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Antisocial Behaviour

It is fairly typical of the right hon. Lady to come up with a point like that, when she well knows that there are plenty of savings to be made in the Home Office's budget—on ID cards and all sorts of other things, but not on front-line services. That, I think, is the key part of where we are today in ensuring that we deliver those front-line services for the benefit of our communities and secure the safety that they rightly deserve. It is interesting to hear the right hon. Lady coming at the issue in that way when her own Prime Minister has hardly shown leadership from the top. As Prime Minister, he has made only one significant speech on crime and antisocial behaviour. In that speech, given during the summer, he made the carefully considered suggestion that the law-abiding, rather than the law-breaking, should be accompanied to cash point machines by the police—a new twist on what Tony Blair had said previously. The Prime Minister also provided the remarkable insight that""we face new kinds of crime—especially knife crime"" and""we face new causes of crime—including binge drinking, youth gangs and problem families"." That poses the question of precisely where the Prime Minister has been for the last 12 years. At the Labour party conference, he claimed:""I can tell the British people that between now and Christmas, neighbourhood policing will focus in a more direct and intensive way on anti-social behaviour."" A policy on antisocial behaviour, however, is not just for Christmas; it requires a sustained approach, looking at the long term and not just the short term. The costs of antisocial behaviour—both to society and to the Government as a whole—are significant. According to the National Audit Office, the cost to Government agencies of responding to reports of antisocial behaviour in England and Wales is approximately £3.4 billion a year. In 2008-09, 3.7 million incidents of antisocial behaviour—equivalent to more than 10,000 every day—were recorded by the police in England and Wales. On average, as the Minister said, even according to the Government's figures, 17 per cent. of the population perceive high levels of antisocial behaviour in their area, with the young and the less well-off being disproportionately affected.