Policing and Crime Bill

I am in a bit of a dilemma. The more the Minister talks, the more uneasy I become. He has expanded on the fact that serious gang members have been involved in violence, in which case they would certainly already be good subjects for anti-social behaviour orders. You do not need to be a member of a gang, as defined in this Bill, to drive a mother and daughter to suicide, for example, as a collection of young people did. Would they be defined as a gang, or should they have had an ASBO imposed? Unfortunately, the end result was as it was, but I am uneasy that we are proposing to put this clause on the statute book. The Government have explained that the reason for it is dangerous and violent gangs, but the more we have thought about it this afternoon, the more we see that what most of these people—whether they were under or over 18—were engaged in should have been subject to an ASBO already. If it became even more serious, which is what the Minister is implying, surely action should be taken to prosecute. If they have not done anything criminal until this date, we are still talking about depriving people of their liberty in all sorts of ways. Severe conditions may be put on them. While I have no wish to defend a gang culture and I recognise absolutely that it makes life very difficult for people, the Government already have in their armoury a number of ways of dealing with that. It would be useful for a group of us to get together before Report to talk through this again, because I have felt more and more uneasy since we began debating it this afternoon and now feel less and less reassured of the need for the measure at all, let alone the safeguards that we are proposing. In that spirit, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 127 withdrawn.