Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I intend to restrict my remarks to some parts of the Bill that affect children and young people. I shall address Clauses 5 and 6 in relation to community support officers and, in Part 3, Clause 17, which deals with the role of local authorities in relation to crime and disorder, and Clauses 21 to 23, relating to parenting contracts, parenting orders and anti-social behaviour injunctions. First, I shall discuss the measures to introduce standard powers and duties for community support officers, and to provide training for them, and the proposal for a sixfold increase in their number. There is no doubt that CSOs can play a very positive role in communities, adding to the ability of the police to keep order in our communities. Many of them have done very good work since their introduction. The Home Office’s national evaluation of community support officers shows that they spend a great deal of their time dealing with young people. More than half do so daily, and four out of five do so at least once every week. They have therefore become a very important group in working with young people, particularly those in trouble. It is therefore important for it to be specified in their new standardised powers that they have an important preventive role to play in improving community relations and supporting communication between residents of all ages. Following the dismantling of youth services through lack of resources in many areas, the Bill seems to propose a large force of surrogate youth workers. Why not therefore have the real thing instead? Why could not the considerable resources, which will undoubtedly have to be put into recruiting, equipping, training and paying these officers, have been put into the youth service, whose workforce we know is properly trained to do the job? This whole measure, I believe, comes at the problem from the wrong end. Here we are talking about recruiting a large body of people to enforce the sort of behaviour we would all like to see on our streets and to deal with the chaos caused when children behave badly. Instead, we could have prevented the problems and annoyance to residents in the first place, and avoided young people getting into trouble with the forces of law and order, if only we had put the resources into what I would call the front end—giving them something to do and somewhere to go instead of getting into trouble and annoying other people—instead of into the back end. How important, therefore, given the Government’s approach, is the need for proper training of this new workforce and adequate resources to deliver such training. The report I have just referred to asked CSOs about their training. Only 38 per cent felt it had prepared them to do their job, and 59 per cent felt they had encountered situations they did not feel trained to deal with. The Minister in another place, Hazel Blears, gave an assurance that community support officers would,"““receive proper and adequate training to deal with young people””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 21/3/06; col. 126.]" She did not specify what this training would involve. Does the Minister agree that the best way in which to deal with this would be to make it a statutory requirement that CSOs—and, by the way, police officers—should receive training in the common core of skills and knowledge for the children’s workforce developed by the DfES? This would equip them to deal appropriately and communicate well with children and young people. Given that ““fit for purpose”” now appears to be the fashionable phrase of choice for the Government, what we are looking for is a workforce that is fit for the purpose of dealing with young people on account of the training that it has received. Without it, CSOs may well fall into the same situation in which the police find themselves, in which young people feel intimidated, disrespected and stereotyped by the police, who they believe lack sympathy for and understanding of them. With appropriate training, CSOs would also realise that, far from always being the perpetrators of anti-social behaviour, young people are all too often the victims of it, as the three very sad cases in last week’s papers of young people being stabbed and shot has shown. I shall now discuss the power of CSOs in Clause 6 to remove truants in specified areas to designated places or to their school. The Government introduced twice-yearly sweeps in May 2002 that do not appear to have been very effective. Indeed, the latest DfES statistics on pupil absence in schools in England in 2004–05 show that it spent £885 million over seven years, but that the absences actually increased by 0.8 per cent last year. Although they may have some role to play, truancy sweeps are not the only answer, and it is simply perverse of the Government to plough more money and more legislative powers into this route when there is no research showing that it works. There are many reasons for children being absent from school. Sometimes there are family difficulties, which need to be addressed by support services. Sometimes the parents are complicit in the absence. Sometimes the child is unhappy at school because of bullying, an inappropriate curriculum or poorly addressed learning difficulties. More CSOs sweeping the streets for children is not the answer. The answer is support for schools’ bullying strategies, implementing a more appropriate curriculum and all the Tomlinson recommendations, and putting more resources into specialist help for children with learning difficulties. I am also concerned about young carers, who are often picked up by truancy officers. This invisible army of young people caring for adults at home needs support, not punishment, and more needs to be done to ensure that they do not lose their childhood or their education. I shall now discuss the role of local authorities and the duty on a ward councillor in Clause 17 to respond to a call for action if approached by one of their voters complaining about anti-social behaviour. Frankly, I am amazed that the Government feel it necessary to put this duty on them. It seems to me only good practice and good service on the part of any ward councillor to respond to such complaints and ensure that the complainant knows what has been done. However, I suppose we have to accept that not all ward councillors are up to the standard of the best Liberal Democrat ward councillors—more is the pity. Although I support the creation of accessible and efficient means for local people to have their legitimate fears and complaints addressed, I am very concerned that young people will be further stigmatised and alienated from their communities. I believe that, before taking action, the local authority must consult widely, particularly young people, including those who are accused of the nuisance. If they do so, they will often get to the causes of the behaviour, and if they address those causes, they can not only address the historic bad behaviour, so that the young people perhaps make amends, but prevent a repetition of it. I would have thought this was an efficient way of going about it. However, it is not always done. It is also essential that, when such a complaint is made, the local children’s services should be asked to conduct an assessment of the child’s needs to ensure a correct diagnosis and appropriate plan of action. Anti-social behaviour may be a cry for help about abuse in the home, poor parental control, poor nurturing and neglect, a drug or alcohol problem or many other causes that should be addressed if the objectives of the Every Child Matters agenda are to be fulfilled. Without such an assessment, local authorities are only guessing the cause or, even worse, not even bothering to guess but simply slapping an ASBO on the child. Sadly, we know that this has happened to many children with learning difficulties. Some have even been named and shamed—a matter to which I will return in a minute. Unless professionals get involved, how can the ward councillor properly address the matter in a long-term sustainable way? I think it should also be specified that the ward councillor should not publish the names of the young people complained about, but should take their action privately within the confines of the local authority and their own weekly surgery. Such publicity should not become a substitute for the real and effective action we all want to see. On Clauses 21 to 23 on parenting contracts and orders, I should say at the outset that I believe the most effective interventions with parents are voluntary. However, I accept that some parents, having been forced by the courts to accept parenting support in some form or another, have found it enormously helpful and have expressed a wish that such help had been available long before the child’s behaviour became such a problem. However, I have to echo my noble friend Lady Linklater’s major concerns about the extension of the powers to make parenting contracts or apply to the courts for parenting orders to social landlords, such as local authorities and housing associations. It is debatable whether parenting contracts can be considered truly voluntary when they appear in statute and their breach can lead to a parenting order from the court, breach of which brings a £1,000 fine. Section 25(2) of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 includes a welcome requirement for the local authority to agree to provide the support necessary to assist the parent to comply with the contract. Definitions and thresholds of behaviour are widely drafted in this Bill. In Clause 21’s amendments to the 2003 Act, new Section 25B(1)(a)(ii) allows a registered social landlord to enter into a parenting contract with parents whose child is ““likely”” to engage in such behaviour. Here we have another example of potential criminal sanctions against someone who has not yet done anything. This Government are fond of that; we see it in many pieces of legislation. If they are so keen to prevent something that might happen, why do they not put their efforts into support and prevention instead of these draconian measures designed to demonise children and penalise their parents for something that they might do? How can the Minister justify such a thing? In Clause 22’s amendments to the 2003 Act, new Section 26A(1)(b), refers to a local authority applying for a parenting order for parents of children who reside or appear to reside in the local authority area, leading to the ludicrous situation that an order could be made against a parent with whom the child does not live, and over whose behaviour he or she has little control. This seems downright daft, and I hope it will be addressed during the course of the Bill. Finally, I return to the naming and shaming of young people who have been given ASBOs. When ASBOs were introduced, the Government claimed that they were not primarily for use with children and young people, yet we have heard from my noble friend Lady Linklater that about half of them are. The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 eroded children’s rights to privacy by making a presumption of negative publicity for children subject to ASBOs. Their rights were further eroded by Section 141 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, by allowing children to be named and shamed if they breach an ASBO. There are major concerns about this, and we will table an amendment, first introduced in another place by Lynne Featherstone MP, to reinstate the 70 year-old safeguard for privacy for children. Naming and shaming not only breaches children’s rights, but is unnecessary, ineffective and dangerous. In rejecting my colleague’s amendment in another place, the Minister, Hazel Blears, said:"““Publicity is not to punish or shame the individual, but is there to let the community know that action has been taken””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 23/3/06; col. 230.]" I suppose this is so that it will vote Labour at the next election. It is certainly not in the interests of the child in question. Publicity is unnecessary because local authorities have other ways of informing the public about what action is being taken, in the form of services for the child and his parents. It does not have to contain the name of the child. In the long term it is better for communities to be educated about these matters rather than be given details about the lives of individual children. The practice is ineffective because it further alienates the child and destroys his self-esteem, and does not address the causes of the behaviour. It is dangerous because the child, or even his siblings, can be subject to bullying because of it. In a broadcast on Channel 4 in February, Rod Morgan, chair of the Youth Justice Board, said:"““It’s not the sort of thing that would be tolerated in most countries and I think it’s unfortunate that we have taken that route. It’s often counterproductive””." Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, said in June last year:"““It seems to me . . . to be entirely disproportionate to aggressively inform members of the community who have no knowledge of the offending behaviour, and who are not affected by it, of the application of ASBOs. It seems to me that they have no business and no need to know””." I agree.