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Antisocial Behaviour

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright). My mother’s family hail from west Hartlepool and I have happy memories of visiting the town and being on the beach at Seaton Carew. As children, when we were not visiting the beach at Hartlepool, we would often visit the Yorkshire coast. From that experience, I know that antisocial behaviour is nothing new. Travelling down the A64 in our Standard Ensign, we would often come to Staxton roundabout, and be faced with the decision of turning left for Scarborough or right for Filey. If it was Easter, and the mods and rockers were in town, we would often decide to turn right, as the antisocial behaviour on the beach on such occasions was something to be believed. That paled into insignificance, however, when compared with Glasgow holiday week in August, when most of Glasgow closed down, factories closed down, whole streets decamped to Scarborough and the hard drinking of the men was something to be experienced. The current problem with antisocial behaviour is much more ubiquitous and in many ways more complex. First, access and attitudes to alcohol are very different now, and drinking hours are much longer. In my constituency, people can drink until 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning in nightclubs or at the new casino. Many tourists who visit the town now adopt Spanish hours, as I call them, going to sleep in the early evening only to get up so that they can club all night. Young people also have much more money in their pockets than they used to have. Many people, before they even go out for the night, will tank up on vodka in their guest house or at home. Alcopops have made alcohol a much more attractive option for younger people. Even if one cannot fight one’s way to the bar in a particular establishment, waitresses, almost like those girls who sell ice cream in the cinema, go around with trays of shots. One can throw £1 into the tray and quickly knock back a vodka shot between rounds. The other big change since the 1960s is that decent people go out more in the evenings. We have moved on a lot from the early days of chicken in a basket. More people now enjoy having meals in restaurants and spending time in our city centres, to which, previously, people largely went to drink in pubs, not to eat. People who go out for a good time, perhaps to binge-drink, are therefore intermixing with families and more respectable—if I can use that word—people who do not regard that as a good prospect. Towns such as Scarborough depend heavily on tourism; it is, I am told, the UK’s premier tourist resort. We are trying to attract more families and conferences to the town, which we cannot do if we have this image of binge-drinking on our streets. We do not want undesirable people coming to the town. We do, however, have the UK Independence party conference coming to Scarborough in October—[Hon. Members: ““Are you tempted?””] On that occasion, I will be in Blackpool, to which the Conservative party is not too posh to go. Forty-six per cent. of calls to North Yorkshire police are about criminal damage. I know, however, that Scarborough is not as bad as many of our inner-city areas. We heard from the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), who is not in her place, about the number of ASBOs served in her constituency. Last year, our newly appointed local police chief, chief inspector Andy Everitt, identified his top priorities: targeting the top five antisocial offenders; more ASBOs; the use of alcohol-free zones and, possibly, parenting orders. Scarborough is a low-crime area. From speaking to my local authority today, I understand that only 25 incidents get phoned in for the whole borough, which pales into insignificance when compared with many London and inner city boroughs in the north of England. However, one in four crimes take place in either the town centre or Castle ward, and our crime and disorder reduction partnership is working well. Our Conservative-controlled local authority is well ahead of the game—I am pleased that places such as Hartlepool are catching up—which might be related to the fact that the leader of that council is a former chief of police in Scarborough. The attitude taken in Scarborough is that ASBOs are not the way to go. The point at which an ASBO is issued to an offender is probably too late. We should be getting ahead of the game. Only two ASBOs were issued in Scarborough last year. We feel that the way forward is through other measures. As well as ASBOs, for which residents, the council or landlords can apply through the civil courts, we have CRASBOs—criminal ASBOs—five of which have been issued. I do not know for sure, but I suspect that those five offenders are the five referred to by Chief Inspector Everitt when he took up his post. CRASBOs are much cheaper to secure, because they result from criminal prosecutions. As we have already heard today, issuing an ASBO can cost up to £3,500, and in cases in which ASBOs are contested it can cost many times more than that. We have 14 acceptable behaviour agreements in the borough, three acceptable behaviour contracts and five active dispersal areas. We have a designated public places order, which applies to 150 streets. Amid the plethora of street furniture in Scarborough are distinctive lime-green signs—I think I used the word ““funky”” when they were introduced—drawing attention to the areas involved. Contrary to popular opinion in the town, they are not areas where people are prohibited from drinking, but if the police ask someone to hand over the alcohol that they are drinking, that person can be arrested and fined £500 if they refuse to do so. Those arrangements replace byelaws which had no powers behind them. If people chose to ignore them, there was nothing that the local authority could do. Scarborough has a successful crime and disorder reduction partnership, known as the Safer Communities Partnership (North Yorkshire Moors and Coast). There have been many successes, for instance in regard to problem drinking. There are four planks to that strategy. The first plank is responsible retailing. We have the Best Bar None campaign, which gives pubs and off licences accreditation if they can meet the required standards by identifying people who are drunk and refusing to serve them, and being vigilant about the problem of under-age drinking. The second plank is responsible drinking. Attitudes to binge drinking need to be changed. We distribute Spikeys, special caps for bottles to prevent people from putting spirits or date-rape drugs into them. We are also examining the problem of domestic violence linked to irresponsible drinking. The third plank is enforcement and fixed-penalty notices, and the fourth relates to the urban environment. Lighting is important in the urban environment. If people are to feel confident in our town centres, the lighting must be adequate. Conversely, one reason why we do not see too much antisocial behaviour in the villages is that there is no lighting. Young people do not congregate in the village centres because in winter it is pitch black, and no one can see what they are doing. We are also considering the location of takeaways and taxi ranks, where there can be flashpoints of antisocial behaviour as people congregate after leaving the pubs. We have a very good CCTV system in the town. Led by the local authority, we have been giving thought to what it calls inter-generational activity. Elderly people, perhaps retuning home from a meal in a restaurant, are intimidated by young people in the streets at night. Although the young people may not be doing anything illegal or causing a specific problem, the fact that they are there, sometimes wearing hoodies, may make elderly people less than keen to rush across and hug them straight away. The local authority is organising another ““kids versus cronies”” bowling competition this year, following last year’s successful roll-out. I am only sorry that, not being in either group, I shall not be able to take part in it just yet.