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Antisocial Behaviour

I was delighted this afternoon to hear the Minister, in his introduction, emphasise the right of everybody to enjoy their life in peace. The sentiment was echoed by the hon. Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick). The other thing that has pleased me is that I do not think I have ever seen quite so much nodding from those on the Government Benches to contributions from Opposition Members, and vice versa. There is a huge degree of consensus across the House. I shall not speak about young people and alcohol abuse, because that topic has been covered. Instead, I shall echo the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and speak about single examples of neighbourhood harassment. I welcome the comment from the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) that these troubles occur across all social backgrounds. The two cases to which I shall draw the House's attention both involve articulate, intelligent families who live in their own properties. In the first case, the family own two houses in a terrace, and the alleged problem involves the house in between those two related properties. There has been physical and verbal abuse, foul language and intimidation of the elderly parents, in particular—so much so that they are frightened to walk alone across the neighbour's property to their relatives' house. That abuse culminated in actual assault, first, of the elderly father, and the assaulter was given a five-year caution. The second assault took place on the elderly mother, even though the caution was still in existence. The perpetrator was arrested, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided against prosecution, as the only witness was the husband, and that was inadmissible. So the family continue to live, in their words, as prisoners in their own house, and their quality of life has plummeted. They have given me 55 pages of evidence documenting intimidation and abuse, including many communications with the police and the CPS. Yet those intelligent, articulate people are still terrified to walk between their two houses. The second case again involves privately owned houses at the end of a very pleasant and quiet cul-de-sac in one of the best areas of my constituency. Although two of the most deprived parts of the west midlands are in my constituency, those are not the areas to which I refer. There are about eight dwellings at the end, and again, two constituents from the same family live nearby and are separated by the alleged troublemaker. There are not many other complaints, because one of the eight houses is empty; one couple are frequently away; one elderly couple are in poor health and too frightened to complain; and one property is on the market, so the owners cannot get involved because they do not want to jeopardise their sale. We are therefore left with just the two houses occupied by members of the same family, and another lady elsewhere. The harassment has been going on for seven years, involving physical obstruction, verbal abuse, obscene gestures, spitting, rubbish thrown into gardens and trespassing. Some events have been recorded on CCTV; again, there have been many police visits; and, again, the CPS has felt unable to prosecute. I have taken up the matter, and I have a copy of a letter from the CPS, but it just has the matter down as allegations of behaviour not amounting to crimes, and it claims that it has no evidence of concerns from other people. That is incorrect, and I shall take it up with the CPS. However, my constituents wrote to me, saying:""The whole situation is becoming a very dangerous farce, anti social bullies and thugs are being allowed to rule our communities… It is high time that the law was sorted out to put the police back in control and make penalties commensurate with the offences and not just a derisory slap on the wrist."" Since the very sad Pilkington case and the case in Lichfield, where somebody was actually killed, constituents have written to me, saying much the same as that letter. They say, "Put the police back in control, give them the powers and make the penalties fit the offence." We have probably all heard this old proverb, "Good fences make good neighbours." In these days of open-plan living, open estates and very few barriers between houses, we cannot have good fences to make good neighbours, because it is just not possible. So we must somehow give the police and other authorities more weapons to be more effective.