House of Commons Hansard Debates for 23 Nov 1993

Mr. Shersby : On the matter of juvenile offenders, will the hon. Gentleman be kind enough to tell the House a little more about the alternative proposals on custody outlined by his hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), who said : "custodial sentences for young people should be replaced by a system of tracking' Tracking' involves extremely close supervision of the individual at all times, accompanied by a positive programme of education, employment and social support."

I am interested in that comment. Would the hon. Gentleman care to elucidate?

Mr. Blair : I must tell the hon. Gentleman that the problem with reading from Conservative party briefing papers is that they are usually rather less accurate than the briefs that he received from the Police Federation. I am surprised that when the hon. Gentleman intervenes he does not ask me about the continuing concern of many serving police officers about the way in which the Home Secretary is conducting consideration of what replaces the Sheehy proposals. In relation to my hon. Friend's statement, he was not saying that young people should not be put in secure accommodation, but that when young people are persistently in trouble there needs to be some multi-agency approach between social services and others so that the behaviour of those young people can be tracked to ensure that they do not re-offend. That seems entirely sensible.

The Secretary of State for Education (Mr. John Patten) : A few moments ago, the hon. Gentleman reminded me that I promised the House, three or four years ago, that we would make about 60 extra places available to deal with young offenders. He is right ; that is exactly the promise that I made to the House. Is he aware, however, that I was too trusting and a bit naive? I put my faith in Labour-controlled local authorities up and down the land, which have persistently refused to give planning permission and to co-operate with my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that that is why my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary's new plans for secure training units will not depend on local authorities, which have done nothing to help the drive against crime?

Mr. Blair : That briefing is thoroughly out of date. It is completely untrue. When that allegation was first made by the previous Home Secretary it was rebutted in detail. Labour local authorities have been trying to ensure that secure accommodation is built--in Leeds, for example. I appreciate that truth has become a pretty scarce commodity in what is said from the Government Front Bench, but the allegation is absolute and utter rubbish. [Interruption.] Labour local authorities and indeed others, including some Conservative ones, have been desperate to obtain Government agreement to build secure accommodation, but they are being given neither the capital nor the revenue funding. I have seen correspondence between Ministers and local authorities which bears that out.

Mr. John Gunnell (Morley and Leeds, South) rose

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Mr. Blair : I am delighted that my hon. Friend wishes to intervene, because the Home Secretary should listen to what he says on the subject.

Mr. Gunnell : When I was chair of social services, the Leeds local authority entered into an agreement with the Department of Health for the provision of an extra 10 secure places--there already being 27, which was the largest number of any local authority. We had an agreement for a further 10 places, but they were not delivered by the Department of Health, which had promised to honour that agreement.

Mr. Blair : What my hon. Friend says is absolutely right. Mr. Howard rose

Mr. Blair : Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman please have a little patience?

What my hon. Friend says is right. Indeed, that experience is replicated around the country. I will give the House one example. There was a debate in which the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland)--I am sorry that she is not in her place, but I did not realise that the subject would be mentioned--spoke about juvenile offending in relation to the Sutton and Cheam local authority. A debate ran in the newspapers for days about how that local authority had failed to take action against those kids. It did not have the secure accommodation available.

If the right hon. Gentleman obtains the figures from the National Bed Bureau in Leeds, he will see that there is an excess of demand over supply for secure accommodation for young people every day of the week. The idea that that could be laid at the door of local authorities is therefore utter nonsense.

I shall give way to the Home Secretary, but I will treat with a fair amount of caution any facts that he gives me.

Mr. Howard : The facts are these. In the current year, nearly £4 million of capital funding has been made available by the Department of Health to local authorities. Next year, £6 million will be made available for the building of those units.

If the hon. Gentleman wants some specific, factual examples, I draw his attention to what has happened in Leicestershire, which has been ruled by a Lib-Lab pact since about 1983. In 1983, when it first came to power, the administration refused to open a secure unit which had been built by the previous, Conservative, administration. It had to repay its grant because it would not open that secure unit. At a council meeting in Leicestershire on 25 March this year, that Lib-Lab council failed to endorse proposals to provide a new secure facility. As the Government wanted to act quickly, the capital grants that were available to Leicestershire county council were removed and allocated elsewhere. That is what is happening in this country, and it will not do for the hon. Gentleman to seek to deflect criticism elsewhere.

Mr. Blair : I understand that that is not the position in Leicestershire. The subject was mentioned before by the previous Home Secretary and it was very well rebutted at the time by Leicestershire county council. However, we can go into the facts another time. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is saying that yes, this year capital allocations have been made, although, as

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I understand it, there is still a dispute about the revenue funding, which is also important. That shows that many local authorities are willing to build secure accommodation. The problem is that they are not being given the resources to do so.

Mr. Dickens : I think that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased because I happen to think that his speech is quite clever and entertaining, and it is the type of speech that I hope that I would make if I were in the Opposition. May I, however, present him with a scenario? If the sentence that the court gives to someone who is convicted is supposed to be retribution, punishment and deterrent, and if all those things have not worked, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the only solution is lock and key--prison--so that the person cannot re-offend and burgle people's homes and steal their cars? I think that he believes that because obviously he believes in a prison-building programme.

Mr. Blair : I have made it clear that who the courts put in prison is a matter for them, and that I accept that those who require to go to prison should go to prison. The difference between us is the idea that one focuses all attention simply on "prison works" as the strategy in the criminal justice system.

I will mention the Home Secretary's conference speech in a moment, but I can tell hon. Members that it bears out exactly what we have been saying. Indeed, it goes further. If we intend to increase the strength of the criminal justice system, one major part of that is surely the treatment of victims in it. The Government are about to undermine the position of victims in the criminal justice system in one crucial respect and I shall spend a moment discussing that. At present, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board assesses compensation on the same principles as common law damages--the actual loss to the victim. That is now to be replaced by a rigid tariff scheme, based solely on the type of injury suffered, without regard to loss of earnings. The minimum award will be increased to about £1, 500.

According to our calculations, thousands of people--perhaps as many as 20,000--will not receive an award if the minimum is raised in that way. The new tariff system will also cause manifest injustice, since the huge variations in individual circumstances will simply be lumped together. Indeed, as the chairman of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board has said, the loss of an eye for, for example, an elderly man as a result of a criminal offence is plainly different from that for a youth of 18 with his working life ahead of him. There should surely be provision to take account of the distinction between those two sets of circumstances.

Mr. Howard : Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House his authority for the assertions that he has just made? Will he promise, here and now, to give a full and unreserved public apology if they turn out, when we publish our proposals in full, to be incorrect?

Mr. Blair : The authority for those propositions is the letters between the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and Ministers. Whether the position has now changed may be another matter. If it has changed, no doubt the right hon. and learned Gentleman will tell us, but he will surely not tell us that the notion of a tariff scheme replacing the compensation on the basis of common law damages was never considered. He will not tell us that.

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Mr. Howard : Will the hon. Gentleman answer the question that I asked him? We have not made an announcement yet. We shall make an announcement in due course. If the assertions that the hon. Gentleman has just made prove to be wrong in the light of that announcement, does he promise, here and now, to make a full and unqualified public apology?

Mr. Blair : What I have just put forward is the basis of the proposals that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is at present advocating. If he is going to change those proposals, I am delighted at the change. But I note that he has not denied that those were the proposals at one stage, whether or not they have now been changed. If those proposals are to be changed, I am delighted.

Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East) : Is it not equally worrying that the consultation proposals also suggest withdrawing the concept of payment for trauma? Will trauma no longer be one of the factors to be taken into account? For example, people working in postal and security services are regularly attacked, yet now they may get no compensation if their lives are ruined in future. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Government if they will wake up, withdraw their stupid proposal and come up with something sensible?

Mr. Blair : I entirely agree. If, by implication, the Home Secretary now suggests that he will not accept the Government's earlier position--he must mean that, or he would have not been silly enough to intervene in that way--I am delighted, and will give him the welcome now.

There are no serious new initiatives on crime prevention. For example, although the Government again pay lip service to the crucial issue of crime and drugs, yet nothing is to be done. It is clear that what works is local agencies striving, in partnership with local people, to target and prevent crime in their areas. We could point to examples of that all over the country. It is always said, even by Government reports such as the Morgan report, which was published a few years ago, that there must be a lead body --the Morgan report advocated the local authority--to co-ordinate crime prevention in each area. The Audit Commission confirmed that opinion a few weeks ago. Not only are the Government failing to adhere to the proposals of their own committee, but--even worse--they are dismantling many of the programmes that have a key impact on crime prevention. Safer cities crime prevention projects are being cut ; the urban programme is being run down ; drug education officers' posts are being cut ; two thirds of local authorities are cutting their youth services because of cuts in their funding. The Government are reneging on the promise to ringfence funding for residential care homes for alcohol and drug abusers ; residential care places for disturbed young people are being closed. All those actions will have a dramatic adverse impact on crime further down the road.

The proposals on policing will make all those factors even worse. There is not a scrap of support anywhere for the Government's policy of replacing those elected by local people to police authorities with Government appointees. In particular, the chairman will no longer be an accountable person elected by local people, but will simply be appointed by the Government. The proposals are bigoted, undemocratic and regressive, and they will take policing in the opposite direction from that in which it needs to go.

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This country has had enough of basic local services being taken out of local people's hands and turned over to unelected bureaucracies, unaccountable to anyone but Conservative Ministers sitting in Whitehall. In policing, that is most important of all. Community policing is about much more than bobbies on the beat, although that is part of it. It is about integrating the police service into the local community so that the police are regarded no longer as experts coming in from outside to clear up the consequences of criminality, but as partners in the community, helping, with others, to prevent crime and to deal with its causes. Let no one be in any doubt that, taken together, the proposals on policing threaten much local policing and will move us away from local community policing, in precisely the opposite direction from that in which we need to go. I shall devote the last part of my speech to another fundamental difference of approach to crime. The Opposition believe that it is important to tackle the causes of crime, too. Let us be clear what we mean by that. No one excuses crime simply by talking of its causes, and we do not mean that people who are poor or unemployed simply rush out to commit criminal offences. That is not the concern. The concern is rather that we are developing within our society a subculture outside its mainstream and impervious to its rules of conduct, whose hallmarks are low educational opportunities, low job prospects, unstable families, drug abuse, truancy and crime. That is why any strategy to fight crime should tackle that subculture and its casues, especially in relation to young people.

It is not only Opposition parties who say that. Sir John Woodcock, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said :

"Police Officers in many inner city localities fear that a substantial number of young people in these areas are becoming detached from social norms".

Sir Peter Imbert said :

"The crime map fits all too closely over the map of disadvantage". Last week the chief constable of Avon and Somerset said : "It is only by tackling the root causes that we can make an impact."

Even the Secretary of State for Employment, a week ago, said : "We have to bring young people on board and give them motivation and the will be become fully paid up members of society before they are blooded into the criminal fraternity".

The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) and Lord Walker, like everyone else, say that we should also tackle the causes of crime.

Even the Home Secretary implicitly accepted that there are causes of crime when he said that its roots could be traced back to the absent fathers in the second world war. As a piece of social analysis, that was unique--a rare feature in that area. Leaving aside the curious fact that there was no such effect after the first world war, and the equally curious idea that the children who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s whose fathers had been absent were apparently fine, yet stored up their psychological defect for onward transmission to their children, let us try to put the matter in a consensual way. Let us accept that poor parenting can lead to crime ; it certainly can. However, if one factor can lead to crime why cannot other factors--such as poor education, poor employment opportunities and poverty- -lead to crime? Once we accept that individuals are in part influenced by the world around them, why must we stop at the family?

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Do families not live in broader communities? Will not the circumstances of those communities also affect the families? Is that not best expressed in the Cabinet Office papers presented to the Home Secretary and other Ministers before he made his speech at the party conference? Those papers said :

"There is a temptation to make a connection between single-parent families and criminality, but the evidence from research suggests that it is factors which often accompany lone parenthood, such as poverty, rather than the absence per se of the second parent, which are associated with a propensity to offend."

If that is true, surely policies on education, employment, housing and drugs also become central to the fight against crime. However, the Government will not accept that, because if they do, they must accept their responsibility for the state of our country today. For too long crime policy has swung between the twin polarities of punishment and prevention. We focus either on crime or on its causes. In reality any sensible strategy needs to do both.

The Home Secretary should re-read his conference speech. Only one of his announcements had anything to do with crime prevention, and that was an old announcement. A few weeks ago on the "Today" programme, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that no one knew how to prevent crime. His is a one- club policy. The argument between him and others is not between those who want to be tough on crime, and penal or prison reformers ; it is concerned with whether his strategy, relying on that one track, will work, to make our communities safer.

We require a strategy that both deals with the criminal justice system and, with common sense and with our purpose as a community, creates a society in which rights and responsibilities, opportunities and obligations, go together. That is why social responsibility is not a substitute for individual responsibility, but is the best way of giving it a chance to be realised. That is the difference between the two parties. That is why our strategy has a chance of success, and why we believe that the Government's strategy has none. 4.58 pm

Mr. Nigel Forman (Carshalton and Wallington) : To be fair to the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), I must say that he made an impressive debating speech and handled a range of interventions most plausibly. However, I cannot extend my bouquet to him much further, for two reasons. The first is that as I listened to his speech and the way in which he dealt with interventions, I could not help feeling that the cause of law and order, and of improving the quality of life for the majority of law- abiding citizens, would be greatly advanced if politicians of all parties would forbear to misrepresent each other's positions on the subject. Although it may be uncomfortable to hear it in a debate such as this, there is much that unites us on the diagnosis of the problem, although some of the prescriptions have different emphases depending on the starting point.

The approach of the hon. Member for Sedgefield hinges essentially on what is called the multi-agency approach, which envisages all the relevant parties taking a share of the responsibility for dealing with and preventing crime. That approach is admirable in political rhetoric, but it is

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probably more expensive and certainly more ambitious than one that is narrowly focused on dealing with crime principally through detection and punishment.

If the hon. Gentleman accepts that, he must talk long and hard to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) to find out whether the shadow Chancellor agrees with the considerable expenditure commitments that are implicit in what the hon. Gentleman has said. That might justify a future Labour Government raising taxation or borrowing more to pay for such worthy ends, but the hon. Member for Sedgefield should realise that his proposals have a big price tag.

Mr. Blair : Many studies here an in the United States have shown that prevention is much more cost-effective than simply dealing with the consequences of criminality and embodying them in a strategy that says that prison works.

Mr. Forman : I agree, but as long as the Treasury has to deal with expenditure annually--and the hon. Gentleman knows that that is how affairs are conducted--the saving, if that is the right word, often occurs well into the future, whereas the up-front cost is considerable.

I welcome the fact that the Government have decided to make law and order central to the legislative programme in this Session. People expect us to respond by giving an even higher priority than we have been able to give over the past 14 years or so, first, to preventing crime--I agree that one must have a strategy for crime prevention--and, secondly, to catching criminals. It is sobering to note the tiny proportion of people who are convicted in relation to the total volume of crime.

Thirdly, we must ensure that the courts have all the powers they need for appropriate sentences. Our next criminal justice Bill will address that. My proposals are especially relevant to the need to deal more effectively with the minority of recidivist young offenders, who cause our constituents a great deal of concern.

I agree with the hon. Member for Sedgefield that effective action on law and order needs co-operation between all who have influence and responsibilty for such matters. In that context one can recite the usual litany of parents, teachers, the police, the courts, the probation service and the media--which has not been mentioned much in the debate--and politicians in local and national government. In that context I welcome and draw to the attention of the House the action plan for a safer Sutton. That plan has been introduced in the area covering my constituency and is but one example--I am sure that there are many more--of how these issues can be tackled effectively at local level.

To some extent that plan is a microcosm of what could and should be replicated more widely. It involves positive co-operation between the police and the local authority and there is also a considerable input from the local Members of Parliament. It emphasises the action that the law- abiding majority can take to safeguard themselves and their property. As the House knows, a great deal can be done under the auspices of bodies such as insurance companies.

I draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education the fact that the plan embodies a much greater effort to eliminate truancy in all its forms and to ensure that education welfare officers have adequate legislative powers to return truants to school. I have some information to the effect that those officers may

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not have the full powers that they need for that purpose. All schools, whether they are in difficult areas or slightly easier areas, should give much higher priority to ensuring constant attendance during the school day. I welcome the recent tables published by my right hon. Friend which focus on that.

It is also right to back efforts such as Sutton's Youth at Risk scheme which, through admirable voluntary action, is designed to divert susceptible youngsters from crime at a timely stage before they embark on what would otherwise be criminal careers. One method by which that thrust of policy can be bolstered would be the early introduction of statutory identity cards. Initially, they could be introduced for those under the age of 18 and that could have many applications to problems such as under-age drinking and the ability of the police to deal with potential juvenile offenders.

However, the justification for identity cards is greater in the sphere of law and order than in social security, which is the one that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has mentioned as one of his justifications for such a scheme. If it proved to work well in the context of law and order and for those who are under 18--as I suspect it would--it could later be extended to everybody. There would be widespread acceptance of that. The Home Secretary should not be frightened of some rather noisy causes and interest groups such as the National Council for Civil Liberties and others who create disproportionate decibels but do not reflect majority public opinion on this issue.

In dealing more effectively with crime and anti-social behaviour, there is a role for the media in avoiding sensationalising and fanning the fear of crime beyond all reasonable limits. There is an important distinction between the reality of crime, many categories of which have been declining rather than increasing--many people do not realise that--and the fear of crime, which has undoubtedly been increasing, fanned by sensationalism.

For example, local papers, which have a considerable influence, should give at least as much prominence to sentences, even though some of them are passed months or even years after the offences, as they do to crimes, awful though some of them are. Any measures that we could take to increase the feel-safe factor as opposed to the feel-good factor among the law-abiding majority of our constituents would do more than almost anything to improve the quality of their lives. I have tried to be constructive because I think that the hon. Member for Sedgefield realises, if the truth be told, that there is much common ground between all parties on the vital issue of law and order.

I shall deal briefly with education because it is the other subject of the debate and I have some experience of it. By all means let us try to reform teacher training in the way that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education intends by encouraging a great deal more emphasis on classroom skills and experience. That is at the heart of his policy. However, in doing that we must be careful not to reduce too far the role of higher education institutions. They have a great deal to contribute and are not all like the institute of education in London university. Many of them are quite sensible, and not all speak with the voice of Professor Wragg.

Our established objective of raising the status of the teaching profession must continue apace. In that contect I hope that we shall press forward with our earlier drive to encourage graduate entry and participation in the profession as widely as possible. That should be backed by

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frequent and timely in-service training and retraining which are vital in a world in which the needs of education change frequently. We must concentrate, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education intends, upon what I would describe as the long-term education agenda of implementing the national curriculum, broadening the subject range post-14 and not just post-16, and encouraging parity of esteem for vocational education. That can be done by boosting such excellent qualifications as GNVQs, which are now beginning to catch on. That will improve people's chances of getting and retaining good jobs.

Against the background of the long-term agenda, it is worth mentioning that the reform of student unions, although set of State for Education to put it into its proper perspective. Now that he has decided, rightly, to legislate for the voluntary principle--something that I have supported, on the public record, from the Dispatch Box--let us at least try to make the new arrangements as simple and workable as possible. Otherwise, we may suffer from the law of unintended consequences which so often dogs all legislation. I should like to hear from my right hon. Friend--I shall be staying to listen closely to his winding-up speech--why his desirable objective of introducing the voluntary principle for student unions cannot be just as well met by the proposals put forward, for example, by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals.

Dr. Keith Hampson (Leeds, North-West) : Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Forman : No, if my hon. Friend will forgive me, I shall not, as I am about to conclude.

I am glad to say that, in going back to basics--at any rate, in law and order and in education--Ministers are doing exactly the right thing. Even if, in the opinion of some of my constituents, some of the developments are overdue, they are nevertheless welcome to Conservative Members. Ministers should know that they will continue to have our strong support in their efforts under those two vital headings.

5.11 pm

Mr. John Morris (Aberavon) : Many years ago, Aneurin Bevan used a vivid phrase, when he said that we live on an island made of coal and surrounded by fish and it would need an organising genius to create at the same time a shortage of both. That may still come to pass. Our problem now, which would do credit to the same organising genius, is an escalating crime wave and empty courts, particularly Crown courts.

The Home Secretary said that the Government will do all that they can to catch and punish criminals. I should have hoped that, before coming to punishment, he would mention prosecution. That is what is wrong today. It is all very well for the Home Secretary to adopt the posture of being tough on crime. I invite him to walk around the criminal courts to see exactly what is happening, to talk to the Crown Prosecution Service and get it to explain its policies, and--I am sure that he does this anyway--talk to policemen.

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The Home Secretary said that if there were too much use of the caution, he would issue new guidelines. We have been asking for that for a long time. There has been a mushrooming of cautioning over the years. It has a proper and important place in the treatment of young people. The statistics show that the overwhelming majority of those cautioned do not come back to the attention of the courts. However, its use has got out of hand and it is being used for serious offences, so there should be guidelines.

Why has cautioning, over the years, come gradually to be used on a wide scale for repeated offences and against the background of the complete absence of a national register? A person can be cautioned in south Wales today and again a week later in Cumbria without anyone knowing about the first caution. Why has it taken so long for this great light to dawn on the Home Office? Every policeman to whom the Home Secretary deigns to speak will agree about the use of the caution. I am with the Home Secretary about new guidelines. I asked for them the other day and I shall look at them carefully when they are published.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean) : The guidelines were published about three weeks ago. We are now consulting on them. I should be happy to send another copy to the right hon. and learned Gentleman and equally happy to receive his comments.

Mr. Morris : I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. It must be less than three weeks, because I tabled a parliamentary question, which has obviously been forgotten about, the reply to which said that the guidelines would be coming soon. I look forward to examining them. I support the policy of less paperwork for the police which was ventilated earlier. However, a great deal of their paperwork has been given to them as a result of previous Government legislation--to begin with, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984--making a substantial inroad on the time that a policeman can be on the beat. Why should a policeman have to spend so much time summarising what has been given during an interview that has been tape recorded? He is not the best man in the world for that job anyway. I have raised the matter with police officers throughout the country and I suspect that every one would agree that, if that chore were taken from the shoulders of police officers and given to the CPS, much time would be saved. My constituents want more policemen on the beat. When the chief constable of the South Wales constabulary asked for an increase of 40 in his establishment, the request was turned down. I suspect that he knows a great deal about the needs on the ground, but obviously someone knows better. I should like the Home Secretary to explain to me why the repeated request of my police force, and I suspect those of many others, for an increase in establishment is turned down time after time by the Home Office.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that when chief constables have more control over their budgets, they will be able to address that point in the way most suited to their area?

Mr. Morris : I suspect that, even then, the establishment will have to be agreed by the Home Office. If that is not so,

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I should be surprised. Total budgets will still be constrained and the process may give only an illusory freedom.

Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) : Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Morris : The hon. Gentleman knows that Madam Speaker enjoined us to make short speeches. I have already given way twice, and I must get on.

We all know of the crime wave set out so clearly by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair). There has been a 50 per cent. increase in recorded crime since 1985, and a 124 per cent. increase since 1979. If we knew the way to solve the problem, no one would be more overjoyed than Labour Members and, I am sure, Conservative Members. Sadly, there is no complete answer. However, while the crime rate is escalating, the courts remain empty.

How does the Home Secretary explain why it is that, when I checked at the end of September as to how many empty courts there were in the south-east circuit, I was told that it was not exceptional for 24 Crown courts to be empty in any one day? I asked again this morning ; on average, each day this week on the south-east circuit, about 19 courts are empty. I suspect that the same goes in circuit after circuit throughout the country. That is why I invited the Home Secretary to include the words "to prosecute" between his desire to catch and his desire to punish criminals.

Over the three financial years from 1990 to 1993, the number of cases received by the Crown courts has dropped, on average, by about 10 per cent. The number of offences committed to the Crown courts in the first five months of the last financial year fell by 14 per cent. compared with the same period in the previous year. On the south-east circuit, the number of cases received by the Crown court in the first five months of this financial year was 22 per cent. down on the number in the corresponding period last year. In the last month or so, there has been a slight resurgence and the figure is now down to 17 per cent. on the number in the corresponding period last year. That is the reality of the world of the Crown court against the background of an escalating crime wave. It is no wonder that the Home Secretary did not introduce the word "prosecute" into his vocabulary. To a lesser extent, the position is mirrored in the magistrates courts, where the CPS case load has fallen by about 2.5 per cent. each year from 1990 to 1993. Magistrates courts dealt with 15 per cent. fewer indictable offences in the first quarter of 1993 than in 1992. It is against that background that we note that the number of notifiable arrests by the Metropolitan police were down by 22 per cent. in the last quarter of 1992 compared with the year before. The combined effect of a smaller overall case load and a smaller proportion of cases ending in a hearing or a committal was to reduce the number of hearings and committals by nearly 6 per cent. over one year. That is an extraordinary state of affairs--an

Alice-in-Wonderland situation. Against the background of an escalating crime wave, perhaps one day we will have a proper debate about what exactly is happening in our courts.

The number of cases that the police are instructed to drop by the CPS has increased by 78 per cent. in five years. Some 32 per cent. of cases are dropped on public interest

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grounds. When I asked the Attorney-General the reason for that, all he could say was that it was not in the public interest to prosecute the elderly, the frail or those suffering from injury, or to prosecute when there was insufficient evidence.

No one disagrees with that principle, but the Attorney-General did not seem to understand that the cases dropped for lack of evidence are in addition to the public interest cases. A further 54 per cent. of cases were dropped on evidential grounds. That is not to be rejected--it is what the CPS was set up to do--but, when we look at the totality, how do we arrive at that substantial 78 per cent. increase? Are 32 per cent. of the people charged frail, elderly or injured? Against a background of escalating crime, we need to look at exactly what is happening in that regard.

Are financial considerations becoming more and more important in deciding what cases are committed to court?

Mr. Shersby : Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Morris : No, I have given way already.

Can we ignore the suggestion that there is a Treasury-led economy drive that may have an important effect on decision making? In addition, there are disquieting anecdotes about cases which can be tried either way, where the CPS is offering lesser charges in order that cases can be tried in a magistrates court rather than a Crown court. I fear that the financial considerations and the Treasury's hidden agenda are the reasons for that.

The Home Secretary and the Attorney-General should conduct a proper inquiry and tell the House why, on the one hand, there is a huge crime wave, which goes up year by year, and, on the other, we have empty Crown courts and empty magistrates courts. It does not add up. Why is there not an increase of work in our courts to match the current escalation in crime?

The escalation in crime is causing my constituents, and the constituents of every hon. Member, very grave concern. Something is very wrong indeed.

5.23 pm

Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton) : I agree with much of what the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) has just said, and I will return to it in a moment. I do not agree with much of what the hon. Member for Sedgfield (Mr. Blair) had to say. He treated us to 50 minutes of hot air, however attractively it may have been presented. Of course we must tackle the sub-causes of crime, but there is nothing useful in saying so, because we are already doing that--in education, in speeding the end of the recession and in countless other ways. Of course we must tackle crime prevention through community policing, but there is nothing useful in the hon. Gentleman saying that, because we are already doing so.

What we had hoped to hear from the hon. Member for Sedgefield--and what the public may have expected to hear--is what more the Labour party would do if it were in power. The most immediate question is whether Labour Members will support my right hon. and learned Friend's measures to reduce crime. It appears from the speech of the hon. Member for Sedgefield that they will not. If they do

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not, they will be the encouragers of crime, and their claim to be the party of law and order will be exposed as the utter nonsense it is.

One of the basics that we must get back to is a society in which there is less crime--for everyone's sake : the old, the weak, all of us. Media coverage of serious crime is greater than ever, and more people read newspapers, watch television and listen to the radio. The fear of crime referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman) is substantial and must be reduced. The fact that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, with the wholehearted support of the Prime Minister, has made the tackling of crime the top priority will be welcomed by everyone, except the criminals.

In what must be one of my shorter speeches, I would like to make two points. First, I am fed up with hearing, as we have this afternoon, the quite unfair and absurd statement that the Conservatives have been in power for 14 years, that crime is worse than ever and that we have done nothing about it. The situation is not as simplistic as that.

The world is not static, but in a constant state of flux and change. Despite the obvious fact that we are unfortunately part of a international crime wave, which has spared very few countries, Britain is one of the safest countries in the western world in which to walk the streets. The murder rate in Britain is half that of France ; our violent assault rate is half that of Australia--to say nothing of the United States, where the murder rate of 24,000 is five times greater than ours.

We are now a far more prosperous society, with more colour television sets, videos, personal computers and mobile telephones to steal. There are more home owners, and 5 million more cars on the road--more houses and cars to burgle and to steal from--than there were a decade ago. The temptations are much greater today than they were 14 years ago.

We have seen a disintegration in family life, with more single-parent families and fewer fathers at home to guide their children on the difference between right and wrong. We have had a disintegration of some education standards, because schools have lost the power to discipline children, to teach them respect for others in society and to teach them that bad consequences follow wrongdoing. We should not be surprised at the upsurge in unpunished juvenile crime, particularly in respect of the small band of hard-core persistent offenders.

There has been a worldwide spread in the use of drugs, which has driven people to commit crime in order to pay for their craving. The worldwide spread of pornography has corrupted people and lowered respect for others in society, particularly women.

During the past 14 years, there has been an undermining of the criminal justice system as a whole, particularly with the relevations of miscarriages of justice, in which legally innocent people have been convicted or many serious crimes. It must be said that this has happened mostly under the last Labour Government, not us.

Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South) : Would the hon. Gentleman explain to the House what he means by the "legally innocent"?

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : We all know.

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