Return of the Asbo: Labour's new 'respect orders' could see you slapped with £500 fine for 'feeding the birds' or 'swearing'

Feeding the birds in the park can see you hit with a £500 fine in a drive by Labour to stop anti-social behaviour.

Starting from today, police officers and local councils have the power to hand out financial penalties to anyone they catch feeding bread to pigeons from benches. 

The stringent measures – known as 'Respect Orders' – are supposed to tackle anti-social behaviour including street drinking, swearing and littering. 

But they also cover busking, street preaching and not cleaning up after your dog.

Similar to Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), which ran from April 1999 to October 2014, the 'Respect Orders' can see violators banned from town centres.

The orders apply only to adults, and can see men and women placed on curfews or forced to complete community orders.  

The breaching of a Respect Order can be imposed across England and Wales and will be considered a criminal offence punishable by up to two years' jail time.

For the first time, courts will also be given the power to enrol serial offenders into rehab programmes if their crimes are linked to drug and alcohol use, or order anger management classes.

Policing Minister Sarah Jones MP, speaking in Staffordshire, said the Respect Orders are intended to help neighbourhoods across the country 'feel safe'.

Ms Jones said: 'We want our neighbourhoods to be places where people can enjoy, they can feel safe, they can go to the pub, they can go to the shop, they can get their hair done, without feeling like they are going to be abused by somebody, threatened by somebody or see something horrific going on in their neighbourhoods.

'That is what we want and that is what should be normal. That's what we should all be aiming for. The Respect Orders will help with that. 

'Anti-social behaviour is pernicious. We shouldn't tolerate it, we shouldn't accept it.'

Chief Inspector Cliff Goodwin, the local policing commander for Newcastle-under-Lyme and Staffordshire Moorlands, said the issues the town faces are the same issues many communities across the country face – including people riding e-bikes and e-scooters, drug-taking, fouling and people congregating in certain areas.

He said the Respect Orders would enable officers to stop anti-social behaviour 'in its tracks' by putting persistent offenders before the courts when they had not engaged with diversionary work beforehand.

The legislation has been passed 'in tandem' with the Ministry of Justice, Ms Jones said. Despite the court system being 'very challenged' at the moment, she insisted the orders were 'really important'.

She said: 'If the public are saying to us, anti-social behaviour is actually something that makes me feel less safe in my town, that really affects my quality of living, then we need to be responding, and the courts need to be responding.

'We just need that concerted effort so that everybody is saying anti-social behaviour is not low level, it's not something that comes last on the list of priorities, it should be upfront as a really big push from all the different agencies to tackle it.'

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she will 'not accept' anti-social behaviour which 'blights' Britain's communities.

She said: 'Unchecked, anti-social behaviour blights our communities. But it is not inevitable and I won't accept it.

'For too long, we have lacked the powers we need to deal with this problem properly. From today, that changes: authorities will be able to take tough action against these offenders.

'This delivers on a commitment we made to the British people in our manifesto. And, most importantly, those who make life a misery for others will now face the consequences of their actions.'