A SUFFOLK peer last night said he had no regrets over tackling a badly behaved youngster head-on and making a citizen's arrest - and revealed that he would take the drastic action again.

A SUFFOLK peer last night said he had no regrets over tackling a badly behaved youngster head-on and making a citizen's arrest - and revealed that he would take the drastic action again.

Lord Andrew Phillips defended his actions, claiming adults had a responsibility to “politely remind” wayward youths of how they should behave and hit out at the police for “inadvertently scaremongering” over the potential dangers of confronting such problems directly.

On Tuesday, the EADT exclusively revealed the peer had grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck - in front of shocked Sudbury shoppers - after he was subjected to a tirade of foul language and had his bike thrown to the ground.

Lord Phillips said: “I have to say I would behave in exactly the same way again because young people need to know there are boundaries in terms of public safety.

“People should care about their environment and the citizens they live with and when they have forgotten this, it is up to adults in the local community to politely remind them.

“The decline of these attitudes, and the scare-mongering the police have inadvertently contributed to, have caused a lot of harm and often deter people from saying anything. But in the right way, this kind of action can be quite positive.”

The incident, spotted by an EADT reporter, saw Lord Phillips grab the youngster for allegedly throwing the peer's bike to the ground on Sudbury's Market Hill on Monday afternoon.

Lord Phillips claimed he was subjected to a tirade of foul language by a group of boys before one threw his bike on the ground after he asked them to stop riding cycles on a narrow stretch of path.

As the youngster, believed to be about ten years old, protested his innocence and his friends told the peer to “get off”, Lord Phillips asked a passer-by to call the police with an officer arriving within minutes.

An officer spoke with the group of youngsters and a police spokesman later said: “Members of the public should always have a regard for their own personal safety and our advice is to call the police immediately.”

But Lord Phillips, who lives in the town, said: “I am sure police have a duty to play safe and say 'call us' but that is just daft when we are just talking about bad behaviour.

“Police are severely overstretched and I didn't want to trouble an officer for an act that might not even be criminal, just bad manners.

“Secondly, the police aren't ever around. It was just a fluke that a police car was in the town when the passer-by called them - I was gob-smacked when they arrived so quickly.”