House of Commons Hansard Debates for 8 Apr 1998 (pt 37)

Caroline Flint (Don Valley): One of the most disturbing sights when I was campaigning last year before the general election was of children as young as eight, nine and 10 on the streets at 9.30 or 10 o'clock at night. Current powers have failed to protect those children and to make sure that they are not on the streets at that time of night.

Mr. Beith: I do not think that the response to a disturbing sight is a curfew. If a police officer finds children wandering the streets and clearly at risk late at night, he has an opportunity to talk to them or to take them home. Social services departments can use Children Act powers for such purposes. The notion of saying, "This is a no-go area for children" is unsatisfactory. Many of us played cricket in the street until it was dark, and in my part of the world it gets dark at 11.15 pm in the summer. We did not expect to be told that, thanks to the local council, a curfew had been imposed and that there would be no more cricket.

The right hon. Member for Gorton probably thinks that a curfew should be in force by about 5 or 6 o'clock. Other Labour Members think that a curfew should extend to an older age group. Before long, we would be back to the days when people shut the gates of the town that I represent and tolled a curfew bell, which still rings at 10 past 8, so that everybody could be safely locked up in their homes. We may find that a curfew would be contrary to the provisions of the European convention on human rights, which the Government are properly ensuring can be enforced in our courts.

I should like to speak about the serious issue of sex offenders and what should be done about such offenders who have been released and about whom there is so much public concern. On television at the weekend, the Minister of State said that, in consultation with others, he was developing some ideas on what could be done. Let us see them in the form of a Government amendment in Committee. Let us begin to discuss the matter openly and not confine the discussion to the Home Office. If, after detailed examination, it seems that the ideas are not developed to a form that will allow them to be included in the Bill, the new clause or amendment that contains them could be withdrawn. Why should we go through the process of debating a Bill in this Session when the

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Government say that they cannot look at such matters until a possible new Bill is being drafted in the next Session?

Mr. Michael: It would not be responsible to present half-formed amendments simply to stimulate debate. The Home Secretary made it clear earlier that when ideas have been worked up he will present information to the House to allow a debate. The right hon. Gentleman should give us credit for the fact that we have been open. We have told people that we are trying to find solutions to these difficult problems. Rather than simply mounting a defensive exercise, we have said, "Let us deal with these problems openly. Let us discuss them."

Mr. Beith: My definition of openness is not saying that one intends to be open, but presenting proposals. That is not a criticism of the Government, but they should get away from the idea that they will lose face if they present proposals in an early form and are obliged to change them or even take them away because, on examination, they prove to be unsatisfactory. The public would like the process to begin now. To process the Bill without considering that seems odd.

The Government must acknowledge that many of the tools that are available to reduce crime will not be in the Bill and cannot even be found within Home Office powers. They involve most other Departments, especially those that deal with local services and communities. They include creating opportunities, promoting positive activities, providing education and training, creating pride in local areas and environments, diverting young people away from crime and improving the child care system, through which so many offenders have passed in their formative years. They have often been in residential parts of the child care system or have experienced unsatisfactory foster care. The majority of those that one encounters in any prison have been through an unsatisfactory aspect of our child care system.

In a sense, it is not even the fault of Home Office Ministers that they cannot solve all the problems of crime. The fault lies much wider and that is a lesson for government as a whole. Introducing a criminal justice Bill every year, a practice which was developed by the previous Government, will have a much more marginal effect on crime than some of the issues that I have listed, and it will have a much more limited effect on the extent to which crime continues to cause so much distress to our constituents.

Several hon. Members rose--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I remind the House that the 10-minute limit on speeches now applies.

7.8 pm

Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South): The legislation is welcome. It is the work of a Home Secretary and a Government who are determined to address the tidal wave of yobbery that accompanied the Thatcher decade. [Interruption.] Oh yes it did, and made a misery of the

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lives of so many of our constituents. It is evidence that a clear sense of purpose and strategic vision are in the process of being restored to our criminal justice system.

Mr. Hawkins: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Mullin: I am confined to 10 minutes, so I will not give way. Forgive me.

I welcome the measures that are designed to deal more effectively with youth crime and to render youth justice, which, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department has sometimes said, resembles a secret garden, more effective. I welcome especially the measures to speed it up. The abolition of the presumption that children who are aged between 10 and 14 do not know the difference between right and wrong is long overdue; I am not persuaded by the argument that that rule has been in place since the reign of Edward III. I welcome, too, other measures that are designed to encourage young offenders to confront their crimes and to make reparation to their victims.

I do not share the view that the Bill is too repressive. For far too long, it has been apparent that our criminal justice system is utterly ineffective against persistent young offenders. For too long, police and local authorities have been tearing their hair out with frustration at their inability to contain that small minority of juveniles who run amok and make the lives of law-abiding people a misery.

Parts of my constituency and those of some of my colleagues have been rendered uninhabitable by out-of-control juveniles, who simply laugh at the law and its representatives. Other hon. Members have quoted examples from their experience. At my surgeries, I am regularly faced with refugees from the poorer parts of my constituency who beg to be evacuated because their lives have been ruined by criminal youths, against whom the law appears to be ineffective.

Last year, an elderly gentleman came to see me who had made the mistake of buying his council home in a once respectable area that was subsequently destroyed by yobbery. As a result, he is trapped. His neighbours, all council tenants, were rehoused years ago, but he is marooned in an unsaleable house that is surrounded by dereliction. Four houses on either side of his are vandalised and boarded up. Behind him, nine or 10 consecutive houses have been abandoned.

Caroline Flint: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Mullin: I cannot because I have only 10 minutes. Forgive me.

Some houses have been fire-bombed. That gentleman has a net over his greenhouse to catch incoming missiles. When his wife died just over a year ago, even the cars of the mourners came under attack from stone-throwing youths. That poor man sits at home at night in terror of the next brick coming through his window, so when someone talks to me about civil liberties, I say, "What about the civil liberties of my constituent? What about the civil liberties of men and women who break down in tears at my surgeries as they describe the anti-social behaviour that is going on around them, which has blighted their lives and those of their children?"

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