion I have had the chance to
say it. That is tough enforcement where it is necessary but support
for people who want to change the way in which they live their
lives. ASBOs are not always on young people. There is a range
of ASBOs that are on older people as well. In many cases young
people are as much the victims of anti-social behaviour as they
are the perpetrators. I have always tried to say that where people
are willing not to engage in anti-social behaviour then I think
we should give them the maximum support we can to divert them
from anti-social behaviour and crime. We have got the Positive
Futures programme, which gets youngsters doing other things—sport,
art, drama, all of that. We have got the On Track programme, which
again diverts them from crime. I have met individuals who have
had orders and have said, "It is the best thing that happened
to me because it made me take stock of my life and now it is different".
I do not regard it as a failure in those terms, but neither do
I regard the number of ASBOs as some kind of badge of success.
What we should be doing is enforcing against the anti-social behaviour
that goes on but also moving upstream into prevention and stopping
the problems getting that bad in the first place. If you meet
people, and I am sure you do, Mrs Williams—in fact, I know
you do—from your own constituency who have been the victims
of anti-social behaviour, often for years, not months, their lives
have been made an absolute misery, so I think we all have a responsibility
to use the powers that are now available. You have some people
in your constituency who have been incredibly brave in standing
up against anti-social behaviour and being prepared to go to court
and give evidence. It takes huge courage to be able to do that
and I think we have a responsibility to support them.
Q698 Mrs Williams: How
do the Home Office and the National Assembly for Wales work together
to provide an integrated response to anti-social behaviour in
Wales?
Ms Blears: Can I deal with that
first and then John can come in? I think it is absolutely important
that we have this policy right across England and Wales, that
it is a national policy for us. That is why we have been working
with the community safety partnerships as well as our own crime
and disorder reduction partnerships in England, to try and make
sure that this is on the agenda. That is why we have got three
action areas in Wales—six areas applied and we were able
to support three at this stage—because I think that these
issues are just as relevant to Welsh communities as they are to
any other communities. We also had the gated programme and there
was some concern expressed from the Welsh Office about how joined-up
we were on the alley-gating programme and there we were able to
reassure Wales that we were seeking to support communities again
right across England and Wales in getting access to the funds
for alley-gating programmes. We very much wanted to be joined
up. I do think that because in Wales you have got this connection
between the community safety agenda and the regeneration agenda
that is something that is quite special. We have been trying to
develop more of that through the Home Office working with ODPM
in England because inevitably these issues are inextricably linked
with the quality of the environment as well as tackling crime
itself.
Mr Bader: Obviously, we agree
with the principle that tackling anti-social behaviour in itself
is not the solution; it is part of the solution. What we seek
to do is tackle the causes rather than just the symptoms. The
Minister has just indicated how we in Wales are looking at this
both in the short term and in the long term. If I could concentrate
briefly on the longer term issues, one of the three key values
the Assembly established and they still maintain today is tackling
inequality of opportunity, ensuring that people in Wales are included,
two, sustainability and, three, they must all fit together. We
have tried to do that by tackling disadvantage in what is now
called a holistic way. It reflects the principles that you are
seeking to achieve. Tackling disadvantage has a long term impact
on the cause of much, if not all, anti-social behaviour. It will
not eliminate it entirely but it will make a major impact. That
is why we set up Communities First, which is a long term programme
for regeneration. Regeneration is not just about improving the
physical and social fabric of our disadvantaged communities in
Wales. It is also about tackling some of the fundamental issues
in a sustainable way. There are two fundamental issues which must
go side by side with any physical improvements in regeneration,
and those are providing economic opportunities for the disadvantaged
communities so that they can participate in that economic regeneration
and making the places where they live free from crime or the fear
of crime. Unless those two elements can be incorporated into regeneration
all we will be doing is effectively sticking plasters over the
problems and we will not achieve sustainability. What we are seeking
to do in the long term is create environments which we can be
satisfied will be sustainable, where people will be economically
active and will actually like to live there, they are not afraid
to live there because of the problems of crime. That needs to
be seen in the context of tackling anti-social behaviour in the
longer term. Clearly, in the shorter term there are different
issues, and I am sure that we subscribe to some of the issues
that the Minister has mentioned, about individuals suffering from
harassment or whatever it may be, with one caveat, and
I think it is an important caveat that my Minister has
frequently indicated, that we must be very cautious about demonising
young people. There are dangers that if it is seen as the only
solution to the problem it will have an adverse effect on people's
attitudes towards young people. That is something that my Minister
feels particularly strongly about.
Ms Jordan: The only thing I would
add to that is that certainly my unit has been very keen to encourage
community safety partnerships and the agencies that form part
of them to develop quite detailed protocols about how they deal
with anti-social behaviour. The low number of ASBOs that have
been served in Wales is perhaps a reflection of success before
it has got to that stage. They have tried to intervene with young
people or whoever is the perpetrator to do something about it
at an early stage. If you were to look at the Anti-Social Behaviour
Unit's referral rate in relation to the numbers who have ended
up with orders in place on people, you would see that as quite
a success. Our aim is the fewer ASBOs the better. The idea is
to intervene at an earlier stage and do everything you can before
it gets to the stage where you have got to enforce an ASBO on
a person.
Q699 Dr Francis: If we
could move on to definition and measurement, in its written submission
to the Home Affairs Committee the Association of Chief Police
Officers noted that there was a lack of clear definition of anti-social
behaviour and that this was hindering progress in tackling it.
It listed a number of problems that they had, for example, it
is difficult to have a joined-up strategic approach. What steps
are being taken to produce a meaningful definition of anti-social
behaviour? It occurs to me from the responses from the Welsh Assembly
a moment ago that there is an apparent assumption that there is
an association between young people and anti-social behaviour.
I wonder whether in clarifying these definitions you could put
that to bed?
Ms Blears: First of all, what
we have tried to do in the anti-social behaviour legislation is
something that is quite different in defining a set of behaviour.
Normally you would have a criminal offence which has very clear
requirements within it. What we have tried to do with anti-social
behaviour is to define it almost from the perspective of the victim.
It is quite a shift and it is behaviour likely to cause harassment,
alarm or distress to another person who is not a member of the
same household. It is a victim-centred definition because we recognise
that anti-social behaviour can cover a whole spectrum of different
behaviours. That will be controversial in some quarters but I
think it is the right thing to do, that is to say, if this behaviour
is causing harassment, alarm and distress then clearly it is something
that should not happen. This is because we are not defining a
criminal offence here. What we are defining is a set of behaviours
that we then want to use an anti-social behaviour order to prevent
that happening, which is a civil order rather than a criminal
prosecution. We are in a different legal position here. Once we
get an anti-social behaviour order we are saying, "As long
as you do not do these things then you will not be guilty of any
criminal offence, you will not breach it and no further sanction
will be taken". It is a very different way of using the law.
There are a number of definitions in the British Crime Survey,
which has seven different strands. It highlights people's perceptions
of anti-social behaviour and it is that which is measured in the
British Crime Survey. About 18 months ago there was something
like 21% of people in England and Wales that felt anti-social
behaviour as defined by those seven strands was a significant
problem for them affecting their quality of life. That is now
down to 16%, so in the last 18 months that has come down by five
percentage points, which says to me that our policies are making
an impact and are working. We have also done some work in the
Home Office. They have got a framework now that describes four
types of anti-social behaviour: misuse of public space (drug dealing,
abandoned cars), disregard for the community or personal wellbeing
(noise, rowdy behaviour, gangs hanging around, that kind of intimidation),
acts directed at people (verbal threats and groups making threats),
and environmental damage (graffiti, vandalism, fly-tipping, fly-posting).
None of those definitions includes in particular young people
perpetrating them. We are saying that it is the alarm, distress
and harassment that is caused to the victim and it could be in
any number of these strands. That is why I was at pains to say
that very many young people are victims of anti-social behaviour.
They cannot go out and use the local park because of gangs taking
it over. They cannot go out and play with their friends. I have
actually met the Youth Parliament myself and they have expressed
to me that in many cases they feel that they are the victims of
anti-social behaviour. I just say to the Director here that we
are not in the business of demonising young people. What we have
here is a real, significant problem of anti-social behaviour and
that is why we have put on the statute book the measures to tackle
it and that is why we are so intensely focused on saying to police
and local authorities, "Look: you have got the powers and
you must use them on behalf of the decent law-abiding majority
of citizens". This is not about demonising young people;
it is about taking action against something that is damaging communities
very badly.
Mr Bader: I was not suggesting
that there was an intent to demonise at all. It is one of the
potential consequences particularly of media coverage locally
on anti-social behaviour. There is a tendency for this to be perceived
as simply a young person's thing. I agree with the Minister entirely.
This is not solely an issue of young people even if the proportion
of young people served with ASBOs is higher than for the general
population. We again acknowledge this working definition. We have
not got any evidence to suggest that that needs to be changed.
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