Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

My Lords, there is a lot in this group. The Government are undoubtedly sincere in wanting to use the Bill to further tackle anti-social behaviour, and such moves to take on this blight on communities will certainly be popular. However, we have to pause a moment and say that there is already a plethora of tools on the statute book designed to tackle anti-social behaviour, and yet it does not seem to be improving. This is the group in which we need to ask why. Perhaps anti-social behaviour orders and injunctions in all their various guises, from community penalty notices to public spaces protection orders, are just not fit for purpose. I fear that, instead of tackling this, the Government are taking an easy and performative route and affording the state even more of the same—with more draconian powers—under a different label, that of respect orders. They are doing all this with little clarity or evidence of efficacy. That is what the amendments in this group are designed to tackle. By and large, I support them all. I tabled Amendment 6, which calls for an independent —I stress the word “independent”—review of existing powers under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which should be published prior to the commencement of Sections 1 and 2 of the Act. As legislators, we have an obligation to take responsibility for assessing the impact of, and the evidence about, laws that we made in the past before we duplicate their weaknesses. We need to understand the pros and cons. This review would look at solving the evidence gap. It is extraordinary that there is significant variation in data captured across relative authorities. Because ASBIs are locally administered in a patchwork of varied use, there is a worrying variation in the types and quality of data collected, the location of that data and the ability of that data to be extrapolated and shared internally or with relevant agencies where appropriate. This is surely a slap across the face of evidence-based policy-making, because without data it is not possible to adequately assess the effectiveness of behaviour orders and to fully understand any trends arising out of their imposition, enforcement or breach, including disproportionate impacts. That is why Amendment 24 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who is not in her place, which would require the Home Office to publish quarterly data, is so important, as well as Amendment 12 from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, which calls for an annual report. Both amendments positively try to tackle the limits of the availability of the evidence base, without which I do not know how we can make informed policy decisions. At present, all the critiques of present behaviour orders are invaluably brought to us from sporadic academic research, FoI-based research led by the likes of Josie Appleton and her team at the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life, and the excellent campaign group Justice. They want their work to be made redundant by the Government; they want the Government and officialdom to do their work instead. If the Home Office does not understand its own legislative tools because it does not have the data, the misery of anti-social behaviour will remain untouched while the statute book grows. I hope the Minister will listen to the front-line workers who have to implement and use these orders and who, reasonably, bemoan the lack of proper consultation with those who understand the ASBI regime in real life. I note the government amendment on consultation, which is welcome. The majority of practitioners who Justice consulted believe that the new respect orders are unnecessary and replicate flawed laws already available. Only 6% conclude that they will improve outcomes for victims; 82% of respondents to the practitioners survey have called for the review of the existing 2014 Act and of existing powers prior to respect orders being introduced. There was unanimous agreement that the Government should address problems inherent in existing injunctions and orders before creating more, and that failure to properly consult has meant that opportunities to resolve problems with the way orders operate in practice, not on paper, and to increase their effectiveness have been missed. Surely the Minister will want and feel the need to understand why research shows that a significant proportion of CPNs and PSPOs are, for example, being overused for trivial activities, such as feeding the birds, honking horns, gathering in groups or idling in your car, or imposed in inappropriate circumstances against, too often, the homeless and the mentally ill, where the behaviour complained of falls far below the threshold of antisocial behaviour that the public are concerned about and that the 2014 Act was envisaged to tackle. All that we are asking in these amendments is for the Minister to look at what has gone wrong so that we can improve it. Surely the Government are worried about the vastly varied use of existing orders, which creates a postcode lottery for victims and means that British citizens do not know what is allowed from one town to another. Conduct that is totally lawful in Lincoln might be subject to state sanction in Leeds. Surely such a differential variation in the volume of orders imposed, the type of orders imposed, the conditions imposed, and so on, undermines the rule of law that I know this Government strongly support. It makes enforcement dependent on the victim’s location, rather than circumstances, or on the perpetrator’s location, rather than precisely how they are behaving badly. This makes a mockery of the notion of all of us being equal under the law. A review would look at these problems and recommend practical solutions. Amendments 1 and 3, especially, are important in relation to ensuring that respect orders are used only when necessary and in a proportionate way. We have already heard about that. I think this is very helpful, particularly in creating a right to appeal. I am worried that the statutory test and the language used for imposing these new respect orders are so broad that, rather than capturing behaviour that is serious and persistent in nature, they will criminalise more trivial behaviour. That these orders can be imposed on individuals without their knowledge and, most egregiously, for an indefinite duration—for example, until further notice—is why we need this appeals process. How is it fair or proportionate that an individual who has never been found guilty of an offence is required to comply with serious restrictions on their liberty and personal life indefinitely, yet someone convicted of an offence by the criminal justice system is at liberty and free of prohibitions once they reach the end of their defined term of sentence, or even sometimes before that these days? This is reminiscent of that stain on our justice system, the abolished and abominable IPP indefinite sentence, which caused such a scandal. Why would the Government now create these new, oppressive orders that flout the important principle that if individual lives are subject to state interference, they need to know how long the interference will last and when it will end? Finally, I have added my name to Amendment 7, an excellent contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on fixed-term penalty notices, based on the work of the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life. This, I hope, will ring true with any Labour Government, because ensuring that private companies dishing out on-the-spot fines for antisocial behaviour, and doing so to profit financially, is surely something that offends the Government’s values. There are concerns that antisocial behaviour orders have been corrupted for income generation and commercial purposes. With fines increasing so much under this Bill, surely that tendency will be turbocharged. I think it is something that the Government will want to tackle, because all the orders in Clause 4 being issued at such a low benchmark are likely to result in fines going up. I am worried that this will encourage councils to become trigger-happy with orders and so on. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, will remember, as I do, the scandal of Kingdom Security in north Wales in, I think, 2019, when councils including Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Gwynedd and Anglesey outsourced the collection of their on-the-spot fines to a private security group, Kingdom, which illustrated that the behaviour of the enforcers could well be seen as being far more anti-social than any of the behaviour of local residents for which they were supposed to be fining them. A grass-roots campaign attracted 8,000-plus members to its Facebook page and led to numerous protests all over north Wales, with the security group’s wardens accused of threatening, bullying and even stalking north Walians, following dog walkers and smokers at a distance just so they could catch them out and fine them. They expressly targeted the elderly and women and children; the tissue of one 95 year-old lady blew from her wheelchair to the ground, and she was fined.