PETER Hain made a vow to the people of Gwent last night. He and his government know that some Gwent communities have been terrorised by people who commit acts of anti-social behaviour.

They may be gangs of youths who gather on estates and start confrontations, people who attack and abuse their neighours - or, as in the recent case of a Cwmbran man banned from the town centre, they may be harrassing people as they go about their business, shopping, or on a night out.

Mr Hain says he knows the situation cannot go on. So he has exclusively told us that a government White Paper will be announced over the next couple of weeks, outlining new ways to deal with anti-social behaviour. The key planks of the proposed policy for tackling the thugs who terrorise our communities include:

Setting up special anti-social behaviour courts. Broadening the use of fixed penalty fines. Fining pubs and clubs for not stopping anti-social behaviour spilling out onto the streets. The idea behind the new specialised court is to speed up the process of dealing with anti-social behaviour.

Mr Hain said the White Paper plans to tackle issues such as residents in Cross Keys and Newport's Somerton estate living in fear of yobbery. In Cross Keys some people told us they were too frightened to go out because of gangs of youths.

Police launched Anti Social Behaviour Orders against a number of youths as a result. Mr Hain said: "Vulnerable and elderly citizens fear to go outside their doors at night and sometimes during the day. That is intolerable.

"We will tackle these kind of issues from Newport to the Valleys. "My message is we can't resolve this problem overnight, but we are on your side and are going to stamp this problem out and give local authorities and the police powers to declare a war on anti-social behaviour."

The details of the bill have not yet been decided, but the Welsh secretary hopes it will reassure the public, who are often afraid of reporting anti-social behaviour. He added: "There is a lot of fear of intimidation and the yobs just taking revenge. They can be reassured with these new measures in place the police will be armed with the powers and the courts armed with the powers to deal with the problem.

"Intimidation, yobbery and anti-social behaviour is totally unacceptable." Gwent Police Superintendent Nigel Russell said: "Clearly the police would welcome any additional proposals to support us and other agencies that deal with anti-social behaviour.

"It is frequently seen as the biggest cause of problems in a lot of our communities, and frequently it is low- scale disorder that causes the greatest disruption to the most individuals."