Policing and Crime Bill

Many Members of the Committee will have read the interview with the new Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, in today’s Times, in which he refers to the fact that the Government have been coasting on ASBOs and that they are going to take a new, proactive approach. Presumably that means that they will take a much more active line with them. Anti-social behaviour is always difficult and needs to be dealt with. However, it is interesting that the Home Secretary chose to use the example that young people may become subject to an ASBO for sitting on a wall in front of an elderly person’s house because, as he said, they have nowhere else to go. The elderly residents of a street may well have asked for an ASBO to be imposed after they had asked the youngsters to move and the youngsters had said no, perhaps quite rudely. Young people tend to use different and sometimes offensive language, which can be intimidating to older people. Nevertheless, they would not have committed a criminal offence; they would be assembling as they have done for ages. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. Of course parents have a role, but young people over the age of 10 and up to 18 have been a problem ever since I can remember. Often their parents, with the best will in the world, are unable to deal with them because the behaviour may take place between school and home or when they are out on a Saturday afternoon. You cannot keep them locked up in the house, nor should you—they have to learn to be independent and to deal with the world. If we pass this Bill, yet again, if the Government have their way on everything—the provisions on alcohol misuse, for example—we will be passing legislation aimed at young people who have done nothing criminal and it will impinge on their freedoms in the same way as ASBOs do. It behoves us—it certainly behoves the Government—at the same time as bringing in further laws that affect young people in these ways, to consider how we are going to ensure that the authorities, such as the police, that deal with these issues take a more proactive approach to young people, who otherwise will feel further alienated. I know that the record of most police forces is extremely good, but that is not always the case. The people who write letters to the press or sit behind their PCs and fire off letters to their MPs asking for more action to be taken on young people are all adults; very often we do not hear the young person’s side of the story. As I said, the Home Secretary said that the young people may be sitting on the wall in the first place because they have nowhere else to go. It is important that we keep the necessity of engaging with their views at the forefront of our minds when considering the Bill.