Clause 29 - Dispersal of groups and removal of persons under 16 to their place of residence
Anti-social Behaviour Bill
9:10 am
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)
The conditions in subsection (1)(a) and (b) amount to a proven problem. My point at our last sitting and now is that an awful lot of conditions have to be fulfilled. That is my concern; that is why I read out the list of conditions that must be fulfilled, which must be seen in the light of the powers that are given to the police. We are talking not about powers of arrest or powers to enter someone's house but about giving the police powers to disperse groups of people—I thought that they had such a power anyway—and
telling those individuals not to return to the area. It is not such a draconian power that it needs so many conditions.
My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) made a good point about the general problem of hedging the powers about with conditions: the more conditions surrounding the powers, the less likely they are to be used. That has been seen to be the case with similar provisions: the police simply look at them and say, ''We have to prove X, Y and Z and then we have to prove A, B and C, too.''
I want the powers to be used. My concern is simply that the Bill creates orders and powers that will not be used in practice because there are too many conditions attached to them and the lawyers have got at the Bill too much. I wonder whether it will make such a big difference to the problem of antisocial behaviour because if it is hedged about with too many conditions, its provisions simply will not be used enough.