Public Disorder

Lord Prescott Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, I will not repeat what other noble Lords have said. Many remarks have been made with which I am in full agreement. I have a four short points.

First, we need to recognise that we cannot arrest our way out of this. The short-term proposition that we are looking at right now is necessary, but how do we move on from there? In relation to that, as well as having robust custodial sentences, are any plans in place to lock restorative justice on to that? That is the kind of work that has a deep impact on people: to make these young people, and indeed the older people, who have been involved in these despicable acts face up to the communities that they have helped to destroy and get involved in work to repair those communities.

Secondly, this situation has been brewing for ages. People are fed up with the kind of government leadership that comes in at the last moment and says, “We’re going to set up an inquiry”, even if they say they are going to move away from academics in Whitehall. Any initiative that is around an inquiry needs to be much more community-based and community-focused. It needs to be led by people on the ground who have experience, ideas and knowledge. They know how they could fight back against some of the terrible things that blight their communities if they had the resources and the back-up support to make that work.

Thirdly, any such initiative needs to be multidisciplinary. We have talked about citizenship and education, but it is also about health and a whole range of other issues. There is no point in any initiatives unless we can involve all those different parts of Government, local government, sport and culture. All those areas have a role to play.

Fourthly, we ourselves need to take responsibility. If we talk about young people engaging in violent games and the kind of influence that that has on them, we must also say that recent publicity about the behaviour of the press, the media and politicians—people who are supposed to set examples in our society—has not been above reproach. We must look to ourselves and see what we can do, not only to ensure that our behaviour is a much better form of leadership and role modelling but to make active contributions to those communities.

[Lord Prescott]

My Lords, is there a recognition that this violent disorder is very different from past civic disorder? Do the Government recognise that and the need for a special policy? The announcements that have been made by the Minister about the policies that the Prime Minister has suggested today are covered by the Public Order Act and the Anti-Social Behaviour Act. Why did the Government not use this legislation for the very proposals that they have at this time? We might then have solved the problem earlier. Was it because there were not sufficient police to arrest people under those circumstances? Is it not time that we took a less partisan position on police numbers? The Government should consider how many police are needed for them to carry out their duties, and perhaps at the same time recognise—I welcome this in the Statement—that it is time we took on the criminals who clothed their faces to avoid being recognised in their criminal acts. I am glad that that proposal is there.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, first, we will have a couple of thousand of these people at our disposal for a year or so. Can we please have some proper academic research, using them, into the whys and wherefores? This is a new phenomenon for us. We really ought to try to understand it; this is an opportunity that we should not miss.

Secondly, as a resident of Battersea, this week it was immensely distressing that the police station 100 yards away from the centre of disturbance did not produce anybody for the first hour and a half of what was going on. As the noble Lord, Lord Dear, said, we need to look at that. It is totally unacceptable that that should be the service that the businesses and people of Battersea had.