Police and Justice Bill

I understand that to be the case. I reiterate that we think it is beneficial to intervene early before it has ripened to a stage where it is much more difficult to give the children and the parents the help and support they need. On Amendment No. 129, there may well be circumstances where the young person or child has an official address but spends a significant amount of time away from that location between two different addresses. One scenario is where there is a split parenting order and the child lives part of the time with one parent and part of the time with another. Sometimes, as an extended family member, they live part of the time with their grandmother or part of the time with their aunt. It would be wrong to say which is the primary address. Rather than be unable to give the child the help that they obviously need, the provision allows that flexibility. I re-emphasise that it is vital that proper assessment is made of the child. I assure the House that we will make it clear in guidance, when it is published, that that is how it should be dealt with. References to a person appearing to reside somewhere are not unusual. There are a number of precedents for that in anti-social behaviour legislation—for example, in the enforcement consultation and supervision provisions for orders, including anti-social behaviour orders, under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. They apply to adults, children and young people. It is really not in the interests of the child, the parent or the wider community to wait until a child is threatening to commit anti-social behaviour that has become more serious. We are concerned that ““threatening”” would make the provision far too narrow. One could be simplistic and say that ““threatening”” is likely to consist of a verbal threat, whereas ““likely to engage”” is not so limited. The expression ““likely to engage”” is well precedented in existing parenting control legislation. If a child is running around with a crowd of young people who are well known to engage in such behaviour and there may be reasons to believe that they are likely to engage in anti-social behaviour, there may be no express threat but it is quite clear that they are likely to do so. A parenting contract might include a requirement to attend a programme, as I said. There is a real opportunity here for us to do something that is truly supportive. From the debate on the previous group of amendments, I understand that there is concern about the number of parenting orders and about behavioural contracts. We have not talked enough about behavioural contracts. There is a whole issue about whether we are collating the information. A number of authorities enter into acceptable behavioural contracts, but they do not record how many are made. In many areas, there are more acceptable behaviour contracts than there are parenting contracts, or parenting orders, so we must consider all of that before making a judgment. There are now also the individual support orders that can go with ASBs. That will make an improvement. So our whole thrust is to intervene early and effectively to give the skills and the support to parents so that they can help better to manage their behaviour. I would therefore have hoped that the provisions would have been warmly welcomed by those in this House who I know care so passionately about supporting families and their children. I hope that I have given a great deal of comfort.