Lord Davies of Gower:

Moved by Lord Davies of Gower

8: Clause 1, page 2, line 26, after “court” insert “or a magistrate’s court”

My Lords, we must ensure that courts can operate within their means. If we issue them with new responsibilities, we have to be sure that they have the capacity to fulfil them. Unfortunately, in restricting respect orders to the High Court and county courts, the Government risk not providing the bandwidth to deal with new orders.

At the end of Labour’s first year in office, the Crown Court backlog suffered an annual increase of 11%. There are over 74,000 cases waiting to be judged. Of course, that burden is not entirely at the door of the Crown Courts, but a considerable number of the outstanding cases will require their use. County courts are in a better—but still not ideal—state. The average time for justice to be delivered is just over 49 weeks. Reflecting on this, it makes sense for the Government to divide the responsibilities for the new respect orders as widely as possible. The logical conclusion is to permit an application for a respect order to be made to a magistrates’ court.

If respect orders were confined to the serious criminality that we expect to be dealt with by the High Court and county courts, I would accept placing additional pressures on to them and excluding magistrates’ courts. It is right that those facing serious harassment or other forms of anti-social behaviour have the ability to make application to these courts, but the scope for respect orders is far wider than that. The definition of anti-social behaviour is to include actions causing alarm and distress. These are two very subjective metrics: they are fundamentally different from harassment and more serious forms of anti-social behaviour. So I see no reason why magistrates’ courts should not be available to deal with these less serious and potentially menial forms of anti-social behaviour. This is the reasoning behind Amendments 8 and 16, tabled in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie.

There is also precedent for this. When the last Labour Government introduced anti-social behaviour orders in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, they could be made only by a magistrates’ court. This recognised that anti-social behaviour should be the purview of summary justice. The Minister might argue that the Government are simply replicating the application process for anti-social behaviour injunctions and that they were the action of the previous Government. That may be a fair criticism, but that would not mean that the Government are right. Simply following the case of previous legislation does not automatically mean that the legislation before us today is following the right path; nor does it acknowledge the very different state of the backlog in the High Court and county courts today, as opposed to 2014. It makes far more sense to permit the use of magistrates’ courts for this purpose today, given the historic case burden.

Finally, I can see no downside to this. It will permit burden-sharing between three types of courts. It would not alter the nature of the orders, nor the process by which they are made. But it would make some progress toward reducing the waiting time for the making of a respect order. Surely the Government do not want to see a 49-week wait for a respect order to be made. Would that not hamper the effectiveness of these supposedly tough new respect orders? I hope the Minister will consider these amendments carefully and sensibly.

The other amendments in this group seek to minimise the pressure placed on our courts by the new measures and ensure that our shared principles of justice are upheld. Interim respect orders interact with the principle of innocent until proven guilty. They can be made following a court adjournment up until the final court hearing. They have the same function as a regular respect order and can impose the same restrictions. I am conscious that this may sometimes be necessary. I reiterate the debilitated state of our courts and the fact that adjournment is sometimes out of their hands, even if the defendant is likely to engage in further anti-social behaviour. In these occasional instances, I can understand the need for an interim respect order.

Amendment 15 aims to find a balance, creating a presumption against issuing an interim order, while still leaving the option open. Amendment 19 exists to forward the argument that these orders can be issued to prevent only further harassment, and not the vague concepts of alarm and distress. These amendments aim to ease the administrative burden on the courts. Amendment 17 seeks to ensure that, if an appeal is made against a decision to refuse to issue an interim respect order, the defendant is notified. It is right that a person should know when they might be subjected to a respect order, especially when they have not yet been proven guilty. I beg to move Amendment 8.

My Lords, I have just a few comments. I am quite concerned that the latest figures show that the magistrates’ courts’ backlog of cases to be heard reached 361,000 as of September 2025, a record high and a significant increase on previous years. In the other place, the Minister said the legal test for respect orders was being kept “broad and flexible” to enable them to be used for a wide range of anti-social behaviours. Again, this suggests significant extra pressure on courts. Jamming up the system further is not going to help victims. Can the Minister say what the Government’s assessment is of the impact on the wider criminal justice system?

Giving evidence in the other place, the Police Federation also pointed to the pressure these orders would put on custody places, saying that infrastructure was needed to make new legislation “effective and believable”. Perhaps the Minister could also address that.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for their comments. I am sorry: I am just getting my pages in order; it came slightly more quickly than I expected. I thought we would have a few more contributions.

The amendments all relate to the role of the courts in the Government’s new respect orders, and it is fair and proper that they do so. These new orders will enable courts to ban offenders from engaging in formal, harmful anti-social behaviour and—again, as we have discussed—tackle the root cause. Amendments 8 and 16 seek to allow magistrates’ courts to issue respect orders. I have been clear that the respect orders are civil behaviour orders intended to prevent further anti-social behaviour occurring. They also aim to encourage rehabilitation through the positive requirements that I discussed in the previous group of amendments. Because they are civil in nature, applications should be heard in the civil courts, which have the appropriate procedures and expertise for handling these types of orders.

Magistrates’ courts deal primarily with criminal matters and summary offences. Hearing civil applications in a magistrates’ court would risk treating preventive orders as punitive measures, when, actually, as I mentioned, they are designed either to try to stop people undertaking negative behaviour or to encourage people to undertake what I will term positive behaviour, such as anger management or alcohol awareness courses.

Amendment 15 seeks to ensure that the interim respect orders are not issued by the courts unless specifically said otherwise, and where an application has been made without notice. Again, anti-social behaviour can escalate quickly and cause great harm, and an interim respect order enables rapid protection in urgent cases involving immediate risk. Judges can make decisions based on the individual facts of the case and ensure that victims receive immediate relief in cases which they deem to be appropriate. On occasion, these will have to be issued without giving notice to the respondent, and it is important that judges retain the ability to do so on or without request from the relevant agency. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that the court would be required to apply itself to the question of whether it was appropriate to make an interim order. There is no question of one being made without an express determination to that effect, but speed is still required.

Amendment 17 seeks to ensure that, if an appeal is made against the decision by the courts to refuse an interim respect order, the respondent is duly notified. I reiterate that interim respect orders are designed to provide urgent temporary relief to protect victims and the public from serious harm before a full hearing. If the respondents were notified of an appeal, it could undermine the immediacy and effectiveness of the interim order, and doing so would likely complicate proceedings, prolonging risk to victims and communities. I come back to the fact that all the measures in the Bill are designed to tackle anti-social behaviour at source and provide either interventions to prevent or interventions to encourage positive behaviour. The law allows appeals without notice to maintain speed and efficiency in safeguarding measures.

Amendment 19 seeks to ensure that the interim respect orders are made only when the court considers the respondent likely to engage in harassment. Again, I just say to the noble Lord that the definition of anti-social behaviour is broad: it is intended to capture behaviours that may not meet the criminal threshold but which can cause severe harm to victims and communities. As I pointed out, interim respect orders are a necessary thing to provide immediate relief, preventing harmful behaviour from escalating and causing further damage to victims and communities. I would have thought that the noble Lord would have supported that general direction of travel. They are a preventative order, not a punitive order; they are punitive only in the event of a breach. Again, the purpose of the order is not to have that breach in the first place but to send a signal that says, “This behaviour is unacceptable”, or “This support mechanism is required”, and if you do not attend the support mechanism or if you breach the preventive mechanism, you are facing a potential criminal sanction.

Just briefly, because this is a very important aspect of the enforcement of respect orders, I ask whether the Minister is saying that all that is needed is that it is shown beyond reasonable doubt that the respect order has been breached, or does one go back to the original decision on the civil balance of probabilities—the reasons for the respect order? Is it purely that you have to show beyond reasonable doubt that the respect order has been breached, in which case it is still a civil balance of probabilities requirement for the original respect order to be enforced?

There is a determination, and I believe the legislation before us today is clear on that matter. We will debate this still further, undoubtedly, but there is essentially a respect order where the court will consider the potential breach and will make a judgment on it, and having examined that, it will determine the issue in relation to that breach. The noble Lord raises that issue now, but as regards Amendment 19 before us today, which is the point I am making now, limiting the scope of where an interim respect order can be issued risks further harm for communities as a whole.

I will just focus on the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned. She covered in the last series of amendments the same issue, in a sense, about capacity, which is important. It will be a matter for discretion of the applicant and the court to determine what requirements will be most suitable in line with the resources and options that are available in a given area. So, again, that discretion is there at a local level to determine; for example, if an alcohol awareness course is required, then self-evidently an alcohol awareness course has to be available for the individual to take up that course. Those judgments will be made at a local level by the local individuals who are determining these matters.

Again, I refer noble Lords to the economic impact assessment that we have published. The ASB package is expected to lead to

“an overall reduction in prison places”.

The respect order replaces the civil injunction, and we are not expecting additional cases per se. Once in a steady state, annual prison places for respect orders will stay more or less the same, and we expect respect orders to have a neutral impact on prison places, given that they are replacing civil injunction powers. So I hope that that again reassures the noble Baroness in relation to the resource question of the additional impact of these matters. With those comments, I respectfully request the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Before the Minister sits down —I love that expression—can I just check? I think he said that respect orders were not going to be piloted. Is that correct? Diana Johnson, the Policing Minister in the other place, in the third session in Committee, said:

“We will pilot respect orders to ensure that they are as effective as possible before rolling them out across England and Wales”.—[Official Report, Commons, Crime and Policing Bill Committee, 1/4/25; col. 104.]

So, what has changed between then and now that the Government have changed their mind?

The Government have considered the reflections in Another place, and we have now determined that we want to get on with this. Remember that the Bill has 12 days in Committee, and then Report, and we have a long way to go before Royal Assent. The Government want to have a manifesto commitment that they made in July 2024 implemented in good time. Even now, that manifesto commitment will take us potentially nearly two years to put in place. That is a reasonable process, we have consulted widely on the respect orders and that is the Government’s position now.

Can the Minister say whether anything else has changed that we would not be aware of because it has not been written down anywhere?

That is a very wide question, my Lords. Let me say that the purpose of Committee is to provide a significant number of days for Members from all sides of the House—as we have had today, from the government side as well as from the Opposition and the Liberal Democrats—to test Ministers and raise points. If the noble Baroness has points she wishes to raise during the passage of the Bill, as ever, I will try to answer them, either on the Floor of this House or in writing afterwards.

The noble Baroness asks whether things have changed. Even today, there are a number of amendments that the Government have brought forward in the groups of amendments that we are deliberating on today. Things move; the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, was saying with regard to the immigration Bill that a number of things have changed over the course of time, and things move. It is now 16 months since the King’s Speech which introduced this legislation. We continue to monitor and move; where necessary we bring forward amendments, and I am open to testing on all matters at all times. But I would welcome the noble Lord withdrawing his Amendment today.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and to those who have contributed. I know we all have the interests of a functioning justice system at heart, and the discussion has reflected that. We must approach this debate with pragmatism as our guiding principle. That means that, when legislating for new crimes, the best outcome is the one that sees offences prosecuted. In a perfect world, perhaps the Crown Courts and the county courts alone would have the capacity to handle these new respect orders. But, as I have outlined, the courts system is incredibly backlogged, and it is therefore necessary to use as many courts as possible to deliver the policy.

Considering the scope of respect orders on top of that, my amendments and the amendments of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie are perfectly reasonable. To consider causing alarm as on the same level as causing harassment, as prosecuting them in the same courts effectively does, defies sense. Making use of magistrates’ courts is both the rational and practical solution to this problem.

Similarly, approaching interim respect orders from a more conservative standpoint would be prudent. They are very illiberal measures and should be used only in the most necessary circumstances. Amendments, such as those tabled in my name, to create presumptions against them and to narrow the preview of their power seek to ensure that this is the case.

I hope that the Minister will agree with the important principles behind these amendments and will perhaps take them away and consider them, but for the time being I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment 8 withdrawn.

Amendments 9 to 22 not moved.

Debate on whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill.

My Lords, I have tabled and de-grouped this Clause stand-part notice because it would be helpful to the Committee to probe the real purpose of respect orders. We have no plans to insist that this part of the Bill be removed on Report.

This Government appear to be making the same errors as those of the previous Labour Administration. The Blair Government seemed to believe that, the more they legislated on crime and anti-social behaviour, the less of that behaviour there would be. We saw Act after Act, many repealing or amending Acts that they had passed merely a few years before. This flurry of lawmaking meant that, by the end of its term in office, Labour had created 14 different powers for police to tackle anti-social behaviour and criminality. My noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead undertook to simplify this system by condensing all these measures into just six powers. However, with this Bill we see that old pattern of the new-Labour years re-emerging. This Bill creates four new powers: respect orders, youth injunctions, housing injunctions and youth diversion orders. I cannot see what real-world impact this will make.

As I said at Second Reading, the concept of respect orders appears to be little more than a gimmick. It is legislative action to make the Government appear to be tough on anti-social behaviour when in fact they are not. Respect orders are no different from the existing anti-social behaviour injunctions. Applications for both are made by the same list of people to the same cause. The requirements that can be placed on the respondent are the same for ASB injunctions and respect orders. Both permit the making of an interim order or injunction. Both permit the exclusion of a person from their home in the case of serious violence or risk of harm. Both permit the variation or discharge of the order or injunction. They are, in almost every aspect, exactly the same.

The only difference is that one is a civil order and the other a criminal order. The Bill creates a criminal offence of breaching a condition of a respect order. A person found guilty of that offence on conviction or indictment is liable to a jail sentence of up to two years. Anti-social behaviour injunctions, however, do not have a specific criminal offence attached to them. A person who breaches a condition of an ASB injunction does not commit an offence of breaching the injunction. The Government have argued that this difference makes their respect orders tougher and therefore justified. However, this overlooks two important facts.

First, the court granting the ASB injunction can attach a power of arrest to the injunction under Section 4 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. Section 9 of that Act states that

“a constable may arrest the respondent without warrant” where they believe that the person has breached a condition of their injunction. The person arrested for a breach of their injunction can then be charged with contempt of court, which carries a punishment of up to two years’ imprisonment. It is entirely understandable that the Government wish to introduce a specific criminal offence of breaching conditions. It is easier to prosecute someone who breaches their respect order than to prosecute someone for contempt of court for breaching their injunction. That is not least because a police officer would have to know that a person had an injunction against them, that they had breached the condition and that their injunction contained a power of arrest. It is also because, even though ASB injunctions are civil orders, the criminal standard of proof is applied when determining whether a person has breached a condition.

I understand this entirely, but it does not explain why the Government are seeking to replace injunctions in their entirety. Surely, given that every other aspect is the same, it would be far easier and more expeditious to retain the injunctions and simply amend them to create an offence of breach of conditions. That would mean that the ASB injunctions remain in place but they have the same power of enforcement. Why did the Government not follow this route? Why did they not simply amend the anti-social behaviour injunctions, as opposed to creating a whole new class of order?

The answer cannot be that one is a civil order and one a criminal order because, as I have demonstrated, the civil order could easily have been upgraded to criminal status by way of legislative Amendment. I would hazard a guess and say that the reason is perhaps bluster. Is it not the case that the Government wanted to seem to be tough on crime, so they came up with a rehash of ASBOs with a slightly catchier name? These new respect orders will likely have little effect on reducing anti-social behaviour. What would have a positive impact would be to increase the number of police officers. Unfortunately, the Government have failed on that front. Since they entered office, the total police officer headcount has fallen by 1,316. That record to date stands in stark contrast to the previous Government’s successful recruitment of 20,000 additional police officers during the last Parliament.

If the Government are serious about getting tough on crime, they should stop the gimmicks and start with enforcement. I beg to move.

My Lords, I have listened to the quite detailed discussion that we have had so far in our attempt at line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill in relation to respect orders. Weighing up the pros and rather more cons, I am very aware that what I am going to say might seem glib about anti-social behaviour. People listening in might think, “This crowd who are raising problems of civil liberties are not aware of the real scourge of anti-social behaviour and the impact and the misery that it can cause on ordinary people’s lives”. The noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Blencathra, gave us a taste of what that anti-social activity can feel like in local areas. I recognised the descriptions from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, of young people potentially running amok in local areas. Where I live, that has been known to happen, so I recognise that.

However, it would not be appropriate for us to be emotionally blackmailed by the suggestion that, if we are opposed to some of these anti-social behaviour orders being brought in, it is because we do not care about ordinary people suffering anti-social behaviour. It is not that we should be told to shut up and put up. I am not satisfied that respect orders will help. They certainly will not help increase the amount of respect in society, particularly of young people respecting authority or what have you. There is a danger that the orders themselves could become a scourge. Using the civil level of proof, on the balance of probabilities, respect orders are too problematic to keep in the legislation without a real challenge.

I want to challenge the Minister: introducing respect orders was a manifesto commitment but, with respect, the electorate would not know what a respect order was. They want the Government and politicians to tackle anti-social behaviour. They do want more respect in society. They do not know what a respect order is. We can barely understand what a respect order is ourselves and the Bill has only just been put before us. One would not be betraying the manifesto commitment by saying, “This order that we dreamt up because it has a good sounding title isn’t fit for purpose”.

I want to remind noble Lords what we are being asked to sign up to. Respect orders are not just to be used to deal with an individual engaged in anti-social behaviour. You can also be issued with an order if it is concluded that someone threatens to engage in said behaviour. That is a preventive order that can be dangerously open-ended. What does “threatens to engage in” mean? It means that criminal sanctions based on speculation rather than actual behaviour can be applied. This is based on a definition of anti-social behaviour as not just conduct that has caused harassment, alarm or distress to any person but conduct that is

“likely to cause distress, alarm or harassment”.

I am emphasising that because these things matter. We end up arming the state with new tools which I am not completely convinced will tackle the problem.

The notion of young people shoplifting, engaging in anti-social behaviour and running amok is a noble Lord, Lord Blencathra-style caricature—no disrespect to him—and kind of like a Daily Mail image. When those activities are happening, there is no Intervention using the Laws that we already have. A lot of these things are already illegal. They are certainly anti-social and actually criminal activities, but nobody does anything. So I am worried about having too open-ended a criminalising Clause that can be doled out to people but will not necessarily tackle the problem.

On harassment, alarm and distress, I have been doing a lot of work with university students, and I can assure your Lordships that in universities there is a huge amount of harassment, alarm and distress being caused, particularly in relation to, for example, pro-Palestinian activists disrupting lectures and threatening lecturers, and where we have a kind of explicit Jew hatred on campus. Everybody says, “Well, what can we do?” Well, you could issue them a respect order, but even I do not think that that is the way that we should deal with it. The point is that we are using these things, it seems to me, as an abdication of responsibility for acting by basically creating another legislative tool.

Overall, the statutory test for imposing respect orders, in my opinion, is too broad and vague in its language to be a safe new legislative change. I am mindful that respect orders can also have significant impacts on our citizens’ rights and freedoms, and I do think that rights and freedoms are important. These measures are a form of behavioural control order that imposes limitations upon a person’s liberty and daily activities in an attempt to prevent unwanted behaviour that is actually quite subjectively defined. To do this, they provide the state with unfettered discretion to do anything described in the order, and that might include imposing curfews, electronic monitoring, and restrictions on who a person can communicate with and where they can travel to, and even can exclude people from their own home—things we have already heard about.

There are no limits to the type or number of prohibitions or requirements that can be imposed. Respect orders can be imposed without notice, as we have heard—without telling the person the order has been made against them—and for an indefinite period, with no provision to remove conditions imposed.

These are quite draconian challenges to our civil liberties regime and we do not even know whether they work. We are told by the Minister that the pilot scheme has been put off because it is urgent that we get on with using these orders. I would suggest that what is urgent is that we get on with enforcing the laws that we have and ensuring that those laws are used to punish wrongdoing, rather than creating a whole new legislative framework that also will probably not be enforced, but none the less gives the state a lot of powers that I would rather it did not have without much more scrutiny. I do not want this clause to stand part of the Bill, and I do want to get rid of respect orders altogether.

My Lords, I am prompted to rise following the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, with which I largely agree. I am not sure whether I should be offended or pleased by some of the other remarks she made about me, but I think her crucial point is that anti-social behaviour orders have been around for years.

We heard from the Lib Dems that they are worried that orders may be imposed inappropriately on people who should not have them. The Government are worried that they do not have enough powers; therefore, they want respect orders instead. People generally know what anti-social behaviour orders are. My question to the Minister is: why not amend the anti-social behaviour orders to tighten them up as the Lib Dems want and impose the penalties the Government want?

I know the Government will say they used the word “respect” in their manifesto and have to stick to it, but it would seem to me to be introducing, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has said, a whole new concept which people maybe do not understand—they may think it is more magical than it actually is. Why not use the existing system and amend it to make it work the way the Government want it, the way the Lib Dems want it and the way my noble friends in the Official Opposition want it to? That is all I ask.

My Lords, the Minister mentioned in his remarks on the first group that there are over a million instances of anti-social behaviour in the United Kingdom, and he is seeking broad new powers in the early part of the Bill. Can he give the House any guidance as to what sort of effect, if the House were to give the Government these powers, will be seen in terms of a projected reduction in anti-social behaviour as a result?

My Lords, I will seize the opportunity to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, while the going is good and before I have to disagree with him on future groupings. I entirely agreed with what he had to say, as indeed I did with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower.

This stand part debate goes to what might be called the heart of legislative utility. Why do we need a new tool if the old tools are sufficient? We must ask: does Clause 1 solve a problem or does it merely create complexity and risk? The Bill, as we have heard, introduces respect orders, but it also retains anti-social behaviour injunctions. Many of us already feel that the new respect orders, as we debated in the first group, are unnecessary and largely either replicate powers already available under the 2014 Act, or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, made very clear, add undesirable elements to those powers.

We have seen with ASBIs that there have been some proposals to include positive requirements tailored to underlying causes of behaviour. If the goal of the Government is to better address the underlying causes of persistent anti-social behaviour, we could be strengthening the existing injunction framework, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, focusing resources on effective enforcement and mandating psychological or therapeutic interventions, rather than introducing a confusing, duplicated power.

Our preference on these Benches is very clear. We should focus on accountability, review and proportionality to ensure that the existing framework works effectively, rather than adding a potentially flawed new tool that invites mission creep and targets the vulnerable.

I am grateful to noble Lords for the discussions that we have had today. I will start by saying something that I hope is helpful and which is meant to be helpful. Respect orders are not something in their own right. They are part of a suite of tools that the Government are looking at to help tackle anti-social behaviour.

I take some issue with what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has said about police numbers. I was Police Minister in 2009-10, and immediately after we lost office, the coalition Government reduced police numbers by around 20,000. The figure of 20,000 officers that the noble Lord says are being put on the streets really represents a replacement of ones who were taken off the streets by the very same Government that he supported.

The noble Lord asked whether we have additional police officers on the ground. This year we have put around another 3,000 police officers on the ground, and we are looking at providing around 13,000 extra pairs of boots on the ground—specials, PCSOs and, indeed, direct warranted officers—during this Parliament. That is again a commitment in the manifesto that we are doing. Many of the measures in the Bill that we will come to later around phone theft, the use of anti-social vehicles and all sorts of other measures are still part of the suite of measures to try to tackle anti-social behaviour as a whole.

If I take the challenge from the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, head on, I cannot give him a figure as to what the impact is going to be directly on those matters as of now. I will reflect on what he said and see whether I can bring further light to that. The key point is that this legislation before the Committee today—this Clause stand part notice that the noble Lord is testing the Committee on—is a measure whereby in the event of a breach of those orders, speedier criminal action can be taken, which is different from where we are currently with other forms of anti-social behaviour legislation.

Again, I reaffirm what I said in earlier contributions: we are not seeking to be punitive; we are seeking to be preventive. I hope that nobody will be sanctioned by the legislation for breaching an order. The whole purpose is to put some behaviour modification in place to stop a poor behaviour or to encourage help and support to overcome the reasons why that poor behaviour has taken place in the first place.

This goes to the heart of what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, said because, from my perspective, this is part of a suite of measures. That is the point I want to put to the Committee today. We know that the powers in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 did not always go far enough to tackle anti-social behaviour and I believe that the whole Committee wants to tackle that anti-social behaviour. It is why the Government committed in our manifesto to introducing the respect order and cracking down on those making our neighbourhoods, town centres and communities unsafe and unwelcome places.

The 1 million police-recorded incidents and over a third of people experiencing or witnessing some form of anti-social behaviour are key issues that any Government should address. The respect order partially replaces civil injunction powers for persons aged 18 or over but, like the civil injunction, will enable courts to set prohibitive conditions by banning disruptive ASB perpetrators from town centres or engaging in a particular behaviour or by providing a rehabilitative, positive requirement, such as attending an anger management course or, potentially, a wider drug or alcohol awareness course to help tackle the root causes of their offending.

If this legislation is passed, authorities—including the police, local authorities and registered social housing providers, among others—can apply for a respect order. That means that the people who are closest to the ground in a community, such as a police officer, local council or housing association, can identify when they want to provide some support for the potential victims of anti-social behaviour. The respect order is not a punishment unless breached, as I have said already. It is intended that, upon receiving a respect order, the offender would cease the behaviour and that there would be no further sanctions. Can I measure that for the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, at this moment? Possibly not, but I hope I can measure it down stream. Provision is made for punishment only where an offender ignores their respect order and continues to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

The important point again is that there is a criminal sanction if someone breaches that order. Unlike in a civil injunction, breaching the respect order will be a criminal offence that is therefore arrestable. Again, that is significant. In a sense, an individual would be warned not to do something or encouraged to do something. If they do neither, they would be subject to arrest.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for responding to my question about projections of the effect of these measures. The purpose of me asking him these questions, just as I did on another Bill, is not just to ask awkward questions and give his officials more work but a genuine focus on performance. We have a very serious issue in the country and we all agree on anti-social behaviour. The price for the Committee, in essence, agreeing to broader powers is some degree of confidence that they are likely to have a significant effect. Of course, it is incredibly difficult to quantify what that effect may be, but some guidance on it would help the Minister’s cause, which is always a cause close to my heart.

I accept that, but it would be fair to say that I would be making promises or guessing about issues that I could not guarantee. But I can guarantee for the noble Viscount that we will monitor the use of this and that the measures that I have already outlined—those in the Bill, those on police numbers and the focus that we are putting on certain police initiatives through central government discussion with the National Police Chiefs’ Council—will make a difference. They will be judged on that.

Self-evidently, a manifesto commitment to reduce and tackle anti-social behaviour requires this Minister, this Government and this Home Secretary to go back to the electorate, at some point, to say, “That is the difference that we have made”. While I cannot give the noble Viscount an aperitif today, I hope I can give him a full-course meal after the discussions have taken place further down stream.

It is important, as we have just heard, that if perpetrators breach an injunction multiple times, the police cannot take action unless they take them to court. Under this measure, there will be a criminal action so police can take action immediately.

I wish to tell the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that, for a respect order to be issued, two tests must be satisfied. First, the court must be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the respondent has engaged in or threatened to engage in anti-social behaviour as defined. Secondly, the court must be satisfied that issuing the respect order is just and convenient. A further safeguard introduced is that the relevant authorities carry out risk assessments prior to the respect order being put in place.

These clauses, about which the noble Lord has quite rightly asked questions, are important and I wish to see them retained in the Bill. I am grateful for his overall indication that, when it comes to determining that, he will not oppose these clauses, but I will take away his comments and I hope to continue our discussions in the positive way that we have to date.

I am grateful for the contributions made and to the Minister for his response. Of course, I have no intention of opposing the passage of respect orders. They were part of the Government’s election manifesto and, as such, shall become the law of the land. This does not prevent my criticising them. Indeed, simply because they were part of the Government’s manifesto does not mean that they are a good idea that would have a positive impact on the streets of Britain.

I have provided substantive justification for why I believe that respect orders are, simply put, an effort to paint a picture of a Government bearing down on crime and anti-social behaviour when, in reality, they are not. The proof will be in the pudding; we will see whether the Prime Minister’s so-called tough new respect orders have any actual impact, in due course. For now, I will leave it there.

Clause 1 agreed.

Clause 2 agreed.

Schedule 1 agreed.

Clause 3 agreed.

Clause 4: Fixed penalty notices