My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, was right in this, at least in drawing attention to the scourge of anti-social behaviour. When I represented the constituency of Newport East I was all the time aware that there were households and, indeed, communities whose lives were very seriously blighted by anti-social behaviour. There is enormous political pressure on MPs representing constituents to find ways to crack down more aggressively and more effectively on such behaviour patterns. That pressure is, of course, amplified by the tabloids.
That is precisely why we should be moderate in this matter, why we need to be restrained and why we must try to get the right balance. Therefore, the provision in law that a threshold of “harassment, alarm or distress”
must be exceeded seems to me to strike the right balance. I think that it is dangerous and improper to lower the threshold to “nuisance or annoyance”. It is surely unthinkable that we should risk introducing legislation that could impair the rights of people to go on demonstrations, as my noble friend Lady Mallalieu offered as an instance, or of kids playing football in the street, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, worried about. There are all manner of other innocent behaviours that are, indeed, annoying, but that in a free society we should not dream of legislating to prevent.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, did not annoy me—he never could annoy me—but he startled me with the arguments he scraped together in his gallant speech in support of the Government’s position. He asked: is it a realistic fear that people would be subject to IPNAs for trivial and inadequate reasons? He offered the thought that the requirement that applications would have to be made through an official public agency should be seen as a filter and a safeguard. The vast majority of public officials handle their responsibilities fairly, properly, scrupulously and reasonably. I hate to say this, but it is also, surely, an observation that all of us have made that if you put a man in uniform, or if you vest a person in official authority, some will find themselves tempted, and succumb to the temptation, to use power overweeningly. We have to be very careful indeed.
The noble Lord says, further, that guidance will be offered to these agencies so, again, we do not really have cause to worry. I am sure that the guidance will be a force in the right direction, but guidance is only guidance; it is flimsy and an insufficient protection. The much better protection would be not to write this risk into law. He offers a much more reassuring protection—that such injunctions could be made only at the discretion of a judge and that we can rely upon the judges to exercise common sense, decency and appropriate restraint and to be animated by a mature and wise sense of justice. In that case, why legislate? We do not need to do this. We can rely on the judges not to order injunctions against people who are merely guilty of causing trivial annoyance. It does not seem sensible, in the present circumstances in which the resources of the courts have been very attenuated, to add this burden to them.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. What are we here for if not to protect civil liberties? Justice and convenience are very often in tension. I suggest that what may be for the convenience of the Government politically, for the convenience of local citizens, whose annoyance threshold is perhaps rather low, or for the convenience of agencies may be very ill assorted with justice. I think that the Government’s position is unwise and I very much hope that the House will support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, and his colleagues.