Clause 1 - Drinking banning orders
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
9:30 am
Lynne Featherstone (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Hornsey and Wood Green, Liberal Democrat)
Amendment No. 110 is a technical amendment referring to amendment No. 116. I am concerned that vulnerable people may be subject to drinking banning orders. As we have seen with antisocial behaviour orders, they could be inappropriately served on vulnerable people, such as those who have mental health issues or alcohol issues. That is a particular concern, given that orders could be applied arbitrarily or disproportionately.
Without the amendments, the orders could be used for a purpose for which they were not intended. For example, an ordinary member of society, or even a police officer, might see a person with Asperger’s syndrome or Tourette’s syndrome in a public place and think that they were being disorderly or creating some sort of disturbance that could be construed as being a subject for a drinking banning order. Of course, such an order would be totally inappropriate. I know of an example in which an alcoholic man was served with an ASBO, which has escalated to a sentence of five years. Such a situation would be inappropriate, too.
There is also the issue of whether an individual has the ability to comply with a drinking banning order. That ability might be constrained if the person had a mental health issue or was an alcoholic, for example, and such irrationality in the person would render the order arbitrary. In such cases, detention or a custodial sentence consequent on a breach—or suspected breach—of an order would, in our opinion, be contrary to article 5 of the European convention on human rights. We need to be satisfied that the court is aware of that individual’s status. The amendment would mean that the court was made aware as by right. That way, the provision would be about stopping the unlawful minority, as the Minister says, and not about punishing those who are not capable of complying with the law.