Standing Committee G
Tuesday 6 May 2003
(Morning)
[Mr. Bill O'Brien in the Chair]
10.30 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Bob Ainsworth): I beg to move,
That—
(1) during proceedings on the Anti-social Behaviour Bill the Standing Committee, in addition to its first sitting on Tuesday 6th May at 10.30 am, shall meet on that day at 4.30 pm and thereafter on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9.10 am and 2.30 pm;
(2) 12 sittings shall be allotted to the consideration of the Bill in Committee;
(3) the proceedings shall be taken in the order specified in the Table below;
(4) the proceedings specified in the first column of the Table shall be brought to a conclusion (unless already concluded) at the time specified in the second column of the Table.
TABLE
Proceedings
Time for
conclusion of proceedings
Part 1, New Clauses relating to Part 1, New Schedules relating to Part 1
9.55 pm at the 2nd sitting
Part 3, New Clauses relating to Part 3, New Schedules relating to Part 3, Part 4, New Clauses relating to Part 4, New Schedules relating to Part 4, Clauses 12 to 14, Schedule 1, Clauses 15 to 17, New Clauses relating to Part 2, New Schedules relating to Part 2
6.55 pm at the 6th sitting
Clauses 36 to 39, Schedule 2, Clauses 40 and 41, New Clauses relating to Part 5, New Schedules relating to Part 5, Part 6, New Clauses relating to Part 6, New Schedules relating to Part 6, Clauses 45 to 47
6.55 pm at the 10th sitting
Clauses 48 to 55, New Clauses relating to Part 7, New Schedules relating to Part 7, Clause 56, Schedule 3, Clauses 57 to 61, remaining New Clauses, remaining New Schedules, remaining proceedings on the Bill
5.15 pm at the 12th sitting
Good morning, Mr. O'Brien, and welcome to the Chair. I am sure that you are as pleased as every other hon. Member to be in Committee Room 11 on this bright and sunny morning as we get down to dealing with the detail of the proposals in the Bill.
I ask the Committee to agree to the programme motion recommended by the Programming Sub-Committee, which met briefly on Tuesday 29 April. The motion provides for a further 11 sittings, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 9.10 until 11.25 am, and 2.30 until 6.55 pm, except for today, which, as anyone who has been a Whip knows, is not really a Tuesday but a Monday—[Interruption.] At least one member of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell), gets the joke. As a Whip, he is familiar with the deliberations about when a Monday is a Monday and a Tuesday is a Tuesday. Today, we shall meet from 4.30 until 9.55 pm.
More important, the programme motion determines which parts of the Bill will be considered
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during which sittings. It allocates the first two sittings to part 1; four sittings to parts 3, 4 and 2; four sittings to parts 5 and 6; and two sittings to parts 7 and 8. We have tried to allocate time to ensure that the Committee has an opportunity to scrutinise the Bill fully. The timetable is potentially challenging, but my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East has had discussions with his counterparts in the Opposition parties and has indicated to them that if there is a desire to make sensible changes to the proposals, he will be prepared to listen to the arguments.
Given the high level of interest in the issues raised by the Bill, as demonstrated by the number of speakers on Second Reading, I am sure that we shall have some interesting and, I hope, constructive debates. We will reflect on the Committee's arguments.
Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire): I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. O'Brien, and other hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. I especially welcome the two Ministers. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth), must have got up this morning thinking, ''Oh no, not another Bill.'' The poor man seems to spend most of his time handling legislation in Committee, particularly in the absence of a replacement for the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham). I last served on a Committee with the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), when he was in the Whips Office. I shall be fascinated to see how he takes up his responsibilities as the Bill progresses, particularly as I shall handle the issues with which he deals.
This is a mixed Bill. As Opposition Members said repeatedly on Second Reading, we seriously doubt whether much of it is necessary—there are existing powers, although they are not adequately used. We will challenge some parts of the Bill directly, either because they go too far in terms of infringing liberty or because they will not have the effect that the Government and, indeed, the Opposition would like. We all share the objective of reducing antisocial behaviour. Our amendments have been tabled in the spirit of trying to improve the Bill or to probe Ministers about their intentions and ways in which the Bill differs from current legislation. The amendments are serious: our intention is not to prolong proceedings on any particular items.
The Minister said that there was much to be dealt with in the timetable specified in the programme motion. I believe that that can be achieved, but take at face value the undertakings given by the hon. Member for Nottingham, East that there will be flexibility if necessary. My hon. Friends and I are anxious that the important points of the Bill should be dealt with properly and that the Government should be challenged where necessary. I am sure that the Minister will respond as well as he can, and I welcome that.
I look forward to serving under your chairmanship, Mr. O'Brien. We are content with the programme
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motion, subject to the undertaking to which the Minister referred, that it will be open to discussion if we find ourselves running adrift.
Mrs. Annette L. Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole): We, too, are pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. O'Brien, and we welcome the Ministers to the Committee.
The Bill is a hotch-potch: it has many different elements and straddles many issues. Although we agree with some of the sentiments, we believe that they should be dealt with under other legislation. We welcome the opportunity for full scrutiny and believe that the flexibility proposed by the hon. Member for Nottingham, East will be helpful.
The Minister will be aware that we have particular concerns about the treatment of young people throughout the Bill. We are sad that there has been no formal consultation with young people. We want to examine that important area and we will make as many relevant comments on it as possible. We are concerned about antisocial behaviour but we want to involve and include young people so that they grow up to be responsible members of society. We look forward to working on the Bill constructively.
Question put and agreed to.
The Chairman: Before we consider clause 1 and amendments to it, I remind the Committee that there is a money resolution in connection with the Bill, copies of which are available in the Room. I also remind members of the Committee that adequate notice of amendments should be given. As a general rule, I do not intend to call starred amendments, including any starred amendments that may be reached during an afternoon sitting of the Committee.
I appeal to Committee members, and to anyone else in the Room, to ensure that their mobile phones are switched off, so that there are no disturbances during consideration of the Bill.
Clause 1
Closure notice
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): I beg to move amendment No. 4, in
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment No. 11, in
Amendment No. 12, in
clause 1, page 2, line 24, after 'constable', insert 'or local authority officer'.
Amendment No. 16, in
clause 2, page 2, line 38, after 'constable' insert 'or local authority officer'.
Amendment No. 26, in
Column Number: 006
Amendment No. 27, in
Amendment No. 29, in
Mr. Hawkins: I welcome you, Mr. O'Brien, as Chairman of the Committee, as well as the Ministers and other Committee members.
We begin with an important group of amendments. It will not have escaped the Committee's attention that at present there appear to be more groups of amendments to clause 1 than to any other clause. It is good to begin the debate with a significant issue. The amendments address a matter relating to local authorities and the lead amendment would insert a reference to the local authority chief executive. We want to amend the clause so that the chief executive has the opportunity to deal with so-called crack houses. We believe that to be extremely important and so have tabled related amendments to clauses 2, 3 and 5, but amendment No. 4 is the crucial amendment.
I will say little about the amendment because I want to listen carefully to the Minister's response to it. However, I will say that it is vital that the chief executive of a local authority should have the opportunity to take the initiative in these matters—it should not be only for a police officer to take the initiative, because often it is local authorities that become aware of the these major problems through their work. Other parts of the Bill deal with local authorities, so it is surprising that the Government chose not to give such an ability to chief executives such as Mr. Barry Catchpole, the chief executive of Surrey Heath borough council—the main local authority in my constituency—and a leading member of the crime and disorder partnership, with whom I have had many dealings over the years.
The Minister and I are opposite numbers—the Minister is responsible for drugs policy and I am the shadow Minister responsible for drugs policy—and he will be well aware from previous discussions that I take all drug issues very seriously. I know from all my discussions with Mr. Catchpole that he would find such a power useful, and I suspect that if we talked to SOLACE—the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers—we would find that many chief executives take the same view.
If we are to crack down on drug use, we must take into consideration the powers that local authorities need to deal with the menace of drugs. The Opposition believe that it is absolutely vital to involve not only the police, but local authorities as well. The Government's own logic in setting up crime and disorder partnerships and involving chief executives and senior officers of local authorities in work with the police seems to fall in line with the amendment.
There are other important issues to deal with in relation to this group of amendments and I would be out of order if I advanced too far arguments relating to other groups. The amendment is not simply probing, but is a serious attempt to improve the Bill
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so that it works better. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) said, many parts of the Bill are probably unnecessary, but we accept that any attempt by the Government to deal with the endemic problem of crack houses is a serious matter. They have signalled for some time that they planned a measure similar to this one, but we are worried that some of their measures are not tough enough—I will talk about the use of other classes of drugs when speaking to another group of amendments.
If the powers in clause 1 are to be introduced, a power given to the chief executive of a local authority to initiate matters would be useful. That has come home to me in the past few days. There was a massive seizure of drugs in my constituency over the weekend; I congratulate Surrey police and their chief constable, Denis O'Connor, for the work that led to the seizure, the latest of a series that involved large-scale drug dealing and importation rather than so-called crack houses. It was sufficiently significant to make the national press as well as the local newspapers—the Minister may have seen the story: I am sure that his officials brief him whenever major drugs seizures anywhere in the country get into the national press.
Even in a relatively prosperous constituency such as mine there are deprived areas in which people suffer the scourge of drugs and other areas in which prosperous people are involved in drug dealing. To deal with the scourge of drugs, it would be logical if not only the police but people such as chief executives of local authorities to have the necessary powers. Ministers have made many speeches and released many press statements about the scourge of crack houses and how they can damage areas, and we agree with them, but if we are to respond to such problems—not only in my constituency but anywhere in the country—the Government should give chief executives the power to initiate proceedings, especially given that they are involved in crime and disorder partnerships,.
That is all that I want to say in moving the amendment, but I hope that the Minister takes what we say seriously. I shall listen with interest to his response. We feel strongly about the amendment and I am minded to press it to a Division.
10.45 am
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