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8 Apr 2003 : Column 220—continued
Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton): I apologise to the House for having been absent for a good deal of the debate, but I have been chairing the Culture, Media and Sport Committee over at Portcullis House.
The Bill can be of great assistance to my constituents, particularly in relation to dealing with premises from which drugs are sold. As I said in an intervention on the Home Secretary earlier, we have a whole area around Chapman street in Gorton that has been blighted by the sale and trading of drugs at a local Texaco filling station. After great pressure, Texaco has taken action to stop that happening, but we never know when it will come back again. I therefore hope that the definition of "premises" in the Bill will include such premises as filling stations, so that they can be closed down in such circumstances if need be. A local wine store is also alleged, by my constituents who watch and monitor it, to be used for the sale of drugs as well as alcohol to underage people. Again, I hope that the definitions in the Bill will enable the police to close that place down, if need be.
These problems do not only affect commercial premises, however. They affect private premises, too. The Bill rightly deals with issues relating to social housing, but the problem does not only affect social housing. There are areas in my constituency in which private landlord accommodation is used for the very purposes referred to in the Bill in relation to social housing, namely for drug trading and as brothels. It is utterly intolerable that housing benefit should be used to fund those activities, which ruin the environment for the large numbers of people who live around those private landlords' houses.
The Bill introduces a power for social housing providers to demote tenancies. Fine; we welcome that in the Gorton constituency of Manchester. I very much hope, however, that when we come to discuss the housing Bill—a Bill parallel to this one—the powers of demotion will be extended to private tenancies and that provision will be made for action to be taken against private landlords who make money, often by collusion with tenants, not only out of drugs trading or brothels, but out of the housing benefit scams that go with such activities.
I hope that the Government will bring in the housing Bill as quickly as possible so that we can be one of the areas in which licensing takes place, and these appalling landlords—who never reply to representations from Members of Parliament—can have their properties removed. Private landlord abuse of that kind did not
take place for a long time, but we are now back to a version of Rachmanism: reverse Rachmanism. I hope that the Government will move speedily. My constituents look to the Government, because they have observed the positive impact of much of what has been done under the crime and disorder legislation—legislation that I supported.In a sense, my constituency pioneered antisocial behaviour orders. Some of the most powerful have been imposed there, and my constituents welcomed them. What they do not welcome is the weakness of the courts when orders are violated. I have already told the House about a 14-year-old girl on whom an order was imposed. The police circulated leaflets so that everyone would know about it. The girl violated the order 10 times, and was arrested 10 times. The courts did absolutely nothing about it. Only after I raised the case in the House was the girl taken into custody after violating the order again. It was very good for her to be taken into an ordered environment for a number of months, because a parenting order concerning her was also violated.
In my constituency, we do not just seek powerful legislation of this kind, although we welcome it. We want that legislation not to be sabotaged by weak courts that do not enforce the will of Parliament.
Mr. Dawson : Surely a child of that age, apparently with a huge number of problems, should be dealt with in the care system rather than the justice system.
Mr. Kaufman: My hon. Friend may be right, but the fact remains that the child was not dealt with. We had a way of dealing with her, but it took prolonged violations and havoc in the area where she marauded for that to happen. She will probably lead a much more constructive and happy life than she would have if action had not been taken.
Relations with the police are extremely good in my constituency, and the police are very active. I thank Superintendent John Brinnand, who deals with a large part of my constituency, for his continuing responsiveness to the problems brought to him. The White Paper mentions the work of Manchester city council and its neighbourhood nuisance teams. I thank the council for the work it is doing, but both the council and the police will say that they need a framework.
I wish that people would speak about these matters with an honest, open and clear voice. Liberal Democrat councillors turned up at the opening of a neighbourhood wardens project in one part of my constituency, which I attended, and participated. They said, however, that a neighbourhood wardens scheme in another part of the constituency was useless and a waste of time. Let us have a bit of consistency when it comes to streets, as well as entire wards and constituencies.
I thank the Government for the Bill. It is a good Bill. But, as I said when the Crime and Disorder Bill was introduced, the test will lie not in the excellent words but in the enactment, and it is my constituents to whose verdict I will listen.
5.59 pm
Vernon Coaker (Gedling): It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). He listed some of the difficulties he had encountered in his constituency, and throughout the debate others have described the problems they have encountered in theirs. I could do the same, but what my constituents are asking is how we reached this point. Why have the horrific episodes encountered by Members occurred, and what are we going to do about the situation?
All of us welcome the Bill because it is a further attempt by the Government to tackle the problems that we have heard about. It is important that we give voice to what our constituents are saying to us. That underpins the reasons for the Bill and for tackling the problems.
We need to draw a line in the sand. We need to make a stand on these issues. My constituents are saying to me that the tail is wagging the dog and that the rights of the individual are riding roughshod over the rights of the community. We cannot have a situation where people are saying that to us, because it brings Members of Parliament and the Government into disrepute and it undermines the authority of the police, the community support officers and those whose job it is to assert legitimate authority in our constituencies. It is important for the House to reflect the concerns that our constituents have, because they are sick of it. Many lives are blighted by the problem and they want something done about it.
Many of my constituents have moved on from anger almost to despair in some respects—almost to a feeling of helplessness and frustration. As the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) said, it is not just an urban problem or a rural problem. It may be worse in some areas than others but it is a problem in every area of the country. If we do not tackle it and give a voice in this Parliament and this Chamber to the people who are telling us that, others who try to give them a voice will take our place. A tremendously serious issue confronts us. I think that all of us welcome many of the proposals in the Bill, which will help us to tackle it.
Many hon. Members have said that the Bill will be law but law needs to be enacted and enforced. That presents us with some problems. We need to ensure that the measures are enforced. I give one example from my constituency. I take the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton and others have made, that private landlords need to be included in the housing Bill or other measures. We have a situation in my constituency, both with the housing association and the local authority, where single families are causing mayhem in a community or in a street. They are warned. People work with them. The police visit them God knows how many times. Everyone talks to them. Everything happens but nothing changes and they continue to cause mayhem in that community.
People just turn round and say, "Why doesn't anyone do anything? Why can't we do anything?" I turn to the local authority, which says that it does not have the power but I think that it does. I think that the Bill extends the power that it has, but what we cannot have in three or six months' time when the Bill becomes law is those families in my constituency or other constituencies
saying exactly the same thing—that they have got individual families whose children are playing out until God knows what time, that they are attracting drug dealers, prostitutes and goodness knows what else and nothing happens. That is the way the law is brought into disrepute. That is what our communities are having to put up with.This cannot go on. I do not understand why nothing can be done. If it comes to eviction, we have to evict those families, whether they have children or not. To protect communities, we need to consider what we are to do with the problem families that we evict. At the moment, we are imposing problem families on communities that are already struggling to cope, because we cannot come up with a social policy to deal with the consequences of eviction. Be it through supported housing or some other measure, we need to ensure that housing associations and local authorities can evict problem families in such a way that communities are protected and sustained in a decent way, and that we can properly protect the interests of the children of such families. If we do not do so, we will simply abandon those families and those communities.
We all know of examples of an area being completely transformed as a result of one or two families being moved out. I should tell the Minister that I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). I am pleased that we have got more police and that we have record numbers in Nottinghamshire, but we need more. If we do not deal with problems in our communities such as individual problem families, we will never have enough police. The police are being asked to deal with social problems and issues that it must be very difficult to for them to deal with.
It is time for me to finish, but I am glad that I have raised the issue of individual problem families, because it has caused particular difficulties in parts of my constituency. There are many other measures in the Bill that I welcome. In general it is a good Bill, although the Committee will undoubtedly improve it. The fundamental point is that we have to use it as the opportunity to draw a line in the sand and say to our communities that we have had enough as well, and that the full force of Parliament will be used to protect their rights.
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