Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 10 December, 2006 10:00
Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

Page 1


10th December 2006.
 

Interview with Home Office Minster, Tony McNulty, M.P. and Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Liberal Affairs, M.P.


All excerpts to be attributed to Sky News’ ‘Sunday Live with Adam Boulton.’.  

 
Bolton:  In the crossfire today, are ASBO’s really the answer to bad behaviour or are they indeed worn sometimes as a badge of honour, by those who receive them?  Joining me now is the ASBO advocate and Home Office Minster, Tony McNulty M.P. and also here Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Liberal Affairs, M.P.  Anti-social behaviour orders Nick Clegg, do you they work?

Clegg:  Selectively I think, I think the problem has been that they’ve been over hyped frankly by the government for many years as the stand alone answer to something which is quite complex, anti-social, as complex as anti-social behaviour, and I think they’ve been discredited because in some parts, not in all parts, in some parts of the country they’ve been over used, breached more than half the time and as we know from the Youth Justice Board they become a badge of honour for some youngsters.  So I think it’s time we kind of move on from this ASBO obsession and try and actually appreciate the fact that there are many others things, as the National Audit Office report suggested today which are more effective and cheaper as well.

Bolton:  I mean the issue rate is approaching five thousand a year I think, or something like that, how many of those do you think are constructive?

Clegg:  Well if well over half are being breached and not enough of those breaches are then properly followed up, I think that is a policy that is simply not working on the ground as it should do.

Bolton:  Tony McNulty, half of them are being breached, what’s the point?

McNulty:  No they are working and they’re working very successfully as communities up and down the country will attest.  One of the interesting points the NAO report said was that by the time of a third intervention some ninety-three percent get back on the straight and narrow.  So they do work, they’ve never been just a one trick pony, there’s always been warning letters, acceptable behaviour contracts and a whole array of things for what I agree with Nick is a very complex situation.

Bolton:  But I mean they are supposed to stop anti-social behaviour and if people are breaching them they are presumably continuing to behave anti-socially?

McNulty:  Well a couple of points, firstly they were never meant to be a magic wand, they help with the process of stopping anti-social behaviour they don’t do it of themselves.  And secondly a breach could mean simply going back into an area that you shouldn’t be going into three, four times a night.  So I wouldn’t say that over half breaching is necessarily a sign of failure.  Nick is right in the sense that what’s the end gain for each and every individual in their behaviour in terms of ASBOs and there, there has been real successes.

Bolton:  I mean to give you a terrific example there is a fellow, an evangelical who used to shout with a fog horn outside on Oxford Circus and eventually he got an ASBO.  So he moved down Regent Street and he now shouts with a fog horn in Piccadilly Circus.  I mean what’s the point?

McNulty:  I don’t know the specifics of that example…

Bolton:  Well it is an example.

McNulty:  Trivial or otherwise but the point is seriously that there are communities up and down the country who are now living better lives because ASBOs have worked and worked effectively and crucially the individuals concerned are back on a straight and narrow path with some focus rather than otherwise.  We can’t just dismiss these young people, only half the ASBOs are from young people.  We can’t either, as the Tories would have it, hug a hoodie, or slap a hoodie as Dominic Grieve said today.  It is complex and ASBOs are part of the solution.

Bolton:   But I mean that anecdote I was giving there, that’s the point that quite often ASBOs are territorially specific and all they’re doing is move the problem really.

Clegg:  Oh yeah, I mean elsewhere in London, Camden, when Camden was run by the Labour council they slapped on more ASBOs than the whole of Wales put together, just moved the anti-social behaviour problem to other outlying areas.

McNulty:  No, no the problem there was the Liberal council next door wasn’t using them at all.

Clegg:  I welcome Tony’s sort of, admission, that it’s not a magic wand solution but frankly if you listen to, every time Tony Blair opens his mouth in the House of Commons about anti-social behaviour he only talks about ASBOs.

Bolton: I suspect that…

McNulty:  Absolutely not, absolutely not.

Clegg:  If you look at election time you will get the Labour party day in day out saying that the Conservatives and Lib Dems are soft on crime because they haven’t imposed enough ASBOs.  Now what we’re getting from these reports, the National Audit Office report, the Youth Justice Board report, is a more subtle picture which shows that for a lot of youngsters ASBOs actually push them towards crime rather than bring them back from the brink.

McNulty:  Not so, not so.

Bolton:  I mean, isn’t the point…

Clegg:  Sure.

McNulty:  Not so, there is no substantive evidence that what ASBOs do is actually push young people more towards crime.

Clegg:  If you look at the National Audit Report the last chapter, the last words are about how we need to look more at the causes of anti-social behaviour.  That ASBOs are a sticking plaster solution for a lot of youngsters.  Yes they work in some places but at the time the legislation was passed, this is worth stressing, ministers told us, we supported the legislation at the time, they told us they would be used selectively and not in excessive numbers on young people.  And I think the way that they demonise a lot of young people is very damaging actually to youngsters today.

McNulty:  They simply haven’t done.  As you say, five thousand odd a year, some nine thousand altogether this is not reigning ASBOs down like confetti.  That’s nonsense, nonsense.

Clegg:  But Tony you know as I do, in particular areas, inner-city Manchester, parts of London, that’s where all these ASBOs have been heavily concentrated.

Bolton:  As I understand it the point of anti-social behaviour orders is that they deal with behaviour which is indeed anti-social, which is upsetting to people, but which is very often not specifically criminalised and the reason why Tony Blair talks about them is because they are popular, because people have seen the person who was causing the nuisance, whether young or not, dealt with in some way.

McNulty:  and because they work.

Clegg:  Oh no, Tony Blair is a task master about talking about things that look popular but the question is do they work?

McNulty:  They do.

Clegg:  Tony keeps saying they do, there are a lot of reports coming out in the last few weeks which suggest they don’t work as much as the government claims.

McNulty:  They don’t the reports go to the complexities they don’t go to the notion they’re not working.

Clegg:  Now look, look at some of the ASBOs we know about, two ten-year olds who got an ASBO and they’re not allowed to look through the windows of flats elsewhere on their estate; a seventeen year old who, under an ASBO, is not allowed to open his front door until he’s twenty-one.  Another one I read about who’s only allowed to wear a hoodie when the weather is bad, who judges that?  Some of these ASBOs frankly are absurd the way they are administered.  It’s no wonder they get breached so often.

Bolton:  I mean speaking of hoodies I suspect a lot of people will see a Tory Home Affairs spokesman saying slap a hoodie and think that’s the way to do it really won’t they?

McNulty:  Well they’ll wonder whether he speaks to Cameron at all in that context.

Bolton:  But what’s wrong with that, that’s a firm hand isn’t it?

McNulty:  Well I tell you what’s wrong with it is it verges towards vigilantism it seems that you can go back to cuffing a young child round the head and that’s the end of it and that’s rather too far even for us.

Bolton:  I mean he’s saying if you see youngsters committing crimes or being a nuisance that you should intervene.  Would you support that?

McNulty:  Slap them round the head I think he says or the intonation of what he says is.  I would say it must be for the police and forces of law and order to deal with these things and I wouldn’t encourage community vigilantism at all.

Clegg:  The Tories in a complete spin, it’s a pity there’s no one here to answer for them.  On the one hand they are going to hug hoodies, now they’re going to slap them about the head and neck.  I think people frankly don’t know what they stand for anymore.

Bolton:  Ok and…

McNulty:  A bit like the Liberals.

Clegg:  Ooh, ooh.

Bolton:  Final question though, if the Liberals ever get into power will you keep ASBOs?

Clegg:  Yes we’d keep ASBOs put we’d issue guidance to make them much more selective and effective and also couple it with a lot of measures, as advocated in the National Audit Office report, which actually deals with the causes of anti-social behaviour.

McNulty:  And I’ll send Nick the guidance that already exists.

Bolton:  Do you think that the wrong people are being hit by ASBOs?  I mean sometimes what they do is they criminalise something which isn’t a crime and that seems to be wrong?

McNulty:  Well the breach becomes the criminalisation bit.

Bolton:  Yeah, I know but that’s the way round it, if one thinks of prostitution for example.

Clegg:  Tony, so looking through a window, is that a crime?

McNulty:  only really for absolute persistency, it was never going to get rid of those who do persist and offend prolifically albeit at that low level.  They’re the ones who variably end up in custody.

Bolton:  But take prostitution, which by and large people, you know, women, as we’re seeing in the news at the moment, very often victims, very much people who are prostitutes.  That is not a crime yet if they get ASBOs they can end up being sent to prison, I mean that’s a way round the law really isn’t it, by the law?

McNulty:  No, it’s only for persistence as I say and I think for prostitution there needs to be a whole range of different and novel ways of looking at it and dealing with it which the government has tried to do over the past, with broad support, because it’s an issue that isn’t going to go away.  But although we call it anti-social behaviour, although we call it low level anti-social behaviour it really is quite oppressive in terms of the sustained nature of it in many communities and does need dealing with.  And I think it’s not only popular, it does work.  Much of the reports that we’ve had over the last couple of weeks go to the complexities and how we need a whole array of things not just ASBOs.

Bolton:  What about something which has very much entered folklore.  I mean do some young people wear their ASBOs as a badge of honour that shows they’re well hard?

McNulty:  Well if they do and persist with their offence then they will end up in custody and then that will wipe the smirk of their face.

Bolton:  Nick Clegg, do they wear it as a badge of honour?

Clegg:  They undoubtedly do, I mean I visited some of the parts, some of the wards in Manchester where I think that was derived from and frankly if you impose too many ASBOs, too arbitrately they lose their value.  The only other thing I would say is that in the two estates that I have in my constituency, where there are serious problems with anti-social behaviour, what I’ve discovered is it’s got nothing to do with ASBOs, it’s all to do with the lettings policy in Sheffield which is putting a lot of residents under strain because of people being moved on to the estate who are causing trouble.  It’s just a lot more complex than the ASBO rhetoric from this government would suggest.

Bolton:  Ok thank you both very much indeed.

 

 

 

Page 1

 

9th December 2006.

 

Interview with Home Office Minster, Tony McNulty, M.P. and Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Liberal Affairs, M.P.

 

 

All excerpts to be attributed to Sky News’ ‘Sunday Live with Adam Boulton.’.  

 

 

Bolton:  In the crossfire today, are ASBO’s really the answer to bad behaviour or are they indeed worn sometimes as a badge of honour, by those who receive them?  Joining me now is the ASBO advocate and Home Office Minster, Tony McNulty M.P. and also here Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Liberal Affairs, M.P.  Anti-social behaviour orders Nick Clegg, do you they work?

Clegg:  Selectively I think, I think the problem has been that they’ve been over hyped frankly by the government for many years as the stand alone answer to something which is quite complex, anti-social, as complex as anti-social behaviour, and I think they’ve been discredited because in some parts, not in all parts, in some parts of the country they’ve been over used, breached more than half the time and as we know from the Youth Justice Board they become a badge of honour for some youngsters.  So I think it’s time we kind of move on from this ASBO obsession and try and actually appreciate the fact that there are many others things, as the National Audit Office report suggested today which are more effective and cheaper as well.

Bolton:  I mean the issue rate is approaching five thousand a year I think, or something like that, how many of those do you think are constructive?

Clegg:  Well if well over half are being breached and not enough of those breaches are then properly followed up, I think that is a policy that is simply not working on the ground as it should do.

Bolton:  Tony McNulty, half of them are being breached, what’s the point?

McNulty:  No they are working and they’re working very successfully as communities up and down the country will attest.  One of the interesting points the NAO report said was that by the time of a third intervention some ninety-three percent get back on the straight and narrow.  So they do work, they’ve never been just a one trick pony, there’s always been warning letters, acceptable behaviour contracts and a whole array of things for what I agree with Nick is a very complex situation.

Bolton:  But I mean they are supposed to stop anti-social behaviour and if people are breaching them they are presumably continuing to behave anti-socially?

McNulty:  Well a couple of points, firstly they were never meant to be a magic wand, they help with the process of stopping anti-social behaviour they don’t do it of themselves.  And secondly a breach could mean simply going back into an area that you shouldn’t be going into three, four times a night.  So I wouldn’t say that over half breaching is necessarily a sign of failure.  Nick is right in the sense that what’s the end gain for each and every individual in their behaviour in terms of ASBOs and there, there has been real successes.

Bolton:  I mean to give you a terrific example there is a fellow, an evangelical who used to shout with a fog horn outside on Oxford Circus and eventually he got an ASBO.  So he moved down Regent Street and he now shouts with a fog horn in Piccadilly Circus.  I mean what’s the point?

McNulty:  I don’t know the specifics of that example…

Bolton:  Well it is an example.

McNulty:  Trivial or otherwise but the point is seriously that there are communities up and down the country who are now living better lives because ASBOs have worked and worked effectively and crucially the individuals concerned are back on a straight and narrow path with some focus rather than otherwise.  We can’t just dismiss these young people, only half the ASBOs are from young people.  We can’t either, as the Tories would have it, hug a hoodie, or slap a hoodie as Dominic Grieve said today.  It is complex and ASBOs are part of the solution.

Bolton:   But I mean that anecdote I was giving there, that’s the point that quite often ASBOs are territorially specific and all they’re doing is move the problem really.

Clegg:  Oh yeah, I mean elsewhere in London, Camden, when Camden was run by the Labour council they slapped on more ASBOs than the whole of Wales put together, just moved the anti-social behaviour problem to other outlying areas.

McNulty:  No, no the problem there was the Liberal council next door wasn’t using them at all.

Clegg:  I welcome Tony’s sort of, admission, that it’s not a magic wand solution but frankly if you listen to, every time Tony Blair opens his mouth in the House of Commons about anti-social behaviour he only talks about ASBOs.

Bolton: I suspect that…

McNulty:  Absolutely not, absolutely not.

Clegg:  If you look at election time you will get the Labour party day in day out saying that the Conservatives and Lib Dems are soft on crime because they haven’t imposed enough ASBOs.  Now what we’re getting from these reports, the National Audit Office report, the Youth Justice Board report, is a more subtle picture which shows that for a lot of youngsters ASBOs actually push them towards crime rather than bring them back from the brink.

McNulty:  Not so, not so.

Bolton:  I mean, isn’t the point…

Clegg:  Sure.

McNulty:  Not so, there is no substantive evidence that what ASBOs do is actually push young people more towards crime.

Clegg:  If you look at the National Audit Report the last chapter, the last words are about how we need to look more at the causes of anti-social behaviour.  That ASBOs are a sticking plaster solution for a lot of youngsters.  Yes they work in some places but at the time the legislation was passed, this is worth stressing, ministers told us, we supported the legislation at the time, they told us they would be used selectively and not in excessive numbers on young people.  And I think the way that they demonise a lot of young people is very damaging actually to youngsters today.

McNulty:  They simply haven’t done.  As you say, five thousand odd a year, some nine thousand altogether this is not reigning ASBOs down like confetti.  That’s nonsense, nonsense.

Clegg:  But Tony you know as I do, in particular areas, inner-city Manchester, parts of London, that’s where all these ASBOs have been heavily concentrated.

Bolton:  As I understand it the point of anti-social behaviour orders is that they deal with behaviour which is indeed anti-social, which is upsetting to people, but which is very often not specifically criminalised and the reason why Tony Blair talks about them is because they are popular, because people have seen the person who was causing the nuisance, whether young or not, dealt with in some way.

McNulty:  and because they work.

Clegg:  Oh no, Tony Blair is a task master about talking about things that look popular but the question is do they work?

McNulty:  They do.

Clegg:  Tony keeps saying they do, there are a lot of reports coming out in the last few weeks which suggest they don’t work as much as the government claims.

McNulty:  They don’t the reports go to the complexities they don’t go to the notion they’re not working.

Clegg:  Now look, look at some of the ASBOs we know about, two ten-year olds who got an ASBO and they’re not allowed to look through the windows of flats elsewhere on their estate; a seventeen year old who, under an ASBO, is not allowed to open his front door until he’s twenty-one.  Another one I read about who’s only allowed to wear a hoodie when the weather is bad, who judges that?  Some of these ASBOs frankly are absurd the way they are administered.  It’s no wonder they get breached so often.

Bolton:  I mean speaking of hoodies I suspect a lot of people will see a Tory Home Affairs spokesman saying slap a hoodie and think that’s the way to do it really won’t they?

McNulty:  Well they’ll wonder whether he speaks to Cameron at all in that context.

Bolton:  But what’s wrong with that, that’s a firm hand isn’t it?

McNulty:  Well I tell you what’s wrong with it is it verges towards vigilantism it seems that you can go back to cuffing a young child round the head and that’s the end of it and that’s rather too far even for us.

Bolton:  I mean he’s saying if you see youngsters committing crimes or being a nuisance that you should intervene.  Would you support that?

McNulty:  Slap them round the head I think he says or the intonation of what he says is.  I would say it must be for the police and forces of law and order to deal with these things and I wouldn’t encourage community vigilantism at all.

Clegg:  The Tories in a complete spin, it’s a pity there’s no one here to answer for them.  On the one hand they are going to hug hoodies, now they’re going to slap them about the head and neck.  I think people frankly don’t know what they stand for anymore.

Bolton:  Ok and…

McNulty:  A bit like the Liberals.

Clegg:  Ooh, ooh.

Bolton:  Final question though, if the Liberals ever get into power will you keep ASBOs?

Clegg:  Yes we’d keep ASBOs put we’d issue guidance to make them much more selective and effective and also couple it with a lot of measures, as advocated in the National Audit Office report, which actually deals with the causes of anti-social behaviour.

McNulty:  And I’ll send Nick the guidance that already exists.

Bolton:  Do you think that the wrong people are being hit by ASBOs?  I mean sometimes what they do is they criminalise something which isn’t a crime and that seems to be wrong?

McNulty:  Well the breach becomes the criminalisation bit.

Bolton:  Yeah, I know but that’s the way round it, if one thinks of prostitution for example.

Clegg:  Tony, so looking through a window, is that a crime?

McNulty:  only really for absolute persistency, it was never going to get rid of those who do persist and offend prolifically albeit at that low level.  They’re the ones who variably end up in custody.

Bolton:  But take prostitution, which by and large people, you know, women, as we’re seeing in the news at the moment, very often victims, very much people who are prostitutes.  That is not a crime yet if they get ASBOs they can end up being sent to prison, I mean that’s a way round the law really isn’t it, by the law?

McNulty:  No, it’s only for persistence as I say and I think for prostitution there needs to be a whole range of different and novel ways of looking at it and dealing with it which the government has tried to do over the past, with broad support, because it’s an issue that isn’t going to go away.  But although we call it anti-social behaviour, although we call it low level anti-social behaviour it really is quite oppressive in terms of the sustained nature of it in many communities and does need dealing with.  And I think it’s not only popular, it does work.  Much of the reports that we’ve had over the last couple of weeks go to the complexities and how we need a whole array of things not just ASBOs.

Bolton:  What about something which has very much entered folklore.  I mean do some young people wear their ASBOs as a badge of honour that shows they’re well hard?

McNulty:  Well if they do and persist with their offence then they will end up in custody and then that will wipe the smirk of their face.

Bolton:  Nick Clegg, do they wear it as a badge of honour?

Clegg:  They undoubtedly do, I mean I visited some of the parts, some of the wards in Manchester where I think that was derived from and frankly if you impose too many ASBOs, too arbitrately they lose their value.  The only other thing I would say is that in the two estates that I have in my constituency, where there are serious problems with anti-social behaviour, what I’ve discovered is it’s got nothing to do with ASBOs, it’s all to do with the lettings policy in Sheffield which is putting a lot of residents under strain because of people being moved on to the estate who are causing trouble.  It’s just a lot more complex than the ASBO rhetoric from this government would suggest.

Bolton:  Ok thank you both very much indeed.