Tony Blair cleans up graffiti
Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP Rota/PA
Tony Blair launched his respect action plan with typical flourish this morning involving 15 ministers in a coordinated cross-government drive to tackle that scourge of modern Britain, antisocial behaviour.
Simultaneously, the Labour party have launched an online petition inviting you to sign up to their campaign.
In his early morning speech and TV interviews the prime minister promised that this initiative (unlike the others?) is a "radical new approach to restore the liberty of the law-abiding citizen". For those of you who don't fancy wading through the New Labour-speak of the document, here are the main proposals:
Power to evict persistent troublemakers from their homes for three month
More parenting courses, with more agencies able to impose parenting orders on those parents who refuse to take up help when their children are "out of control"
A "national parenting academy", to train social workers, clinical psychologists, community safety officers and youth justice workers about advising parents
Possible night-time curfews and new, higher fixed penalty notices and injunctions against antisocial behaviour, and more unpaid community service orders
Communities are to be given powers to grill the police on their battle with yobs and demand tougher action where they think they have failed. They must hold "face the people" sessions and respond to a "community call to action" within a set deadline.
While the pictures of Tony Blair hosing down graffiti in Toothill in west Swindon bring to mind that carefully staged photocall of Mrs Thatcher picking up litter in her high heels in St.James's Park in the late 1980's, this initiative on first reading appears to be a far more comprehensive attempt to restore some civility back to life in the UK.
The mixture of carrot – £28m to set up family support schemes – with the stick of eviction threats – is based on the evidence of a pilot scheme in Dundee that has seen some genuine results. Success in reducing antisocial behaviour is one of the big political prizes that has so far eluded every government in the last three decades – this was after all what John Major's Back to Basics was supposed to be about rather than sexual morality.
Every recent opinion poll indicates the public is fed up with nuisance neighbours, graffiti and yobbish behaviour, and strongly support the government's Asbo initiative, even in the face of mixed evidence to their effectiveness.
While the penalties for those who persist in antisocial behaviour, to borrow a Tony Blair phrase, appear "eye-catching" – the Sun's take on Friday was "neighbours from hell will lose their homes and be forced to fend for themselves" – the reality is a touch less Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.
In reference to evicting nightmare neighbours, the following passage from the action plan should be noted: "We envisage that the new order would be used only as a last resort and would be enforced as a court order with all the necessary safeguards. Agencies would have to have regard to their responsibilities when children and vulnerable people are involved."
So far only 10 people have been evicted in Scotland in the 14 months that closure orders have been in force. The hope in government is that the threat will be enough.
