Scotland began to take anti-social behaviour seriously long before England, let alone the other parts of the United Kingdom, woke up to its importance. Scotland was also first to try and draw a distinction between yobbish behaviour and crime. The new bill on anti-social behaviour now before Parliament offers Scotland the opportunity for another first.

The Minister for Communities, Margaret Curren, left the Scottish Parliament in no doubt about how serious anti-social behaviour is in Scotland. The examples of how this new cultural yobbism makes life near-impossible for decent citizens, and which she detailed to such effect in the Scottish Parliament debate last October, could, sadly, be replicated for England. I remember well the actual day nine years ago when a group of highly respectable working class pensioners came into my surgery.

Up until that point I had been appalled by individual incidences of anti-social behaviour. But I had convinced myself that, appalling as each instance was, there was no general pattern. These pensioners explained how young lads ran across their bungalow roofs, peed through their letterboxes, jumped out of the dark to frighten them should they have the temerity to come home after dusk, as well as attempting to break their sitting room windows when the pensioners were watching television. The police confirmed what the pensioners had told me. They were powerless to act against these young tearaways. It was at this point I realised that, while previously I had dealt largely with the politics of class, I would probably be dealing with the politics of behaviour for the rest of my political career.

The Anti-Social Behaviour Bill before the Scottish Parliament offers Scotland the possibility of three reforms which could again show the English Parliament the best way of dealing with anti-social behaviour. The first reform is to help strengthen the defences against disorder.

Putting our communities first sets out the case for extending anti-social behaviour orders to a small minority of children under the age of 16. Such powers are undoubtedly necessary. But this mirrors the English approach of modelling strategies to counter anti-social behaviour on the criminal justice system. I believe this is profoundly mistaken. But the document is the first public document I have seen that highlights the root cause of our yobbish culture.

In Neighbours from Hell: The Politics of Behaviour I also suggest that we are witnessing the breakdown of some families to teach their offspring those common decencies that are necessary for families to function well. They are equally crucial in ensuring that family members have the social skills to live properly in a wider community.

We need to accept that young people do not necessarily acquire good parenting skills by osmosis, and particularly if their own parents do not set them a good example. We need to think again how within the school curriculum basic knowledge of good parenting is acquired.

But where parents have failed, I believe the police must act as surrogate parents to check that behaviour. Here is a first suggested amendment to the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill. The awful fact is that the hardcore of young yobs deliberately taunt the police, knowing that the police have no immediate powers against them. They also appreciate that being taken to court can take a year or more before an anti-social behaviour order is enforced.

I believe we should give police the powers of surrogate parents so that they can act like a football referee. Young people will be warned and, if the warning is ignored, the police will be able to impose immediately an acceptable behaviour contract or an anti-social behaviour order. The exercise of these powers would be outside the criminal justice system. It would then be up to the young to go into the courts to get the order lifted. I believe such a move would change street power in favour of those trying to maintain decent behaviour and against those whose aim is to destroy the lives of decent citizens.

I would also hope the Scottish Parliament would consider two additional reforms, both of which try and set a long-term strategy so that each of us knows what is required of everyone to be a full citizen.

Christianity has played a crucial part in establishing the Scottish character with its belief in a common decency. Christian teaching together with the mutually owned welfare state reinforced these values. There is sadly little chance of either of these two forces playing the role in the future that they commanded in the past. But the teaching role that religion played does need to be replicated by secular society if the present level of disorder is not to become irreversible within the confines of a free society.

Welfare and education are two universal services that I believe must be developed into two great teaching forces for acceptable behaviour.

The 1945 Attlee Government had very definite views about the nature of the welfare state it was establishing. Privileges and responsibilities were the name of the game. The idea of welfare being a right, which came automatically rather than being earned, was foreign to the government and voters alike.

We need to return to the idea that there is no free ticket to the welfare feast. Our entrance as citizens has to be earned. A second amendment to the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill would be to give the Scottish Executive powers to run pilots so that when individuals sign on for benefit they will have explained to them that they are also signing a welfare contract. Society has decided, quite properly, that individuals in certain circumstances should be eligible for help. In return, that same society asks that each citizen should sign up to its side of the bargain of behaving in a civilised manner.

Most people believe they are entering such a contract anyway, even though, as at present, they are not required to sign anything. But for others it would be a helpful reminder of the social highway code, which it is in everybody’s interest to maintain.

A suitable starting point for such a reform would be the registration of births. When the British Expeditionary Force sailed for France in 1914 practically every soldier had been baptised and thereby welcomed into the wider community beyond the family. When our forces left for Iraq, less than half of them had been baptised.

The registration of a birth should be turned from a private into a public welcoming service. Here the registrar would remind parents and the family that the wider community has a very real wish for the child’s life to be successful. An outline would be made of all the help society has pledged in order to bring this about. In return, parents would be reminded in outline of the duties of parenthood.

Schools offer a further advantage of extending the idea of a citizen’s contract, and could thereby become another major teaching force against anti-social behaviour. In one of Birkenhead’s secondary schools I am beginning to work with pupils on what such a contract should look like. The pupils accept that their parents and the school will rightly have a big say.

But the pupils have very clear ideas on what they want. They want a safe school and one that is free of bullying. They also want to gain the social skills, as well as educational qualifications, to be good employees. The pupils also question whether they should have the power to exclude pupils who disrupt their studies.

It is already clear that school contracts could play a part in recreating a self-governing country. Of course many steps are necessary, and some will involve sanctions. But sanctions are not a goal. The aim must be to create self-governing communities where such sanctions become less and less necessary.