My Lords, I suppose that we should congratulate the Minister on now having dealt with three of the 161 clauses during the course of today. The amendment addresses one of the most extraordinary absences from the Bill, which is that there is no mention, as far as I can see, of the role of police and crime commissioners—or, in London, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, earlier raised the issue of police and crime commissioners with the interesting suggestion that they might want to fund youth services to address issues of anti-social behaviour by juveniles.
Clearly, the role of police and crime commissioners in terms of addressing issues around anti-social behaviour should be central to the Government’s philosophy. These are the individuals who will be holding the police to account and doing so much to reduce the volume of crime and so on within their areas. So it is surprising that there is no mention of police and crime commissioners in the Bill.
In his reply to one of our earlier debates, the Minister talked about the tough financial climate in which all the agencies involved are operating and the importance of using resources wisely. That is why I put forward the amendment, which provides that there should be a proper, local anti-social behaviour strategy in every police force area. That should outline the approach that should be taken by the police service and local authorities in that area, and by other agencies that might be involved in reducing anti-social behaviour. That is so important because we all recognise that this is not an issue for which there is one magic bullet. There is no magic bullet associated with anti-social behaviour orders or with the new injunctions. There has to be a suite of measures, a series of actions taken at different levels by different organisations, to reduce the level of anti-social behaviour in a community.
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That is why it is important that there is a clear strategy to inform the actions of those who try to deal with anti-social behaviour and to enable those trying to judge the performance of those agencies in that area to see what the agencies concerned were seeking to achieve on anti-social behaviour. For example, some problems of anti-social behaviour on a particular estate could be usefully addressed by the use of the injunctions set out in the Bill. Some might be usefully addressed by other measures that the local authority might put in place. Some might be about the provision of support services or services targeted at individuals that could help reduce anti-social behaviour. They might not be of a nature that would be a condition associated with an injunction on an individual, but one of more general facilities provided for the young people of that area to wean them from the idea that the most enjoyable thing at night is to go around breaking things or causing noise and nuisance.
There is an absence of a coherent local strategy for addressing anti-social behaviour problems in the Bill. That is missing. The Minister may tell me that that is all supposed to be covered by existing crime and disorder strategies. He is nodding, so I suspect that that is what his brief tells him to say. In that case, it is quite surprising that there is no explicit reference in the Bill relating the approach being taken to the seeking of injunctions against individuals, sourcing those who are going to enforce conditions and the crime and disorder strategy.
The Minister may say that this is an important issue and that he is planning to come back to us with an amendment on Report that will address that and will that, as part of the crime and disorder strategy in each area, there shall be elements that address what is being done about anti-social behaviour, the policies to be adopted on injunctions, and the policies to be adopted to enable people to enforce the conditions associated with injunctions. At the moment, the Bill does not provide that.
That should be a collective strategy. The police and crime commissioner, and, in London, the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, should be responsible for drawing up that strategy, but it should be drawn up in consultation with and with the agreement of the local authorities in that area. There may well be other
bodies, including the major housing providers, who should be part of the process of drawing up that overarching strategy for how, collectively, those different organisations will address issues of anti-social behaviour in their patch. I am surprised that so little is said about police and crime commissioners in the Bill. There should be a coherent, overarching approach and strategy adopted within a police force area, working in conjunction with local authorities. I beg to move.