Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, but antisocial behaviour can happen in any community. Government Members ought to listen to the people they represent, who do not wish to see them watering down the responses and toolkit available to tackle antisocial behaviour.

To refer again to my experience, Lambeth council increased the use of ASBOs to achieve a reduction in antisocial behaviour not for the slogans or press releases, or to try to look tough, but because it was needed to get a grip of our streets and return confidence to the law-abiding majority of residents. Government Members cannot tell me that ASBOs do not work because I saw how crime fell when a newly elected Labour council worked alongside the police to use ASBOs to great effect in making our streets and our communities safe again.

ASBOs work in part because they are backed by a criminal sanction. Breaching an ASBO is not something to be taken lightly—it is a criminal offence. Persistent antisocial behaviour is deeply damaging to local communities, and people expect effective sanctions. With Labour’s ASBOs, that is exactly what they got. Instead, the Government propose to take away the criminal sanction. Offenders can breach IPNAs in the full knowledge that they are not committing a crime. If the police or local councils want action taken against someone who has breached their IPNA and who is terrorising a local community, they will not get support from the criminal justice system. There is no automatic penalty. Instead, the breach of an IPNA will lead to the potential of civil action brought under the contempt of court proceedings. Offenders across the country will be rejoicing that the Government have gone soft, while the law-abiding majority will be horrified.

The Government’s proposal is not only a weak response to antisocial behaviour, but the police and local councils will pay for it themselves. Instead of criminal proceedings being brought by the Crown Prosecution Service, the police will have to bring a civil action in the courts at their own expense.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Why, if ASBOs with criminal penalties attached are so successful, do 70% to 80% of teenagers against whom they are made breach them?

[Mr Reed]

I have given the hon. and learned Gentleman examples of how we successfully used ASBOs to drive down antisocial behaviour and offending of that kind, so I do not take his point.

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[Dr Huppert]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I agree with much of what he said, particularly about the consequences of the riots, which I shall come back to. Let me start by welcoming the Minister of State, Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) to his new post and by congratulating him on his promotion to Minister of State. His injection of liberalism into this Department will be hugely welcome after decades in which Conservative and Labour Governments have clamped down on civil liberties and taken illiberal approaches wherever possible, playing to populism’s worst flaws. I greatly look forward to him playing his role as Minister of State in this Department.

I disagree with what the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) said about the effectiveness of ASBOs. I do not think they were effective at all, but I do think substantial improvements can be made to the Bill. I hope this new Minister will take the opportunity to reflect on our comments and come up with something that takes them all into account.

[Stephen Phillips]

Whether or not ASBOs were effective originally, does my hon. Friend agree that, over time, they have become increasingly less effective? The breach rates are now so significant—up to 90% for most orders—that they have become utterly meaningless.

[Dr Huppert]

I agree; my hon. Friend is right that ASBOs simply do not work, so the idea of continuing them does not make much sense.

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I believe that the amendment should be withdrawn, and that further discussions should take place. In my view, for the Government to railroad through the House a measure about which they are unclear is a constitutional disgrace.

[Stephen Phillips]

I intend to speak to the amendments for which I am at least in part responsible, and which were necessitated by our proceedings in Committee: amendments 1, 17, 45, 46 and 39 to 41. Before I do so, however, let me welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to his new post, and congratulate him on his promotion. Let me also welcome the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) to his place on the Front Bench. He has been in the House for only a short time, and I am sure that his promotion is well deserved. No doubt we shall see a great deal more of him in due course.

Having congratulated the hon. Gentleman, however, I am afraid that I must take issue with some of the points that he made this evening. I have to tell him that while there was a lot of hot air about Labour’s great policy of the ASBO, the truth of the matter on the streets—whether in urban or in rural Britain—has been very different. Year on year, ASBOs have been breached in increasing percentages. While the hon. Gentleman, as the former leader of Lambeth council, may well have thought that he had solved problems by securing ASBOs for those who were engaging in antisocial behaviour which was affecting people in the area, the truth is that merely securing the orders achieved precisely nothing. It was their enforcement that was important. As I am sure the Minister will tell us in his response, breach rates now stand at 70%, 80% or 90%.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Drawing the attention of those on the Opposition Front Bench to the speech that my hon. and learned Friend is making may be to their advantage, as opposed to the advantage of the House. Would it be possible for them to stop talking to each other and listen to my hon. and learned Friend, who is making rather a good speech, mainly about the Opposition spokesmen themselves?

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I fear that it may be counter-productive. I thought I was having rather an easy ride, at least in terms of how my speech will read in Hansard. There has been no intervention so far from the hon. Member for Croydon North, and I suspect that there can be no intervention from him now, because he has not heard anything that I have said. Be that as it may, however, this is not Third Reading, so I shall now deal with the amendments with which the House is being troubled principally as a result of what some would describe as my intransigence in Committee.

Let me begin with amendments 1 and 17. They relate, I am afraid, to words that were inserted in the Bill as a consequence of amendments to clauses 1 and 7, which were suggested by me and were carried in Committee. Clause 1 concerns the general power to grant injunctions. Subsection (5) states:

“Prohibitions and requirements in an injunction under this section must, so far as practicable, be such as to avoid”

a list of occurrences including, for instance,

“any conflict with the respondent’s religious beliefs”.

In the form in which it was considered in Committee, the Bill made no reference to the fact that those against whom injunctions might be granted might have caring responsibilities, particularly in regard to children. Because I thought that that was an important omission, I proposed—and the Committee agreed, in circumstances that I shall describe in due course—that the court should be required to take into account

“any conflict with the respondent’s caring responsibilities including, in particular, any caring responsibilities for a child”.

That seemed to me—and still seems to me—to be particularly important. Children’s life chances are not fixed, and if an IPNA is granted against their parents, they may be significantly and substantially affected by something for which they are not responsible. In those circumstances, it seems appropriate for the court expressly to take into account caring responsibilities, particularly caring responsibilities for children—and, perhaps, for those who suffer from disabilities. The Government’s position is, as I understand it, that those matters will be taken into account by a court under the general powers in the Bill—that is the assurance I have been given. Indeed, the draft guidance produced last week in accordance with the undertakings given to the Public Bill Committee contains wording that requires those seeking IPNAs—regard will no doubt be paid to this by courts as well—to take into account caring responsibilities.

On that basis, and although the decision has not been easy, I am not minded to oppose the Government’s desire to remove my first attempt at legislation in this House, successful as it was, because the Committee did not divide on the amendment I was proposing to clause 1. My amendment was accepted by the Minister who was then in charge, although there was a reservation when the “like” amendment was proposed to clause 27 that the Government reserved the right to come back to this matter on Report, as they have now done. Be that as it may, I am not going to take further the point that the Committee did not divide. The simple fact is—the Minister needs to make this clear from the Dispatch Box, so that it is clear to courts in due course—the one matter that has to be taken into account when an injunction is granted are the caring responsibilities of those against whom it is to be granted. That addresses amendments 1 and 17.

Government amendments 45 and 46 relate to clause 93 —we are see-sawing around a lot because of how the amendments have been grouped—which deals with community remedies and the community remedy document. As the House will know, every Member having read the Bill in detail, that is a list of community remedies—punishments, if one prefers—that can be handed out, which is drafted by a local policing body. Before it came into Committee, the Bill provided no guidance as to what that document might contain. As I pointed out in Committee, it might have provided that one punishment or remedy that could be handed out was to place someone in the stocks for two or three hours and have oranges hurled at them. Many of our constituents would doubtless think that a very sensible community remedy to be contained in a list of punishments or remedies that might be handed out to those guilty of antisocial behaviour. Obviously, the police and crime commissioners who gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee indicated that some form of guidance would be both desirable and necessary, and that has been taken on board by the Government. I tabled, but did not move, a probing amendment in Committee and it has been picked up by the Government, in that they have tabled amendments 45 and 46 to deal with the possible problem that one might have ended up with rogue and inappropriate remedies. Those measures therefore have my full support and I hope they will also have the support of the House.

I do not wish to detain the House for too long, but I wish to discuss amendments 39 and 40, which relate to clauses 70 and 73 and the time within which those who obtain orders must return to court. The Bill specifies a relatively short period—no doubt the Minister knows precisely what it is—but for the purposes of computing time no account is taken of days when the courts might be closed. I proposed to the relevant Minister somewhat longer periods, because it seemed to me that a problem might arise in respect of bank holidays and public holidays, as the courts would not be able to deal with these matters sufficiently quickly to enable the time limits to be complied with. Some of that has been taken into account, because the Government now propose that Christmas day will be removed from the period of calculation in these clauses, but there remains a difficulty with which the Minister needs to grapple.

I wrote to the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice and it was suggested that specifying Christmas day was sufficient in this regard, but what about Easter? As we know, it consists of two public holidays, Good Friday and Easter Monday, so we are talking about a four-day period. The Home Office’s response has been, “The courts are able to deal with this because they may open over the weekend.” The Minister needs to reassure the House that that is the position and that there is therefore enough time over the Easter holiday, in particular, for these orders to be dealt with appropriately and for the Bill’s time limits to be addressed.

Government amendment 41 would alter clause 81, which deals with the recovery of costs against the owner of premises where an order is made—I have forgotten which part of the Bill this relates to, but the Minister will doubtless remind me. The Government’s point is that where such an order is made—for example, against a nightclub—the police should be able to recover their costs, and that is absolutely right. However, as I pointed out in Committee, nightclubs or late-night premises often are not owned by the people who occupy the premises where the nuisance occurs. For that reason, we need to include the word “occupier”, as the Government are now proposing. I am pleased that that piece of advice, which I gave for free—that is rare—was accepted. The amendment is therefore sensible and I hope it will command support across the House.

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[Mark Field]

Naturally, I will try to be constructive. I wholly agree that the lower level nuisance and annoyance behaviour covered by an IPNA does not always warrant the threat of criminal prosecution, which perhaps happened in the past with ASBOs. Among the concerns expressed earlier was that elements of those ASBOs were not being properly enforced. We should rightly look to avoid criminalising the country’s youth wherever possible, but in practice the specific problems that we face with, for example, the very professional, aggressive begging on the streets of Westminster, literally within yards of where we are all sitting tonight, can currently be tackled only through the use of ASBOs on application. We rely heavily on the genuine threat of arrest to protect victims and to deter professional aggressive beggars, who are completely different from the 16-year-old who has got into trouble by graffitiing a bus-stop, for example. We lose that threat under the new proposals.

I want also to speak briefly about the antisocial behaviour committed by people with no fixed UK address. From the experience in Westminster city council area, but also in the City of London area that I represent, I know that tackling antisocial behaviour often involves dealing with organised aggressive begging gangs from across the EU. I fear that we will hear a lot more of this in the months to come. Some individuals travel to the UK in large numbers, with the sole intention of doing a short, but profitable begging stint before returning to their home. These people enter the UK according to their rights as EU citizens, and cannot currently be deported unless they remain in the country for longer than three months or commit a criminal offence. While they are in the UK, and particularly while they are here in central London, they have no fixed address and are completely transient in nature, with many sleeping rough.

Where we have previously dealt with such individuals through ASBOs on application, under the IPNA system the local authority will be able to apply for an arrest warrant only after a breach has occurred, by which time the individual in question may well have left the country, entirely unchallenged, to return at a future date. These people are deliberately off the grid, and we must have some legislation in place that closes this potential loophole and does not actively encourage the gaming of the system.

[Stephen Phillips]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point, to which I hope the Minister will respond. Might provisions in other statutes be used, under which, where a crime had been committed, people could be deported without an ASBO having to be made against them?

[Mark Field]

I cannot use ignorance of the law as an excuse, but my hon. and learned Friend knows considerably more about these matters than I do. He makes a relevant point, which is that we do not necessarily have to go entirely down that route. The ASBO legislation and this concurrent legislation is designed to look at the whole issue of antisocial behaviour in a constructive and codified way. The problems to which I have referred apply not simply to the City of Westminster, Southwark or inner-London boroughs. Increasingly, it will become apparent in places such as Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, so we should look at it fairly urgently. Without being overly negative about the potential open-door arrival of a significant number of people from Romania and Bulgaria, there is no doubt that some of the specific problems in central London in recent months have come disproportionately from groups who have already come to this country from those other EU states. We need to ensure that local authorities are given a chance to take action. As such, I feel strongly that the Bill should be amended better to reflect the circumstances that affect inner-city areas, recognise the particular challenges that are faced in the UK’s major cities and specifically enable a court to grant IPNAs with automatic powers of arrest in a wider variety of circumstances.

This matter will have to be dealt with in amendments in another place. To answer directly the question put by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), I hope that we will have a further amendment to clause 3 to add an additional subsection applicable only in major city centres or other designated areas, which varies the conditions under which a power of arrest attachment can be made to include wording such as “deliberately organised antisocial behaviour”. That will have to be dealt with in our further deliberations on the Bill.

I take this opportunity, Mr Deputy Speaker, to thank you for allowing me to make a brief contribution. I accept that the Minister is aware of some of the specific concerns for Westminster, but I also very much accept that he may wish to deal with this in writing rather than going into it in great detail this evening.

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[Norman Baker]

I am certainly not dismissing them, and they have been looked at carefully, but it is important to look at the IPNA and the criminal behaviour order in tandem rather than merely concentrate on one of them.

[Stephen Phillips]

Does my hon. Friend agree that rather then relying on letters from the great and the good, perhaps the best thing to do is to rely on the British people? He will no doubt remember that in 2012 Angus Reid conducted a survey in which only 80% of people said they thought that ASBOs had been effective in tackling antisocial behaviour. Is not that why we need to change the regime?

[Norman Baker]

That is exactly right. The shadow Minister said that the recent crime survey showed that 80% of people think that antisocial behaviour is increasing. That suggests to me that the current regime is not working and needs to be replaced by something more efficient.

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[Norman Baker]

There was particular concern about processions and picketing. That is why they were singled out for mention in the Bill. I have made it plain this evening that where a behaviour is lawful and is not causing harassment, alarm or distress, the test for the use of the dispersal power will not be met. I hope that that gives my right hon. Friend the reassurance that he seeks.

Amendment 177 would remove the ability of landlords in England to seek to evict tenants when they or members of their household have been convicted of an offence at the scene of a riot anywhere in the United Kingdom. The Government believe that clause 91 sends out the strong and important message that if somebody gets involved in a riot, whether it is near their home or not, there may be consequences for their tenancy. However, Members have asked me to reflect on that matter and I will, of course, listen to the House and reflect on it without prejudice to the outcome of that reflection. We will respond fully to the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in due course. For now, however, I hope that my right hon. Friend will not press amendment 177 or new clause 33.

The shadow Minister and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who is no longer in his place, spoke about amendment 82, which is a consequential amendment to the Government of Wales Act 2006. Provisions on antisocial behaviour orders are among the exceptions to the legislative competence of the National Assembly for Wales in respect of local government matters. Amendment 82 simply updates that exception to recognise the abolition of the ASBO, thus preserving the status quo with regard to the Assembly’s competence. The UK Government is firmly of the view that amendment 82 is purely consequential upon the abolition of antisocial behaviour orders, so a consent motion is not required. It is also difficult to wait for the outcome of the Silk commission, as a failure to amend the Government of Wales Act now would alter the legislative competence of the National Assembly. Our intention is therefore to preserve the status quo and no more.

[Stephen Phillips]

Is it not a difficulty, though, that even though the amendment may be intended simply to be consequential and to replace the provision relating to the ASBO, it is drawn so broadly that, as Opposition Members have pointed out, it might also have an effect in other areas in which the Assembly currently has legislative competence?

[Norman Baker]

The advice I am getting from officials is very clear—that this is an appropriate conclusion to reach. However, three Members have now raised that matter, and they have done so in quite strident or convinced terms, so I will write to them with a firm conclusion.