Anti-social Behaviour Bill

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Mr. Randall: What the Minister is saying is sensible. For clarification, I ask him whether ''responsible'' is used in the way that we use it in everyday speech, rather than in the legal sense in which it is used in Home Office legislation.

Mr. Ainsworth: We are not using ''responsible'' to mean that the person has a legal responsibility for the individual; the Bill refers to a responsible person over the age of 18 who has control of the young person's behaviour. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct in that regard. I hope that I have clarified the position.

On the point about 9 o'clock, the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire did not suggest a different time. It is a matter of judgment. Many problems exist at that time of night, and people are entitled to believe that people under a certain age are under some sort of parental guidance. I would be happy to hear arguments for another appropriate time, but 9 o'clock seemed to us to be the most appropriate when the Bill was drafted. There is no great science in this regard. The hon. Gentleman may tell us that he thinks half-past one is more appropriate but I think that 9 o'clock strikes the right balance. However, we are happy to listen to arguments to the contrary.

I hope that we have avoided a rebellion on the Labour Back Benches on this occasion and that the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire has managed to avoid one on the Conservative Back Benches.

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Matthew Green: I am worried that there are some matters that the Minister has not addressed. He did not say what would happen to someone under the age of 16 who the police decide will suffer significant harm. Say the young person has been taken in the police car to his house and it is decided that he will suffer significant harm. What do the police do with him? There may be powers under other legislation, to which the Minister did not refer, although I wish he had. He may therefore wish to intervene.

The Minister did much to clarify how he sees the powers being used and that was reassuring. However, there are still some judgment calls to be made. Age is one and time is another. We are inclined to say that 16 is too old for this power and that 14 would be more appropriate. Although there is no specific amendment to this effect, in some circumstances, 9 pm may be too early but in the middle of winter, when it is pitch dark at 9 o'clock, that time is probably relevant. Specifying a particular time may not be the right approach. Perhaps there should be something about how dark it is.

Mr. Ainsworth: May I try to clarify the matter about which the hon. Gentleman is so concerned? We are talking about a young person who is not necessarily involved in criminality. The police have no ability to arrest that young person. They have the power to make him disperse along with the rest of the group. However, because of his age, the police officer may choose to take him home and feel that he is at risk of significant harm. We would not want the police officer to be required to hand the young person over if the officer felt that the young person would be at risk of significant harm.

The young person could not be arrested. However, the police officer will have an obligation to report to social services, as they do now, whenever they come across young people in that situation. In such circumstances, the police officer would report the matter to the appropriate authorities to ensure that social services were correctly engaged. We want to avoid the necessity of leaving young people in circumstances where they would be at greater risk than they were on the streets.

Matthew Green: I thank the Minister for his reply. We are not saying that young people should be left in such circumstances. Presumably, there will be some guidance about what a police officer should do in such a situation. A 15-year-old who has not committed a criminal offence cannot be arrested and put in the cells overnight. I presume that the police officer would take him away from the place where he would suffer significant harm, notify social services and bring people in to deal with the matter. It is the process by which that happens that I hope the Minister will be able to clarify in the guidance.

A policeman who takes a young person to an obviously violent household where the parents are blind drunk or under the influence of drugs is in a quandary. He may think the child would be in danger if he left him there and there is nothing in the proposal to say what that officer should do. The Minister may not want that to be stated in the Bill but the guidance

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should clarify what a police officer should reasonably be expected to do in such circumstances.

Some of the other proposals involve judgment calls, although I can see that the Government are not going to give way on their judgment call. There is an area the Government need to address, perhaps through guidance: ensuring the involvement of parents. I understand why the Minister said that amendments Nos. 209 and 210 might stop the police using the powers altogether. Whatever he may think, we may want to raise thresholds and introduce higher tests before the powers are used. There is no intention to get rid of subsection (4). When the dispersal order or the power to take someone home is used, some attempt should be made to bring parents into the equation.

As the Minister says, on many occasions, the parents will be at home anyway and it will be fairly obvious that there is not a problem but there will be situations where the parents are not at home but at the pub—when at 9 o'clock at night the police take the kids home to an empty house. They might end up taking them back several nights on the trot.

Shona McIsaac: I am trying to save the hon. Gentleman from himself. Does he accept that powers already exist for the police to contact emergency social services to deal with the issue? They do not need to be included in the Bill: the powers already exist.

Matthew Green: I think that the hon. Lady is looking at the matter from a different angle. There may be circumstances where it is nothing to do with social services and the child is not at risk. The child may happen to be out after 9 o'clock at night or on the streets and causing a problem but the parents may not be at home at that time. It is not necessarily something for social services to be involved in. If night after night the police are taking a young person home and the parents are not there, at some point the parents need to know. The young person is hardly going to volunteer to his parents, ''The police brought me home again tonight. They did me again tonight''. There will be circumstances where parents might not know, because they were not in when the police dealt with the situation.

I will not trouble the Committee with this group of amendments. We know the arithmetic and that the Government are determined to push the measure through. I hope that when the guidance comes out it addresses the issues that I have raised to try to help the Bill to work more effectively in the interests not only of the community but of the children. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The Chairman being of the opinion that the principle of the clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in the course of the debate on the amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put the Question, pursuant to Standing Orders Nos. 68 and 89, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Question agreed to.

Clause 29 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

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Clause 30

Authorisations: supplemental

Matthew Green: I beg to move amendment No. 170, in

clause 30, page 25, line 1, leave out 'either or'.

The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment No. 171, in

clause 30, page 25, line 5, leave out

'some conspicuous place or places'

and insert 'conspicuous places'.

Amendment No. 211, in

clause 31, page 25, line 30, leave out paragraph (a).

Amendment No. 120, in

clause 31, page 25, line 30, at end insert

'but must be recorded forthwith.'.

Amendment No. 212, in

clause 31, page 25, line 30, at end insert—

'( ) must be given as a written notice'.

Amendment No. 172, in

clause 31, page 25, line 36, leave out from 'scale' to the end of line 38.

11 am

Matthew Green: This group of amendments would achieve a number of things in respect of the publicity relating to authorisation. Amendment No. 170 would remove ''either or'' and ensure that both methods are used.

I am sure that the Minister will say that there might be circumstances in which only one method is suitable. However, as the clause is drafted, only one or the other may be used. Perhaps ''either, or, or both'' would make more sense. The orders should be made as widely known as possible. It would be in the interests of the public and of the police if people were made aware that the orders were in place. The ability to choose one method or the other—publication in a newspaper alone, or merely posting in a conspicuous place—might be taken to mean that merely sticking up on notice somewhere would be deemed sufficient. However, notices get torn down—the children who caused the original problem could remove the notice within a matter of hours, so that nobody was aware that the authorisation was in place. By leaving out ''either or'', we hope that both methods will be used. No doubt, the Minister will say that some places lack either local newspapers or conspicuous places, but I am sure that both can be found.

Amendment No. 171 would replace ''some conspicuous place'' with ''conspicuous places''. The object is to ensure that the notice is more widely available. That would be consistent with the Government's aims. The most effective use of authorisation issued by a senior officer is if the problem goes away without the police having to deal with it on the ground. The more widely known the authorisation, the more likely that is to happen, so I should have thought that the Government would be interested in its being as widely known as possible.

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Amendment No. 172 would remove clause 31(2)(b). It is a probing amendment to test why the Government have imprisonment as one of the penalties and in what circumstances they might want the sanction of imprisonment to be used. What is the situation when somebody has been given a dispersal order for 24 hours and returns to the area within that time? There has to be some sort of penalty, such as a fine, but I want to hear the Government's justification for imprisonment being necessary—or do they see it as a final recourse, perhaps after a series of fines has been imposed and has not worked? The Minister's thoughts on what would be an appropriate use would be welcome clarification.

Amendment No. 120, tabled by the Opposition, is similar to our amendment No. 212. They both seek to deal with the fact that the Bill seems not to allow for a written record to be made of an order being given to disperse. Our concern is that without our suggestion of a sort of dispersal ticket, rather like a parking ticket, of which there would be a carbon copy, or what is suggested in the Conservative amendment, under which the policeman would record it there and then, it would not be possible to prove that a penalty had been issued.

If the police did not have a record of the names and addresses of those involved, it would not be possible to prove that a person had returned to an area within 24 hours. It would be down to the constable to say, ''I told this person to move away the previous night, and the following morning he was there again.'' That person could argue that the police did not say that they were issuing a direction under the Bill. They would say, ''Yes, we saw the police officer, but he did not say anything like that to me.'' It would be between him and the police officer as to what was said at the time.

That brings us to amendment No. 211. That amendment would delete clause 31(1)(a), which states ''may be given orally''. That does not mean that the police office cannot do so; but we are concerned that the direction could be given only orally. If a police officer spoke privately to the members of a group, issuing them individually with dispersal notices, it would be on his say so at a subsequent trial. If the person was caught the next day, it would be on the say so of the officer, yet under the Bill it seems that there need be no witnesses and no record that that took place.

 

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Prepared 13 May 2003