Respect Orders and Antisocial Behaviour
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Diana Johnson(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on the Government’s action to tackle antisocial behaviour.
From residential neighbourhoods to busy high streets, from rolling countryside to city centres and from idyllic villages to bustling towns, the places of Britain should be a source of local pride. As well as being safe, they should feel safe for those who live and work in them, yet the dismal reality is that in too many areas the opposite is true. In the last year of the previous Government, shop theft soared by 29% to a 20-year high, street theft surged by 40% and antisocial behaviour reached new heights in our towns and cities. That is the Conservative party’s legacy on law and order.
Up and down the country, people feel uneasy or even unsafe. Unruly gangs roam the streets, creating intimidation and fear, noisy off-road vehicles speed around, disturbing the peace, illegal drugs are abused with brazenness, public spaces are awash with litter and graffiti, and an epidemic of shop theft is plaguing retailers big and small while their staff are subjected to intolerable levels of abuse and violence.
At its core, this is about respect: respect between citizens, respect for our society and the expectations underpinning it, and respect for the rule of law. All those are woven into the fabric of our democracy, but, after years of neglect, that fabric has become worn. We saw a disgraceful illustration of that in the summer when serious disorder erupted in some towns and cities. We see it on a smaller scale every day as decent, law-abiding people suffer due to the selfishness of others.
More than a third of people—36%—in England and Wales report experiencing or witnessing some type of antisocial behaviour in their local area, while about a million incidents of antisocial behaviour were recorded by police in the year to June 2024. We must never make the mistake of dismissing this menace as low-level or trivial; to do so would be an insult to the victims. It may manifest itself in different ways in different areas, but wherever and however it occurs there is an adverse impact on neighbourhoods and communities.
Antisocial behaviour chips away at people’s sense of pride and confidence in their local area. It ruins their enjoyment of public spaces. For those affected by the most serious and persistent cases, their quality of life is damaged. One victim quoted in a report on antisocial behaviour published recently by the Victims Commissioner said this:
“Every day I’m crying…It makes me anxious…and it actually makes me physically sick.”
Another said:
“It’s totally isolating and nobody can understand the pressure it puts on you.”
I am sure that all hon. Members across the House will be familiar with accounts like those from the all-too-frequent interactions we have with our constituents on these issues.
Earlier this month, I visited Leyton in east London, where I heard from local councillors about the importance of partners working together to tackle antisocial behaviour. More recently, the Home Secretary and I met victims of antisocial behaviour and shop theft, Annie Valentine and Brian Roberts from Blackpool and Tim Nye from Sheffield, to hear about their concerns at first hand.
This cannot go on, and the Government will not stand for it. That is why the Prime Minister has made safer streets a central pillar of our agenda for change. A key part of that mission is the work that the Home Secretary is leading alongside police to put visible neighbourhood policing back at the heart of our communities. By restoring that crucial link between police forces and the people they serve, we will ensure that residents and businesses have the reassurance they want and need as well as deterring would-be offenders. As we implement our neighbourhood policing guarantee, we are determined to tackle antisocial behaviour head on. Today, I can update the House on that work.
To turn things around and effectively combat the problem, it is clear that fresh impetus is needed, which is why we committed in our manifesto to introducing respect orders, which will enable tough restrictions to be placed on the worst adult perpetrators of antisocial behaviour. Those subject to a respect order could be banned from a town centre as well as being compelled to address the root cause of their behaviour—for example, through mandated alcohol and drug treatment. The orders will be applied for by the police, by councils or by social housing providers and issued by the courts.
Importantly, there will be a power of arrest available for all suspected breaches, protecting communities and town centres from further harm. We are going even further: anyone who breaches a respect order will have committed a criminal offence and may face up to two years’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine or a community order. These new powers will be piloted first to ensure that they are as effective as possible.
We will also crack down on the scourge of off-road bikes in public parks, dangerous e-scooters on pavements and street racing, all of which inflict misery on local communities. Under strengthened police powers, officers will no longer be required to issue a warning before seizing vehicles involved in antisocial behaviour.
Retail crime harms lives and livelihoods and be must dealt with as the serious threat that it is. We will introduce a new, specific offence of assaulting a retail worker and we will end the effective immunity for shop theft of goods under £200.
The task of making our country safer will not be completed overnight, but this is a Government of action. The work of change is under way and, as we step up this vital effort, we are guided by the simple and unshakeable belief that our streets belong to the decent, law-abiding majority. For far too long, gangs, yobs and thieves have been running amok, and that is not going to happen any more. Under this Government, the safety and security of the public will always come first. We will be unrelenting in our mission to restore respect and take back our streets.
Dame Diana Johnson
I am going to answer the questions, if the hon. Lady will give me an opportunity to do so. [Interruption.] I think a little courtesy in the House is helpful. We are talking about antisocial behaviour, and a number of my comments were about respect, which is very important in this House.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Can we have less noise and heckling from the Back Benches?
Dame Diana Johnson
I have always tried to be respectful to all Members of this House, and I will now try to deal with some of the points made by the shadow Minister.
The most important point for the shadow Minister to understand is that respect orders are different from criminal behaviour orders—I do not think he quite understood that. 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. They will be made on application to court by councils, social housing providers and the police. A power of arrest will be attached if they are breached, and that individual will be brought before the magistrates court if that breach happens. They are different from a criminal behaviour order. They are also different in the sense that they are not community protection notices, which I think the shadow Minister referred to, which are for lower-level environmental antisocial behaviour issues.
In the conversations I have had with individuals in the sector and organisations that work in this field, respect orders got a lot of support. We want to pilot them. We want to make sure that they will work fully when we bring them in across the country. I am confident that they will provide the flexibility of a civil injunction, which is what deals with antisocial behaviour at the moment. But if a civil injunction is breached, the police officer has to take the individual to court to prove the breach. There is no automatic power of arrest. That is the difference from the respect order. It combines the flexibility of the civil injunction with the teeth of the criminal behaviour order. I hope that explains to the shadow Minister why respect orders are a very positive development to deal with antisocial behaviour.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I welcome the measures that the Minister has set out today and the Government’s commitment to tackling antisocial behaviour, which is an urgent issue in my constituency, particularly in town centres. But the most urgent issue that we face in tackling these issues is the number of police officers. My hon. Friend will be aware that the previous Government allocated funding to recruit police officers, and then withdrew it when the Met was unable to meet its target due to a set of unique challenges in London. Can my right hon. Friend give her firm assurance that the unique challenges facing the Met are fully understood, and that the Government will provide it with the resources that it needs to tackle this very serious issue in our communities?
Dame Diana Johnson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. The Met makes up almost a quarter of overall policing. It plays a very important part in policing London, but it also has other responsibilities at national level—counter-terrorism and so on. Decisions on funding are being taken at the moment. The House will be informed in the normal way next month about the provisional settlements for policing, but I hear my hon. Friend concerns very clearly.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the Liberal Democrats spokesperson, who knows that she has a maximum of two minutes.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
In a recent survey of residents of Telford, it was overwhelmingly clear that they had had enough of the inaction of the past 14 years. I welcome the respect orders coming into the police officer toolkit. Can the Minister confirm that they will give the authorities the power to seize and crush off-road bikes, to seize booze off drunken yobs and to deal with those who consume drugs in our town centres? We also need a return to neighbourhood policing, so that we have coppers back on the streets, patrolling their communities.
Dame Diana Johnson
I am mindful of your instruction, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I can absolutely say that this is about rebuilding that neighbourhood presence to put those police officers, PCSOs and specials back in our communities and deal with exactly the issues that my hon. Friend has raised, with people drinking, taking drugs, riding vehicles and causing harassment, alarm, and distress.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Sussex Members of Parliament are listening very closely to the Minister.
Dame Diana Johnson
Announcements on the provisional police settlement will be made in the usual way next month. The Home Secretary has already indicated that an additional half a billion pounds will be made available for policing. That has already been announced. With regard to the direct figures for Sussex, I am afraid that the hon. Lady and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will have to wait a few more days.
Dame Diana Johnson
We all know the importance of a good night’s sleep, so I hope very much that respect orders will go some way towards delivering that. There may be additional things that we need to do, but it is at least a start to remove the requirement for a warning before action can be taken to get these vehicles off our roads, parks and pavements, because they are causing such problems.
Police Conduct and Complaints
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Diana Johnson(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under you this afternoon, Ms Ghani. I think it is an excellent idea to recognise the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and his long-standing membership of the Home Affairs Committee. His institutional memory of what has happened on that Committee has certainly been important not only in putting together this report, but in our work on policing.
The hon. Member has set out clearly and effectively the findings and recommendations of our report. It is quite clear that the Home Affairs Committee inquiry looked at the role and remit of the IOPC in relation to the police complaints and discipline system, and explored the continuing disquiet at the way in which police forces in England and Wales investigate and deal with complaints about the conduct of forces and individual officers. Importantly, we sought to consider what changes might be required to improve public confidence in the police complaints and discipline system.
We thought it was important to undertake parliamentary scrutiny of that important role, given, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, the establishment of the newly created IOPC in January 2018, and because the Committee had not looked at the topic for nine years, since the publication of its last report on the matter—I do not think the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Committee at that point. Our report has covered several different areas, which were set out effectively. I will focus my contribution on a couple of areas that we looked at in the Committee that will hopefully complement what the hon. Gentleman said in his opening remarks. First, I will focus on the treatment of vulnerable adults, specifically people with autism, and how they interact in the police complaints process.
A well-functioning conduct and complaints system is essential to maintaining the trust in the balance created by the founding Peel principles between the police and public. Despite the welcome reforms and improvements, some submissions to our inquiry demonstrate that there is continuing dissatisfaction with the handling of police complaints, and that much more work is needed to address both complainants’ and officers’ concerns. In our report, we noted that the IOPC impact report 2020-21 stated that 43% of people surveyed were confident that the IOPC did a good job, compared with 44% in 2019-20. Obviously, there is still a lot of work to do.
In the evidence heard and received during the course of our inquiry, individuals with autism and parents of children with autism outlined systemic issues in their treatment in the police complaints and criminal justice process. Many felt they had been badly let down by the IOPC and the police, and that that had caused distress to families and friends.
Fiona Laskaris, whose autistic son Christopher was unlawfully killed by a drug addict in 2016, told us:
“the IOPC urgently needs to start engaging in a meaningful way in cases involving people with disabilities, and particularly… with autism”.
Fiona argued that cases involving people with autism
“warrant an enhanced level of independent scrutiny”
and suggested the existing statutory safeguarding duties to protect vulnerable adults who come into contact with the police were not working.
We received anonymous evidence that one autistic person, who had experienced frequent contact with the police, including being arrested for alleged attacks, was not treated as a vulnerable adult, even though they informed the police they were autistic and had requested an appropriate adult for assistance. The anonymous submission claimed that the police “never acknowledge or check” their autism awareness card, even when their wallet is being searched, which always happens when the police seize personal items.
The Home Secretary wrote to the Committee on 9 December 2021 and said,
“Many police forces have developed additional training programmes”
and
“various autism alert card schemes, apps, and the creation of easy-read ‘widget-based’ sheets (using icons or pictographs) to aid communication in custody suites.”
She highlighted the IOPC statutory guidance for forces on complaint handling, which outlines the
“importance of accessibility as well as the duty under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that a disabled person does not suffer any substantial disadvantage when accessing a service.”
The Home Secretary said it was
“important that those dealing with complaints recognise the particular vulnerabilities of individuals with autism”.
In spite of these welcome statements by the Home Secretary, some evidence to our Committee suggests that autistic people are still not always been treated fairly by the police.
I want to say a little more about super-complaints, which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham commented on. In her evidence to the Committee, Fiona Laskaris, who I mentioned earlier, proposed that the super-complaints process could be used to investigate system failures in the treatment of vulnerable adults, specifically people with autism. Since November 2018, the super-complaints process has enabled designated public and charitable organisations to ask HMICFRS, the IOPC and the College of Policing to consider investigating what they think are systemic issues affecting policing in England and Wales.
Our report expressed concern that of the 16 organisations designated by the Home Office that can raise such issues or concerns on behalf of the public, no specialist organisation represents complainants with disabilities, including autism. The Home Secretary wrote to the Committee in December 2021 and pledged to review the designated bodies that can submit super-complaints on systemic issues in policing to include a broader range of organisations, including disability organisations. We welcome that commitment, but nearly two years on, I hope the Minister can confirm when the Government will review the super-complaints system. As we have heard, the Home Secretary confirmed to the Committee that a designated body should collaborate with non-designated organisations and, where appropriate, make a complaint on the basis of the matters raised.
Our recommendation was that the Home Office should highlight on its super-complaints website that the 16 designated bodies should collaborate with non-designated bodies as appropriate to make a complaint on matters raised by those non-designated bodies. We are pleased that the Government have made that change on their super-complaints website, but we urge them, the IOPC and other relevant policing bodies to make the public aware that the super-complaints process is accessible to all groups and interests.
I thank everybody who assisted the Home Affairs Committee in our inquiry. We will be watching what happens on our recommendations in this area, and following progress over the months and years to come on this important issue, as we know police misconduct and complaints have been in the news a lot in recent times, and it is very much an issue that the public care about.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)
Before I call the shadow Minister, I can see that Sir Peter Bottomley has joined us—do you wish to contribute, Sir Peter?