Sarah Jones

The hon. and gallant Member is absolutely right; people can, and I would encourage them to do that. Respect orders are part of the legislation that we are bringing in. We do not have time to get into this because I want to let the hon. and gallant Member wind up at the end, but respect orders will have a place in terms of repeat antisocial behaviour offenders. We will introduce them in the Bill, pilot them and roll them out. It will be a tougher measure in terms of tackling antisocial behaviour more widely. On the hon. and gallant Member’s point about whether we should expand the age group eligible for community protection notices, he said that it was a way of intervening without criminalising children, but he also said that, if they breach it, they are then criminalised. The question is: what is the most effective way to get people out of that kind of behaviour? Is it to criminalise them at that point, or is it to intervene in ways that might be more effective, as he said in other parts of his speech? Of course there need to be consequences, and there is the issue of whether we should list this as a banned weapon. We looked in our meeting at the list of weapons that are banned, and there is a strange mix of slightly peculiar weapons that clearly have been an issue at some points in time. It is an interesting list for people to look at. That is one aspect, but as a Minister who has been in post for less than 100 days, I want to look at this issue more. There is clearly a problem, and we need to consider how we tackle it. Thames Valley police were mentioned by name. I was with Thames Valley police recently, and they have massively reduced hare coursing through the use of really effective policing. They are using gators—these vehicles that zoom around the country—and drones to see where the hare coursing happens and get there, so I can reassure people that, when the police put their mind to it, they can do incredible things, despite the challenges. I am therefore optimistic that we can tackle this problem together.