House of Commons Hansard Debates for 12 Dec 1991

Sir John Wheeler : I was going on to give an explanation, which may help the hon. Gentleman. May I do so and see whether he is still of the same mind?

Since 1980, the Home Office has collected its own crime figures through the British crime survey, which attempts to gauge the total number of crimes committed rather than those notified to the police. The survey shows that crime is not rising anywhere near as fast as police figures suggest. For example, the 1988 British crime survey reported a 12 per cent. rise in wounding, the most common form of assault, between 1981 and 1987, whereas police statistics showed a 40 per cent. rise. The increase in robbery was 9 per cent., compared with a police total of 62 per cent.

The fear of violent crime has risen out of all proportion to the actual risk. I am not saying that that is not worrying, and we must address that problem ; I shall seek to suggest how in a moment. Interviews with 10,000 people for the survey showed that one in five women felt very unsafe when out walking at night ; yet fewer than one in 70 claimed to have been attacked in the past year.

It is very important to get the facts if we are to contemplate what the police should be for controlling and preventing crime.

Mr. Sheerman : The hon. Gentleman must also know that it depends how one selects one's facts and which surveys one looks at. Referring to the point at which I first

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tried to intervene, he will know that there is under-reporting of crime. At a time when there is more sympathetic treatment of rape cases and domestic violence, there is greater reporting, thank goodness, but all the evidence shows that there is under-reporting of burglary as people become worried about making claims against their insurance policies. We know also that police screening encourages people not to report.

Can I direct the hon. Gentleman's attention to the Islington crime survey, which gives rather different evidence about how much crime is being committed and how much it is rising?

Sir John Wheeler : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because I suspect that we are not really disagreeing. I am suggesting that the British crime survey is very important. It is independent of Government and is formulated by researchers who are anxious to establish the truth, because without those facts we cannot deploy the resources effectively. I know about the Islington survey, and I also share his concern about under- reporting in some areas of the country of some types of crime in particular, but let me continue with the facts before we begin to look at the solutions.

It is very important to know that less than 6 per cent. of all recorded crime is violent ; 94 per cent. of the crime about which most members of the public are concerned relates to property. Rape, for example, accounts for less than 1.5 per cent. of violent crime. In 61 per cent. of cases, rape is by someone known to the victim, so women are not at risk from every man they happen to encounter when they go for a walk on a dark night. Over half the assaults on women are domestic, according to the crime survey of 1986, and, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, are now being reported and investigated.

Although women, elderly women in particular, feel at greater risk from violence, it is young men who are by far the main victims of assaults, which occur principally in the middle of the afternoon, not late at night.

Let us begin to look at what is being done to remedy these problems. The Government's initiatives are many and varied and of very great importance. The safer cities programme, for example, has resulted in reductions in burglary on a housing estate in Wolverhampton to the tune of 40 per cent. These are surely the solutions for which the right hon. and learned Gentleman is looking. There has been a drop of 35 per cent. in car crime in a central Nottingham car park through the safer cities programme. Crime in central Birmingham is showing a 16 per cent. decrease after the introduction of new security measures. So there are ways forward in difficult inner-city areas which bring real solutions to the lives of ordinary people, which is what we want to see.

Perhaps I can deal now with car crime. Seventy-five per cent. of people are prepared to pay for built-in car security features. At long last, the motor manufacturers are waking up to the reality that they ought to do more and that they too can assist in the reduction of car crime.

I am delighted that the Association of British Insurers, an organisation committed to a reduction in car crime, has recently issued a video aimed at young males, particularly in the 12-to-16 age group. Those are the people who commit most car crime and who take away and drive away most motor vehicles. The video will try to help them understand the misery they cause and what they should do to avoid being tempted down that road.

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That is an example of an institution joining the Government to try to provide a solution to a serious problem. The majority of known car crime offenders are males aged 15 to 16. The evidence is overwhelming ; we must address crime prevention far more successfully if we are to achieve the reductions referred to by the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West.

The other important statistic is that 94 per cent. of crime relates to property, much of it to burglary and breaking into people's homes. Here again, more could be done by ordinary people. A large number of homes lack basic security measures. About half those surveyed said that they had no locks on their windows, and one in four were without mortice locks or deadlocks. People have taken very few sensible precautions to stop young male burglars breaking in. Of those surveyed, 73 per cent. felt that they could do more to protect themselves. Part of the crime prevention initiative which many police forces are following is to assist the public to take more precautions to help themselves.

One other initiative was announced in a written answer to me only today, so it is topical and relevant. I refer to the 16 local drugs prevention teams which are being brought into action to assist in dealing with the problem of drug addiction among the young. Again the emphasis is on primary prevention of the misuse of drugs and on preventing young people from being drawn in.

As to serious and organised crime, in the 1990s we must address the subject of police structure with greater enthusiasm. The common police services must be combined in a central police agency so that we can deal with serious and organised crime, not necessarily crime which immediately affects the lives of constituents but crime which can affect them through the stealing of their pension funds or the misappropriation of their assets and savings.

As we examine the structure of the police in the 1990s, I hope that we shall see the need for a national police agency to deal with national and international crime, while preserving the important links through the local constabularies, because it is through the local police links with the public that crime is prevented. 7.53 pm

Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) : I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) on initiating the debate. He reflected the view of my constituents when he said that crime and how to reduce it are matters for the Government. The Government have failed to tackle or prevent crime. I want to touch briefly on four areas in which the Government could and must do better, in addition to the initiatives mentioned by my right hon. and learned Friend and the preventive programmes, such as that mentioned by the hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler) in relation to drug addiction.

I shall rely not just on statistics but on the position in communities which I have known well over many years. The Government's record is not as good as the hon. Member for Westminster, North suggested. For instance, the safer cities campaign has minimal resources and ignores Wales completely. Other worthwhile initiatives do not go to the root of the problem.

I compare the Government's record to the experience I once had of helping to redecorate a pensioner's home to

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brighten up the dingy gloom. As we tried to attach fresh wallpaper to the wall, we found that the damp had so undermined the structure that the wall fell down. That was not a criticism of the redecoration scheme, any more than my remarks are a criticism of some of the Government initiatives. Rather the criticism is that the basic and structural problems are not being tackled with the vigour that is required.

The Government are not giving the police the tools they need to do the job, certainly in south Wales. Here I reflect very much the comments of my right hon. and learned Friend. In Wales, the Home Secretary cannot distinguish a rural community from an urban community, much less appreciate the different policing needs of each. Let me spell that out.

When the Home Secretary announced the additional numbers for police forces throughout England and Wales, I was shocked to find that Gwent merited only one extra officer and was astounded to find that the South Wales police force was not to have a single extra officer, especially as the chief constable has undertaken a major review to ensure the best use of available manpower, a process which must continue.

In the South Wales police area, the crime level this year will be up some 22 per cent. on last year. I spent a Saturday night recently on patrol with the police in central Cardiff and saw just how thin is the blue line which looks after law and order in the city at night. Weekend availability was frightening, even before the Home Secretary's failure to tackle the issues within Cardiff prison, and other areas put enormous pressure on police time and cells. My constituency includes part of four divisions, so I have had a unique opportunity to see the problems which the police face in diverse communities. Right hon. and hon. Friends could replicate that experience and express the same concern about urban and rural areas throughout Wales and England. The Home Secretary and the Minister of State must face up to two facts : first, that their party is guilty of creating the conditions for crime and failing to tackle the root causes of crime ; and, secondly, that the police do not have the tools for the job.

I set out to find out why no extra police were coming to help our communities. It is not enough for the Minister to pass the buck to the chief inspector of constabulary. I found that part of the reason lay in the formula used to decide the police needs of each area, by which the Home Secretary gives greater weighting per thousand of urban population. Hon. Members might say that that was fair enough, but the Government have gone on to use a bizarre and irrelevant definition of urban and rural.

According to the definition, Cwmbran is not an urban area, nor is Aberdare, Rhondda, Abertillery, Neath, Barry, Penarth, Merthyr, Pontypool or Port Talbot, that well-known steel town ; nor is Newport, the third city in south Wales. According to the bizarre method of calculation, the urban population of Gwent is nil. Only Swansea and Cardiff fall into the urban category. It is no wonder the Home Secretary came up with a derisory response to the heartfelt plea for more police to restore a sense of security to our communities. How, a week after that crazy decision, are we to place confidence in Ministers who talk about policing and crime prevention in our urban and rural communities when they cannot tell one from t'other ? It is not as if the Home Secretary had not been warned. If present trends continue, reported crime will have risen

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by 113 per cent. between 1981 and 1991 in the South Wales police area. Incidents requiring attendance by police officers are up by nearly 80 per cent. since 1984, and 999 calls are up by over 20 per cent. in the same period. I am not sure who is more demoralised by that--the local people, who frequently complain that they do not get a quick response when they need help, or the local police, who attend the crime in an attempt to do the good job that they intended when they entered the police force, knowing that they are likely to be pulled in all directions to answer calls on a blue line that has been pulled far too thin by the Government's demands. In 1990, the number of crime calls per officer in south Wales was more than 42, compared with 29 in Cheshire and 39 in Leicester, to take just two examples. Where is the sense or comparability of that ?

In his response to the Home Secretary's manpower announcement, the chief constable of south Wales, Mr. Lawrence, said :

"I must repeat my warning that the South Wales Constabulary cannot be treated like a sponge and continually expected to absorb an ever-increasing workload without an inevitable decline in the quality of the service we provide".

In the light of the facts that I have set out, his conclusion that the Home Office decision is "ill-conceived" is a masterpiece of restrained understatement.

In a number of ways, the police are making positive responses to suggestions of working together to tackle problem areas and undertake inter -agency approaches to the many problems that need a co-operative approach. But they need help from the Home Secretary both to do their basic job properly and to take their share in such initiatives, and I greatly regret that help has not been forthcoming. I understand that the Home Secretary still has some flexibility within this year's resource allocation, and I appeal to the Minister of State who is present for this debate, the right hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten), to undertake to reconsider the needs of the South Wales and Gwent police forces.

I wish that I had time to go more deeply into the Government's failure to tackle the root causes of crime in our communities, but suffice it to say that neither unemployment nor lack of a decent home is an excuse for crime. On that, I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer). However, failure to tackle the economy, provide relevant training and create long-term prosperity all help to create a second and third generation of young people growing up with despair ever present in their communities. That is not healthy, and it nurtures the likelihood of crime, which damages victim and delinquent alike, as well as their families and the community in which they live.

I worked in the communities that experienced the most painful impact of the first of the Government's recessions in the 1980s. At that time--at least to start with--we could pick up some of those who had been the least successful in their school careers, often because they had turned their backs on the opportunities open to them, and provide the first steps towards training and employment. They often responded positively to being given a chance, but as time went on, the same families ended up with the father on the dole and older brothers and sisters unable to find work. Younger brothers, sisters and cousins approaching working age did so in an atmosphere of discouragement

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and despair. That experience angered and frustrated me sufficiently to consider coming to this place to try to change the evil which the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) was letting loose on decent families in decent communities.

Sadly, largely the same communities felt the burden of crime. Most of the delinquent youngsters with whom I worked--I stress most, not all--did not need to be involved in delinquent activity. There remains truth in the adage, "The devil makes work for idle hands" ; and I assert that lack of hope is the greatest recruiting officer for all criminal activity.

The assertion, "If it isn't hurting, it isn't working," shows callous disregard and ignorance of the effects of social problems on individuals, families and communities at the sharp end. As for the economy, when it hurts in this recession, the pain is felt most--in a way that is most unfair--by the same families and communities who felt the worst pain in every other recession. It is felt by the same people who experience the pain of all the other inequalities in our unequal society. It encourages the conditions for crime in communities that already feel more impact from crime because they contain more victims of crime, as well as more offenders. For many hon. Members, unemployment and criminal activity are one-off experiences. It is often a matter of history repeating itself from generation to generation and, under this Government, even within a single generation. That is the real failure of the Government's approach. They cannot wash their hands of social problems and the incidence of crime by saying, "Let the markets take care of it all". That will not work ; it is not responsible, and future generations will pay for the Government's failure.

The Government must recognise that there needs to be a positive approach to young offenders if we are not to encourage them to grow into hardened and repetitive offenders. I served on the Committee which dealt with what is now the Criminal Justice Act 1991, in the hope that I could draw on my own experience as chairman of the Cardiff juvenile bench, and as someone who had worked with young offenders. I found that amendments that sought to divert young people from criminal activity would not fit into the Bill because of what an Officer of the House described as

"the curious geography of the Bill".

Whatever the Bill was about, it was certainly not about preventing crime and diverting young people from it.

Since well before I was elected to this House, I have pressed for the provision of secure accommodation to end the scandal of young offenders and remand prisoners in particular being held in prison accommodation. Others, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), have pursued the matter vigorously in the House in recent years. The Home Office has now decided that places should be provided but that the Department of Health and the Welsh Office must find the money. But it gets worse : the Home Office has now decided that those Departments must find the money to build the places but that local authorities must find the running costs. If the Prime Minister really believed in the principle of subsidiarity, as he said yesterday, that would certainly not be allowed to happen. Magistrates and others who have called for more secure places want them to be used to contain the activities of young offenders who are not currently kept in prison accommodation, like so-called joyriders and repetitive

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burglars. The current proposals do not meet that requirement. Indeed, they contain the seed of a massive oak tree of nonsense. At present, if there is an objection to bail on the ground that the young offender may commit another crime while on bail, there are two alternatives. Either the magistrate refuses bail and says, effectively, that the court orders that the weekly equivalent of £20, 000 a year is spent on the offender until his case is heard, or the court grants bail and orders that nothing is spent on the offender until the case is heard. There are many cheaper and constructive ways to contain young offenders, but they ware not being funded by the Government. Custodial sentences and remands prevent immediate offending but increase the likelihood of later and more serious reoffending. That is an area for immediate consideration and actions by the Government if they have the slightest interest in protecting society from the growth in criminal activity over which the Home Secretary and the Government continue to preside.

The Government's actions regarding observance of the law do not escape attention by ordinary people. My constituents are outraged by the fact that Ministers seem to regard themselves as above the law. I shall not refer to wider policy matters, or to matters that are currently subject to argument in the courts or on appeal, but I condemn the Government for running away from their responsibilities on Sunday trading. Ordinary citizens cannot understand why they do that. In their squalid and cowardly decisions announced last week, they spelled out in large letters the message that, in Conservative Britain, there is one law for powerful corporations that have a voice at the heart of the Tory party, and another for ordinary individuals in urban and rural communities of Wales and England.

Sir John Wheeler : The hon. Gentleman is being most unfair. The senior Law Officer of the Crown, the Attorney-General, explained to the House that, on the question of the Shops Act 1950, he had to make a decision based not on party politics but on the law.

Mr. Michael : The hon. Gentleman rightly describes the responsibilities of the senior Law Officer. I bow to the knowledge of people like my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West on the technicalities of the law, but the Attorney-General's comments satisfied neither me nor my constituents. My constituents saw him as a responsible Government officer who came to the House to say that the Government washed their hands of the matter and would leave it alone. I repeat my view, which is shared by my constituents, that a squalid and cowardly decision was announced last week, spelling out the fact that there is one law for those with a voice in the Tory party and another for the ordinary individual in the urban and rural communities of Wales and England.

Commercial organisations like the Co-operative Retail Society, the Co- operative Wholesale Society, Marks & Spencer and Iceland have expressed their horror that the Government should so abdicate their responsibility as to say, "We shall do nothing if you break the law," and weakly add the unconvincing refrain, as the Home Office Minister did, "But we'd rather like it if you didn't." Organisations that want to keep the law are effectively being invited to watch their competitors steal their trade, which is not on.

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As chairman of the Co-operative parliamentary group, I was delighted to see Sir Dennis Landau's comments on behalf of the CWS. As he said, such a retailer must recognise that each family in such hard times will buy only one turkey, one tin of biscuits, and one Christmas pudding, and the retailer which is not open will lose that custom. However, he went on to say that the CWS

"remains wholly opposed to unrestricted Sunday trading and will continue to seek a sensible reform of the law on the basis of the REST proposals put forward by Keep Sunday Special Campaign." That must be the way forward. My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) will tackle that issue later if we reach his subject for debate. The point that I am making is that the argument is not one of Sunday trading, but one of law and order, with the Conservative party ranged firmly among the enemies of law and order.

We should not be surprised by that. I saw £3 million stolen from my local authorities of Cardiff and South Glamorgan when the Government introduced retrospective legislation to change the rules that they had set and which those councils had followed carefully and obediently. From 1979 to 1987, six Conservative Ministers were found guilty of breaking the law-- in their official capacity, I hasten to add ; I hate to think what the tally is now. The Conservative party has never been the party of law and order, and during this Parliament it has thrown away the last vestiges of any claim to such a title. To restore law and order in a way that makes sense to, and works to the benefit of, ordinary people--we have an obligation to ensure that Government actions make sense--we need action to tackle the four issues that I have mentioned. We must address the social ills that are at the root of much crime ; we must take action to divert young people into more positive ways of using their time and lives ; we need the sort of common-sense and long-term commitment shown by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) and his team. In short, we need a Labour Government as quickly as possible.

8.14 pm

Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) : This has been a most interesting debate, and I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) on introducing it. I have enjoyed all the contributions, particularly those that touched on the way that crime affects constituents who live in districts such as Cardiff and Sandwell. I have been to many of those areas and seen the problems. I sympathise with the views expressed. I do not want to cover the whole subject, this evening ; I shall focus on what I understand to be the thrust of the debate-- tackling the causes of crime.

The speech of the hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler) disappointed me, as usual. He is extremely knowledgeable on the subject, and I am still something of an idealist at heart. I have an ideal picture of a Chairman of a Select Committee who is knowledgeable, takes an overview of the subject and does not hold a strongly party political view, but weighs the evidence in a dispassionate way. In such a debate, he should both praise and criticise the Government. That would give the House the impression of a Chairman of a Select Committee of some stature.

However, every time I hear the hon. Member for Westminster, North, I am disappointed, because he is such

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an awful Government apologist, and is renowned as such. For example, he reels out evidence that the Government are doing a wonderful job. He mentions Home Office research suggesting that crime is not as bad as everyone thinks, but he does not mention any of the other analyses and carefully toes the party line. He avoids mentioning Home Office research that suggests that there is a relationship between deprivation and crime. That causes me deep disappointment. I hope that, before a Labour Government come to power early next year, the hon. Member will give one speech in the mould of a great Select Committee Chairman.

One of the aspects we should consider in this debate is the necessity of taking a pragmatic rather than an ideological approach. My remarks will follow that line. There is a tidal wave of crime in this country, and it does no good to the people of Cardiff, Sandwell and Westminster to say there is not as much crime there as in Chicago or Sydney. That does not wash. Crime has doubled since 1979 under the so-called party of law and order.

The one sphere of crime that the Government will not consider is its underlying causes. Crime is a complex social phenomenon with no single cause or solution. Research has identified some key factors that affect crime rates. There is a critical link between crime, recession and employment opportunities. Last year, Home Office research showed a clear correlation between recession and levels of property crime. Other research has shown a critical link between crime and employment opportunities.

Only last week, the National Association of Probation Officers issued a report showing that up to 80 per cent. of probation clients are now out of work. The Apex Trust work shows that ex-offenders in employment are three times less likely to offend than those who are unemployed, which is remarkable. I wish that the Minister would respond to a point that I made in a debate last week when I spoke of the tragedy that the employment advisory service--available to prisoners both before and after their release--had been withdrawn by the Government. I wish that it could be restored.

The link between recession, deprivation and crime hardly comes as a surprise--it is a common-sense notion. Moreover, it has been obvious for more than 50 years. As long ago as 1940, Mannheim produced a report on the social aspects of crime in England in the inter-war years. His work showed that crime more than doubled during those years. The idea that the 1930s was a crime-free era is a myth. The same disastrous pattern of crime rising in the wake of recession was seen then as now. In 1940, Mannheim concluded :

"Where unemployment and crime both stand at a high water mark, it can safely be assumed that the latter is largely due to the former." The second critical factor is the treatment of youth. Anyone wishing to tackle crime rates must pay enormous attention to youth crime because of its sheer scale. The hon. Member for Westminster, North touched on that, but he was not convincing when he spoke of the underlying causes of that crime.

Is it not astounding that half of all crime in Britain is committed by people under the age of 21 ? Some 73 per cent. of all auto crime is committed by those under 21. Some two thirds to three quarters of all solved burglaries

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are committed by young men under the age of 21. There is a tidal wave of youth crime, and the Government have not begun to answer it.

Mr. John Patten : Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that there is something new about a substantial majority of crime being committed by young people--that it is a phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s ? If he looks at the statistics, he will see that it has always been like that. Right up to the head waters of time, young men have always been those most inclined to commit crime.

Mr. Sheerman : The right hon. Gentleman is right about the significance of that age group, but I am trying to point out that the age for offending has become very young. The enormous crime rate and the fact that the average age of a young person who takes a car is 15 are new and frightening phenomena.

Mr. Patten : I shall attempt not to intervene again, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way with his characteristic courtesy. As a student of these matters, surely the hon. Gentleman recognises that in, for example, the past five years, the peak age for offending for a young male has not gone down but gone up. The average peak age for offending was 15 but is now 18.

Mr. Sheerman : We can pick over whether the peak age is 15 or 18, but I am saying that crime has doubled. The youth component of that crime is much more substantial than it was, according to all the figures. Whether or not the peak age has gone from 15 to 18--and specific categories of crime move either way--the average age is 18. That is worrying enough, but we are talking about a category of young criminals up to the age of 21.

Research has shown clear links between the level of crime and number of children brought up in poverty in families in difficulty. I quote from Professor Irving's introductory report to this month's international conference on urban safety, drugs and crime prevention in Paris. I hope that the Minister has read this--it should be engraved on the hearts of the Home Secretary and his Ministers. The report states that rates of child poverty

"remained constant in the 1980's for most countries, but doubled in the United Kingdom The results of longitudinal studies suggest that countries that have more child poverty and do not provide universal child care or other programmes to reduce inequalities before the child goes into the school system will have more crime. This is indeed the case. Moreover the rapid increase in child poverty in England, some of which is mitigated"--

admittedly--

"by income transfers, is likely to result in further acceleration in the crime rate in the 1990's".

That is a chilling thought.

The Government are pursuing policies that are directly linked to the rise in crime. There is increasing child poverty in our country. The level of unemployment is rising--especially among the young--and we are seeing the creation of what some commentators call an underclass'. We see alienated young people with no stake in society and, increasingly, without even a bed. Is not that what we would have expected when the Government take on the 16 to 18-year-olds and perpetuate the myth that that age group is in full-time employment, in full-time training or in full-time education? We all know that that is a myth or a lie.

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Many 16 to 18-year olds are living off their wits and on the streets. That is a sad comment on our society. Only a bone-headed Government would not accept that, by taking away young people's ability to claim benefit and housing benefit and the opportunity to receive a decent reward for a training scheme, and by halving the value of the training allowance in the past 12 years, they are picking on young people who, at the same time, are being pushed ever further towards the consumer society. Television advertising tells them that they must have designer trainers, designer clothes and good stereos. It is a sad comment on our society that the Government cannot see what they have done to young people and cannot see the relationship between what they have done and the crime rate. The Minister said that the peak age for offending has risen to 18 from 15, but he chose the end of the two-year period that I would describe as covering the most vulnerable young people on whom the Government have picked in the past 12 years.

If, with the help of all the civil servants who advise Ministers and who sit under the Gallery and elsewhere, one worked on a policy to create crime, one could not come up with anything better than what the Government have created in the past 12 years. They have done a wonderful job of creating crime, but they will still not recognise the link to which I have referred.

Any Government who are seriously concerned about dealing with the escalating crime rate must begin to tackle crime at its roots. That means a concerted attack on poverty and it means attaching far more importance to early crime prevention measures, such as the development of pre-school provision. How can the Minister be complacent about pre-school provision? Why do not the Government set up--as the Labour party will when it takes office in a few months--a national crime prevention council to co-ordinate the work of all the Departments of state in crime prevention?

I return for a moment to the link between pre-school education and the later propensity towards crime. It has been shown that the development of pre-school provision has a very marked effect on later offending. As I have said, we lag behind our European counterparts. Ninety-five per cent. of pre -school children in France and Belgium receive state-funded education. Furthermore, each child has access to eight hours daily nursery provision in France and five to six hours in Belgium. In Britain, only 44 per cent. of three to five-year-olds receive pre-school education, and a substantial proportion of them have a school day of only two and a half hours.

The knock-on effect is unacceptable to the Government, because it means having a properly resourced training programme, a properly resourced pre- school education programme, proper training opportunities and the development of measures to counter unemployment. It also means providing a range of creative leisure opportunities for young people. They are Labour party policies, which are desperately needed in their own right but which have a vital knock-on effect on offending rates generally.

Other countries saw the need for such policies years ago. Again, the French have been at the forefront. In 1983, the Bonnemaison report brought the issues to the fore. The result was a network of municipal crime prevention councils which co-ordinate social and criminal justice agencies to deal with the circumstances that breed crime

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and which focus on youth in particular. Our Conservative Government reject that, as they do so many other aspects of the European social programme.

Indeed, one of the most disgraceful things that we have seen in the Chamber this week was the Maastricht agreement which, in terms of social policy, means that the opportunity to do so much to support the family, children and working mothers has been lost. The knock-on effect will be seen in the crime rate and in other aspects of our social life.

The Government have lead the country into the second division in Europe in this aspect as in many others. Their record on crime is a disaster, and it is time they gave way to a Government who have the imagination and policies to tackle crime fundamentally, not at the periphery.

8.28 pm

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten) : I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer), with whom I have debated closely during the past three or four years, on his good fortune in getting this debate at a rather fashionable hour--earlier than the watches of the night--during the Consolidated Fund debate. I think that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) is as pleased as I that the debate started at 7.15 pm rather than at 4.15 am. I also congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on the style and content of his speech.

It is a sad loss to this House that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should have decided to lay down the burden of representing the electors of Warley, West. He looks, sounds and acts youthful, and it is a great shame when someone like him decides to retire absurdly early. Doubtless he will spend a certain amount of his time enjoying himself. After his retirement, I might try to persuade him to enjoy himself by accompanying me to whatever seaside resort the Conservative party attends for its conference next October--I will ensure his safety of passage into the hall--so that he can see how few pinstripe suits there are, let alone the mythical hats of which he spoke.

I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will forgive me if I answer first the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), who supported the Government's position, before answering the remarks made by Opposition Members, who took a rather different line.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North characteristically set the record straight about manpower allocations in the police force and about the critical role of Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary in objectively advising the Home Secretary on correct force levels and on the identification of posts suitable for civilianisation--for that releases policemen and women from desk jobs and puts them back on the beat, which is what the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West wants. He rightly paid tribute to the West Midlands police for what they have done in this process. Would that other forces had briskly followed the excellent example of the West Midlands force--

Mr. Archer : Perhaps it is churlish of me, after the kind remarks of the Minister, to venture to comment on what he has just said, but at the risk of being tiresome, may I point out that what I said before was that it does not follow that a decision made by the Home Secretary

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corresponds with the advice that he receives from the chief inspector. Lest anyone be misled, I should be grateful if he would confirm that.

Mr. Patten : I can confirm that the ultimate decision is ministerial. Ministers must accept our responsibility for decisions. But the Home Secretary benefits from the objective advice of HMCIC, a distinguished policeman, and of his colleagues, who are all serving policemen and who can therefore speak from both sides of the fence. The other important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North concerned looking at English and Welsh crime in the context of the international scene. I agree with Opposition Members that what matters to our electorate is crime in this country. The people in my constituency are concerned about what happens there, not in America or France. Still, it is important to point out that Britain is not a violent country compared with almost every other western European country. Opposition Members like to make great play of comparing our unemployment rates with those in certain west European countries, of course. I do not suggest that, just because Britain is less violent and less prone to crime than most other west European countries, that diminishes the necessity to concentrate on the picture at home, but let us not frighten people unnecessarily by comparisons with the rest of Europe and the United States. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North also mentioned car crime in his short but excellent speech. I agree with what he said about the Association of British Insurers, the insurance industry and the motor car industry, here, in western Europe and increasingly in central Europe--not to mention Japan and Korea. Those industries are scrutinising much more what they can do to make cars more secure and less easily stolen.

Yesterday, the Home Secretary and I saw representatives of car manufacturers and car importers in the United Kingdom for the second in a series of meetings. Considerable progress is being made, and we have agreed a three-point agenda for improvements in car manufacture, not just in this country but in western Europe. Happily, the message is also being carried back to Japanese manufacturers.

The first significant area for improvement concerns visible vehicle identification numbers, which are critical in stopping the international trade in car crime. Secondly, we must continue to work on introducing deadlocking for all cars. Thirdly, we must introduce effective and efficient immobilising devices. We were delighted yesterday to obtain the agreement of the manufacturers to concentrate on these three key areas. I pay tribute to the increasing attention that the industry is giving to these aspects.

The right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West first discussed the causes of crime. Any sensible policy concerned with reducing crime--crime can never be abolished--needs three components. First, we need a tough and hard-edged law and order service. The right hon. and learned Gentleman sits in court and passes sentence himself, so he has seen the issue both from these Benches and from the Bench he adorns when he sits as a recorder. That is the traditional part of British law and order, and it is what people think of when they mention it

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at Tory or Labour conferences. I do not know what they talk about at Liberal party conferences on law and order, and the party is not represented here this evening.

Secondly, we have added to the traditional approach the new approach of crime prevention. There has been an extraordinary growth in neighbourhood watch schemes. In 1982, there was one such scheme ; now there are 92,000--a great tribute to people, for instance, in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's constituency.

There is a great deal of co-operation between the police, the fire service, the social services and South Staffordshire water board, which has devised a crime prevention package which home helps from the social services department distributed to about 5,000 homes in the area. Some of the information was printed in large type so that elderly people could read it. From such little things, considerable advances can accrue. I pay tribute to all who work in these services for what they do.

The third element, on which we have not yet concentrated enough, is criminal prevention--trying to stop people becoming criminals in the first place. Last week I was in the north-west and in Salford, where I toured a number of places, among them a primary school--it would be wrong to name it here--where the head teacher, who was clearly devoted to her inner-city children, told me that there were 260 children in the school.

I asked the sort of questions that visiting Ministers always ask : how many people worked there, what kind of classes they had, what activities and problems there were. She began to talk about the problems. Without my prompting, she said, "I have a lot of people here who I can predict are going to get into trouble." I asked how many. She said, "I have about 30 here who will get into trouble when they reach their teens. They are all right when they are five or six--they are protected then--but between seven and eleven they start becoming"--her phrase is burnt into my memory-- "clones of their elder brothers and sisters who have got into trouble before." She was cheerful enough, but she was saddened when identifying those children whom she thought at risk.

It is surely important that we begin to concentrate our efforts on trying to find ways of helping such children before it becomes necessary to punish them, and to prevent them from becoming criminals in the first place. I hope that the Labour party would agree with that.

Mr. Michael : It is hardly our place to agree with something that we have been trying to tell the Minister for a long time. If he is serious in what he is saying now, it is rather like a conversion on the road to Damascus. I hope that the Minister will address seriously the comments that he has just made. Will he now take the sort of steps that people such as myself, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) and my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) urged on him before, during and after the passage of the Criminal Justice Bill, or is that apparent conversion just another anecdotal experience? Did he really experience a conversion, and will he now respond to the remarks that he has just made?

Mr. Patten : The hon. Gentleman is impertinent, because it was all those who thought like the Opposition who did so much in the 1960s and 1970s to undermine some of the messages which used to come from schools,

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teachers, park keepers and others who were part of the warp and weft in helping people grow up straight rather than crooked. But that is a debate which will continue.

Mr. Michael rose --

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