Blair tackles bad parenting
Tony Blair today unveiled plans to tackle bad parenting in a bid to root out anti-social behaviour.
The prime minister announced extensions to parenting contracts and parenting order schemes, designed to force parents to take control of yobbish children.
Focusing on the respect agenda that he pledged would be a key strand of Labour’s third term, he said it was about changing the culture of the country to put the law abiding majority back in charge of their communities.
He called for a change in the culture of the criminal justice system, which “first and foremost looked to protect the accused from potential transgressions from the state and police”, when the first question should be “how to protect the majority”.
He conceded that far too many communities lived in fear, and there were too many “gross and random acts of violence”; and expressed concern at the culture these criminal acts cumulatively indicated.
In his first major speech since returning from his summer holiday, Mr Blair outlined the importance of the family in tackling anti-social behaviour at its roots.
He set out the government’s two-pronged approach to tackling yobs, which involves tough law enforcement measures, while providing support for parents.
Both parenting contracts and parenting orders will be used earlier – before the problem gets too serious – and more widely than at present under proposals to be set out in greater detail later this year.
Parenting contracts are voluntary agreements between parents and the authorities concerning a child likely to become involved in crime, while parenting orders can be issued when parents are unwilling to co-operate.
Housing officers, anti-social behaviour teams and even schools could be given the power to apply to the courts for parenting orders, Mr Blair revealed.
He said that while new laws could not work in isolation, they “can signal a new approach and a new determination on the part of the majority that it is time to reassert ourselves”.
Mr Blair acknowledged that the government would be open to accusations of running a “nanny state”, but stressed that it had to intervene because of the effect anti-social behaviour had on people’s lives.
Tackling anti-social behaviour is so high on the prime minister’s agenda that reports in the press have suggested that home secretary Charles Clarke’s job is under threat because he is “soft on crime” – although this has since been dismissed by Downing Street as “plan wrong”.
But in an interview with a newspaper, Mr Clarke said he was feeling the heat.
He told the Daily Mirror: “It is a pressure on me, yes I feel pressure. We have to deliver. But I think there is a steely determination among decent people and they are not going to accept disrespect. Labour is trying to rebuild community.”
Mr Clarke also said he had “never been liberal in my life” and revealed how he had been left “intimidated and fearful” after being confronted by a gang of yobs.
