Crime and Policing

I shall not give way at this point, because I need to develop this point. I am delighted that in place of that rotten rhetoric, we have a sense of honesty and reality when it comes to addressing what is going on at the coal face of the criminal justice system. A major part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was on antisocial behaviour, but by assuming that there will be a wholesale abolition of the structure, an assumption that other Opposition Members repeated, an Aunt Sally has been set up. When the Home Secretary in her paper described the process of moving beyond ASBOs, she meant development and improvement, rather than wholesale abolition. I shall propose a few sensible simplifications of the system. The criminal ASBO, or CRASBO, is a waste of time and should be removed. At the end of a Crown court trial, when a defendant has been convicted, punished and has received his sentence, an application is made, almost as an afterthought, for a criminal antisocial behaviour order, which is often poorly drafted, ill thought-out, unworkable and unenforceable.