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 Paice (South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
I am sorry that we have dragged you out of bed so early.
Amendment No. 107 is part of the succession of amendments to clause 29 to which I have spoken. In my closing remarks in the last sitting, I referred to the Minister's intransigent attitude to them. It will suffice to repeat the general point, which is that we should like this part of the Bill to be much more flexible and the police to be given the scope to use the powers of dispersal in a way that they think appropriate as and when they need them, rather than subject to all the accompanying paraphernalia in clauses 29 and 30.
Amendment No. 107 would remove the requirement for a
''significant and persistent problem in the relevant locality'',
stated in clause 29(1)(b). That is part of the overall case that I have been advancing. With the Bill, we—I presume that I can use the royal we—are trying to help people who suffer antisocial behaviour. Frankly, they do not really care what criteria surround whether and when the police can use the powers, or whether an offence was committed last week on the other side of town. They care about whether the police can turn up when there is a problem in their area and metaphorically get a grip on those who are causing it and sort them out. That is the purpose behind the amendment.
So much of the rest of this part of the Bill provides that the powers can be used only in areas where there has previously been a persistent problem and where a superintendent has decided to designate a relevant locality and gone through the activities described in clause 30. Those activities would be even more
bureaucratic if the Government accepted the Liberal Democrat amendments to which we shall come later.
I am trying to remove all that bureaucracy, so that if I, as an individual civilian, or my household is suffering the antisocial behaviour of a group of people—not necessarily young people—I can say to the police, ''I do not want you to have to go back to the office to sort things out and return next week to tell me that you have the powers to move these people on. I want them moved on now.'' Currently, the Bill prevents that from happening.
The Bill provides that the police can designate some parts of the country where it is deemed that there is a significant and persistent problem as relevant localities, so that the next time that something happens they can do something about it. The problem is that, as we all know, young people—we are all trying to avoid describing these groups as groups of young people, but we know that the majority will be young people—are past masters at knowing just how far to push the limits of the law. They will know which area is a relevant locality and that if they cross to the other side of the street or walk across a boundary, they will be outside the relevant locality and therefore able to gather and continue their antisocial behaviour with impunity. The police will not be able to disperse the young people or take them home.
That seems crazy. It is asking for the legislation to be brought rapidly into disrepute: young people will make it into a laughing stock. The Government should re-examine the issue and ensure that antisocial behaviour is not considered a problem only in some parts of the country. It is a problem everywhere. It may vary in degree, but to the people suffering from it, it is their suffering, not someone else's, that matters. That is why I contend strongly that there should be flexibility and that the requirement that the ''relevant locality'' must have a ''significant and persistent problem'' should be removed.
The argument can be taken on a stage to discussions on what constitutes a ''significant and persistent problem''. It is not defined in the Bill, so the decision will rely on the subjective views of individual superintendents in different parts of the country who may take different views. For clarity, we should remove that subsection and say simply that if antisocial behaviour is caused by groups of people, the police should have the power to do something about it.
That is the argument and there is no point in repeating in its entirety the case that I have made before. I am trying to emphasise that the value of this part of the Bill, which is designed to help people who are suffering antisocial behaviour caused by groups of people gathering together, will be dramatically diminished if it is hedged about in the way that the Government propose. Bearing in mind the Minister's remarks on earlier amendments, I want at least the removal of the criterion that the area must be the source of a ''significant and persistent problem'', so that people will not have to put up with the problem for some time before the police take any action.