Clause 1 - Offences leading to penalities on the spot.
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
12:00 pm
Mr Charles Clarke (Minister of State, Home Office; Norwich South, Labour)
There is a variety of different circumstances in which the penalty could be used. The hon. Gentleman is right to focus on
``behaviour within hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress''.
That may or may not be Friday and Saturday nights in inner-city centres where there has been a lot of drinking. He may be right that, in those circumstances, the police would judge that the people there are unlikely to be caused distress, but there are other imaginable and real examples, perhaps from his own constituency, where people on estates are exceptionally offensive and cause serious distress and harassment to people living their lives peacefully, and not necessarily at 2 o'clock in the morning.