Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord James of Blackheath and Lord Crickhowell

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord James of Blackheath (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Marlesford on his amendment, but I wish also to make a small criticism of it—that it is lacking in focus. While it deals with the issues of litter very effectively, it does not go far enough in addressing the issues of offensive behaviour in cars and other moving vehicles, which is increasingly prevalent among young people.

I cite the example of recent Saturdays, when we have had the rugby at Twickenham. I have made endless attempts to convince my wife that rugby is a respectable pastime and not the equivalent of being found in bed with a supermodel on a Saturday afternoon, as she has often thought—although, given the way in which England have played recently, it is a good alternative. However, I persuaded my wife to come to Twickenham with me on each of the last three Saturdays and she was totally horrified at the sight of the school buses coming down the road full of children indulging in a pastime which is, I believe, called mooning. I am not going to explain it to your Lordships because we are in mixed company, but the sight of some 40 children mooning simultaneously is not a pretty one. My wife is a youth justice officer and as she watched the police motorbikes zooming past these kids, giving them a friendly wave, she said: “We have a law against this sort of thing. Why are they not being brought into court? I would put them away for a year if I got them.”

There is an omission in the amendment tabled by my noble friend in that it does not deal adequately with the bad behaviour that can come out of vehicles and interfere with others. That was one example, but there was another this week of which your Lordships should be aware. In its wisdom, the Times—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, is not here to take down this message—is pursuing, to a ludicrous degree, the cause of cyclists to the point where they are creating a new and separate society in London, in which cyclists think they have a superior law and control over everybody in a motor car. This is going to lead to some catastrophic accidents very soon. On three mornings, driving up the A3 in the Balham and Clapham area, I have seen cyclists put their cycles up against the central reservation—not the line where the bus lane is—stand in the middle of the road with a camera and defy you to run them down while they photograph you doing it. That is what they are longing for. We need to have that sort of behaviour excluded because it is going to lead to their demise and our prosecution: it is ridiculous. I support the amendment, but it needs to go a little further.

[Lord Crickhowell (Con)]

My Lords, one step at a time. I am going to let my noble friend’s suggested change to the amendment pass by for the time being. However, I have a great deal of sympathy for both these amendments. I will concentrate on my noble friend Lord Marlesford’s amendment. I have now moved from my home in a national park, but I have always been horrified by the casual way that, in one of the most beautiful valleys in the countryside, people throw drink containers out of the windows of their cars as if that was a normal and natural thing to do. I am almost equally horrified—frustrated, indeed—by the attitude described by my noble friend as coming from Defra. I am not entirely surprised that it comes from officials: I am horrified that it has come in the form of letters from my noble friends who I have always regarded as thoroughly practical, sensible and wise people. I hope that my noble friend Lord Taylor will show that I am right in that respect when he responds to this debate.

The condition of our roadsides is really appalling. It is a very long time since I served in Lady Thatcher’s Government, but I well remember her returning from an overseas trip and expressing horror and consternation at the state of the road from Heathrow to London given the litter that was there, compared to the roadsides she had observed in the places she had been visiting. This was, I am afraid, one of the occasions when she did not do anything and here we are, 30 or more years later, and nothing effective has been done.

My noble friend described the comments from a Minister about the strength of the legal system and how, if you have a tough law and all the awful penalties he described, people were likely to take notice of it. I have to tell him that it is not only the hooligans and the ignorant who ignore the law. I well remember, when I was still a Member of Parliament for Pembroke, the president of my association—who had himself fought three parliamentary elections and was a distinguished local magistrate—telling me of driving back over the Preseli Hills from a magistrates’ meeting in Haverfordwest. He was horrified because someone in the car in front of him was throwing papers out of the window every few hundred yards. After he had driven for 10 or 20 miles and the confetti had been scattered along the roadside for a considerable distance, he decided to stop to see what the litter consisted of. He stopped, picked up the litter and discovered that it was the minutes of the magistrates’ meeting that he had just left. There you had a magistrate leaving a magistrates’ meeting who was so terrified of the law which my noble friend has described that he was taking no notice of it at all.

We have a very practical suggestion from my noble friend and it does not deserve the casual and rather absurd way that it has been treated so far by Defra. I hope that the Minister, if he cannot accept the amendment in exactly its present form, will tell the House that he will be prepared to discuss this whole matter in much more detail with his department in the hope that we can make some belated progress on this urgent problem.