THE SWEEPING powers proposed by Labour today to curb neighbourhood nuisance may be designed to out-tough the Tories on law and order, but the politicking does not detract from their value or the necessity for them.

For as we have seen in East Lancashire, with tenants' complaints about hell neighbours outstripping those over repairs and with private-eye "professional witnesses" having to be brought in to combat intimidation, too many lives are being made a misery.

Indeed, unveiling the plans today, the Shadow Home Secretary, Blackburn MP Jack Straw, points to official estimates of one in nine council tenants reporting incidents of anti-social behaviour last year.

Nor is it just council estates that are blighted by this problem, families are living in fear of bad neighbours throughout the community.

But, too often, the law is weak and slow to combat the trouble-makers.

Thus, Labour's plans for community safety orders restraining anti-social behaviour with curfews, exclusion orders and other restrictions appear to be swifter and beefed-up.

And the proposals for mobile "nuisance squads" involving police and council representatives to tackle troublemakers and nip problems in the bud may also deter much of the problem.

There is, of course, the notion that these sweeping proposals may impinge on the civil liberties of the bad-neighbour targets. But too often they are a minority wrecking the lives of the majority whose rights to a decent, quiet life are being trampled on.

It is time we started looking after the interests of the innocent majority and less after the interests of the criminal minority.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.