Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Taylor of Blackburn Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

I do not want to disrupt the Minister as he answers other noble Lords’ questions, and I am grateful to him for answering one of the questions that I raised. I just wondered whether he is going to come to the other questions I asked, about the representations he received that the current process was inflexible, and what examples he had of those. I also asked why the Government have not abided by their response to the Home Affairs Select Committee, as they committed themselves to do.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I have given the noble Baroness the information I have on our response to the Home Affairs Select Committee. I can give her no more information than I have given her already on the representations that were made. However, if the noble Baroness will permit it, I will write to her on the subject. It might be useful that I exchange the information with her. Of course, I will include any other Peers who have spoken on this group of amendments.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

While the Minister’s flow has been disrupted, perhaps I could disrupt it a little bit further. Can he explain a little bit more how the Government envisage that this will work? The more I have heard about this, the more concerned I have become. Suppose, for example, there is a fairground in an area. It may be a visiting fair. During the previous evening, there were some problems with youths fighting and so on. Does that mean that an inspector could issue an authorisation or exclusion from people carrying out certain sorts of behaviour during the following day?

I think I am also right in saying that Clause 38 would permit—if the right authorisation has been given—a police community support officer, rather than a warranted officer, to carry out the exclusions concerned. What would then happen, if I am right, is that an area would be defined and police officers and police community support officers would be deployed with maps in their pockets to give to people whom they thought—in their opinion—were causing disruption or bad behaviour, and those people would then be required to leave the area shown on the map which they would be given from the back pocket of the police constable or the police community support officer.

That would then be a power for which there would be no accountability other than the authorisation by a police officer of the rank of inspector. This is one of the federated ranks—not even superintendent—so in many ways it would be a comparatively low-level authorisation. There would be no requirement to consult. It was said that it would be good practice to inform the local authority; but I think I heard the Minister say that this would be after the event, rather than before.

This could have an enormous impact on community relations. I can think of parts of London where the sudden arrival of police officers clutching maps and saying, “We are going to exclude you from this area for 48 hours”, would cause serious problems and disruption. Even if it were a proportionate response to the problem that had occurred the previous evening, it seems that this is something that should be exercised with proper consultation with the community representatives concerned. I have ended up being more disturbed by these provisions in the Bill following the Minister’s very careful and helpful explanation than I was beforehand. It would obviously have been better had he not tried to explain it to us.