House of Commons Hansard Debates for 5 Mar 1993

Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) : Replying to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman), the Minister claimed that the crime rate in Scotland had fallen, and boasted that that had happened under a Conservative Government. As the Minister boasted that anything of credit in Scotland was the responsibility of the Conservative Government, he must accept responsibility also, on behalf of his Government, for the fact that, during their period in office, crime has doubled and the clear-up rate has fallen from 41 per cent. to 29 per cent.

In a speech lasting 34 minutes, the Minister hardly referred, if at all, to the causes of crime--yet unless we deal with them, crime and the number of its victims will continue to increase, and the damage to the community will worsen.

Column 586

I bring to the attention of the House the case of an alleged criminal in my constituency--I will not give his name. He came to me a few weeks ago to say that his giro had been lost in the post, and that the Post Office had apologised to him when that happened in the past. He was told that he would have to wait seven weeks for a replacement.

That constituent has three small children, one of whom attends a special school, yet he was left with nothing to live on. I wrote to the Benefits Agency about that constituent and it replied that there had been a number of giro cheque irregularities involving payment of income support to the constituent in question, that the sector fraud team and the police had interviewed him on a number of occasions and that investigations were still under way. The agency referred to a history of unresolved fraud, and by doing so it said that my constituent was criminal.

Last weekend, my constituent came to see me again, and told me that the police had interviewed him only once, in December 1991. They stated then that they would test for his fingerprints on giro cheques in his name that had gone astray but which had been cashed, and that, if his fingerprints were found on them, he would be charged with fraud. That was 15 months ago. The police have not been in touch with my constituent since. He is alleged by the Benefits Agency to be a criminal, and meanwhile his children go without sufficient food. The agencies have made a mess of it, denying him milk tokens and money. The police have had to waste time on an allegation against a law-abiding man who is trying to house and to feed a wife and three small children, one of whom is attending a special school. He has been libelled as a criminal and is deprived of the means of keeping his family because he cannot get a job and is denied income support. Heaven knows what the temptation must be to my constituent to resort to crime, to keep his family going. He resists that temptation--yet Mr. Michael Bichard, chief executive of the Benefits Agency, who receives a salary of £79,000, wants to label my constituent a criminal, and he is going to extreme lengths to do so. At the same time, my constituency is riven with real criminals. Recently, five minutes from my home, a gunman barged into a club on a drug run. Also near my home, a man was kidnapped on the street, taken to a house and tortured.

The Minister referred to car radio sets. In my constituency, such thefts are now so common that they are mentioned only incidentally in conversation ; people do not bother to report them to the police, because they know that the police can do nothing about the problem. The actual crime figures are even higher than the Government's appalling statistics, because so many people no longer bother to report petty crime to the police.

The number of crimes reported, meanwhile, has soared. As I have said, crime in the country as a whole has doubled since the Government came to power. In the Greater Manchester police C division, which broadly covers my constituency, the crime rate is now 265 per cent. of the rate when the Government came to office. That is a far larger increase than the increase in the country as a whole. In 1980, when the crime rate in C division was little more than a third of the rate today, the clear-up rate was a very creditable 45 per cent., well above the national average. Today, the division's clear-up rate is 29 per cent. In my constituency, the number of crimes cleared up is

Column 587

now smaller than the total number of crimes- -cleared up and not cleared up--committed in my constituency when the Government came to power.

Let me make it clear that I do not criticise the police in any way. Greater Manchester has a first-rate chief constable--Peter Wilmot--who has come into the city like a breath of fresh air. He is accessible to people and will travel anywhere in his area to discuss their problems.

Mr. Riddick : The last chief constable was a good man, too.

Mr. Kaufman : I am talking about the present chief constable, Mr. Peter Wilmot, for whom I have the highest regard and respect. His force does the best that it can, despite sometimes being distracted and made to waste their time investigating nonsensical charges against people such as the constituent to whom I referred earlier. How can the police, even when they are doing their best, cope with escalating crime and insufficient resources? I have received repeated complaints from the Greater Manchester police authority about the insufficient resources allocated to them to deal with one of the highest crime rates in the country--if not the highest. Much of the crime is youth crime. We do not have the figures for C division, but we have the figures for the Greater Manchester police force areas, which show that the rate of known crime committed by those aged between 10 and 16 is 30 per cent. above the national level. Those figures are, of course, inadequate : more than seven in 10 known crimes--as distinct from those that are not even reported are not cleared up ; we therefore do not know who committed them. Many crimes are committed through pure wickedness ; there is no point in pretending otherwise. All crimes-- whoever commits them, and whatever that person's motive and background--are inexcusable. The overwhelming majority of my constituents are law-abiding people who know right from wrong, are determined to lead honest and upright lives and bring up their children to follow their example. When I mix with the churchgoers, community groups and ethnic minority groups in Gorton, I observe that my constituents are overwhelmingly law-abiding people ; only a small minority break the law.

None the less, it is important to understand the backgrounds both of those who keep the law and of those who break it. My constituency is one of the most poverty stricken in Britain. A test of poverty is the number of households in receipt of housing benefit : 46 per cent. of households in Manchester receive such benefit--more than in any other city, including Glasgow and Liverpool, which come second and third respectively.

In my constituency, poverty is greater than in Manchester as a whole. Among 634 constituencies in Great Britain, mine comes 28th in terms of unemployment : 18.9 per cent. of my constituents are unemployed, and 26.3 per cent. of men. More than one in four males who have left school, and whom I see in my constituency, are out of a job. The national unemployment average is 10.6 per cent., compared with 18.9 per cent. in my constituency ; the male national average is 14.2 per cent. Of the 18.9 per cent. who are unemployed in my constituency, 36 per cent.--more than one in three--are aged under 25. That is 24 per cent. above the national average.

The fact that a person is unemployed certainly does not mean that that person is a criminal. The overwhelming

Column 588

majority of my 6,000 unemployed constituents would never even consider committing a crime, but the temptation to commit crime must be greater for the unemployed than for those in jobs and it must be especially great for young people with time on their hands. What does such a young person do in Gorton? One option is to stay at home--if the person concerned has a home. My constituency has a high level of homelessness and bad housing. On 17 March, the Princess of Wales will open a housing association development in Longsight : it consists of just eight dwellings, but that is two more dwellings than Manchester city council has in its house-building programme for the whole city this year, and eight more than it has in its programme for the coming financial year. In the last year of the Labour Government, Manchester built 2,500 houses ; this year it will build none, because the Government have taken away all the subsidies and ring-fenced the housing revenue account. My constituents cannot even secure proper repairs for their council houses.

Once, my constituency had a major engineering industry : it was a major engineering centre for the whole country. Today, the major industry is homelessness. Some private landlords are on the way to becoming millionaires on money that they have been paid to house the homeless, when that same money could be used to build hundreds of houses, to give the homeless proper homes and to keep families together.

If a young person in my constituency has no decent home in which to stay, or wants to vary his or her day by going out, where does he go? Until recently, he could have gone to look at the animals in the pets corners at Debdale park or Platt fields, but the Government's squeeze on council spending has forced Manchester to close Debdale park and to consider closing Platt fields. Both are within walking distance of most homes in my constituency.

I strongly disagree with the council's decision to close those amenities and I am campaigning against the closures. I hope that we can still save Platt fields ; but the Government impose enormous financial compulsions for such cuts. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been taken away from my city council as a result of the reduction in what used to be the rate support grant, and the abolition of housing subsidies. At present, young people in my constituency can go to the Arcadia sports centre in Levenshulme or to the Victoria baths. Soon, unless the council is persuaded to change its mind, young people will be unable to visit those places, because both are to be closed.

The Prime Minister grabs headlines by boosting Manchester's Olympic bid, but the Secretary of State for the Environment is killing off the training grounds for future Olympic athletes in Manchester by squeezing local authority spending, which is forcing Manchester city council to consider such unattractive cuts. That is sickening hypocrisy from the Government.

We are losing all kinds of amenities in my constituency that could have kept young people off the streets. Some are going because of cuts forced on the council by the Government. Some are going because the Government are abolishing urban programme projects. I was astounded to hear the Minister boasting about urban programme projects, when many are going down the drain because of deliberate decisions taken by the Government. Some projects are going because the Government are cutting funding under section 11 of the Local Government Act

Column 589

1966. The Home Secretary is making those cuts--the same Home Secretary who announced this week a cosmetic and almost totally useless alleged initiative to combat youth crime.

Although less than a third of all criminals are caught, the Government are spending more money on detaining them than they are on preventing crime, which, if successful, would mean that they would not have to be detained, and there would be fewer victims of crime. I wrote to the Home Secretary three weeks ago about the cuts in section 11 funding, but he has not even bothered to send a postcard in acknowledgement.

The head teacher and staff at Stanley Grove school in Longsight--a particularly deprived part of a deprived constituency--have written to me this week in despair at the cuts in their section 11 project for multi- ethnic teaching. The Home Office agreed that project should go ahead for five years, but after eight months it is murdering the project.

Stanley Grove school had to give my constituents music lessons on the stairs to try to give them the kind of start in life that the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day) believes is somehow better than it was in the 1930s. I was a child in the 1930s, and in the working-class area of Leeds where I lived, we did not suffer from the despair or degradation that is being inflicted on my constituency by the Government. I do not have to listen to the hon. Member for Cheadle speak about his grandfather ; I can talk about my own experience.

Programes that keep our community together are being cut all over my constituency. The other day, I received a cry of despair from Gorton community centre about the way in which cuts in funding are affecting their valuable and necessary work in a deprived area. Problems grip other parts of my constituency. The Government boast of building a huge Olympic stadium in Manchester, but Abbey Hey AFC, a club in my constituency which took over derelict land and turned it into a football ground, and which gallantly provides something useful and constructive for young people to do and keeps them off the streets and away from the temptations of crime, cannot even find money for new changing rooms or a training area. That voluntary organisation cannot find a single source of funding for new changing rooms, yet the Prime Minister tells us that he is a football fan. What may a young person do in my constituency? He can, and I am afraid too many do, take drugs--to his own, his family's and the community's deep disadvantage. He finances his habit by breaking into cars and houses and stealing radios, video players and televisions to sell. What he increasingly cannot hope for is to be helped to break the habit, even if he wishes to.

This week, I received a despairing letter from the Langley House Trust, a Christian venture in the care of ex-offenders. The right hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) rightly mentioned what the Church can do to combat crime. Langley House Trust runs drug rehabilitation homes, yet it tells me :

"the Government are pulling the rug from under all drug and alcohol residential facilities"

by implementing the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 from the beginning of next month.

Column 590

The trust runs 14 residential homes for the ex-offender, two of which are drug rehabilitative homes used mainly by men coming directly from prison, yet the Government are withdrawing funding from new residents. One of the homes, Chatterton Hey, provides facilities for my constituents. Do not let us hear glib nonsense from the Government about restoring offenders from society when they are taking money from a good, worthwhile organisation that wants to return offenders to the community.

Mr. Jack : I am listening to the right hon. Gentleman. Perhaps he will enlighten me, because I am a shade disappointed, about what he has done to take advantage of the Home Office's drug prevention initiative that operates in the Manchester area.

Mr. Kaufman : I do not want to hear such glib nonsense from the Minister, who made a complacent speech. I was talking about the Langley House Trust, which does good work for my constituents and which wrote to me on a non-partisan basis, as it did to other hon. Members in my area, saying that the rug is being pulled from under its work because the Secretary of State for Health is taking money that it could have used for drug rehabilitation.

I will not accept complacent rubbish from Ministers. My constituents are suffering from degradation, despair and poverty. Conservative Members smirk and sneer, while my constituents suffer as a result of what they have done. I am not having it.

Ms. Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington) : I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that Ministers would not be so supercilious if they had to face, as we do, the real tragedy and crime that emanates from drug abuse. Drug and alcohol projects throughout the country are facing closure because the Government have backtracked on their commitment to ring-fence money for drug and alcohol projects within community care funding. The Secretary of State gave a commitment on the Floor of the House, but he has backtracked on it and, ultimately, drug and alcohol projects will have to close.

Mr. Kaufman : My hon. Friend is right. I am being assailed by organisations that want to do good and to help but which are not being helped by the Government's withdrawal of funding.

What can young people in my constituency do? Where can they go? They can go into the centre of the city and beg. We have more beggars in Manchester in 1993 than at any time in the 23 years for which I have represented part of the city.

When constructive places of resort such as the sports centre and other projects are shutting down, my young constituents will go to the commercial amusement arcades that litter the streets of my constituency like scabs. The city council tried to refuse planning permission for those arcades, but it gave up when the Secretary of State for the Environment upheld planning appeals from those wanting to take money from my young constituents without giving them anything in return.

I do not know where those who use the arcades get the money to put in the machines. I am sure that most come by it honestly, but do all of them? How many are at risk

Column 591

of being picked up and started along the road that turns them into the rent boys who are another feature of life in the city of Manchester?

The Government are destroying the social cohesion of my constituency. Good, hard-working, patriotic people who love their country, many of whom have served it in the armed forces or in other ways, and who love their city, are seeing the social fabric disintegrate before their eyes. The greater the sense of community, the smaller the chance for crime. My constituents fight crime by being members of home watch schemes. They attend police consultative committees, of which we have a network in my constituency. They work with the police, and they work to maintain the community. They work to maintain their own and their families' self-respect, but they are beginning to lose the battle. The odds stacked against them by the Government are just too high.

Young people, sometimes small children, are being arraigned for alleged crimes. Every criminal aged 13 or under is a child not only of his or her parents but of this Government, born, brought up and educated--if one can call what they receive an education--often with no prospect of a job or a clear vision of any future.

Crime is to be wholly condemned. It should be detected and punished, but, above all, it should be prevented. It is no good the Government having a programme to deal with the relatively few offenders who are caught. We need a programme to prevent crime, and that can be achieved only by the social regeneration of the inner cities to give a fair chance to the fine people who live there, to the fine people who live in my constituency.

The crime rate has increased massively under this Government. The crime committed by this Government against my constituents can never be forgiven.

11.21 am

Mr. Warren Hawksley (Halesowen and Stourbridge) : Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me so early in the debate. It is an especially important debate now that crime seems to have moved centre stage of the political scene. It is right that it should have done so because the public are alarmed. In Birmingham, there has been an increase of about 20 per cent. in the number of schoolchildren arrested last year. That is why the public are demanding speedier action from the Government.

I was disappointed by the statement made on Tuesday by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. It was far too narrow. It should have shown more urgency in tackling the problem with which he was dealing. The proposals for secure accommodation units were all very well. The Opposition have challenged the idea today, but it seemed to have all-party support. Why, then, can action not be taken at once? Why do we have to wait for perhaps two or three years before even that measure is introduced?

I suggest that we also need to consider less expensive options of secure accommodation. We have a surplus supply of ex-military establishments which were quite good at keeping out the Irish Republican Army and would keep the youngsters in. Do we need to worry that such establishments are spartan? I suggest not. They should not be luxurious abodes for young criminals.

The problems that we face stem to a great extent from years spent listening to liberals, do-gooders, social workers and Home Office advisers. They have worried for too long about the offender and have not worried half enough

Column 592

about the victim. We now need a much stronger policy of deterrence. I do not wish to discuss at length corporal punishment or the ultimate deterrent of capital punishment, although I support both without reservation. I was disappointed that my right hon. and learned Friend did not respond to a question about corporal punishment on Tuesday. During my previous incarnation in the House, I tabled amendments-- one in Committee and once on the Floor of the House--to try to reintroduce corporal punishment for crimes of violence by youngsters. Had they been accepted, there might well have been a reduction in today's figures.

The Government could tackle the problems straight away. It was important that the Home Secretary agreed on Tuesday to take up the question of the Criminal Justice Act 1991. The Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), said that he looked forward to hearing our views. My views are clear : I believe that section 29 must be amended and we do not need to wait to do that. I also believe that unit fines, the system under which unemployed people, for example, are not punished at anything near the correct level, must be examined. There is disillusionment among magistrates, especially over the unit fining system. I hope that action will be taken quickly so that we can retain the very good list of magistrates we have.

Not long ago, I read that the Home Secretary was to ask the new Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis why his force was not catching more criminals and why the clear-up rate was not higher. We know that we could ask the same question of nearly every chief constable. I offer a solution that will save my right hon. and learned Friend contacting chief constables all over the country. I have it in my left hand. It is a batch of 59 forms that a police constable has to deal with when he arrests someone for a minor offence such as shoplifting. I am assured that even an experienced officer will take at least two hours to fill them in. That is not good enough. We must get rid of the bureaucracy. I served on the Standing Committee that considered the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. My then hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds, Sir Eldon Griffiths, and I warned that bureaucracy would take up too much of a policeman's time. It is now happening with a vengeance. The other day, the chief superintendent of my area went to one of his major police stations at 3 am. He was rather surprised to find all the police cars parked in the garage. He inquired what was happening and found that each officer had arrested a suspect and was spending at least two hours on the paperwork, writing out reports. Would it not have been better for those officers to be on the streets, trying to catch more criminals? Please let us ignore the campaigns of the civil liberties lobby, which wants such bureaucracy to tie up police officers who should spend their time doing far more important work.

What can we do about cautioning? According to the chief constable of the west midlands, it is another aspect of the police officers' work which they have had to implement to the best of their ability, following guidelines issued by the Home Office. I am glad that Chief Superintendent Mike Holder of my area has found a way around the cautioning policy. Because the number of crimes committed means that there is a state of emergency, he is able to take action. He is reported in The Birmingham Post as saying :

Column 593

"We don't caution for drink-driving, so why should we caution someone for taking a car without authority and driving it away? Either way, someone could get killed. In our division, 60 per cent., of crime is car related or involves burglary of houses or factories. We will prosecute when there is enough evidence."

I am glad that cautioning has been suspended in those circumstances. In Wolverhampton last year, there was an increase of about 50 per cent., in cautions and a drop in the number of prosecutions.

I hope that we shall hear today that advice is being sent to all forces that the cautioning policy can be altered and that a tougher line can be taken throughout the country.

The Minister mentioned the Bail Act. Too many offences are being committed while youngsters, in particular, are out on bail. Something must be done quickly. It is not good enough to say that we will examine the matter, discuss it and decide what happens. We must act now.

Since 1979, the size of the police force has been increased and police officers are better paid. However, we can do more--and quickly--to help them. I believe that assault on a police officer should carry an automatic custodial sentence. We should give police officers the protection to which they are entitled when doing our duty. I hope--and I have not heard arguments against it--that the forces that wish to do so will be allowed to carry out trials with the side-handled baton. The American baton might well protect and save many of the injuries from which our officers suffer. [Interruption.] Labour Members may laugh if they wish at the fact that 1,720 officers in the West Midlands area were injured in 1992 and 6,682 working days were lost through injury. If police officers were given batons that would protect and save them, we should be doing good for them and for our constituents. That is important. I should like to raise two other points. First, we are not using special constables to the full advantage. They are a deterrent if they are on the beat. They can be used when they are most needed in the evenings and at weekends. In the West Midlands, only 955 special constables, out of an establishment of 1,400, are in place. For a long time, I have argued that we should consider moving towards a Territorial Army-type force with honorariums being paid. I am glad that the Home Office has taken up the suggestion to the extent that the Dorset force is allowed to do so as an experiment. I have seen the Dorset force in operation. I hope that the experiment will continue and be extended. I ask the Government to put pressure on the Treasury to allow the honorarium to be paid without deduction of tax. It is ludicrous. In the case of the Territorial Army, there is no payment of tax, but in the experimental system in Dorset, the officers are liable to tax. I know that the Home Office has some sympathy with this point. I hope that it can persuade the Treasury to respond constructively, possibly as early as next week's Budget. A final question that is important in tackling the problems of crime is the right to silence. I am not a lawyer, but I am worried about the way in which the right to silence has been used. We saw the case of two parents where there was a young child attacked. Because the parents used their right to silence, the police could not move the investigation further forward. Only yesterday,

Column 594

we saw the example of the osteopath who was killed by a hit and run driver who was moving away from a petrol station without having paid for his petrol. I remind the House of the press report in The Daily Telegraph yesterday on this important issue :

"A motorist who knocked down a motorcyclist as he fled from a petrol station without paying"

for his petrol

"could escape charges because of the right to silence laws ... Mr. Timothy Brown, 32, an osteopath, died after his motorcycle was hit by a Honda Accord as it was driven away from the garage in Beaconsfield, Bucks, in November last year.

But although the owner of the car has been traced, he has refused to answer police questions and charges relating to the death had not been brought."

It is a tragedy. I see no reason why the right to silence should be maintained. People who are innocent should have no fear of expressing their innocence. If they are guilty, they should be dealt with by the law.

I hope that I have expressed a strong wish for Government action. It is not too late for such action, but it must be done quickly. I ask the Government not to talk about what will happen in a year's time. They should look at the bureaucracy. I was horrified to find that so much paperwork had to be done by police officers. I hope that the Minister will give meaningful answers and I hope that action will be taken to help our constituents and ensure that crime is defeated in the United Kingdom.

Several Hon. Members rose --

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. We are now in the period of the 10- minute restriction on speeches.

11.34 am

Mr. John Fraser (Norwood) : I should like to say a few words to defend and bring some understanding of my constituents, as well as suggest one or two solutions. In 10 minutes, I think that only one or two suggestions per Member are possible

It is important to stand up for the rights of those who are innocent and to defend the rights of constituents to be physically safe in their homes or on the streets. One of the most precious civil rights that people have is to be able to go about their business safely. The civil rights of ordinary citizens in the borough of Lambeth in my constituency are breached too frequently.

I shall give the House the flavour of that by quoting a few headlines from a single issue of South London Press. The main story on the front page says :

"Gun-toting teenagers as young as 13 forced a man to hand over his wallet in a robbery which has stunned police."

That took place in Streatham in my borough. I quote from the next page :

"Woman was raped in a squalid, rundown garage after being attacked at knife -point. The 27-year-old woman was walking home along Palace Road".

The story goes on about an attack with a Stanley knife. I turn to the next page :

"A mother-of-two charged with murdering her common-law husband was granted bail at Camberwell Magistrates Court on Wednesday" The accused, who lives in my constituency, had knifed her husband to death.

I continue :

"A cashier at the Mecca bingo hall, in Streatham Hill, had £18 snatched from her hand by two men who ran off at around 9 p.m. on Sunday A 28-year-old man appeared at Camberwell Magistrates' Court on Tuesday, after a neighbour was allegedly attacked and injured with a 3ft sabre

Column 595

... Clinton Rowe (21), of Dalyell Road, was committed in custody for trial at the Old Bailey from Camberwell Magistrates Court, on Wednesday, charged with attempting to murder"

someone

"at Tintern Street, on December 14 last year Baby killer Christine Gibelli's mental state was not taken seriously by the authorities who failed to diagnose her illness"

That is a case of infanticide in which someone was sent to an institution.

I turn to the next page :

"A knife-wielding rapist who subjected a young wife to a seven-hour sex ordeal after grabbing her on a busy pavement"

I am glad to say that that is out of my borough : that is at London bridge. The next story is back in the constituency.

Mr. Day : None of this has anything to do with social deprivation.

Mr. Fraser : I shall come to that in a moment.

I continue :

"A Brixton man was remanded in custody at Camberwell Magistrates' Court charged with the murder of Paul Baker in a squat"

in my constituency.

The final story does not relate to south London : it relates to Hammersmith but involves a person in my borough :

"A trainee lawyer was gunned down in cold blood for a few pence while he helped out at a friend's off-licence."

Those are just a few, I was going to say headlines, in the South London Press . But they are not headlines. Two of the murders feature in the miscellaneous column. Such is the level of crime in our area that they do not feature as headlines. They are titbits in the gossip column that somebody has been murdered by someone else. That is the scale of the headlines and titbits in the local paper for only one week.

The cold statistics, rather than the headlines and titbits, are appalling. I mention robbery with violence as an example. That involves an attack on a person as well as an attack on property, so it is a good indicator of the state of our society.

In my borough, the chance of being robbed is 992 per 10,000 of the population. One is eight times more likely to suffer robbery in Lambeth than in Merseyside or Manchester and six times more likely than in the west midlands. The hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day) interrupted me to ask about deprivation. Perhaps the following statistic is one of the indicators. One is 14 times more likely to be attacked in the street and robbed in Lambeth than in Kingston upon Thames. The difference between the two must be that one is an affluent area and the other is a poor area.

Let us compare my borough with Kingston upon Thames for other crimes. In Lambeth, one is 14 times more likely to be robbed, three and a half times more likely to suffer a crime of personal violence, four times more likely to suffer criminal damage and twice as likely to suffer burglary.

I do not want to give the wrong impression. I do not represent or live in a concrete jungle. I echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) : most people are decent, honest and hard working. If they are not working, at least they are honest people who want to contribute to society. They want to have a safe community and make a positive contribution to it. So I am not all that pessimistic.

Column 596

On the whole, despite the figures that I have given, mine is a relatively safe area. However, once people have been burgled, their quality of life can be irreparably changed. In many of the housing cases that now come to me, people wish to move not because of the state of repair of their accommodation but because they have been burgled six or seven times. They can no longer afford to live there. The other lesson that I have learnt is that the victims of crime are on the whole poor people, not rich people. If my stereo is taken, I get a better stereo on the insurance. I am relatively affluent. I was once lobbied by a probation officer, who told me that it was my own fault that I was burgled, because I had only one lock on the door and had not done enough to the windows. The probation service talks about being non-judgmental, but occasionally it is a good idea to tell people that they have been naughty or wicked.

As for the causes of crime, there is no simple relationship between unemployment, poverty and crime. If a group of monks who had taken vows of poverty found themselves unemployed, they would not automatically turn to crime. However, there is a coincidence between crime and conditions such as high unemployment and poverty, unfriendly types of tenure, indefensible space, poor housing and other pressures on families and other unfriendly conditions. High mobility of the population tends to create crime or criminal circumstances. Medical practitioners tell us that there is a 40 per cent. turnover of population in some of our inner-London areas. That contributes to circumstances in which crime rises.

Crime is committed by a relatively small number of people. On the whole, their behaviour is predictable. One finds previous convictions, a record of truancy, anti-social attitudes and a weak family background. One can usually predict that such circumstances will lead to crime. The job of the Home Office and the law enforcement authorities is to target those who are most at risk.

Secondly, we should deal with crime seriously and intelligently. Our intelligence and experience tell us that secure accommodation such as borstals and attendance centres, although it might be tough on criminals, often creates circumstances that may lead to more crime being committed. There is a strong case for more remand into secure accommodation of people who are likely to commit offences on bail. Thirdly, we should concentrate on measures to increase people's values. A set of circumstances, including poverty, can translate into a corrosion of values. We must set up a programme to rebuild values. I am afraid that so much of what the Government do breaks down values. They break the values that come from nursery education. They destroy our sports facilities. Football pitches are being closed. Youth clubs are having to close. We have massive homelessness. Nothing can do more damage to the family and the child than the circumstances of homelessness.

If the Government really want to do something about crime, they should examine the circumstances of crime and the predictability of behaviour and do something to restore the family values which have been hurt and damaged even further by Government programmes.

Next Section

Home Page