I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will forgive me if I do not join him in his encyclopaedic tour of the townships of Lancashire. In fact, this amendment does not necessarily suggest that there is a single county-wide strategy, because I, like him, would accept that what works in one area would not be appropriate in another. It talks about,
“the area in which the court sits”,
and there will be different courts in different parts of the county. The relevance of this is that each of the local authorities in the area should contribute to the preparation of the plan, because this must be something which is agreed at local level. It is the absence of that agreed joint strategy, working together at local level, which is the omission in this Bill.
This could be a subsidiary part of the police and crime plan, or it could be built from the crime and disorder partnerships which exist at local authority level, but what is missing is any cross-reference to those two different processes. If we are to be serious about anti-social behaviour, if we are to make things happen at local level and have the different agencies operating in concert, working together to try to deal with anti-social behaviour, there needs to be some linkage between the existing planning structures.
While I am quite prepared to accept that this amendment does not necessarily deal with the issue precisely, if the Minister does not bring back proposals on Report, then I might well bring proposals to try to link what is being done in this Bill with both the police and crime plan, which commissioners are asked to draw up, and the local crime and disorder arrangements, which exist between the local senior police officer in an area and the chief executive of each local authority area. On that basis of looking forward to the Minister coming forward with some further suggestions about how to integrate these documents, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.