Clause 1 - Drinking banning orders
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
12:15 pm
Jeremy Wright (Rugby and Kenilworth, Conservative)
I am grateful for that guidance, Mr. Benton. Perhaps I can put things this way. I have no doubt that constituents will have expressed to every member of the Committee concerns about precisely the type of incidents that drinking banning orders are designed to address. However, I also have no doubt that such constituents, including those of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green, will be interested not in the type of order that the Government introduce, but in its effectiveness and in whether the law already gives the police and the legal system powers to deal with those incidents. The Committee should be concerned about laying down layer upon layer of extra law, when new provisions will, like extra weapons, simply lie in the arsenal, fully polished and never used.
Given the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking, the Minister should give serious consideration—I hope that she will address this point—to the fact that the antisocial behaviour order legislation and other legislation that has been mentioned already address the points that she seeks to tackle through drinking banning orders. If that is the case, and worse yet, if drinking banning orders, having become law, are used no more than the other pieces of legislation, is she not concerned that people will start to think that the problem will not be addressed whatever laws the Government make? Is not the real problem that the police do not have the resources or the time to deal with such issues under the existing legislation? If so, should not the Government address that issue?