Drunken yobs making town centres into no-go areas

They act like "an occupying army loose in the streets" and the mayhem they cause costs the country £3.4billion every year.

Now the Public Accounts Committee is demanding drastic action against the yobs who regard Asbos as "part and parcel of everyday life".

One offender breached the terms of his order 25 times while committing 271 criminal offences, according to a committee report.

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Chairman Edward Leigh warns: "After dark, our city and town centres are fast becoming no-go areas, with behaviour there ranging from drunken skylarking and intimidation to out-and-out criminal activity.

"No civilised country should have to put up with what can seem like an occupying army loose in the streets.

"A barrage of different anti-social behaviour measures was introduced 10 years ago but the Home Office has not done any work to find out which ones are best."

The report - which follows a study confirming that drunken violence has increased since Labour introduced 24-hour drinking - questions Government tactics for controlling the thugs.

The committee concentrated on Asbos, which have been given to 10,000 thugs over the past seven years. A study by the National Audit Office, which formed the basis of the committee's report, found 55 per cent of louts breach their orders.

One in three broke the rules which ban people from town centres for bad behaviour on five occasions or more. One thug managed to ignore orders 25 times.

Other powers, which cost considerably less than the £3,100 bill for administering each Asbo, have better rates of success, but are used less often.

The success rate for warning letters and Acceptable Behaviour Contracts was around 65 per cent, with no further offending recorded.

Mr Leigh added: "The Audit Office found that, for many tearaways, a simple and cheap warning letter was enough to deter further bad behaviour.

"But the Government has not collected information on the effectiveness of different measures on different groups of offenders.

"A hardcore of persistent offenders clearly regards Asbos as part and parcel of its way of life and to be shrugged off accordingly."

He warned that communities are "frustrated and concerned" at the courts' failure to act rapidly when Asbos were broken. Only 40 per cent of breaches ended in a custodial sentence, with six in ten let off with a slap on the wrist.

The report said that, ten years after the introduction of anti-social behaviour measures, nobody has checked their effectiveness.

Some information which the Home Office gave to NAO on public perceptions of anti-social behaviour turned out to be incorrect and had to be revised. These were the latest of "several recent examples by the Home Office of its poor quality information systems and data," according to the committee.

Previous blunders included inaccurate or missing statistics on foreign prisoners and British citizens jailed abroad.

Mr Leigh added: "The Home Office is notorious for a number of recent episodes where it provided duff information.

"The fact that it supplied the NAO with incorrect data on perceptions around the country of anti-social behaviour does nothing to improve its reputation."

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith needs to "change attitudes within the Department' in order to rebuild public confidence, the report warns.

Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said: "This shows that the financial cost of Labour's failure to tackle anti-social behaviour is in the same league as the cost of the human misery suffered by the countless victims.

"This failure comes about because Labour's approach has been to get the headline and ignore the problem.

"They go on about the record number of Asbos given out while ignoring the fact that nearly two-thirds are breached."