I do not wish to detain the House for any great period. I had the great privilege and honour of serving on the Bill Committee with my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), who was not always given an easy time by those whom he was whipping, even on his own Benches. As a number of hon. Members have done, I pay tribute to the proceedings in the Bill Committee. It was a great pleasure of course to work with the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and with the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice and the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), who was also taking the Bill through the Committee.
The Bill has shown the House at its best. It has been improved throughout the Bill Committee, both by Opposition amendments that the Government have taken on board—they have brought changes to the Bill before the House during Report—and amendments tabled by Government Back Benchers, which the Government have also taken into account. I want to pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) for her work during the passage of the Bill, which a number of us were pleased to support and which has led to the vast improvement of the Bill before it leaves this place.
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Delyn for indicating he will not divide the House on Third Reading, but insofar as there is any difference between the two sides of the House on the Bill, it appears principally to centre on whether ASBOs have been a good thing. I understand that there is politics around this and the Labour party is deeply attached to the idea, but as I pointed out in our debate yesterday, whether or not ASBOs were originally effective, as matters now stand they have turned out not to be effective at all. As the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has pointed out, they have become a badge of honour for some teenagers, and the breach rates of ASBOs among teenagers in particular have risen to such levels that they have proved completely ineffective at controlling antisocial behaviour. It is therefore entirely right that the Government have moved to tackle this issue—as, I say to the right hon. Member for Delyn, I suspect that that would have been the position even if his party were in government.