Police and Justice Bill

When I come to the end of the phase of my speech to do with neighbourhood policing, I will give way to Members who have comments or questions on that. On parenting orders and contracts, we believe that effective parenting is one of the key drivers in preventing children from offending and engaging in antisocial behaviour. It is vital that the police and other crime reduction partners are supported at the local neighbourhood level by parents in creating a strong society based on mutual respect. In tackling poor parenting and providing proper support for families where it is needed, we must be aware that that is the best course of action, and we are investing substantial resources in that. In the very small number of cases where parents are not willing to engage, the Bill widens the range of agencies that can enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders to secure the engagement of parents. Parenting orders are already highly successful where they are used by local authorities to combat truancy, and by youth offending teams. Youth offending teams successfully applied for 1,273 orders in the last financial year alone. The breach rate is low, and most parents subject to an order grow to value the support that they receive. Indeed, many wish that they had received such support earlier and make an articulate statement of that. Finally in this section of my speech, I turn to conditional cautions. To tackle low-level crime and antisocial behaviour effectively, we need tools that bring rapid relief to communities and send a clear signal that such behaviour is unacceptable. Conditional cautions can be used for adult offenders who admit their guilt and are willing to comply with the conditions specified in the caution. They have already been operating successfully in six areas, starting in December 2004, and we anticipate implementing them across the country in the next 18 months. They can provide an appropriate response to low-level offending without a potentially lengthy court process and free up court time to deal with more complex cases. The conditions that can be attached to a conditional caution are currently limited to direct rehabilitation or reparation. While those conditions have given good results, experience has shown that widening their scope would mean that conditional cautions could be used in more cases. The Bill will enable conditional cautions to involve the offender paying a fine or undertaking up to 20 hours of unpaid work—for example, making reparation to the community by clearing up litter from a park. In that way, offenders will be giving something back to the community, and more quickly and directly than if they had gone to court. I will now pause for a moment to give way to one or two Members who wanted to ask questions.