HL Deb 13 September 2004 vol 664 cc983-9

7.58 p.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 19 July be approved [27th Report from the Joint Committee].

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the penalty notices for disorder were introduced by the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. These are on-the-spot penalties for disorderly behaviour. Police officers may issue penalty notices in respect of offences listed in Section 1 of the Act. Current penalty notice offences include being drunk and disorderly, causing harassment, alarm or distress, wasting police time and being drunk on a highway. Therefore, they are targeted at a range of low-level anti-social offences which can blight our neighbourhoods and communities and which serve to increase the fear of crime.

As noble Lords know, penalty notices for disorder form an important part of the Government's determined campaign, working with the police, local authorities and concerned citizens, to tackle antisocial and nuisance behaviour and offending. But this type of offending is at the lower end of the scale of seriousness and therefore needs to be dealt with in a way which punishes the offender and reassures the community but which does not take up large amounts of police and court time.

Penalty notices for disorder have proved that they fulfil that remit. They enable offenders to be dealt with quickly on the street or at the police station by the issue of a ticket. A significant amount of police time is already being saved by not having to prepare the paperwork necessary to take an offender to court—around two-and-a-half hours per case. Further time is saved by the police officer not having to attend the court hearing. That means that police officers are free to spend more time on the streets deterring crime and dealing with other offenders who might otherwise never be apprehended. In addition, court time is freed up to deal with more serious offending.

Penalty notice amounts are currently £80 and £40. The recipient of a notice has 21 days to decide how to respond to the notice. If he pays the penalty within that time he cannot be tried and receives no criminal record for that offence. If within 21 days he chooses instead to go to court so as to contest the notice, he may be tried for that offence. If he does nothing, a sum of oneand-a-half times the original penalty amount is registered against the offender as a fine. Such fines are then enforced in the normal way. That is very similar to the discussion we had on Friday about these notices.

The penalty notice scheme was piloted and then rolled out nationally earlier this year. The police have welcomed it and have asked for it to be extended to further offences. One new offence, that of causing harassment, alarm and distress, was added to the original list in 2002 and is well used, representing as it does almost half of penalty notices issued. The Government have now decided that the time is right to add a further 10. They are largely low-level offences which are suitable for penalty notice disposal or. in two cases, offences for which the least serious examples are suitable for such treatment. It is the addition of these 10 offences which we are debating today.

The proposed new offences are four offences involving alcohol misuse by those under 18; three new firework offences; destroying or damaging property where the damage is valued at under £500; retail theft under the value of £200, and dropping litter. A further order is to be laid before the House which will set the penalty amounts for each of these offences. The order proposes that the majority of these offences should become penalty notice offences by 1 November but the three firework offences will be available for penalty notice disposal two weeks after the order comes into force, bearing in mind the proximity of bonfire night. That will mean that police officers will be able to issue penalty notices for many offences associated with fireworks in the run-up to 5 November. That should help to combat a very serious problem involving firework misuse which is experienced daily on our streets across the country.

As the House knows, theft and criminal damage are generic offences and can cover a wide range of behaviour. As I said, for theft it is no more than £200 and for criminal damage where the value is no more than £500.

The order which is before the House today pursues, therefore, the Government's commitment to tackle anti-social behaviour and nuisance offending. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 19 July be approved [27th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)

Viscount Bridgeman

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that succinct explanation of the order. The extra offences which have been added to the existing ones for which a penalty notice can be issued, which she has enumerated—namely, theft; destroying or damaging property; depositing and leaving litter; and the widening application of fireworks offences—clearly make a lot of sense.

The order also includes a widening of alcohol-related offences. While we fully recognise the dangers to the public peace and, indeed, to the personalities of the young persons, of binge drinking, I share with my right honourable friend Mr David Davis his concerns that the highly publicised plans to clamp down on binge drinking are but a prelude to the imposition by the Government of cash curbs on pubs and breweries, especially in view of the failure of the Licensing Act to address the problems posed by many pubs in residential areas. I would welcome an assurance by the Minister that he has no intention of imposing these burdens in future.

Turning to the modification of powers exercisable by police civilians—in this House, we rise above such cheap epithets as "Blunkett's bouncers" or "plastic policemen"—this is a proposal which we welcome, provided that it releases police officers to deal with more serious forms of crime. However, this widening of the role of community support officers must not be used as a cloak to avoid addressing the fundamental need to increase the number of police officers, which, in the view of my own party, is the only really effective way of reversing the tide of anti-social behaviour and restoring respect for authority and the law.

I would remind your Lordships that my party is pledged to increase police numbers by 40,000, to remove central government interference on local policing and to put it on to a sustainable financial footing, also to create a genuine partnership between police and public by establishing directly elected police authorities in England and Wales. However, with those reservations, I agree with this very comprehensive order.

Lord McNally

My Lords, one of the reasons why we on these Benches are suspicious of secondary legislation is that when we have the major debate on the key Bill, there is always the suspicion that what is being debated is the tip of the iceberg and it is at the secondary legislation stage that we shall see what the Home Office really intends.

It also means that mini-debates such as this are on very narrow specifics when they need to be taken in a broader context. Most of the measures in these orders or the problems that they are trying to address are, by common consent, a desire by people to see something done. There is wide concern about unruly behaviour. The problem I face is seeing any kind of coherence in the government response. One worries that sometimes this little package or series that we see is designed to cover the Government's Daily Mail flank in advance of a general election rather than to put some of these issues in their proper context.

As far as policing is concerned, what we are doing at the moment is trying to catch up after a decade of cutting police numbers by both parties when they had responsibility for these matters. One of the advantages of being in this House for almost 10 years is that I remember pressing the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, about the Government sticking to the previous government's record and intentions on police spending and being assured that new technologies and greater mobility mean that we did not need extra police on the street. So, I am glad that there is now common consensus that we do. I should also point out that this party was advising community support officers a decade ago when again it was seen as some kind of weird liberal thinking.

Today most of these orders are aimed mainly at young people. Young people cause most public concern. My eyes were caught by two things: first, today's Guardian headline, "Today's youth: anxious, depressed, antisocial"; and, secondly, a booklet on social exclusion published by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister entitled Breaking the Cycle. It states: Social exclusion is about more than income poverty. It is a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas face a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, discrimination, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime, bad health and family breakdown". I draw attention to that because social reformers in all parties believed that if those problems were cured, the anti-social behaviour—crime itself —would diminish in the better, richer society that would be created.

What is worrying about the research published in the Guardian today is that it found: The increases cannot be explained by the rise in divorce and single parenthood … because they found comparable increases in all types of families, although there is a higher rate of adolescent mental health problems in single-parent families. Nor can growing inequality over the 25 years explain the rise in problem teenagers because rates of increase were comparable in all social classes. There was no difference between white and ethnic minority teenagers". In some ways it is extremely worrying that this rejection of society's behavioural norms is taking place. One finds it in so many ways. You talk to teachers who find that they cannot teach because of the simple defiance of students that will not take authority. Then we find that the rules and regulations make it very difficult to exclude those who then destroy the education for a whole class. You talk to policemen who say that the youth seem to be very well versed in their rights, with very little idea of any kind of social responsibility.

The temptation therefore is to appease that concern by ever more draconian measures. On Friday, these orders were slapped on 10 year-olds and now we are going to fine people on the spot for theft, which seems a slightly odd way of punishing theft. It might be an encouragement to go and steal something else to pay the fine.

I am really putting a marker down. I know that the Government have other studies coming up on the educational and training aspects of 15 to 18 year-olds and their leisure pursuits. Some studies show that crime drops where the old youth club provisions are restored and where sport and other leisure pursuits are available. I cannot believe that that is not a better route than simply relying on ever more draconian policing.

I suppose it is a sign of old age when one starts thinking nostalgically. I have a teenage son. Sometimes when I raise my voice at him I think, "Where have I heard that before?" Then I realise that it was from my father. It is a difficult period, but this generation does seem to be throwing up even greater challenges.

I have a small point on fireworks, about which I do not think there will be great protest. Members of the general public often ask me why, when in our youth fireworks happened on bonfire night, they now seem to run for three months beforehand and three months afterwards and are let off almost anywhere at any time of day or night. If this order can help in that regard, it will be welcomed.

As I say, I am worried that the motivation behind the order is not the more efficient policing to which the Minister referred but ticking another box for the Daily Mail. We welcome the order in a limited way because we believe that the wider issues, of which it is a part, need to be addressed in a wider context.

8.15 p.m.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for their comments. Although they went very wide of some of the issues with which we are dealing, I have taken from them that I have general assent to the orders that we are bringing forward.

I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, that binge drinking is an issue of concern. Of course, I can make no commitment to any further introduction or change of policy. The targets we have in our sights as a result of this order are the selling of alcohol to under-aged children, the delivery of alcohol to under-aged children, the purchase of alcohol by under-aged persons and the drinking of alcohol by under aged persons in a bar. Noble Lords will know that alcohol has had a significant impact upon the behaviour that, regrettably, we are seeing in many of our city and other centres. It has been a real problem.

The Government's alcohol harm reduction strategy for England, published by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister's strategy unit on 15 March 2004, included recommendations aimed at encouraging greater use of penalty notices for disorder to clamp down on the low-level drunk and disorderly behaviour that we are seeing. They are quick, easy and direct. I can assure your Lordships that before they are issued an officer has to have clear evidence that such an offence has been committed.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, talked about draconian measures but these penalties are seen by others as a quicker and more efficient way. Instead of pulling people right the way through the criminal justice system, criminalising them for what may be a one-off piece of foolishness, they are a way of punishing it, recognising that it is wrong, but dealing with it. We think that it is a more effective, and often more speedy, response.

I assure the noble Lord that the police have welcomed it. Governments quite often come up with ideas that people in the field do not find to be of much use. The impression that we have from officers is that, for once, government have come up with something that works, which is useful and which has made a difference. Already 20,000 penalty notices for disorder have been issued to great effect. Most of them are being paid. Noble Lords should think about what that says for our criminal justice system.

In relation to theft, the difficulty that we have in terms of the volume of crime is petty theft from shopkeepers. We have consulted shopkeepers and they very much welcome this. Particularly, in relation to the younger element, not criminalising a child who has stolen a 10p sweet from the local sweetshop may be seen by many as a very good thing. I know that noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches will applaud telling the child that it is wrong, making sure that the parents know what the child has done and intervening swiftly in a way that does not unnecessarily criminalise the child but which, we hope, brings an end to the behaviour. This is not to placate the Daily Mail or anybody else.

I know that there is a wider debate. I listened with great care to what was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, but we have done more than any government before us to increase the numbers of police officers on the beat. We are taking a holistic approach. We are looking at education and diversion with the work we are doing with DCMS; work is being done with NOMS and probation to find diversion, and we are doing work on drugs. There is obviously a lot that we can discuss, but maybe not tonight and maybe not on this order.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that this is not electioneering. This is hard work that needs to be done and is being done well. It is already proving to be very successful. I am glad that we have unanimity on all our Benches that this is a good thing and we should get on and do it. I commend this order to the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Lord Davies of Oldham

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn until 8.30 p.m.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

[The Sitting was suspended from 8.19 to 8.30 p.m.]

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