Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Morris of Aberavon and Lord Greaves

Monday 18th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords, we are all grateful to my noble friend Lady Mallalieu for raising these matters. She has spelled out her concerns and anxieties about what might be unintended consequences. We should always pause and think, particularly with regard to Amendment 19C, when a standard lower than the usual criminal standard is sought to be imported. I am always nervous of including any test other than the usual one in a criminal court. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has done a good service to us here in spelling out—and I am sure that he is right—the two parts of the procedures: civil, in order to obtain the injunction, then the usual criminal one, where there has been a breach or an allegation of a breach. This should reassure those of us who are anxious—and I was anxious when I first read it—of importing any lower standard.

I appreciate the remarks of my noble friend Lord Harris, who has dealt with this in part. I invite the House to stand back and try to deal with the mischief that we are concerned with of unacceptable behaviour in closely-knit communities. For more than 40 years, I represented an industrial constituency with large housing estates. People would come to my surgeries—as they did with my noble friend Lord Harris, who was in a slightly different capacity but with the same problem—and ask: “What can we do? We have been to see the housing manager, the police and everyone we can think of and nothing happens”. Time after time, we were impotent.

Far more frequently than would be admitted, the problem was that people were not prepared to come forward and give evidence, because they had to live in that community after the event. That is the crux of it. We are dealing with a real mischief. This is a small change to what we might expect of a standard of proof before any sanctions are imposed, but there are well-hallowed precedents for doing it in this way. Provided one maintains the usual criminal standard for a breach of it, then I for one am satisfied with Amendment 19C.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, do the Government expect more or fewer people to be arraigned before the courts for injunctions under this new system, compared with people given ASBOs? Have they made an assessment of that? This is important because, we hope, the number of people who are given the new injunctions or who at the moment are given ASBOs, are a minority—quite a small one—of people who cause some kind of low-level anti-social behaviour in the sort of communities that the noble and learned Lord has been talking about.

Do the Government have an assessment of how the new system will affect the numbers who get to the end of the road and have one of these badges—if that is what they are—put upon them? Secondly—I thought about this while listening to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey—the fundamental thing is: what level of resources are on the ground to deal with these problems and to prevent people getting either the new injunctions or ASBOs? The harsh reality is that in many parts of the country at the moment, that resource is going down.

In my area, what people might think of as a crime and disorder partnership—we call it a community safety partnership—has been extremely successful in the towns and wards of the borough. One meeting that I try to go to each month as a ward councillor is called a PACT meeting—police and communities together. It is a group of residents who meet police and councillors in the ward each month to talk about these problems: local crime and particularly disorder and anti-social behaviour. It works. Sometimes, a handful of people turn up. Then, when something erupts in some of the streets, a lot of people turn up and it provides a focus for dealing with these problems. However, it requires the local police to have the time and resources to take part in such activity. It also requires the local authority’s anti-social behaviour staff to be there and to be prepared to get involved at the case, area and street levels. If it is in an area of social housing, it involves the social housing providers as well. Other people get involved as well.

In our part of the world, that system is being slowly withdrawn for purely financial reasons, as the police cannot afford to devote the resources to it that they have done. If the police are given a choice between relatively high-level and low-level crime, they will put more resources into high-level crime. They might also be given a choice between low-level crime and local disorder or the preventative work where the local neighbourhood teams go round to talk to people, getting to know the patch and its lads and lasses who are hanging around on the streets and might get into bother. The police might find diversionary activities for them, if they have the resources. If that is going on, the system will work, but once that is withdrawn, then all the IPNAs, ASBOs and anything else in the world will not solve the problem. The numbers will increase, because the numbers who get to that level will increase, but the problems on the ground will get worse.