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Mr. Baker : It is not a rare case. Certain other authorities where Labour has been in office for some time have not allocated the same priority to spending on law and order as other authorities. My hon. Friend has given us a good example and I am sure that he will make the most of it to his constituents, because law and order should be given the highest priority. As I said earlier, law and order is not the highest priority for the Labour party.
Mr. Ron Leighton (Newham, North-East) rose--
Mr. Baker : I shall give way in a moment.
The Labour party's failure to make law and order its highest priority was illustrated last weekend when the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook had the opportunity to set out his policies on law and order.
Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow) rose --
Mr. Baker : I shall give way in a moment.
The right hon. Gentleman wrote an article for the New Statesman and Society in which he returned to his familiar theme of attacking the judges. He said :
"There is no doubt that the character and position of the judiciary is in urgent need of change."
How will that happen? Who will appoint the judges? Will they be appointed by the Labour party's national executive? After all, it is appointing candidates up and down the country. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook is the biggest deselector of Labour candidates. Now he wants to be let loose to deselect judges. That is equivalent of the politicisation of the judiciary. That is the prospect held out to the electorate by the right hon. Gentleman.
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Mr. Leighton : I know that we are near to a general election, but would the right hon. Gentleman please remember that he is not the current chairman of the Conservative party, he is the Home Secretary? We do not expect such a flippant presentation, we expect something rather more serious. If he is claiming that law and order is close to his heart, why have we had so little law and order in the past 12 months [Hon. Members :-- "Twelve years."] of this Government? Why has crime doubled in that time?Mr. Baker : We have been in office for a little longer than 12 months. We have been in office for 12 years and we intend to be in office for much longer.
I have attempted to set out some of the differences between the Labour party and the Government on law and order and it is entirely legitimate for me to do so.
Crime prevention is an important matter. The hon. Member for Newham, North- East (Mr. Leighton) referred to the crime figures. He should be aware that the Home Office is spending £15 million a year on crime prevention schemes. As a result of our safer cities programme, we already have schemes operating in 19 cities. Hon. Members will be aware of the other projects that we intend to launch. Fourteen drug prevention teams have been established through our drugs initiative programme.
It is essential to reduce car crime, which now constitutes nearly 30 per cent. of all recorded crime.
Mr. Michael Shersby (Uxbridge) : Although the measures that the Government have introduced are welcome, does my right hon. Friend agree that they will not reduce auto crime until we have a system under which juvenile offenders can be locked up? At the moment, a small number of those offenders constantly reoffend. Without such a system, some of those who are bailed, and bailed again, constantly reoffend.
Mr. Baker : The Home Office will complete a research project about reoffending on bail in a matter of days and we will publish the results. That project will draw together the experience gained across the country.
In several public statements, I have made it clear that, when young offenders appear before the courts, the magistrates should think carefully before granting them bail. I shall go no further than that because it is not for a member of the Executive to instruct or to pressure in any way any elements of the judiciary. However, the courts must be aware of the dangers that exist if some young accused hooligans are not committed to custody.
Earlier this year, I published a Green Paper about juvenile custody. We do not have enough places for secure accommodation for juveniles, and some authorities have closed them down. Many Labour authorities believe strongly that no one under 16 or 17 should be committed to custody in any circumstances. That view is not shared by the Conservative party. The policy advocated by some Labour authorities is one of the reasons for the Green Paper, in which I state that we need more secure accommodation for juveniles.
Mr. David Tredinnick (Bosworth) : Is my right hon. Friend aware that facilities were made available for secure accommodation in Leicestershire but that they were voted down by the Labour and Liberal parties?
Mr. Baker : That is one example, and I have heard of other Labour authorities that have specifically reduced or eliminated secure accommodation. The sad fact that one
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must face is that there are some juveniles below the age of 16--soon it will be below 17--who must be kept in secure custody : for example, those who commit severe crime. We do not want to lock up hundreds of thousands, but there are some juveniles who must be held in secure custody because of the seriousness of their crime. It is regrettable that in some parts of the country Labour authorities have closed such accommodation.Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse (Pontefract and Castleford) rose--
Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) : Which authorities ?
Mr. Vaz : That is a hung council.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : Order. Mr. Baker.
Mr. Baker : I shall give way to the hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Mr. Lofthouse).
Mr. Lofthouse : Did I understand that the right hon. Gentleman agreed with his hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) that more young people should be locked up ? Although no one condones crime, surely it would be better policy to find such youngsters some work.
Mr. Baker : We will produce a consultation document, before Christmas I hope, that deals with the roots of criminality and what leads youngsters, principally young boys, into crime. The hon. Gentleman will find that it contains many positive proposals to try to ensure that those youngsters do not set out on a path that leads inevitably to custody.
The House is aware that, three weeks ago, the Cabinet agreed to my proposal that a new offence should be introduced to deal with joyriding--the House will appreciate that that crime should not be known as "joyriding". That offence will deal with the crime of stealing a vehicle without the owner's consent when that offence is aggravated by damage or dangerous driving.
Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle) rose --
Mr. Baker : I have given way a great deal and I should like to proceed with my speech for a while.
It would not be enough just to increase the penalties for taking and driving away from six months to two years. The new offence needs to be carefully defined to hit the mischief of damage and injury associated with the theft of the vehicle.
Since I made my announcement lawyers in the Home Office have been working on the definition of the new offence so that it will be tough and effective. The Bill is now being drafted and I can assure the House that it will be introduced as soon as it is ready. I am glad to hear that the Labour party has agreed that that Bill should go swiftly on to the statute book.
Mr. Martlew : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Baker : No. I shall give way in a moment.
Our campaign to reduce car crime goes much wider than the Bill. The House will be aware that I have spoken to motor manufacturers to persuade them to fix more secure locks on their cars, to introduce burglar alarms and also to invent a device that immobilises a car when someone has broken into it. I have had two meetings with
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the manufacturers, the second much more positive than the first. I can assure the House that I want progress on these matters. I have also spoken to the insurance industry. Within the past month its members have made significant changes to their policies in respect of theft from and of cars. Owners will bear a share of the loss. Those fitting certain protective devices will get a reduced premium. The premium for cars that are the favourite targets of young thieves will be much higher.I want to say a word about our support for the victims of crime. We have given them a great deal of support and an entitlement to that support. There are now 360 voluntary local schemes providing help and support tothe victims of crime. In 1986, only £136,000 was being spent on this programme. That has risen this year to£5.4 million, and next year it will increase to £7.3 million. We have also published a victims' charter which sets out in detail the advice and support available to victims.
Mr. Martlew : In March this year I wrote to the Home Secretary on behalf of the Cumbria police authority asking him to ban the sale of skeleton keys, which are a major problem in the north-west. They are used in crime and can be bought for as little as £50. A Home Office Minister replied that he did not intend to take any action against the free sale of such keys. Surely the right hon. Gentleman should be doing something practical instead of waffling on like this.
Mr. Baker : Following the hon. Gentleman's representation I discussed it with the Association of Chief Police Officers, whose members said that in their experience skeleton keys were hardly ever used in crime- -but that other devices were. They did not say that I should take this action.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West) rose --
Mr. Baker : I have given way a great deal and I must pursue my arguments now.
Since the House last debated the Queen's Speech, Lord Justice Woolf has produced his report on the riot at Strangeways. In a White Paper I announced the acceptance of virtually everything in that report. We have introduced the largest measure of reform of our prisons this century. Many of the improvements are already in hand.
The House will know that I announced that slopping out, which is a degrading practice, should be eliminated by December 1994. This was faster than Lord Justice Woolf recommended. Already the building and plumbing programmes for that are well in hand.
Many other changes are also being introduced. They include the number of extra visits that prisoners have from their families. I know that that concerns many hon. Members. Pay telephones are being provided throughout the prison system. The training of prisoners is being improved. Education opportunities have been improved and increased so that prisoners have a chance of learning a skill which will encourage them to lead non-criminal lives when they are released.
Since 1987, the number of prison officers has increased by some 4, 700, an increase of 27 per cent., at a time when the prison population has fallen by about 3,000. I am glad
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to tell the House that next year we will increase the number of prison officers by a further 1,600. To staff the new prisons which are coming on stream, we are recruiting and training prison officers at the unprecedented rate of 2,500 a year.I am also glad to tell the House that tomorrow we shall be awarding a contract for the private management of the new Wolds prison in Yorkshire.
The House will also know that in the Queen's Speech we announced that there would be a Bill creating the new offence of prison mutiny, which will carry with it a maximum sentence of 10 years. We will also increase the penalties for aiding and abetting escapes to a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish) : Can the Minister explain why, 18 months after the Strangeways riot, 760 prisoners are still being held in police cells in the Greater Manchester and surrounding areas? Is it not time that these people were held in proper prisons instead of these degrading circumstances?
Mr. Baker : The hon. Gentleman has come in right on cue, because I want to deal with that matter now, as the House would expect me to in a debate of this kind.
We are about a third of the way through the biggest ever prison building programme, which is going to increase the number of cells over the next two or three years by several thousand.
Unfortunately, at the moment--I agree with the hon. Gentleman about this-- we have far too many prisoners in police cells--about 1,800 a day. This is fairly close to the maximum that the police can deal with. It should not be the duty of police officers to look after prisoners in police cells.
The reason for this is the unprecedented surge in the prison population over the last few months. There are 3,000 more convicted and remand prisoners than the experts predicted. This has occurred at a time when some prison accommodation is out of use as a result of the Strangeways riots, and it bears particularly heavily on the Greater Manchester force. Over the course of the next few months many more places are becoming available.
The present problem is exacerbated by a number of industrial disputes in our prisons. I am glad to say that disputes at Pentonville and Wakefield have been satisfactorily settled. Threatened industrial action at Birmingham and Brixton has been suspended. We are doing everything we can to resolve the disputes at the other prisons. I do urge the Prison Officers Association to take to heart the recommendations of Lord Justice Woolf about industrial action. The population of a prison should not be determined by the Prison Officers Association.
To assist with the pressure before Christmas, I have decided that the new young offenders establishment at Brinsford, which is just north of Birmingham, should be brought on stream early. That will allow us to stop using the prison at Brockhill for young offenders and instead keep it open on a temporary basis to hold adult prisoners.
If the prison population continues to rise, we will have to consider calling upon the assistance of military personnel on a temporary basis. I do not judge it necessary just at this moment to do so, but this is a subject which I will hold constantly under review.
The Asylum Bill is one of the most important in the Queen's Speech. Many people are now leaving their own
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countries, and claiming to be political refugees. We have a proud centuries-old tradition in our country of welcoming those who have a genuine and well founded fear of persecution. We will continue to provide refuge for such people, but we cannot accept the abuse of this tradition.The purpose of our Bill is to distinguish quickly, fairly and openly between the genuine applicant and the bogus applicant. Genuine applicants will be allowed to stay, and indeed will have the right for their families to be reunited with them. Bogus applicants should be returned to the country from which they came.
The Opposition motion calls for rights. The Labour party will therefore welcome our Bill, which creates two new rights : a right for all applicants to appear before a tribunal, which some applicants do not have today, and a further right of appeal to a court of appeal, which also does not exist today. It is recognised across the whole of Europe that action on these lines has to be taken. Every country in Europe is taking similar action.
I was therefore astonished when, at the Labour party conference, the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook stridently promised to oppose this Bill. I will remind the House of his words. He said of this Bill :
"I make this absolute promise. We shall fight that shameful proposal in Parliament with the ferocity that comes from deep and abiding contempt that it could ever have been considered and put before us."
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : I am fully behind my right hon. Friend, but did I understand him to say that everyone will have a right to go before a hearing? On 2 July he said in the House :
"The Bill will provide for accelerated handling of clearly unfounded cases. An adjudicator will be able to dismiss an appeal without an oral hearing upon deciding that there is manifestly no substance to the claim."--[ Official Report, 2 July 1991 ; Vol. 194, c. 167.]
Is that still true?
Mr. Baker : As I said in last week's press release and as the immigration rules and the rules issued by the Lord Chancellor stipulate--I hope that we will have an opportunity to debate these matters soon--the Bill will attempt to shorten the determination process to three months. The decision by immigration officials of the Home Office will take a month, and there will be eight weeks after that for the appeal process. Some manifestly unfounded cases may not go to appeal. It is up to the adjudicator to decide that.
Mr. Roy Hattersley (Birmingham, Sparkbrook) : A moment ago, the Home Secretary said that every applicant for asylum would have the right of appeal to a tribunal. I see the Under-Secretary nodding at that. The right hon. Gentleman made a statement in the House about a fast track procedure under which some applicants would be sifted out immediately and would not have the right of appeal--at least not the right of audience in an appeal or representation in an appeal. The adjudicator would deal with the papers there and then. If that is the case, the Home Secretary's statement of a few moments ago is wrong.
Mr. Baker : It is not the case. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to study the papers that I issued on Friday. Every refugee applicant will have the right to go to the adjudicator, who will decide.
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Mr. Hattersley : A moment ago, the Home Secretary said that every applicant for asylum would have the right to go to an appeal tribunal, and his hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E.
Kellett-Bowman) rightly picked him up on the point. If that were the case, the Bill would be very different from the one that is being presented. The hon. Member for Lancaster rightly said that what the Home Secretary called the fast-track applicant will go not to a tribunal but to an adjudicator with no new evidence.
Mr. Baker : Even today, some claims are manifestly unfounded. Some applicants arrive from Canada claiming refugee status. There are a few each month. Every refugee applicant will have the right to appeal to the adjudicator. That was set out in our papers last week. Opinion polls over the weekend showed 80 per cent. support for the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman's determination to oppose the Bill shows an abiding contempt for the feelings of ordinary voters, including no doubt many in his constituency.
It is not for me to offer helpful advice to the right hon. Gentleman, but I shall do so : when in a hole, one should stop digging. Only a week ago, the right hon. Gentleman appeared on BBC Radio's "The World this Weekend" and dug with the vigour of a navvy. First, he pooh-poohed the idea that the number of those claiming asylum was continuing to rise. He said :
"I only admit there will be some few--not very many--but a few, who will apply bogusly."
If the right hon. Gentleman believes that, he is in the most solitary position in Europe. His attitude betrays staggering complacency.
I shall give him the figures of refugee applicants for the past three months. In August, there were 3,300 ; in September, there were 3,500 ; and in October, there were 4,400. The problem is not getting smaller ; it is growing. If the right hon. Gentleman were responsible for the matter, we are assured that today he would be doing exactly nothing about it. His hallmark on this issue is complacency and indolence. He needs to stir himself.
Mr. Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West) : My right hon. Friend says that we are to continue our tradition of offering a haven to refugees. It is important for him to define a refugee. During the recent troubles in India, many of the people who came to this country and who said that they were refugees from oppression by the Indian Government were proposing various forms of armed or violent protest against that Government. Are they to be defined as refugees ? That was a real issue during the troubles in the Punjab and had a real effect on Wolverhampton.
Several Hon. Members rose--
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. In accordance with practice, the Home Secretary is required to reply before giving way again.
Mr. Baker : The definition of refugee is laid down in the United Nations convention. I do not think that it is possible to change that definition. A refugee is defined as someone who suffers from a well founded fear of persecution, and the process has to determine whether such a fear is well-founded. That determination process is carried out by the Home Office and the adjudication tribunal.
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Mr. Dicks : Does my right hon. Friend agree that the aim of the Bill is to protect the rights of the British people and make those rights more important than the so-called rights of bogus refugees ?Mr. Baker : The purpose of the Bill is to distinguish between the bogus and the genuine refugee applicant.
The problem affects the whole of western Europe. I was at a conference in Berlin on Wednesday that was attended by ministers of the interior for the Twelve and for the countries of eastern Europe. Several parts of Russia and the new countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were also represented. They were all very alarmed by the prospect of substantial movements of people. This year Germany expects to receive applications amounting not to 50,000, which is the rate approached by the United Kingdom, but 250,000 non -German speaking refugees. The Germans say that they cannot absorb that number, and country after country is saying the same. Hon. Members will be aware of the unpleasant aspects in political debates in some countries in Europe. I am taking action which I am sure is responsible and necessary.
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : Will the Home Secretary confirm that his adviser on race matters, the Commission For Racial Equality, have made representations to the Government that their proposal to withdraw legal aid from applicants would leave the Government in breach of the provisions of the Race Relations Act 1976? In order to override that, they intend to introduce a statutory instrument.
Mr. Baker : I do not accept that interpretation. As I made clear in July and as the Lord Chancellor made clear, the provision of green form legal aid will be withdrawn when other services are available, but not until then. The House will appreciate that the Government provide funds for green form legal aid and for the United Kingdom Immigrants Advisory Service, a body which represents refugee applicants at the initial process of determination and at the tribunal hearing.
Mr. Corbyn : Will the Home Secretary give way?
Mr. Baker : I shall do so for the last time.
Mr. Corbyn : Will the right hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to condemn the campaign that is being mounted in some sections of the popular press? That campaign is racist in intent and is against the interests of people who are seeking asylum from situations of great danger. The Home Secretary is promoting his Bill by saying that people who are fleeing from political or social oppression do not deserve to come here and do not deserve political asylum. Because of his fast-track methods, such people may well be returned to face even greater danger to themselves and their families in the countries from which they have come. The proposed legislation undermines the principles of the 1951 Geneva convention.
Mr. Baker : That is absolute rubbish and I expect the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook to condemn it as such. That is not the purpose of the legislation. I am not prepared to condemn the various newspapers which have written about this subject in a responsible way. There is genuine concern about this problem. The Opposition pooh-pooh the matter and the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook says that it is not really a problem and that the
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numbers are going down. He would do nothing about the problem, and that is why he is unsuited to hold the office of Home Secretary. I have tried to show the real gap between Labour and the Conservative party and Government on matters of law and order. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook is happy to describe himself as a socialist on many occasions, although the advice from Mr. Mandelson is to drop the word. Only last weekend, the right hon. Gentleman said :"For socialists, constitutional reform is not an end in itself. It was one of the ways by which a more equal society can be created." It is clear to the right hon. Gentleman that for him the banner of rights and freedoms that he would wave represents a very different set of outcomes from those in which Conservatives believe. For the Opposition, the subjects of this debate are strictly for the realm of rhetoric. The rhetoric of socialism claims to enhance rights, but the practice of socialism invariably extinguishes and restricts peoples' rights. The rhetoric of socialism talks of freedom, but the practice of socialism involves the restriction of personal freedom. People will not give up lightly what they have gained under this Government, and they will not easily embrace a creed that has been rejected by so many nations in recent years. I am glad that at the next election the choice will be between conservatism and socialism. Nowhere will the difference be more marked than in the attitudes towards law and order.
The Labour Government neglected and cut resources for law and order, and the right hon. Gentleman sat at the table agreeing to those cuts. We have shown our commitment to law and order as a major issue. It is what concerns most people. I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that indolence, sloth and complacency are not enough. 5.29 pm
Mr. Roy Hattersley (Birmingham, Sparkbrook) : There is only one thing to say about the Home Secretary's speech : I have heard more intellectual contributions from Lord Waddington on the subject, and I never believed that I would make that statement about anyone holding the office of Home Secretary.
Let us return to a serious discussion of the subject before us. Inevitably, two aspects of the Gracious Speech have focused special attention on the Home Office. They are the inclusion of the Asylum Bill and the absence of any commitment to action against what we still--inappropriately--refer to, as the Home Secretary did today, as joyriding.
The absence of the joyriding Bill, to use the misnomer adopted by the Home Secretary, is not the only surprising omission. The legislative programme should have included a criminal justice Bill to prohibit conviction on confession evidence alone, to bring some consistency into a chaotic sentencing policy and to give statutory rights to the victims of crime. The programme should also have included a Bill to deal with the crisis in our prisons, by implementing at least part of Lord Justice Woolf's report. Above all, the Gracious Speech should have included a crime prevention Bill. Today, we debate a legislative programme that could have been proposed only by a Government who have no purpose other than hanging on to office for a few more
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months. Extraordinarily, the Queen's Speech does not even include the usual platitudes, promising, in the words of last year's speech ; that the Government would"vigorously pursue their policies in fighting crime."
This is the first Queen's Speech for 20 years not to make such a general promise. I can only assume that the words were left out because an assurance "vigorously" to continue "fighting crime" would have raised only a horse laugh when offered by a Government with a record of this Government on this subject. They preside over the fastest increasing crime rate in our history.
At the beginning of his speech, the Home Secretary went to some lengths to compare what life on this subject was like under a Labour Government in 1979 with what it is like under a Conservative Government now. He failed to make only one comparison--that on crime rates. That is hardly surprising, as the crime rate has doubled in the 12 years since the Conservative party was elected on a promise of law and order.
The Home Secretary excused the appalling record on law and order by saying that, for every year since the war, the crime rate has increased by 6 per cent. on average. So it has, but last year the crime rate increased by 18 per cent.--three times the average--and the Home Secretary had nothing to say about that, and not a single mention of that subject appears in the Queen's Speech.
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