Antisocial Behaviour

It is a great pleasure to take part in this debate on the Select Committee's report. First, I congratulate the Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), on his hard work and leadership, and on the depth of interest that he takes in the subject, which is obvious to everybody in the Chamber. I shall briefly follow down the road of what he said in his introductory remarks. His point about looking beyond legislation is extremely important; legislation certainly has its part to play, but it would be a mistake to think that the answer is always enacting package of legislation after package of legislation, without looking to see whether existing legislation is working, or whether other things need to be done. That is a lesson that we should take to heart generally in this place, and certainly when dealing with the subject of antisocial behaviour. To take just one slightly topical example, it is a fair point that antisocial behaviour orders, which we have had a little debate about this afternoon, play a role, particularly in some areas; but that was not always the case. They were introduced some time ago. From memory, I think that they first came on stream in 1999 or 2000. The relevant legislation was one of the very first pieces passed by the Government. I recollect the Committee that considered it, because I served on it. The Conservative party did not actually oppose antisocial behaviour orders, but I am not sure that that can be said of those in all quarters of the House. I will not go any further down that road, although it is interesting to ask when, or in what circumstances, the orders became appropriate to some. We warned at the time that care should be taken to make sure that antisocial behaviour orders were practical and would be used. There was a time when uptake was slow; the Minister and other hon. Members could confirm that from their experiences. They were subsequently modified, and are now used much more than they were in the first couple of years after their introduction. On the same general point, I follow up what was said by the hon. Member for Burton (Mrs. Dean), who referred to parenting orders. They are a very interesting idea, but statistics bear out that they have not been used very much so far. Perhaps it would be worth considering, when there is an opportunity, why that is so, and whether anything further could be done to make sure that they were more widely used. As the Chamber will have gathered, the issue of alcohol-related disorder occupied quite a bit of time in the Committee's deliberations, and was the subject of much of the evidence that it took. There was a question in the Committee's mind as to the direction in which the Government were going on the issue. It is not that we contradicted the Government, but we wanted to consider whether other things needed to be looked into, beside the measures already being taken. When we heard evidence on the subject, we were struck with the scale of the problem. I have a slight disagreement with the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) on the issue; his point about publicans selling to people who were inebriated was very good, and I was interested to hear that the number of publicans prosecuted was so small. However, there is a limit to how much effect prosecuting more publicans has. Perhaps there is a case for considering the matter more carefully, but the evidence that the Committee heard about the extent of the consumption of alcohol in town and city centres suggests that there is an element of inevitability about this, given the numbers of people involved.