Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to raise just two points on this Bill—the first concerns prisoners’ families and children; the second, the notorious ASBO and its replacement orders.

I had the privilege of being president of the Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders for many years. The association, inter alia, provided services to prisoners’ families and children. It described the impact of sentences, especially long ones, on the wives and children as “the silent sentence”. That is why I support the coalition of NGOs in this jurisdiction that wishes to amend this Bill to ensure that courts, the probation service and social services have a duty to arrange proper care and advice for the children and any vulnerable adults dependent on a person remanded in custody or in prison. Acceptance of an amendment on these lines will help to break the cycle of offending. We know already that children of prisoners are twice as likely as others to experience mental health problems. Some 65% of boys with a father in prison will later themselves offend. Their employment prospects are reduced and they are more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs. The impact on the children of a woman prisoner who suddenly disappears from her family may be even worse emotionally. We are therefore seeking both crime prevention and health improvement. An amendment has already been drafted and I urge Her Majesty’s Government to accept it or perhaps to take it away and gold-plate it.

The second point to which I draw your Lordships’ attention concerns “annoying conduct” and its definition under Clause 1. The phrase itself is subjective, because what is annoying to one person will seem quite ordinary to another. The new injunctions replacing ASBOs will have a lower threshold, going wider than causing “harassment, alarm or distress”, and a lower standard of proof. This has already been criticised by the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights and even by the Association of Chief Police Officers. The new powers should be examined to ensure they are grounded in necessity and not just in convenience. The Government should turn their mind to the standard of proof and to the apparent lack of a defence of reasonableness.

All these matters, and Clause 33, deserve the most careful scrutiny. I say this having previously argued that acceptable behaviour contracts should be used before resorting to an ASBO. If I have been right to raise these two points, of which I have a little knowledge, it seems likely that the rest of this 200-page Bill will also need much improvement.