Police and Justice Bill

I understand the noble Viscount’s concern, but I hope that I shall be able to assure him that it is not merited. The current wording of this clause ensures that anti-social behaviour injunctions are available for use by practitioners subject to the consideration of the court in deciding whether they are an appropriate and reasonable form of intervention. It is important to note that housing injunctions are available against adults, but will not normally be made against persons under the age of 18. Thus, there should be no need to specify this on the face of legislation. We take the view that the existing practice of the courts will ensure that, save in very exceptional circumstances, injunctions are applied only to adults. We would not wish to fetter the discretion of judges in deciding whether an application is appropriate in the circumstances. To the very best of our knowledge there are very few cases in which housing injunctions to tackle anti-social behaviour have been made against people under the age of 18. However, we are aware of a small number of cases where injunctive action has been taken against 17 year-olds for the purposes of preventing anti-social behaviour. That would occur only where the court was satisfied that the recipient of the injunction was fully capable of understanding and adhering to the terms of an order. There is no evidence that we have been able to identify showing that we should be concerned about the use of injunctions to tackle anti-social behaviour against minors on this basis. I hope that will assist the noble Viscount. It is still the case that a person under 18 cannot be imprisoned for breach of an injunction, so there is that additional safeguard. I am sure that the court will have taken into account the sort of injunction that would be appropriate for someone under 17, and I am sure that the noble Viscount has as much faith in our judges as I do.