Respect Orders and Anti-social Behaviour

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to the House. As Conservatives, we stand against anti-social behaviour in all its forms. It is not right that people feel unsafe in their communities and that the consequences of anti-social behaviour are felt by shops, businesses and residents alike. We welcome all efforts to tackle anti-social behaviour, but I ask the Minister whether he believes that respect orders are anything

“more than a press release or a rebrand”,—[Official Report, Commons, 27/11/24; col. 794.]

as the honourable Member for Stockton West said in the other place. Does the Minister think that respect orders are necessary, given that they are near-identical to existing powers held by the police?

We completely reject the notion that the previous Conservative Government was anything but the party of law and order. That Government launched the anti-social behaviour action plan, backed by £160 million of funding and with over 100,000 hours of police and another uniform patrols undertaken to tackle anti-social behaviour hotspots. Given that the Minister’s party seems keen on releasing serious offenders early, how does this align with its plan to decrease anti-social behaviour? Surely many of these dangerous individuals, who have been released on to our streets before they have served their sentence in full, will need more than a respect order to prevent them reoffending.

The Minister for Policing told the House of Commons that

“respect orders are different from criminal behaviour orders”.

She continued:

“Criminal behaviour orders are attached where there is a conviction, and the Crown Prosecution Service applies in court for that criminal behaviour order. Respect orders will not require a conviction”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/11/24; col. 795.]


Will the Minister outline what sort of behaviour will be covered by a respect order and what the penalties will be for them?

The previous Conservative Government created over 20,000 police officers and fulfilled our manifesto commitment on this. By March this year, the police headcount hit its highest ever number on record. We are most definitely the party of law and order, and I will repeat the question asked in the other place, which was left unanswered by the Minister there—perhaps the Minister will answer me now. It was

“the last Government increased funding for frontline policing by £922 million for this year—will the Government match that increase next year?”—[Official Report, Commons, 27/11/24; col. 795.]

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, a return to proper neighbourhood policing, with officers who know and are known to the communities that they serve, is absolutely essential to tackle the misery caused by anti-social behaviour.

The part of the Statement about respect orders raises a number of issues, which we will return to, no doubt, when we look at the policing Bill. For example, what burden of proof will be required for the courts to approve such an order, and how will police work with communities to ensure that repeated reporting and gathering of evidence has the desired effect? How will the courts deal with applications in a timely manner, given the enormous backlog of cases already before them? What will be the bar for anyone who breaches these orders to find themselves in jail? It is an easy headline to say that offenders will end up in prison, but there is currently such an acute shortage of prison spaces that the Government are already having to release people early. What safeguards will be in the Bill to ensure that these orders do not inadvertently reinvent the Vagrancy Act, in effect, criminalising homelessness?

I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to removing the de facto threshold of £200 for attracting any action on goods stolen from shops. Last week, one of my friends went into a local pharmacy, where she was picking up a prescription. A few minutes later, a young man walked in, carrying a very large bag, and set to clearing the shelves of all the over-the-counter medication. When somebody who was standing there mentioned the police, he just laughed. Afterwards, the staff said that he comes in on a regular basis but that they are too scared to try to stop him.

Sadly, this is not an isolated story: it is part of a rising tide sweeping the country. The numbers are staggering. In 2023, the Association of Convenience Stores recorded 5.6 million incidents of shoplifting—more than a fivefold increase from the previous year. That is 46,000 thefts every day.

Can the Minister say anything about how the Government intend to deploy technology to make it easier for retailers to log crime by repeat offenders, thereby helping to build a picture that can be used to prosecute? I took a quick look at the Met’s reporting tool over the weekend. The website estimates that it takes 15 minutes to report a non-violent shoplifting offence. I cannot imagine that many shopkeepers, particularly those with small shops, will spend 15 minutes reporting a crime that almost invariably will not end in a prosecution. Will the Minister look at introducing a national scheme for reporting shoplifting, where retailers can quickly access a dedicated platform and report crime in just a few minutes? No one wants to watch people walking out of a shop without paying for goods or, indeed, racing down the footpath on an e-scooter. It unsettles everyone, leaves the most vulnerable feeling unsafe and chips away at our collective sense of security.

I hope the Minister will welcome suggestions and inputs from all sides when we come to discuss the Bill.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the contributions of both His Majesty’s Opposition Front Bench and the Liberal Democrat Front Bench. I reassure the House that we will have plenty of opportunity to discuss these matters because this Statement, in effect, trails legislation that will come into effect at a later date, if passed by both Houses. So we will consider it over the next few weeks and months.

I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, is against anti-social behaviour. I would expect nothing less of him. It is a shame that when in office his party reduced the number of PCSOs by 55% since 2010. It is a shame that confidence in policing fell by 65% when he was at the Home Office and his colleagues were in office. It is a shame that trust in policing fell by 69% over the same period. It is a shame that shop theft, which the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, raised, has risen by 29% over the past year. It is a shame that the former Minister refused to implement suggestions that we will bring forward in the Bill on shop theft and attacks on shop workers. It is a shame that he took 14 years to reinstate the number of police officers in service when he took office in 2010. When I was Police Minister—

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I was not the Minister.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I do not blame the noble Lord personally. He carries the collective weight of the Conservative Government of the last 14 years on his shoulders. He may not like that, but he is in front of me now and he has to account for the Government he supported in Parliament, in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as I have to account for this Government.

I will be helpful to the noble Lord. He talked about respect orders. The respect order will be introduced through the crime and policing Bill when it comes before this House and the House of Commons in the new year. We expect to pilot respect orders once the legislation is passed so that we can learn lessons from them. We expect that they will be introduced for persistent adult offenders involved in public drinking, drug use or other anti-social behaviour—that goes to some of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. The orders will be targeted at individuals involved in persistent anti-social behaviour as a whole.

I will answer the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, then return to those of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, shortly. The courts must be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that an offence has occurred. The same legal tests will be in place as those that are in place now for civil injunction policies. The police and local authorities can apply for respect orders. The pilot scheme will be a chance to look at and, I hope, iron out some of the issues that might be raised. It is for the courts to determine how to handle someone who breaches an order; that could mean a community sentence or a jail sentence. We are trying to look at prison places generally; I will return to that point.

The noble Baroness asked the important question of whether this will criminalise homelessness. I hope I can genuinely reassure her that being homeless in itself will not be treated as anti-social behaviour. That would be the case if there were aggravating factors, such as alcohol or misbehaviour of some sort, but simply being homeless would not be a qualifying factor for a respect order.

Respect orders are different from civil injunctions because they are aimed at higher levels of anti-social behaviour. The important point is that the police will be able to undertake those orders very quickly—if the Bill is passed by both Houses. Again, there will be an opportunity for us to debate these matters in due course.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned the early release of prisoners and asked whether respect orders would be effective if a prisoner committed a further offence. Let me tell the noble Lord: if a prisoner on licence committed a further offence, they would not need a respect order; they would be back in prison very quickly as a result of breaching the licence conditions for which they were released early.

If the noble Lord reflected carefully on this he would know that, were he was standing where I am standing now, he would be defending a government policy for limited early release of prisoners to give space. Dare I say it, the noble Lord’s Government did not build prison places during their time in office. Again, I do not wish to hang 14 years of policy and decisions entirely on his shoulders but he has to take responsibility. When he asks for things from this Government, he has to reflect on the fact that there were things he and his Government did not do when they were in office. Indeed, they left us with a black hole to deal with, as well as these issues.

The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, welcomed our proposals on shoplifting actions and shop theft, as I prefer to call it, and the change to the £200 limit. She may be interested to note that, when I was the shadow Minister in another place 10 years ago, I opposed the order that introduced the £200 limit for the very reasons why we are now removing it. It sent a signal that low-value shoplifting and shop theft can be tolerated. That will not lead the police to look at the issue she mentioned. The 29% rise in shoplifting in just the last year of the previous Government is an indication that we need to take action, and we will.

We will also take action on the important issue the noble Baroness mentioned of protection for shop workers, and the creation of an aggravated offence in the event of shop workers being attacked. Shop workers deserve our respect. They often uphold legislation on alcohol sales, solvent sales, knife sales, tobacco sales and other sales. When they are subject to anti-social behaviour, there should be consequences for those individuals who engage in that behaviour. Her suggestion on how we record those incidents is interesting; we will explore that during the passage of the legislation.

The 13,000 neighbourhood police officers that the Government intend to put in place will be funded by additional resources. Half a billion pounds was announced last week, so the noble Lord, Lord Davies, will now be aware of the extra funding that he asked about. Again for the benefit of the noble Lord’s checklist, another £260 million was announced last week. More money will be announced during the first two weeks of December for a proposed police settlement, which will be out for consultation for the year after. It is extremely important we take action on shoplifting.

Finally, the noble Baroness mentioned e-bikes. One plan in the legislation—so it has to go through both Houses—is to give police powers to seize e-bikes and other bicycle-type machinery involved in anti-social behaviour. I regard riding an e-bike on a pavement as anti-social.

I want to make noble Lords aware of an important difference in this legislation regarding the police’s ability to take action. At the moment, police can take action on these issues but they have to give a warning. The proposals in the legislation will remove the need for a warning, so that if somebody is riding an e-bike or, indeed, an off-road bike in an anti-social way, that bike can be seized immediately, with consequences for the individual.

I welcome the welcome from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I hope that, in due course, the House will scrutinise but welcome these proposals.