Towns becoming "no-go areas" after dark

City and town centres are becoming "no-go areas" after dark partly due to "drunken skylarking", the chairman of an influential committee of MPs has warned.

Tory MP Edward Leigh said the cost of responding to anti-social behaviour was costing £3.4bn a year, while the Home Office had yet to find the most effective way to tackle the issue.

"No civilised country should have to put up with what can seem like an occupying army loose in the streets," said Leigh, chairman of the public accounts committee, which conducted the report into ways to tackle anti-social behaviour.

He criticised the Home Office for not researching which anti-social behaviour measures, introduced 10 years ago, worked best.

Leigh added: "The National Audit Office found evidence that, for many tearaways, a simple and cheap warning letter was enough to deter further bad behaviour. But the government has not collected any information on the effectiveness of different measures on different groups of offenders.

"A hard-core of persistent offenders clearly regards ASBOs as part and parcel of its way of life and to be shrugged off accordingly.2

The committee based its report on 893 cases of anti-social behaviour interviews reviewed by the National Audit Office.

Of the sample of anti-social behaviour cases, around 46 per cent related to under-18s and 54 per cent were over 18.

Tony Payne, chief executive of the Federation of Licensed Trade Associations, said: "There hasn't been a dramatic change in town centres, we have always had problems. The problem is not so much alcohol, it's the animal we are dealing with."