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House of Commons

Friday 5 March 1993

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[ Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Point of Order

9.34 am

Mr. Tom Clarke (Monklands, West) : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I should be grateful if you would consider a point of order arising from our proceedings on Wednesday this week, when we were dealing with Scottish questions. You may recall that my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley, South (Mr. McMaster) asked whether the Secretary of State would be meeting representatives of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to discuss local services.

Later in our exchanges, I intervened to ask for the Government's response to the problems of community care in Scotland. That led to the following reply from the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), the Minister responsible at the Scottish Office :

"The House expected the hon. Gentleman to defend Monklands district council and its employment policies and religious discrimination. Does the hon. Gentleman not defend every action of Monklands district council? I see that he sits silent, and I am not surprised."--[ Official Report, 3 March 1993 ; Vol. 220, c. 291.]

I gave the hon. Gentleman notice that I intended to refer to him, although he did not do the same to me.

That exchange led to a comment in yesterday's evening papers by the chairman of the Monklands West Conservative Association :

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"It was noticeable that Tom Clarke, given full opportunity in the Commons yesterday to make his position clear, refused to do so. He sat through it all and said nothing, no doubt believing that this will show he was not involved."

Madam Speaker, you and I know the rules of the House, and you know that I was not entitled to respond to a question from a Minister at Question Time. You also know that it is disgraceful that the Minister, in an effort to influence television viewers and get the response that we saw in yesterday's evening press, made that comment which was not a contribution to an inquiry that was published yesterday--in which I had no involvement whatever--covering events after I had left Monklands district council to come to the House in 1982.

Is not it despicable that the Minister has abused the procedures of the House for cheap smears based on unsubstantiated allegations? I ask for your considered view on that abuse of our procedures.

Madam Speaker : I noticed that one or two rhetorical questions were asked during Question Time on Wednesday. Of course, there is no possibility for Members to reply to such questions and therefore no conclusions should be drawn when they do not. That fact is well understood within the House, but it may not be so to those who follow our proceedings, and I am glad to be able to make that position clear now.

Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) : Further to that point of order--

Madam Speaker : There can be no further point of order. I have dealt with the matter.

Mr. Riddick : Well, Madam Speaker, it is fair to point out that the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) had a number of opportunities to respond to the accusations of corruption in Monklands district council.

Madam Speaker : Order. That is not the case. I have given my ruling and it is an abuse of the House to attempt to reopen the matter. We will now move on to the Adjournment debate.

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Crime

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Chapman.]

Madam Speaker : Before we proceed, let me inform the House that I have had to impose a 10-minute limit on speeches between 11.30 and 1 o'clock, because there is a great deal of interest in this Adjournment motion on crime and crime prevention.

9.38 am

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Michael Jack) : In starting this debate, we should reflect for a moment on the word "crime". It is a neat word to describe a complex problem--crime itself is a battle and a battleground. It is like a virus. It is not seen and it is difficult to treat, but its effects blight the lives of all too many of our fellow citizens. The language that we use to deal with it is powerful. Words like "punishment", "victim", "murder" and "arrest", stir deep emotions and powerful feelings in all of us. Crime is frustrating. Crime is frightening. Crime is complicated.

Crime is frustrating to the politician because there is no easy, off-the- shelf answer to crime. It is frustrating because there are fashions in both crime and punishment and short-term policies do not always lend themselves to the best long-term solutions. It is frustrating to the public, who rightly want to lead their lives free from fear and in relative security.

Crime is frightening, because it is not easy to predict where and when it will occur. It is frightening for victims because its effects can be both physically painful and mentally traumatic. It is frightening because it represents the fight between good and evil. Crime is complicated : complicated to fight, because it involves many agencies ; complicated because its analysis brings forward as many questions as there are answers. Like the virus, it has a unique ability to keep changing its shape and form. But, above all, crime is about its victims.

As a new Home Office Minister, I spent last Easter Monday at Blackpool police station and watched for myself the victims of crime coming in and reporting what had happened to them : the old lady crying, who had had her purse snatched and lost £270, the man whose car had been broken into. All this made me resolve never to forget that, behind all the statistics of crime, are real people whose lives have been cruelly blighted by crime. That is why the first thing that I want to put before hon. Members in this debate is our response to the victims of crime.

Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow) : I hesitate to intervene in an English debate, but does the Minister agree that a great deal of crime on the streets could be reduced if there were more police officers on the streets? Does not that involve two factors? The first is the recruitment of more officers. The second is taking police officers away from the court rooms. In my part of Scotland, many of them waste hundreds of hours each week of the year because they are called to court but never have to give evidence. I am sure that the same problem exists south of the border.

Mr. Jack : The hon. Gentleman comes from part of the kingdom--this is the Parliament of the whole kingdom--where crime levels have fallen remarkably under the Conservative Government. He may have noticed reports in the newspapers today the the Commissioner of Police of

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the Metropolis has addressed precisely the issues that underlie the hon. Gentleman's question. He talked about a thorough review of the management of his police force and putting more officers back on the beat.

It is also right that my hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, in the work to which I shall refer later, has grasped the nettle of police reform. We are anxious to respond to issues such as that which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. But at least we are taking action, not merely talking about it. Conservative Members may be interested to know that, last Sunday, when the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) was pontificating on the "Walden" programm, he mentioned the police only twice in all his rhetoric.

Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North) : Did my hon. Friend note the figure announced this week, that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police intends to take 700 police officers off paperwork and put them back on the beat? Will not that help us in London? Is it not an excellent development?

Mr. Jack : I am delighted to have my hon. Friend's endorsement of that point. I was aware of that announcement. I am delighted that the new Commissioner is so active.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : Opposition Members welcome the appointment of Paul Condon, and were greatly encouraged by his first speech and his proposals. Will the Government support Mr. Condon's proposals for reorganisation within the Metropolitan police?

Mr. Jack : The thrust and theme of what Paul Condon wants to do underlies the approach which my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is employing through the Sheehy inquiry and his further thoughts on improving the effectiveness of the police. To get more police officers out from behind desks on to the streets to do their vital work in the community is a cause which we have in common.

Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann) : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Jack : I wish to make a little progress, but I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.

I mentioned that my first task was to talk about the victims of crime. I wish to put before the House what we have done to address those problems. In 1990, we published the victims charter, which set out for the first time what victims of crime have a right to expect. We support Victim Support. Its increased budget next year will be £8.4 million. That will provide 375 local victim support schemes, covering 98 per cent. of the country. It will provide practical help and emotional support to victims of crime.

We want the courts to use their powers more frequently to order offenders to compensate their victims. In 1964 a Conservative Government set up the criminal injuries compensation scheme, which last year paid out £144 million to the victims of crime. We have made it easier for vulnerable victims such as children to give evidence in court.

However, we do not forget those who are the silent victims--victims of the fear of crime--because we know that crime touches the whole community. Our response

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involves the whole community. But there never has been a quick fix, and that is why we have a long-term strategy. I want today to cover the nature of the problem we face, our strategy for dealing with it, and respond to concerns that hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed and will undoubtedly express today.

Mr. Trimble : I come from the part of the United Kingdom which has the lowest crime rate. Indeed, it has the lowest crime rate of any industrialised nation in the world outside Japan. That is a point well worth remembering. It occurs to me to wonder why this is an English debate, if this is the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Minister referred to the Government's record with regard to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. Why does he not follow the excellent example of Northern Ireland and put the compensation of victims on a statutory basis, so that they have a right to compensation and do not depend on the exercise of discretion?

Mr. Jack : I did not notice that the title of the debate contained any delineation by geography of the kingdom of what we might cover. So keen am I to learn about crime in different parts of the kingdom that on Monday this week I visited Lisnevin to see the juvenile justice system. I realised how, for example, the secure accommodation for juveniles there made its contribution to the excellent figures to which the hon. Gentleman referred. He may well have noticed a parliamentary answer that appeared in Hansard at the end of last year, in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary said that he was looking at arrangements to improve the way in which our Criminal Injuries Compensation Board works.

Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale) : When my hon. Friend was at Lisnevin, did he discover that, contrary to what we have heard this week, there is potential for a regime of containment and education, and that Lisnevin has a success rate of about 69 per cent?

Mr. Jack : My hon. Friend makes his point in clear and unequivocal terms.

Mrs. Barbara Roche (Hornsey and Wood Green) : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Jack : I wish to make some progress, because I am conscious of the number of hon. Members who wish to speak in the debate.

Mrs. Roche : On Lisnevin.

Mr. Jack : I will give way on that point.

Mrs. Roche : I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on Lisnevin. Will he confirm that one of the difficulties with Lisnevin is that education is not as properly resourced as it might be? If the emphasis is to be on education, further inquiries need to be made about the lack of resources there and proper resources should be made available.

Mr. Jack : One of the reasons for visiting Lisnevin and other institutions for dealing with juvenile crime is better to inform our work to develop the thoroughgoing approach and policy that were outlined by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary earlier this week. The hon. Lady did not mention that Lisnevin tries hard to

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follow the tenets of the national curriculum and is inspected accordingly. So perhaps we must be less selective in our use of information

Mrs. Roche rose--

Mr. Jack : I should like to make a little progress now. What is the scale and nature of the problem to be tackled? One measure is the amount of crime recorded by the police. In the 12 months to the end of June 1992, the police in England and Wales recorded 5.5 million crimes. As in previous years, 94 per cent. were crimes against property, more than half were thefts of or from vehicles or burglaries and 5 per cent. were violent crimes. The total number was 11 per cent. more than in the previous year.

Those figures are a matter of concern to us, but judging the effectiveness of our action against crime by those figures is like judging the state of the health service purely on waiting lists, for the number of crimes recorded by the police tells only part of the story. The statistics are influenced by many different factors. I am glad to see that some sections of the press acknowledge that. We are not, as has been suggested by some, in the grip of a strange new phenomenon. Throughout the industrialised world, recorded crime has been increasing inexorably since the second world war. Some of the increase is due to more offences being included in police records, because victims are more likely to report, and the police to record, offences when they occur.

The 1992 British crime survey showed that between 1981 and 1991 the amount of crime experienced rose at half the rate recorded by the police. For violent crime, the increase in the recorded figures is because more of it is coming into the open, but the actual increase is on a lesser scale. Our policies have encouraged increased reporting of such crimes as rape, domestic violence and child abuse. Only if those crimes are brought to public attention can they be dealt with.

Recent international surveys confirm that people in England and Wales are comparatively safe. Compared with other countries in western Europe, in England the risk of being a victim of crime is about average. The risk of sexual assault is well below average, and of violent assault just below average.

Of all crimes, violent crimes cause the fiercest reaction, but our statistical indicators tell us some things about violence that may surprise the House. Young men aged 16 to 24 are the group at greatest risk of being violently assaulted and, despite what some press reporting would have us believe, women over 60 are the least at risk. Indeed, women are at much less risk of violent assault from a stranger in a public place than is generally imagined.

Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton) : On the subject of statistics, my hon. Friend will be aware that last week The Independent, and some weeks ago The Sunday Express, published figures from unpublished Home Office and police statistics showing that the latest clear-up rate had dropped in many areas, most notably in those covering the west country--the Avon and Somerset and Devon and Cornwall constabularies. That is causing great concern among my constituents and in neighboring constituencies.

First, can my hon. Friend tell the House when those figures will be published officially? Secondly, can he say

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whether any caveats should be attached to them? Will he also deal in his speech with why the clear-up rate is falling, if it is doing so, as it is a matter of grave concern?

Mr. Jack : I agree that that issue is of considerable concern. The work of analysing the data has not yet finished. The Metropolitan police, for example, have been doing a great deal of work on it. We have to accept that one of the advantages to the police of improved management information is that it shows up trends in their effectiveness. If we compare the figures for 1991 and 1992 for the 40 police forces outside the London area, we find that total arrest rates have increased. For example, the number of files that provincial forces send to the Crown prosecution service has increased and the productivity of individual police officers has risen. The picture is complicated and part of the answer may well lie in the care that the police are taking to ensure that their decision making is correct when they make arrests and charges and that there is a high probability that safe convictions will ultimately result. We are considering that matter, but it is complicated, and I note my hon. Friend's concern.

Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) : I applaud the fact that the Home Office is making more information available to the public. Could my hon. Friend therefore explain why information about previous convictions is denied to magistrates when sentencing the people who appear before them?

Mr. Jack : It is not. If magistrates decide to call for a pre- sentence report, information on the previous record of the individual concerned is avaiablle. I shall be coming to some of the problems that underlie my hon. Friend's question about section 29(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 and I shall certainly be interested to hear hon. Members' comments on the matter.

I was talking about the nature of crime, how we define it and what we are doing to tackle it. Our objective in tackling crime is to ensure that the public are protected, that those who commit crimes are apprehended and punished, and that every effort is made to prevent crimes from being committed in the first place. To achieve that, our strategy involves action at international, national and local level by all Government Departments, by a wide range of agencies outside government and by the whole community. It involves the Government providing a properly resourced and effective police service, well administered courts, a well managed probation service, a properly resourced prison service and a crime prevention strategy involving all Government Departments, local authorities, local agencies and local people in a broad-based partnership against crime.

The Government's record has been one of continually increasing the resources of the criminal justice system. More money has meant that police and civilian numbers in England and Wales are up by 31,600 ; police spending is up by 81 per cent. in real terms ; the number of officers back on the beat is up ; the biggest prison building programme this century is under way and 21 new prisons are to be open by the mid-1990s ; and spending on the probation service, which administers punishment, is up. We have also given the police and courts more powers to deal effectively with offenders. It was the Government who introduced the

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Criminal Justice Act 1988, which gave the Attorney-General the right to refer excessively lenient sentences for serious offences to the Court of Appeal. This Government introduced maximum penalties of life for trafficking in hard drugs and for attempted rape. This Government introduced a maximum penalty for child cruelty of up to 10 years.

We introduced the Aggravated Vehicle-Taking Act 1992 to provide tough new penalties for that so-called tragic activity of joy-riding. We introduced new powers for the courts to confiscate the assets of drug traffickers and people convicted of other profitable crimes, and we introduced the Criminal Justice Act 1991. Now we are taking steps to address the problems of and deal with the persistent juvenile offenders who are a menace to their communities.

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : The Minister quickly passed by the question of increased expenditure on the criminal justice system. What is the total cost of that system and, to put matters in perspective, what is the cost of expenditure on crime prevention by comparison?

Mr. Jack : I shall deal with that in more detail, but the Home Office spends about £6.5 billion on the areas identified by the hon. Gentleman, out of its budget of just over £8 billion.

In putting before the House an unequivocal, definite and clearly stated record of our achievements, I look to hon. Members on the Opposition Benches--who are smiling--to ask what they were doing in the meantime. They were busy writing their manifesto for the general election. Those hon. Members who are pointing an accusatory finger at the Government's record on crime could find only 155 words to write on crime in their manifesto, which was less than the number that they wrote about arts and leisure.

What was their passionate statement on crime? What was their strategy and their new insight into dealing with the problem? I shall tell the House and pick out four points from their manifesto : "fencing off waste land ; demolishing derelict buildings ; improving street lighting ; modernising vulnerable estates". There is no mention of being tough on crime, and the word "community" did not appear once in their manifesto. There was no mention of tough sentences. There were a limited number of ideas in that manifesto.

It is quite remarkable how the Opposition have suddenly taken an interest in crime, when for so long they have been happy to deride our efforts. This from the party which opposed us on the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the Public Order Act 1986, and the Criminal Justice Acts of 1988 and 1991. It has consistently opposed the renewal of the prevention of terrorism Act. Was it not ironic that, last week, the Labour spokesman on Northern Ireland was telling us how the Opposition wanted to water down the PTA, as a means of trying to find a way in which they could support it, just as the IRA were bombing Warrington?

Such is the sorry record of the Opposition's thinking on crime and crime prevention. The Conservative party has a consistent record of dealing with those problems. The Opposition are the

Johnny-come-latelies to the subject.

Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith) : The Minister started off quite well, but he is now digging himself into the hole

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into which the Tory party always digs itself. The list of the actions that the Conservative Government have taken has one outstanding feature : they have not stopped the problem growing. He could have summed that up by saying that there is now one police officer for every 400 citizens, when, 20 years ago, there was one for every 600 citizens--incidentally, the number of police officers has gone up under both parties.

The issue is crime prevention--preventing it from happening. The Minister's record included nothing on that. If he looks at our manifesto and what I said in speeches in 1985 and 1986 when I was a member of the Opposition Front-Bench team on home affairs--I will send him copies of them--he will discover that we were concerned with preventing victims from becoming victims in the first place.

Mr. Jack : I have looked at the four key points in the Opposition's manifesto, and I cannot see the words "crime prevention". If one has the eyesight to read it, the words appear in little print down at the bottom of the page somewhere in the sentence that reads : "Planning applications will be examined against crime prevention criteria."

Such is the ruthless and incisive way in which the Opposition are proposing to deal with crime.

If the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) had listened to the answer that I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson), he would understand--if he had ever been in

government--that the resources available to spend on the criminal justice system are finite, but at least our police productivity has increased.

Mr. Soley rose --

Mr. Jack : You had your say, and I want to have mine.

In a moment I shall discuss crime--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris) : Order. There is a particular manner of addressing hon. Members : it is "hon. Member" : we do not use the word "you" in the Chamber.

Mr. Jack : I apologise if, in the fierceness of the debate, I was in any way impolite to the House and to the hon. Member for Hammersmith. He and I have debated on many occasions and the last thing that I would wish to do would be to be discourteous to him. I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for pulling me up on that point, because discipline is a key factor in dealing with crime. I am now duly disciplined.

As I said to the hon. Member for Hammersmith, I shall deal with crime prevention in a moment, but first I should like to consider the Criminal Justice Act 1991, in particular section 29 and the provisions for unit fines, which I know have caused concern to right hon. and hon. Members. I look forward to hearing their views in this debate and I assure the House that the Home Secretary and I will listen carefully to what our colleagues say. We will take their remarks seriously.

I should remind the House that the 1991 Act introduced changes that were supported by hon. Members and which I believe deserve powerful endorsement. The Act allows for longer sentences to be passed for violent and sex crimes. It ensures that all prisoners will serve at least half their sentence in prison rather than a third, as before. It

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gives courts a new duty to bring home to parents their responsibilities when their children offend. It enables child victims to give evidence in new ways.

There is some concern about what is happening in the criminal justice system. I hope that hon. Members will be reassured to note that the signs are that the rate of increase in nationally recorded crime in 1992 fell back to the long-term average. We are looking hard at what is going on all over the country. The police are working effectively and productively to bring offenders to justice. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is addressing the question of the structure of the police and their overall effectiveness. A crucial part of our strategy, which addresses the point raised by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, is preventing crime in the first place. The fact that so much crime is preventable supports our view that the Government alone cannot be responsible for fighting it. We have always involved the people in the home, the neighbourhood and in the city. We want to involve them a lot more.

The word "community" has always been in the Conservative dictionary, but the Labour party has only just found what page it is on. Our policies have always been founded on sound research. The crime prevention unit of the Home Office, set up by this Government, has identified what works for individual people and individual businesses ; for community groups such as crime prevention panels and neighbourhood watches ; for the police, local authorities and other statutory agencies ; for multi-agency partnerships and within specific Government programmes such as the safer cities programme, launched by the Home Office, the urban programme and city challenge. All that is bound together by the partnership approach.

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent) : I should like to draw my hon. Friend's attention to one issue that is causing much anxiety. All over the country, good schemes that involve young people, as volunteers, are supported strongly by the youth service and the education service. There is anxiety that, with the move to grant-maintained schools, the funding for such schemes will dry up. It would be a tragedy if a major advance in one Department's work should lead to a massive retreat in the work of another.

Mr. Jack : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, which has not gone unnoticed by me. I am glad that my hon. Friend mentioned voluntary activity, because that work and that which we fund through the Community Development Foundation, has a great deal to do in strengthening and empowering communities to deal with crime prevention.

Mr. Mike O'Brien (Warwickshire, North) : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Jack : If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I shall address the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) first.

Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow) : The Minister is only giving way to his hon. Friends.

Mr. Jack : I have given way generously to Opposition Members.

Mr. Dixon : The Minister is taking up a lot of time.

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Mr. Jack : I note what the hon. Gentleman says ; if he wants me to stop taking interventions from his hon. Friends, I shall be delighted to do so.

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent, I am concerned about what is happening to the youth service, but, equally, local authorities are victims of crime. A study in 1987 showed that local authorities face a bill of £500 million because of crime. Obviously, the youth service has a contribution to make in dealing with crime and I hope that those two points will be juxtaposed. Our strategy is to empower people to help themselves. We empower individuals by making available advice and information--for example, with 12.5 million copies of "Practical Ways to Crack Crime". It was individuals, helped by motor manufacturers, who made such a success of Car Crime Prevention Year. We empower neighbourhoods--there are now 115,000 neighbourhood watch schemes in England and Wales covering more than 5 million households. We empower communities to develop their own community safety strategies. The crime concern programme set up area reduction schemes and youth crime prevention initiatives. We have commissioned a new "Good Practice Guide" to give clear practical advice to communities on what works and how to make it work.

To empower the cities, we launched the safer cities programme, which is a major crime prevention initiative. It is having positive results in combating crime and fear of it. It was launched in 1988 and there are now 20 local projects, which, between them have sponsored more than 3,000 individual crime prevention schemes. They have produced many excellent results in combating crime. The Government wish to build on that success by offering other areas the chance to participate in up to 20 new phase 2 projects.

At the national level, the fight against crime will be boosted by the new National Board for Crime Prevention ; a practical vehicle for solving problems, not a talking shop. The board will generate new ideas, draw on a wide range of expertise, suggest practical local and national strategies for crime prevention and involve all sections of the community. I have been inundated with offers of help from individuals and businesses alike. I hope to make an announcement on the membership of that board shortly after Easter and I want the first board meeting to be convened in May.

The ministerial group on crime prevention will pull all the schemes together across government. There is much in the programmes of other Departments that can be and is being done to tackle aspects of crime.

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