Antisocial Behaviour

I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this debate on the fifth report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which was published just before the general election last spring, because it addresses an issue of great concern and because this is the first opportunity to discuss at any length in the Chamber the Government's respect agenda and the proposals that they announced last week. One criticism of the Government's respect action plan is that not much in it is new, but those who have read the report, which the Committee unanimously supported last year, have said that the Government's proposed action is line with the report's conclusions. The Committee's overall conclusion is that the necessary legislative powers to tackle most aspects of antisocial behaviour are largely in place, that the challenge is to ensure that they are used effectively in every part of the country and that there is no need for a raft of new initiatives or totally new approaches. In that sense, although some elements of the respect action plan are new, the general approach, which is to get things done properly at local level, seems to be right. I shall run through some of the main themes that emerged during our work, rather than discuss the detail of the antisocial behaviour powers. One of the most obvious conclusions, and one that might sound strange, although I do not suppose that the hon. Members present will challenge it, is that antisocial behaviour is a genuine problem. Neither politicians nor the media have invented it. That might sound like a banal and obvious thing to say, but a constant note was struck throughout our inquiry by a minority of those giving evidence, who denied that antisocial behaviour is a significant problem. From time to time, it was suggested that antisocial behaviour has always been there, that it is no different now and that politicians who talk about antisocial behaviour are simply creating a myth to justify some authoritarian powers.