Clause 15 - Designated public places
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate, Conservative)
We may find that, rather like the licensing laws that were first introduced to ensure that munitions workers were kicked out of the pubs at lunchtime to get back to work making shells for our troops on the front line, the designated areas become permanent—even though, after a period has elapsed, the pattern of behaviour has been broken by the fact that people are no longer allowed to drink in that area according to regulations properly enforced by the police. The nature of that place may then change, and it may no longer be a place where people should not be allowed to drink in the ordinary course of events. The designated area might be a public park that had acquired a bad reputation, was then cleaned up, and might then be a place where people might like to have picnics.
Amendment No. 128 is simply a sunset clause, which would require local authorities to reconsider every five years the list of areas that they have designated to be nominated under this legislation. Five years is probably the right interval, because the sort of people who display such behaviour will have grown out of the 16 to 21 age group, which is likely to cause these problems. The pattern of behaviour in relation to that place may have changed. All that I am seeking to achieve is to make local authorities re-examine properly, after a period of five years, whether they still need to have a place designated. If there is a continuing problem that obliges them to continue the designation, that should be done, but I do not think that once the designation is written into a local authority byelaw, it should remain for ever and a day merely because there is too much inertia to get people to examine the issue again.