Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I suspect that the Home Secretary has recently become used to me standing here criticising things she has done and highlighting where we have disagreed; I am delighted that today will not be another of those days. I am able to support much of what is in the Bill, and it is a great pleasure to follow the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), and to agree with him that it is excellent that it does not appear that there will be a Division on Second Reading, and that we can therefore proceed.

There are good things in the Bill, such as the changes to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, bringing in private providers, which the Liberal Democrats have wanted for some time; stronger control sanctions against forced marriage; controls on firearms; the introduction of the College of Policing, which will be important for evidence-based policing; controls on dangerous dogs; and particularly protections for guide dogs, which I shall talk about later.

At the core of the Bill, however, are the antisocial behaviour provisions. It is particularly welcome that the Bill underwent pre-legislative scrutiny by the Select Committee. I thank the Home Secretary for taking on board some of the suggestions that it made, although she did not take on board all of them. The principles are surely absolutely right. The simplification of the toolkit used to remedy antisocial behaviour, which can blight lives, even at a relatively low level, is welcome. It will produce a quicker and more coherent response, empowering police, local authorities and other agencies, so that they can deal with the problems far more effectively and efficiently. This issue is serious: there were 2.3 million reports of antisocial behaviour in 2012, although I suspect the vast majority of such incidents are never actually reported. We need a simple scheme to deal with that.

I am also pleased to see the direction of travel and the move away from the automatic criminalisation of breaches, which in many cases gave ASBOs a poor reputation. We are moving a lot further and I am pleased also to see the introduction of positive requirements to try to help people out of the problem—we have argued for that for a long time and it has cross-party support. The Home Affairs Committee highlighted that the positive requirements

“can help to achieve an outcome that satisfies victims and helps to mend the ways of perpetrators without exposing them to the criminal justice system.”

That has to be what we all want. It was the aim of the acceptable behaviour contracts, and it is the right direction in which to be travelling. It also fits in well with the Government’s general approach to the criminal justice system, with a focus on rehabilitation. Rather than focusing on how we punish people, there is a focus on how we can prevent problems from happening in the first place. I am very pleased about all that. I could talk at great length about how excellent some of the provisions are, but the Home Secretary has done that, as have others.

Further improvements could still be made in a couple of areas, and there are particular concerns about how the system will deal with young people. In looking at antisocial behaviour the focus has always ended up on young people; it is many people’s first encounter with the criminal justice system. Some 40% of ASBOs were issued to 10 to 17-year-olds, who comprise only 13% of the population, and a very large proportion of those people have mental health problems and learning difficulties, which is a serious concern.

That situation was acknowledged in the antisocial behaviour White Paper, which stated:

“There are strong links between anti-social or criminal behaviour and certain health needs.”

However, the Bill does not yet contain enough to strengthen early intervention or ensure that a full health and social assessment is made to go with any of the orders that are available. I accept that that is not all about legislation; I hope that in Committee, or through comments from the Home Secretary, progress will be made to strengthen the arrangements, because we want to help people with mental health problems or learning difficulties, rather than putting them through an inappropriate route.

As I mentioned when I intervened on the Home Secretary, I remain concerned about the naming and shaming of young people. Clause 17 would disapply section 49 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, which restricts reports on proceedings in which young people are concerned, in respect of injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance and criminal behaviour orders. That goes against the presumption of anonymity for children in criminal proceedings and is likely to hinder their successful rehabilitation, particularly in this age where people can say things online that can stay with people for ever. We want a chance for a young person who made an error at 14 to be able to have that removed very quickly. Article 40 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child clearly requires that a child accused of, or recognised as having infringed the law, must

“have his or her privacy fully respected at all stages of the proceedings.”

Both the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Committee have expressed grave concerns about the privacy of children subject to ASBOs, and I am concerned about what may happen.

I know the Government’s intention, as they have been clear in their response to the Home Affairs Committee and I am grateful for that. The intention is not simply a blanket naming and shaming of young people, and I am pleased to be reassured about that. However, I want the right clarification to be given to judges. The Minister of State, Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) made the point well when he gave evidence to us, but there may well be some special cases where it is simply unreasonable to prevent a child from being able to do something if we cannot tell anybody that we have prevented them from doing it. I accept that there are such cases, but they should be seen as the exception. I want to develop the point implied by the Home Secretary that judges should use such an approach rarely and sparingly, where there is a good case for doing so. We want a

“short, focused nudge for young people to set them on the right track, not a millstone that will weigh around their necks for years to come.”

We have to ensure that the right guidance is in place, so that the provisions are used only when they have to be. Fitting in with the positive requirements will help with some of that.

Many of the organisations we spoke to welcomed the general direction towards positive requirements but were concerned about the extra monitoring and the burdens of that. The Chair of the Select Committee was right to express concerns about the funding available. This is the best direction in which to go, but we need clarity on the funding. The Local Government Association, of which I have the great honour to be vice-president, has said:

“Clarity is needed from the Home Office on the cost of imposing ‘positive requirements’”

If they are not available, that could lead to breaches and to the whole system falling into the sort of disrepute that we saw with ASBOs. That is particularly so for children, where parental support may not be sufficient in many cases.

On one issue there has been an arms race, with every Government trying to change the antisocial regime, lowering the standard of proof and widening the definitions. The Home Affairs Committee unanimously concluded;

“This arms race must end.”

The current definition of antisocial behaviour is behaviour that

“caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress”.

Clause 1 requires only that the conduct appears to be “capable” of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person, as the Chair of the Select Committee pointed out. I share the concerns of the Association of Chief Police Officers that that lower threshold could unnecessarily stigmatise and criminalise young people in particular. It is a broad definition. I dare say that I have occasionally done things that are “capable” of annoying other people in this Chamber; I am sure we all have. [Interruption.] I am delighted to have the support of the Chair of the Select Committee. I would hope that the definition is not intended to cover such things; there has to be some sort of stronger level involved. I am pleased to see the move away from criminalisation, although some criminal sanctions will still be available, but I remain concerned about that definition.

The safeguards in the Bill about criminalisation go a bit further. A court has to consider an injunction to be “just and convenient”, but there is nothing about proportionality or the need to demonstrate necessity. The Committee concluded:

“For the IPNA, the threshold of ‘conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance’ is far too broad and could be applied even if there were no actual nuisance or annoyance whatsoever. A proportionality test and a requirement that either ‘intent or recklessness’ be demonstrated should be attached to the IPNA, as well as the requirement ‘that such an injunction is necessary to protect relevant persons from further anti-social acts by the respondent’.”

That was agreed unanimously by the Committee, and I hope that the Home Secretary will examine the case for that more carefully and consider whether we could have some clarity. None of us wants these provisions to be used to deal with trivial behaviour. I have known constituents who do not like the fact that young people sit on a bench, but I hope that we would not want to introduce controls to deal with that if those young people are doing nothing else.

I also have a few concerns about the provisions at the beginning of part 5, which would give landlords the power to evict a tenant when the tenant or a member of their household had been convicted of a serious offence nearby or of various other provisions. No flexibility is given for the judge to decide on that; it is an obligatory process. My concern is about the effects on the rest of a family when one of its members, be it a child or an adult, does something that we all agree is unacceptable. In particular, children may be made homeless as a result of the actions of other people that they could not control. Such concerns have been expressed by the Children’s Commissioner, and I hope that the Home Secretary will consider clarifying the arrangements, by changing where the grounds would be listed, to ensure that judges at least have the discretion to say, “In this case, it does not seem appropriate.” The LGA has highlighted that these powers could

“result in displacement of the problem rather than solution”—

none of us would want to leave children homeless. I hope that the Government will examine that.

To conclude, I wish to talk about the issues relating to dangerous dogs. I want to emphasise how good it is that we are making progress, particularly on the serious issue of guide dogs. There were about 240 dog attacks on guide dogs between March 2011 to February 2013, which is about 10 a month. Last year, I met some of my visually impaired constituents and found out what it was like to have a guide dog: I was blindfolded and had to follow a dog around Cambridge. I spoke to my constituents about some of their cases. The big problem is that guide dogs are trained not to fight back or defend themselves; they are trained not to run away, but to get their owner away safely. My constituents told me about some brutal cases where the dog had been savaged in awful ways—their guts were hanging out, and so on—but had still tried to lead its owner away. Such attacks were also devastating for the owner, because it takes a long time to get used to a dog and they cannot simply be replaced; the emotional cost is huge, too. Five of the dogs attacked had to be withdrawn, costing the Guide Dogs charity £170,000—money that it simply does not have. I am really pleased that the first clause in part 7 makes it clear that attacks on guide dogs will be considered aggravated attacks, but we need to go much further.

There are other bits of the Bill that I could talk about at great length, but some of them have already been touched on, and I am sure that they will be considered in Committee. This is a good Bill, but it could be tweaked slightly further to make it an excellent Bill. I am sure that that will be looked at in Committee.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I visited Glastonbury post office, which has been doing some fairly visionary work on what happens to post office staff when they are making deliveries. The stuff made two points. First, being attacked by a dog in the communal area of a block of flats is not covered by the Bill. Secondly, there may be no remedy for those who are bitten while putting a letter or packet through a letterbox; if someone trespasses with their fingers, effectively, they may not be covered. I wonder whether my hon. Friend agrees that the Secretary of State might take this opportunity to remedy that drafting problem and make sure that the issue is sorted out.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment; I am sure that the Home Secretary heard it. What my hon. Friend says seems sensible; we want to protect postal workers when they are posting leaflets. I have not checked the wording of the Bill, but if it is a problem, I hope that that can be addressed. The same would apply to those of us delivering leaflets. I have yet to be bitten by a dog, but I know that it happens to many of us too often. I hope that the Home Secretary will look at those suggestions to see whether we can sharpen up the provisions and make it an excellent Bill that we can be proud of for many years to come.