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Antisocial Behaviour

I recommend that the hon. Lady does what I have done myself in such circumstances: try, as the local MP, to get together a case conference involving the agencies and knock heads together. That actually works. If we have to wait until the police are at the point of issuing an ASBO, the people who have been suffering from the antisocial behaviour will have been doing so for far too long. Later, I want to develop some of the ways in which one can try to be a bit more effective earlier on. Research carried out by the British Institute for Brain Injured Children suggests that 35 per cent. of all ASBOs issued to people under 17 were to children with a diagnosed mental disorder or a learning difficulty. Nearly a third of all people say that teenagers hanging around on the streets are a big problem and, as we know, antisocial behaviour is predominantly perpetrated by children. Yet rather than giving young people a real and attractive alternative, we too readily give them an ASBO. ASBOs are extremely punitive—sometimes, frankly, to the point of being ridiculous. Take 13-year-old Zach Tutin, who was served an order banning him from using the word "grass" anywhere in England and Wales for six years. Meanwhile, 17-year-old Luke Davies was forbidden from using the front door of his home until he reached the age of 21. It seems to me that such sanctions can never change a young person's behaviour for the better, never make them accept responsibility for their actions and never engage them with the victims of their behaviour. The current approach has not been working well, yet as usual the Government have flip-flopped on what to do about it. When the 2006 ASBO figures were released in 2008, the right hon. Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), then Home Secretary, asserted what we Liberal Democrats had argued for some time: that alternative methods of early intervention are far more effective than ASBOs. However, in July 2009, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), the new Home Secretary, announced measures to revive the use of ASBOs, admitting to Government complacency on the issue. What approach do the Government believe in? Are they merely chasing after tabloid headlines or looking at the evidence of what actually works? Despite some of the remarks from the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire), I am afraid that the Conservatives are offering only more of the same. They have criticised the Government for headline-grabbing gimmicks, but, frankly, their ideas are no different from the current solutions. They have suggested confiscating the mobile phones or iPods of young people who behave antisocially. The hon. Gentleman suggested that young people could be grounded out of school hours for up to a month. Such schemes are slow to implement, and continue to criminalise children, rather than diverting them away from antisocial behaviour at an early stage. What really work are community-based punishments and solutions. The Liberal Democrat council in Islington pioneered the use of acceptable behaviour contracts, which are more rehabilitative for the offender and more beneficial to society. A National Audit Office study has shown that they were highly effective in combating antisocial behaviour precisely because they get buy-in from the people involved. Some 65 per cent. of the people stopped behaving antisocially after one intervention, 86 per cent. after two interventions and 93 per cent. after three interventions.