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order will frequently prohibit the defendant from entering a defined area where he has been
particularly troublesome and from using or engaging in any abusive, insulting, offensive,
threatening or intimidating language or behaviour or from threatening or engaging in violence
or damage against any person or property within a somewhat wider area.
Section 1 (to) provides that if a person does anything which he is prohibited from doing by an
anti-social behaviour order he shall be liable oil summary conviction to imprisonment for a
term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding a specified amount, or to both, or on
conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or to a fine, or
to both.
The remedy given by section 1 has operated effectively because the courts have held that
proceedings under section 1 are civil proceedings and not criminal proceedings. Therefore, it
has not been necessary for those who allege that they have suffered as a result of anti-social
behaviour on the part of the defendant to go into the witness box to give evidence against
him, because hearsay evidence can be given of their complaints and allegations pursuant to
section 1 of the Civil Evidence Act 1995 which provides that in civil proceedings evidence
shall not be excluded on the ground that it is hearsay.
It is rulings that applications for anti-social behaviour orders are civil proceedings which are
challenged by the defendants in these appeals. They submit that both under domestic law and
under the jurisprudence of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) the proceedings against them under section 1 of
the 1998 Act are criminal proceedings and constitute criminal charges against them so that
hearsay evidence is not admissible. They contend in their submissions in reliance on the
Convention that the use of hearsay evidence against them violates their human rights.
The facts of the present cases and the proceedings before the magistrates and on appeal have
been fully set out in the speeches of my noble and learned friends Lord Steyn and Lord Hope
of Craighead. I gratefully adopt their accounts and I therefore turn to consider the
submissions advanced on behalf of the defendants.
Domestic law
Counsel for the defendants submitted that an application for an antisocial behaviour order is a
criminal proceeding because the complaint against the defendant alleges anti-social behaviour
which, in effect, is an allegation of the commission of criminal offences. 1 bus the complaint
against the defendant Clingham alleged:
PART 5 © SWEET & MAXWELL
44,
Simon Cordell’s Skeleton Argument (2) Pdf
Page: 9
R (McCann) v Manchester Crown Ct (HL(E)) Lord Hutton
It appears to the local authority, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, that the
following conditions are fulfilled with respect to you, namely—(a) chat you have acted
between 9 December 1999 and 15 April 2.000 on or in the vicinity of the Wornington Green
Estate, London W10 in an anti-social manner, that is to say, in a manner that caused or was
likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same
household as yourself, namely by: assaulting residents, threatening to assault children of
residents, verbally abusing residents and police officers, threatening and intimidating
shopkeepers, engaging in car related crime, throwing objects at persons and property and
entering property as a trespasser; and (b) that an anti-social behaviour order is necessary to
protect persons in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in which the harassment,
alarm or distress was caused, or was likely to be caused from further anti-social acts by you .
Counsel submitted that the great majority of this conduct constituted the commission of
separate criminal offences. They also relied on the dose similarity between the wording of

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