Anti-social Behaviour Bill

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Mr. Clappison: I am with the Minister on much of what he says, but does he remember when the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) said as Home

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Secretary that we should have an evidence-based approach? What works is important, so if it is becoming evident that the approach in one piece of legislation is having only a limited effect and that other things are more effective, such as tackling parents through parenting orders or drug problems through drug treatment and testing orders, should we not give priority to those schemes and to increasing the number of police officers, rather than continually revisiting something that has had limited usefulness?

Mr. Ainsworth: I do not totally buy into what the hon. Gentleman has said. Let us not get back into point scoring, because we could all go over the issue of police numbers again. I could say that crime doubled under the last Conservative Government, which it did, and that police numbers were falling. I could point out that we have turned that situation round, that there are now record numbers and that the official Opposition are pledged to 20 per cent. cuts in public expenditure. I could ask where on earth they are going to get the extra police officers from, but that would not achieve a lot.

The Chairman: Order. I can see where this debate is going, so I should like to be assured that it will not go any further in that direction.

Mr. Ainsworth: I give way to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole.

Mrs. Brooke: I think that you will prefer my quieter approach to get us back on track, Mr. Cran. I understand that each crime and disorder reduction partnership must nominate an antisocial behaviour officer from within the local authority. Will the Minister confirm that? That officer is an important person to make contact with. How much sharing of best practice has there been between such people, who have in their portfolios—probably along with other jobs—responsibility for their area's antisocial policies?

Mr. Ainsworth: I do not think that there is anything like enough sharing of best practice and we must certainly work at that. On my other point, hon. Members have a role both in framing legislation and in investigating the under-use of powers that are available.

Antisocial behaviour orders cannot be seen in isolation. They should not be abandoned for more popular or successful measures, as the hon. Member for Hertsmere suggested. We must work at making antisocial behaviour orders more widely available as we spread best practice, as well as using those other measures.

Only 785 antisocial behaviour orders were reportedly issued up to the end of 2002. I will not pretend that that is an acceptable number. There is a problem with under-reporting, so the number is probably higher than that, but I am not suggesting that we have used the powers to their fullest extent. However, there have been 3,106 parenting orders, and 3,816 juvenile curfew orders. We must look at the entire package. We should not regard it as frozen legislation. The problem still exists, and we must refine the answer to that problem.

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CSOs cannot request antisocial behaviour orders. A chief officer makes the application, after consulting a local authority. CSOs could, however, be involved in the decision about whether to suggest that an application be made. That is central to the role that they play within communities.

Liz Blackman (Erewash): We have established that the Bill gives authorities a better chance of obtaining antisocial behaviour orders. We have also had a discussion about the role of MPs. My hon. Friend mentioned that it would be a good idea to further spread best practice and that more work needed to be done on that. Could he flesh out how that will happen and how he sees the strategic role of Government in ensuring accountability once the Bill becomes law? Central Government are a partner in this matter. How are we going to make sure that the patchy way that the orders are enforced will be made consistent?

Mr. Ainsworth: The Home Secretary fully recognises that it is not the job of the Home Office simply to frame legislation and then to leave it to others. Delivery must be at the heart of everything that we do. We must engage with local government, which is an important partner. We must look at the operation of the court system. We must look at the engagement of the police. Delivery and how legislation is used should be central to the responsibilities of central Government. It is not good enough for central Government to provide the legislative framework, only for others to take over the job thereafter. That certainly is not the view of the Home Secretary, nor is it the view of this Government. The Government must see their role as deliverers, not just as legislators.

Vernon Coaker: My hon. Friend has said that community support officers will not be able to apply for antisocial behaviour orders. I ask him to give that matter further consideration.

Mr. Ainsworth: I shall, and my hon. Friend will batter my ear if I do not do it—although he may batter my ear even more if I agree to do it: I have no way out.

10.15 am

In order to deliver in that area, the Home Office has set up an antisocial behaviour unit. Its job is not only to talk to practitioners about the powers that are available, but to get feedback on whether and how they are being used and to ensure that the legislative process is being put properly into practice.

Liz Blackman: I accept that we are not starting with a blank sheet, but will the Minister accept that councils perform differently? The Government may need to be a little more proactive in targeting those that perform less well, in order to get them up to the mark.

Mr. Ainsworth: Yes, we accept that. The Government, the antisocial behaviour unit and Members of Parliament all have an important role to play.

I return to the issue raised by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole. She said that the ASBO is an enforcement measure and that she wanted to see more activities attached to the ASBO to deal with the underlying causes of the problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling addressed that point. Yes,

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measures to tackle those underlying issues are needed, but to attach them to ASBOs would make the orders not more accessible but, potentially, less so. I would be totally opposed to something being built into the ASBO that would result in them not being issued or pursued unless this, that or the other had been put in place beforehand.

I agree with all my hon. Friends—we are not in contradiction—that we must see a change of attitude. Yes, of course there has to be support and care; and no one suggests that the first intervention for a 10-year-old should be an enforcement one. However, we must get more into the frame of mind that certain things are not acceptable and that enforcement action will be taken.

Mrs. Brooke: Let me clarify my point. The problem is that we are widening the number of people who can apply for an ASBO. I am confident when a local authority is at the heart of the order, because I know who the antisocial behaviour officers are and I can work with them. However, I do not have that confidence when the ASBO is initiated by a registered social housing landlord, because I do not know the landlord and, as a result, do not know that earlier processes have been engaged on.

My concern is that, when bringing more bodies into the system, one could jump through a lot of hoops and go straight to the process. I want to be reassured that everything will be tied together. I keep making the point that there is no requirement for housing associations to be at the centre of a crime and disorder reduction partnership, and I would feel more confident if there was such a requirement. It works as a total partnership in some parts of the country, but the legislation does not include the sort of safeguard that I am looking for—which I think is a pretty reasonable one. I do not want to undermine the system. The problem lies in extending the power to other bodies that are not locked into the partnership.

Mr. Ainsworth: Housing action trusts need to be able to apply for ASBOs. Their tenants are often at the receiving end of the problems suffered by our communities. We will not allow housing action trusts to apply for orders without consulting the police or the local authority. They will have to consult before making an order, and it is right that they should do so. They cannot do that in isolation and without that consultation.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 36 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 37

Certain orders made on

conviction of offences

Mr. Hawkins: I beg to move amendment No. 65, in

clause 37, page 29, leave out lines 5 to 7.

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

Amendment No. 66, in

clause 37, page 29, leave out lines 34 to 36.

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Mr. Hawkins: First, let my say that I think that the debate that we have just had was extremely useful. Dealing with these amendments is linked to that. I wanted personally to compliment the Minister and the Government. That is not something that I do every day, but the Minister will be aware that in a previous debate in which he and I were involved in Committee, I proposed amendments to enable courts to publicise the names of juveniles who had been made the subject of an antisocial behaviour order. The Minister gave a sympathetic reply, as he often does. He said that he would continue to keep the matter under review. He was under pressure from his own Back Bench, specifically the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Ms Munn), who did not agree with him. However, he said that he agreed more with me than with her, which caused some amusement.

I was delighted to see subsection (9)(c) in this clause, because it is the Government's response to the points not only that I made in Committee, but that my local authority had made. I am looking at a letter sent by the chief executive of Surrey Heath borough council, Mr. Barry Catchpole, to Louise Casey who, I believe, is still the head of the antisocial behaviour unit at the Home Office. The Minister is looking puzzled. I will draw his attention to the Official Report when we break at 11.25 am. I remember this vividly and I am not being tongue-in-cheek. This is a genuine thank you to the Minister and to all those people in the Home Office who put subsection (9)(c) into the Bill, because it reflects precisely a weakness that had occurred in my own constituency where the police and the local authority—the crime and disorder reduction partnership—had done a huge amount of work to bring two brothers finally before the courts and to issue an ASBO. The local Camberley newspaper desperately wanted to publicise that as part of the deterrent effect—to make an ASBO work and to make local people aware that an ASBO had been granted. However, because the two brothers were under the relevant age, the press were refused permission to publicise the case, and the police and chief executive of the local authority wrote to me to say that that defeated the object of the exercise and weakened the ASBO. The newspaper group took the matter to appeal to obtain permission to publicise it and were refused because of the state of the law. That should not happen now, so it is a pleasure to be able to compliment the Minister on this occasion.

I know that we will return to the issue of publicity on a second group of amendments, so I do not wish to say too much now, but it is no surprise that when the Government finally do something right and listen to us, the Liberal Democrats then oppose it. I have no hesitation in drawing attention to the fact that when the Government and the Opposition are doing something sensible together, the Liberal Democrats are against it. We shall return to that.

We are seeking in these amendments to make a further improvement in flexibility. We wish to query with these probing amendments whether it is necessary to have new subsection (3B) in each of subsections (2) and (5). At the moment the Government have inserted:

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''It is immaterial whether evidence led in pursuance of subsection (3A) would have been admissible in the proceedings in which the offender was convicted.''

We simply wish to probe whether that is necessary. No doubt the Minister will explain precisely his thoughts on subsections (3B). Does one need to say in such terms that something is immaterial? I am not convinced that those words have to be in the Bill. We will listen to the Minister with interest.

 

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Prepared 15 May 2003