Clause 1 - Drinking banning orders
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
12:30 pm
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
Nothing could be further from the truth. I regard the information that I give to Parliament as extremely important and I would not dream for a moment of misleading the Committee.
The changes made by the Licensing Act 2003 will come into effect in November and will strengthen the police's ability to attack problems. They will be given powers for immediate closure and decisions will now be made by local authorities, which is an increase in democracy. I hope that the hon. Gentleman welcomes that. In many cases, local authorities are refusing or restricting applications and local people can make the decisions and influence their local authorities. That is an improvement.
I have dealt with exclusion orders and why we need to do something different, as well as how they differ from ASBOs. The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green talked about dealing with the causes of binge drinking. I am pleased to be able to tell her that we are working closely with the industry and that a couple of the big chains have now outlawed the irresponsible happy hour promotions such as ''All you can drink for £10'' and ''Girls drink free'', which are a recipe for the binge drinking and mayhem that we see. I want the industry code of practice to bite and to ensure that all the retailers and people involved sign up to the responsible retailing of alcohol products. I am sure that we will do that.
The alcohol harm reduction strategy means that we are also considering some of the health issues and the sensible drinking messages that we send out. As well as enforcement, we need a campaign that gives people information and changes their behaviour. I have always said that we need enforcement and support for people to change if they want to. That does not mean that we do not need tough enforcement in such circumstances.
The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford spoke about police resources. He knows as well as I do that the Government have put 13,000 extra police officers on the street and that we will have 24,000 community support officers—we already have 6,000 out there—with a range of powers to tackle alcohol problems, especially among our youth, including intervention and confiscation. Again, if we are to have more police—we are committed to maintaining our historically high number of police officers—we have to will the means as well as the end. That means more resources, yet the Conservative party votes time after time against the resources that need to be invested in the police service.