Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Sharma and Yvette Cooper

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

We have another parliamentary Session and another Home Office Christmas tree Bill. Last year’s Bill had a bit of crime, a bit of judicial reform, a bit of extradition and a bit of drugs. This year’s has a bit on police standards, a bit on guns and a bit on dogs, but in none of those areas does it go far enough. The Christmas tree decorations cannot hide the fact that the Bill is weak on tackling antisocial behaviour, at a time when the Office for National Statistics shows concern among the public that antisocial behaviour is going up.

There are areas of the Bill that we will support, as well as areas in which we want the Government to go further. We called for the Independent Police Complaints Commission to cover private companies, and we are glad that those provisions are in the Bill. We support the measures relating to the College of Policing, too, although we believe that the Government should go further on police standards. We agree with the Home Affairs Select Committee that new firearms offences are needed for possession of firearms with intent to supply, and we are glad that they are in the Bill.

We agree that forced marriage should never be tolerated. It is a terrible violation and can destroy people’s lives. The law should be strengthened to build on the work done to stop forced marriage, although the Government need to work with experts to get the detail right and also to ensure that cuts to refuges or to legal aid do not undermine the support that victims need in practice.

The central claim for the Bill, as we can see from its title, is that it will tackle antisocial behaviour, and here there are many false promises. Three years ago, the Home Secretary said that she was determined to take action on antisocial behaviour, yet the figures from the Office for National Statistics show that eight out of 10 people say antisocial behaviour is going up, that nearly half say it is going up a lot, and that only one in 10 say it is going down in their area.

So what have the Government done to help? They have cut the community safety funding by nearly two thirds, even though those are the funds that help communities to pay for extra police community support officers, for youth activities, for action against gangs, for extra street lighting and for CCTV. This is the crime prevention investment that helps to save money and police time later on, yet the Government have cut it severely. They have cut it not just by 20% in line with police cuts, or even by 23% in line with the Home Office budget, but by over 60%.

This is all happening at a time when the Government are cutting 15,000 police officers, including more than 7,000 from the most visible units of all. The Home Secretary claimed earlier, in Home Office questions, that a higher proportion of police officers were now on the front line. However, a slightly higher proportion of a much lower number still means fewer police officers, and the proportion who are visible has gone down from 12.3% to 11.8%. The Government are not just cutting police numbers; they are making things harder for them, too.

[Alok Sharma]

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way, but I really wish she would not keep undermining the police force, which is doing a fantastic job. In the Thames valley, we have had crime down and detection rates up year after year. Why can she not just acknowledge that we have police forces that are doing a great job in some difficult circumstances?

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. We have seen the impact in a whole series of areas—as I said, during the London riots, for example. In fact, at the time of the riots, the Prime Minister said of CCTV:

“We are making technology work for us…And as I said yesterday, no phoney human rights concerns about publishing photographs will get in the way of bringing these criminals to justice.”

It would seem, however, that the Home Secretary is tying herself up in exactly those so-called “phoney human rights concerns” that she has pledged to abolish.

This Bill will not make it easier to tackle antisocial behaviour. The Government are indeed making changes to powers: antisocial behaviour injunctions will be replaced with crime prevention injunctions; public space orders will be replaced with public space protection orders; acceptable behaviour agreements will be replaced with acceptable behaviour contracts; premises closure notices will be replaced by closure notices; and noise abatement notices will be replaced by community protection notices. No set of powers will be perfect, and everyone wants to make sure that the system is as swift and easy to use as possible. The trouble is that the Bill will not achieve that. There is a lot of changing of names and a lot of tinkering at the margins. Some changes may help and make it simpler; others may make it harder while agencies work out how the new processes are supposed to work.

Housing associations, for example, have warned that it will take five years to develop the case law for the new powers to work. The Government’s own figures admit that it will require at least 150,000 hours of police training to use these powers, even though many of them are remarkably similar to the old powers they replaced. The fact is that communities, councils, housing associations, the police and the courts need a wide range of tools to deal with very different problems. The risk for the Home Secretary is that, by trying to squeeze a wide range of problems into a narrow number of powers, she may make it harder to achieve that.

On the one hand, many organisations have written to The Times today to say that they fear this will mean too heavy-handed treatment for the lowest level of antisocial behaviour or nuisance, while on the other hand police officers have raised with me their concern that the powers will not be strong enough to deal with the worst problems. The one-size-fits-all approach has risks.

We need early intervention. We do not want to see young people unnecessarily criminalised or dragged through the courts for low-level problems when it can be sorted out on the spot. We do want to know that persistent, aggressive antisocial behaviour that can terrorise neighbours or residents will be dealt with properly, including by criminal sanctions where needed. Yes, we should have community resolutions and remedies for antisocial behaviour, but they must not be abused.

We know that community resolutions are now being used for serious and violent crimes, including for domestic violence. Last year, community resolutions were used for 33,000 serious and violent crimes, including in 2,500 domestic violence cases, where the Association of Chief Police Officers was clear that they should not be used.

[Alok Sharma]

The right hon. Lady is talking about the views of the police, so let me quote what ACPO said:

“In broad terms the proposals contained within the draft bill are practical, positive, reasonable and balanced.”

What is there not to like?

[Yvette Cooper]

I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that ACPO, like chief constables across the country, will make the best of the approach put to them, but many practitioners across the country have raised the concern that, with changing case law, it will take some time to be able to use the powers as effectively as the previous powers were used.

The Bill does nothing to make sure that community remedies and resolutions are focused on low-level crime. It does nothing to ensure that proper restorative justice, putting victims at the heart of the process, will be pursued or guaranteed. Instead, it risks creating loopholes to let offenders off because overstretched councils and police have not had the resources to sort the problem out.

European Convention on Human Rights

Debate between Lord Sharma and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, as a result of the problems over foreign criminals, a series of actions and measures were taken that increased the number of foreign criminals being deported. The problem for the Government is that the actions that they have taken seem to have reduced the number of foreign criminals being deported by more than 1,000 a year—a drop of nearly 20% in 12 months. That means that foreign criminals who should be deported are staying in this country and in the community. The UK Border Agency is not deporting them because of the chaos and fiasco within it.

[Alok Sharma]

Will the right hon. Lady be supporting the motion this evening? Everything that she is saying suggests that she supports what the Home Secretary has set out.

[Yvette Cooper]

I think that we need action to deport more foreign criminals. That includes more practical action through the UK Border Agency. The Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration need to explain what they think the motion means. I will come on to that now, because it is an important issue.

The relationship between Parliament and the courts is made explicit in the Human Rights Act 1998. Parliament is actively encouraged to debate the way in which rights should be balanced, and the judiciary is expected to take that into account. Similarly, the British courts cannot strike down an Act of Parliament or primary legislation on immigration, even if they think that it does not comply with the Human Rights Act. Parliament has to decide how to respond if that is the case. That is the legal and democratic framework within which we operate. As part of that, it is reasonable for Parliament to express its view on the balance of different rights, and in particular the balance of different qualified rights. Indeed, we do so all the time through our legislation.

Border Checks Summer 2011

Debate between Lord Sharma and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

The Home Secretary has not intervened, so let me give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Alok Sharma]

Listening to the tone of the right hon. Lady’s opening comments, one would almost think that her party had left immigration in absolutely perfect order. Let me remind her that it left a system which her own Home Secretary at the time said was “not fit for purpose”, with a backlog of 450,000 asylum cases, and that Lord Glasman, her own colleague, said:

“Labour lied…about…immigration and the extent of illegal”—[Interruption.]