City centres are 'no-go areas'

Putting the cost of dealing with street disorder in England and Wales at £3.4 billion a year, Edward Leigh called for "absolutely rigorous" action against a hardcore of offenders who regard anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos) as "part and parcel of their way of life".

His comments come as the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee issued a report warning that a small proportion of families and individuals are causing "misery and despair" to communities, particularly in the most deprived areas.

The report criticised the Home Office for its failure to carry out adequate research on which measures work best in tackling and preventing bad behaviour.

Different measures - such as Asbos, acceptable behaviour contracts and dispersal orders - are used at varying rates in different parts of the country, with no central information about which work best in which circumstances, it found.

Meanwhile, some interventions have scarcely been used, such as individual support orders - issued five times in 2003/4 and 30 times in 2004/5.

The report cited a study of 893 cases of official actions to deal with anti-social behaviour, carried out by spending watchdogs the National Audit Office, which found that 65% of people stopped misbehaving after a single intervention - often a simple warning letter.

Some 93% of those studied had given up anti-social behaviour after three brushes with the authorities, but a hardcore continued regardless.

Just 20% of the individuals accounted for more than half of the interventions and, among this group, those with convictions had an average of 50 each. One person had 271 criminal convictions and had breached his Asbo 25 times.

The report said that, 10 years after the introduction of the first anti-social behaviour measures, no national evaluation has been undertaken of their effectiveness. Data which the Home Office did provide to the NAO on public perceptions of anti-social behaviour turned out to be incorrect and had to be revised.