In moving Amendment 90 I shall also speak to Amendment 91. These two amendments are intended to be entirely helpful to the Government. I am surprised that that suggestion provoked hilarity from the Government Front Bench, because that is genuinely the case. If the Minister has in front of him a brief from his officials suggesting that he should oppose these amendments, I hope that by the time he has finished listening to what I have to say he will realise that that advice is perhaps an example of civil servants approaching amendments to a Bill as if not a tiny hair of its precious head should be interfered with, because obviously it is an object of complete perfection. I hope that by the end of my speech the noble Lord will realise that I am trying to improve the Bill and make it fit more coherently with other legislation on policing and anti-social behaviour.
Amendment 90 requires that each of the responsible bodies in a local community safety partnership should set out its approach to using the anti-social behaviour powers in the Bill. As part of the production of a community safety plan, the various relevant organisations —the local authority, the local police commander, and possibly the health bodies and so on—should set out how they will use the powers given to them by the Bill.
Amendment 91 requires that police and crime commissioners should include in their policing and crime plans objectives for the use of the anti-social behaviour powers in the Bill. Before the Minister assumes that I must have had some sort of Damascene conversion to the concept of police and crime commissioners, let me tell him that this is nothing of the sort. I am simply trying to make this legislation that the Government are trying to get through consistent with other legislation that Parliament has already passed. I am not saying that previous legislation is perfect or does not need changing; I am simply trying to make this legislation consistent with it.
The aim of the amendments is to integrate what is in the Bill with other legislative requirements. They would ensure that plans were made for how the various
powers—the new injunction powers, the dispersal order powers and so on, which we have spent many happy hours debating—would be used in any local area. The requirement that the intentions of the various responsible authorities be set out in the local community safety plans and the force-wide policing and crime plans will ensure that there is public consultation on the approach to be taken. It will also require buy-in from all the local partners to the approach being taken. Above all, we are trying to ensure that some sort of coherent strategy for the use of Parts 1 to 5 of the Bill is articulated. At the moment, that is not an obligation for those who will enforce it.
In my view, local community safety plans are the building blocks of local collaboration. The 1998 Act that created them, and the subsequent amendments of the law that have strengthened and added elements to them, are the mechanism by which, at local level, the police service, the local authorities and other relevant parties come together to decide on the best way of dealing with what, in the original formulation and language used, was called crime and disorder. In this context, that would include anti-social behaviour. What is the best way of addressing that? My amendment would involve the local authority sitting down with the police and identifying the circumstances in which they can both make a difference, so it is about the sort of collaboration that the Minister, in responding to a number of provisions, has talked about as being the sine qua non of what the Government are trying to achieve with the Bill. Therefore, the amendment follows the principles set out by Ministers but provides a framework in which they will be discussed at local level by the relevant parties. The amendment would also provide coherence and enable the relevant intentions to be set out clearly. It sets out a mechanism for this to take place and a mechanism for partnership around what the Government want to see achieved at local level with regard to anti-social behaviour. It also sets out a mechanism whereby those approaches can be agreed.
The amendment would deliver transparency at local level with regard to how the measures in Parts 1 to 5 are to be used—without the amendment, I am afraid that the Bill simply does not have that—and introduce a much clearer system of local accountability as the local objectives in regard to the use of Parts 1 to 5 would be set out. It would also provide a mechanism to achieve consistency of approach in the way that the powers in Parts 1 to 5 are used within a force area and even within a local authority area. Above all, it would institutionalise effective collaboration. I cannot see what there is in these amendments for the Government Front Bench not to like. As I say, they are genuinely put forward in a spirit of trying to be helpful and make this piece of legislation consistent and compatible with other legislation that requires collaboration and working together to protect local communities against anti-social behaviour. I beg to move.
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