I can still remember, as though it was yesterday, the point when I knew my job as MP had changed. Before me were a group of respectable working class pensioners. Each had put on their best clothes to come and see their MP. The tale that they recalled was one of Britain changing for the worse.

Night after night these pensioners were terrified, as young lads ran across their bungalow roofs. Others urinated through their letterboxes. If these pensioners came home after dark, the young lads would, as likely as not, jump out to scare them. Watching television was no longer a safe activity. The laddos would bang on the windows in the hope of scaring them to death.

The police could do nothing, so my constituents assured me. And on this their reports were accurate. The police were in despair at under-aged children behaving in this loutish way.

I knew that politics had changed irreversibly for me. When I first became a Member of Parliament my constituents brought before me an array of issues, which I expected I should have to deal with. Could I help with a housing transfer? Benefit payments haven’t come through. Repairs to the local road were non-existent. While I still get such complaints, the overwhelming number of issues raised with me by my constituents concern behaviour.

Out has gone class politics. Quickly filling the vacuum has been devising policies to deal with anti-social behaviour. This is now the number one issue for ordinary people, although it is not one which registers in the same way in more prosperous areas.

Helping to respond to this new politics of behaviour is now a major concern of mine. An original proposal made before our 1997 election win, which would have given police the powers of surrogate parents against these tearaways, was rejected by the incoming Labour Government. Instead, they put on the statute book Anti-Social Behaviour Orders which proved clumsy to operate.

My constituents and I lobbied David Blunkett to get these orders applied much more quickly. Typically, the Home Secretary responded constructively.

I followed this up last year by introducing a bill which would take housing benefit away from neighbours from hell, and those landlords who care nothing about the behaviour of their tenants, as they grow fat on a rich diet of housing benefit payments.

Yesterday was another milestone in this campaign forging the new politics of behaviour. The Government is consulting on these proposals to dock housing benefit. And I have lobbied hard to ensure that it is not only the views of the normal bleeding hearts that are sought.

Andrew Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, and David Blunkett, have agreed that the consultation should ask ordinary people what they think should happen to neighbours from hell. I am confident that once those people on the receiving end of this barrage of yobbish behaviour are consulted, the Government will get a clear message on how tough sanctions should be.

Landlords should lose the right to draw housing benefit if any of their tenants are convicted of anti-social behaviour. Similarly, it is no use simply evicting these families and allowing them with their housing benefit to go off and cause mayhem to another group of decent citizens.

The Government has got to bite the bullet. Not only must we take housing benefit away from this group. We will have to devise places where they will be out of harm’s way.

I have told the Government I would like money for Birkenhead so that we can build as indestructible units as possible under our motorway. Here neighbours from hell would be confined to tormenting themselves, and not other decent citizens.

Of course, their children should be taken into care. The behaviour of some of these families poses a huge moral danger to their children. And every move ought to be made to get people to behave properly before these final sanctions are applied.

But the neighbours from hell should realise from this day onwards that they are seeing the white of voters’ eyes. We mean business. We want to see benefits used to lay down clear guidelines on proper behaviour, and for sanctions to be applied to persistent offenders. And there is no point the bleeding heart’s brigade banging on about there being good in everyone. There may well be. Those taking the butt of anti-social behaviour would like to see a little of this goodness. Those people fortunate enough to live in the leafy suburbs do not know half of the story.

Poor people are the most insistent on tough action being taken. They don’t have bank balances allowing them to escape their neighbour from hell. It is this group above all to whom the Government has promised to listen as it develops its strategy against unacceptable behaviour. My guess is that the response to taking housing benefit away from neighbours from hell will be overwhelming.