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GRANDAD Michael Wyatt, pictured with wife Sylvia, is backing calls by Bury South MP Ivan Lewis to name and shame unfit parents
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Calls for bad parents to be taught lesson
Ailsa Cranna29/ 5/2008
A GRANDAD who has been plagued by yobs for the last 20 years has backed calls for unfit parents to be named and shamed.
Last year Michael Wyatt forked out over £2,000 for window repairs damaged by rifle toting youths.
The 63-year-old grandfather-of-four says he dreads coming downstairs each morning for fear of what else has been vandalised.
Now Mr Wyatt says he is ‘totally behind’ a proposal announced by Bury South MP Ivan Lewis this week to ‘out’ unfit parents and send them to compulsory parenting classes.
He said: "Ivan Lewis is absolutely right - parents must be made to pay for what their children do.
"If these youths have no respect for people and their property, it can only be because they are copying their parents."
In January Mr Wyatt and his wife Sylvia, 64, described how they had endured 20 years of attacks on their property, a situation he says remains changed.
He said: "We still have the youths congregating on the Egremont Close Industrial Estate at the back, shouting and drinking ‘til all hours, and my car is constantly vandalised.
"Last weekend, there was an 18th birthday party with loud music that went on from Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning.
"If Ivan Lewis’ scheme was put into action this problem could be tackled and stamped out."
Mr Lewis, minister for care services, said: "Local people tell me time and time again that anti-social behaviour in our community is one of their greatest concerns.
"Decent law-abiding citizens want us to send a clear message that parents are responsible for the behaviour of their children.
"Where teenagers consistently engage in anti-social behaviour it is their parents who should also appear before the courts and be sentenced at the very least to compulsory parenting classes.
"We need to have a very clear understanding that if your child is out late at night, after dark, under the age of 16, drinking alcohol, doing it repeatedly, making a nuisance of themselves, you are responsible."
Councillor Barry Theckston, chairman of Bury Council’s safe, strong and confident communities scrutiny committee, said: "I don’t think Ivan Lewis’ comments are anything new, I seem to remember Jack Straw coming out with something similar 10 years ago.
"All Ivan Lewis has done is re-package an old Labour promise and relaunch it as his own."
The MP’s comments come only a few months after figures revealed that Bury Council has one of the lowest rates in Greater Manchester for issuing parenting orders to parents of children who skip school or behave badly when they are there.
According to figures presented to Parliament by Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes in February, Bury had secured just four parenting orders in connection with school matters in three years, compared to the 58 obtained by neighbouring Salford.
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18/06/2008 at 14:38