My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendments 20J, 22F and 96 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Rosser. It is a slightly strange grouping. They do not hang together that well, but I hope I can help my noble friend Lord Harris on the points that we are seeking to address.
In principle we welcome the addition of positive requirements. There is no question about that. We introduced the concept, partly through individual support orders. The submissions that were made in the other place in the committee’s evidence sessions and the correspondence that we have received from local authorities and the police show that the point is not dissimilar to that made by my noble friend Lord Harris. It provides some clarification on how the requirements will be funded.
I took the opportunity, in the huge avalanche of a rainforest of paper that we have on the Bill, to see what the impact assessment said on the costs. Basically, every cost is caveated; the impact assessment is unable to make an estimate. Not all costs could be quantified and no benefits from reduced anti-social behaviour could be quantified. The costs took no account of the gains and losses. The Local Government Association is concerned that,
“given that use of positive requirements is predicted to impose an additional financial burden on councils, the overall estimates that the injunctions will be cheaper to use than ASBOs may not be right, and councils may be placed under an additional financial burden”.
The Association of Chief Police Officers gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee; it stated its concerns about agencies’ capacity and capability to deliver this support in difficult economic times, and said that that had to be considered. I was taken aback by the remarks in Committee in the other place of the Minister, Jeremy Browne. He said that it was important to establish how possible clients would be funded at the point of injunction being issued in the court. He did not agree that individual organisations should be responsible for supervising the compliance should be liable for the costs. He said,
“to take it literally momentarily, where the local authority, for example, applied for an injunction that was to include attendance at a drug rehabilitation course, the teacher delivering that course could be put forward to supervise compliance. Although the teacher would be best placed to monitor attendance and engagement with the course, it would not be right for the teacher, or school or college, to cover the costs of the course. Instead, we could expect the local authority, as the applicant, to cover those costs”.
But he added:
“That is because the downstream benefits of changing the perpetrator’s behaviour fall to them and other agencies, such as the police”.—[Official Report, Commons, Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill Committee, 25/6/13; col. 172.]
Is the Minister saying that if we can change the behaviour of somebody who is involved in drugs and crime in some way, and the interventions for positive requirements reduce that offending behaviour, the police or the local authority saves money? It was as if they incurred the costs. We know that early intervention reaps rewards further down the line, but that does not help those bodies pay for the costs at a time when the Minister is imposing positive requirements on the authority.
I am interested to know what assessment the Government have made on the savings that have been made. I understand from the impact assessment that they are unable to quantify the costs, but the Minister in the other place is saying that they will save money, so they should spend the money in the first place. That does not seem to be a sensible way to pursue legislation such as this.
I am also curious to know whether any assessment has been made of the impact that having to meet those costs will have on the imposition of requirements. If a local authority or the police say that we cannot afford to do X, Y or Z, or, if we could, we cannot afford to monitor it, there is little point in imposing those requirements if there is no funding to pay for them.
It is highly likely that one of the drivers for positive requirements will be the costs involved. It is a bit of a Catch-22 situation if the usefulness of the positive measures is limited by the available funding and quality services to meet those needs. That could create a postcode lottery, because the position could differ across areas of the country. We all know that there are some vagaries in the criminal justice system, but the position for somebody in Manchester could be completely different from that for somebody in Basingstoke or Basildon, for example. That causes enormous concern. If the needs of the person on whom the requirement is being put are being met, that is fine, but the danger is that those needs will not be met because the funding is not available.
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Our second amendment, Amendment 22F, would require the Government to issue guidance on the scope of the requirements for criminal behaviour orders. I might have misunderstood something and am quite happy to admit that, with the bulk of paper here, there may be some paragraph or clause in the Bill or Explanatory Notes that I have missed. However, on reading the Bill and the Explanatory Notes on criminal behaviour orders, I see the power to make orders, the procedure for making an application and the requirements
included—which are quite detailed—but they do not tell me what the requirements will be. The Explanatory Notes state that requirements in an order,
“could include attendance at a course to educate offenders on alcohol and its effects”.
Elsewhere, they state that providers of such courses,
“could be the local authority, recognised providers of substance misuse recovery or dog training providers for irresponsible dog owners”.
However, they do not specify or give any guidance to those issuing the requirements on what they should be. Perhaps I have missed it, but there should be some reference to the fact that the Government will issue some guidance on what those requirements will be. If the Minister can tell me where I can find the find the relevant provision, that would be helpful; if not, there is a need for such guidance, both on the appropriateness of any requirement and to curtail any excess of requirements.
Our final amendment in this group is Amendment 96. This is a fairly significant amendment. Had we been able to have our planned meeting with the Minister today to discuss the Bill, I would have raised it with him. Instead, at the last minute, we are debating it on the Floor of your Lordships’ House, given that this session has been brought forward. Our amendment does not tell the Government that they should not introduce the injunction as indicated in the legislation, because we think that injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance could be helpful in certain circumstances; our objection is that they are to be used in every circumstance. Our suggestion through this amendment is to keep ASBOs on the statute book, leaving it to local councils and police forces to decide what best suits their local areas and needs. We would therefore not be reducing their options, as the Government are currently doing, but seeking to extend them. The same sort of view comes forward in a later amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Flight.
As we said earlier, the IPNA has a lower threshold than the ASBO. The higher threshold in the ASBO is reflected in the fact that there is an automatic criminal sanction. In those most serious cases, somebody who breaches an ASBO will know that a criminal sanction is attached to it.
If we look at the number of people involved and engaged in anti-social behaviour, we see that 2.4 million incidents were recorded by the police in England and Wales at the end of last year. In the impact assessment, the Home Office refers to the 2010 poll that found that tackling anti-social behaviour is the public’s highest priority. We are worried about jettisoning ASBOs when, at Second Reading, your Lordships would have heard several noble Lords with enormous experience in this area saying how effective they had become. The Government want to throw away that tried and tested system, replacing it with a weaker but wider power with a lower threshold. We could find that we have far more injunctions of the kind provided for in the legislation; we could well find that we have more breaches because of the lower test; but the serious cases would not be dealt with in the same way because that criminal sanction would not be behind them.
The Bill is called the Anti-social Behaviour Bill and all the discussions that we have had today and at Second Reading have centred on anti-social behaviour. I do not think that this is addressed at all in the oddly-named IPSAs—I mean, IPNAs. IPSA is something that other people can complain about at other times, and which we would not want to see in your Lordships’ House.
We are saying to the Government: do not turn the clock back. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater and lose something that is working and effective by introducing this weaker power. That brings with it cost implications. If an ASBO is breached, that becomes a criminal matter. However, looking at the information and evidence given by the police and others about the breach of an IPNA, it is not a criminal matter, but the police could pursue a breach under contempt of court.
The estimate from some of the sources that we have been speaking to about this is that the legal services team could have a per case cost of pursuing a breach of about £800 to £1,500 per breach. Is that realistically going to happen? Will breaches be pursued at all when the costs are so high at a time of such limited resources?