My Lords, I hope that my noble friend will be very careful about not accepting the amendment for a very important reason. The noble Baroness talked about the most vulnerable people in society. From my experience as a Member of Parliament, the most vulnerable people I ever came across were decent families whose whole lives had been made totally unacceptable by their neighbours. I am afraid it is one of the facts of life that up till now no measures have been introduced that have dealt with this issue. Unless these measures are very serious, these people will go on suffering, not just for a year or two but very often for whole lifetime. The situation is remarkably regular; it is not one of those things that happens occasionally. Indeed, I fear that it has become more likely today than it was when I first started being a Member of Parliament 40 years ago.
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This particular part of the Bill will be received with considerable support by those most concerned about the most vulnerable—people who cannot defend themselves and are subject to years of abuse by neighbours who seem unable to take account of all the legislation that we have had. ASBOs and the like, as the noble
Baroness said, are very often ignored, and we have no other way in which to deal with this. So I hope that we recognise that we have to be tougher than we would normally like to be. I say that as someone who does not have a reputation in this House for being overly tough. If you have not seen the state to which some people’s lives are driven by these sorts of neighbours, you really do not understand why this measure is so terribly important.