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The holiday has cost £20,000. Such activity is an affront to the victims of crime, who want criminals to be put into detention centres or given custodial sentences. They have little truck with the slogan "Commit a crime and win a holiday", or the slogan "Commit a crime and get motoring lessons". That is the last development that we want. We could all do much more to help reduce crime. I cannot speak too highly of my own Lancashire constabulary, who are working partnership with industry and schools to great effect. They are also operating a car watch scheme, which is being partly sponsored by Bradford and Bingley building society. More than 120,000 Lancashire car owners are taking part in the scheme : they display a luminous sticker and may well be stopped by police between midnight and 5 am. The arrangement is working extremely well.We want more people to be involved in the special police force, which is being increased to 30,000. The last thing that we want is for people to become self-styled vigilantes, going around the country to track down crime on their own. They have the opportunity to adopt a role in the special force and to become involved in neighbourhood watch schemes. We now have 115,000 such schemes, covering 5 million homes. They are extremely successful and allow residents to take part in the detection of the crimes described earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East.
As one who represents a rural constituency, I was delighted when my right hon. and learned Friend made his announcement about parish constables. That will enable people in rural areas to help the police to detect the crime that has, unfortunately, been increasing in such areas because of improved infrastructure. It is possible to enter constituencies such as mine from one of the major cities in the north-west, after a 45-minute drive, and to perpetrate a crime ; the stolen goods could be offered in a car-boot sale back in the city in a very short time. We need to support the police and we are doing so, in particular, with the announcement of the extended batons. I am fed up with the rhetoric of Opposition Members. They talk about law and order as though they care. The Labour party manifesto at the general election devoted 155 words to law and order. That is how much they care about cracking down on crime. In debates on the measures that we have passed to crack down on crime, all that we have heard from Opposition Members has been rhetoric and how much they feel for the victims and they have voted time and again against the sort of measures that we need to introduce. I should be interested to see whether Labour Members and especially the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) follow us into the Lobbies when the Home Secretary's proposals are introduced because I suspect that the hon. Member for Sedgefield will think again of all sorts of reasons why he was unable to support the new legislation that we need.
8.10 pm
Mr. John Gunnell (Morley and Leeds, South) : One basic principle of government over the past fourteen and a half years has been the process of centralisation. The Government have consistently put democratically accountable bodies and independent services under Westminster control, either by inserting their own placemen or through
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more drastic restructuring. It is not surprising that there is more of the same in the 1993-94 programme. The programme is not "back to basics", but more of the same.I shall briefly consider one quango that would be created under the proposed legislation and one body that is to be quangoised and I shall ask why a third is missing from the plans.
Having spent the largest slice of my professional life in the training of graduate science teachers, I shall raise two serious concerns about the new quango--the teacher training agency. Can it maintain a proper balance between classroom experience and the knowledge and understanding of educational issues--essential to becoming an effective teacher--in the initial training of teachers? Some have suggested that the teacher training agency is primarily a mechanism, through emphasis on school-based enterprise, to provide additional funding for grant-maintained schools.
Emphasis on school practice is important. Anyone who has been in the teacher training business--I was at the university of Leeds for many years- -knows that over recent years there has been a consistent increase in the amount of work in schools and an increase in the breadth of experience as a result of students working in different sorts of educational institutions. Partnerships have developed between schools and universities and between schools and colleges, and those partnerships have proved fruitful in developing teacher training. However, a wholly school-based consortium may tip the balance too far and it would need a partner in higher education to maintain balanced training.
Of still greater concern is the control of research. The concept of giving research funding to the teacher training agency is quite disturbing. Research funding given to the agency must deal with issues relevant to initial teacher training. How wide is that remit? Will there be research into the psychology of learning, the motivation of teachers, the supply of teachers and the choices of sixth form students? Those topics are not directly related to initial teacher training and are not its focus, but they impact on it. One has to be careful when one has a research funding body, because inevitably it is liable to impinge on academic freedom. There is great danger in setting up an agency that funds research and is able to specify what areas of research it feels are desirable. One may well get Government-directed research that will conclude what the Government desire.
Having led a council and having been a member of its police authority, I am appalled by the changes proposed for police authorities. I noted the comments made by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby), the adviser to the Police Federation, who raised the issue of police authorities and correctly stated that chief constables were unhappy about the proposals and about changing the process of democratic accountability. There are a number of examples of events in West Yorkshire that were more easily dealt with as a result of elected members of the police authority having credibility with the public.
Those responsible for drafting the proposed legislation should carefully consider the aftermath of the Yorkshire ripper case. I had not long been in the job of leader of the authority when the case came to its conclusion and Peter Sutcliffe was sentenced. The Home Office must consider the analysis of the failings of the detection work, as it was eventually chance that led to his identification. As an
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authority member, I had access to reports which are available to the Home Office but are still not generally available.New technology was implemented as a result of the analysis of those failings, and changes were made at the top. We were able to talk sensibly with the then Home Secretary, Lord Whitelaw. It was a proper co-operation between central and local government. Because of the public focus on the issue, having a democratically accountable authority was extremely important. West Yorkshire introduced community policing well before it was the norm or was encouraged by the Government.
The Home Office should also consider the policing of the miners' strike and compare events in West Yorkshire with those to the south of us and in the east midlands. People should consider why, in West Yorkshire, there was little violence and few of the problems that hit the national headlines. Sir Colin Sampson was a superb chief constable of West Yorkshire at that time and every week he met democratically elected members of the police authority. Those meetings were also attended by Jack Taylor, then president of the Yorkshire branch of the National Union of Mineworkers, and representatives of the British Coal Board. We talked through likely problems and how to deal with them.
We had a police authority that was credible in the eyes of police and credible in the eyes of the public, because it was operated by democratically elected members. Ken Davison, the Tory spokesperson on police--and a business man and therefore "acceptable"--disapproved of magistrates being on police authorities and said that those authorities were unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable and and affront to democracy. How much more would that be true of Government appointees? It will be extremely difficult to facilitate effective policing with the consent of the community if an authority is set up along the lines suggested.
Lastly, why is it that the part of the royal commission report that deals with miscarriages of justice is not being dealt with? That would be a devolution of Government decision-making and would be most desirable. People should study recommendations 331 to 337 in the report, together with recommendations 316 and 317.
I have spent a great deal of time during the past year and a half dealing with the problems of a constituent, Alan Dodson, who maintains his innocence--and who has been maintaining his innocence for the seven years he has been in prison. Because of that, he does not qualify for parole. I recognise the seriousness of the problem and I believe that recommendation 317 should be followed.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes) : Order. The hon. Gentleman's time is up.
8.20 pm
Mr. Gyles Brandreth (City of Chester) : I want to begin my brief contribution with a revelation. When my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer first arrived at the Treasury, I had the temerity to offer him some advice on his first Budget. I said, "Chancellor, on 30 November why do you not simply get up and say that the recovery is coming along, we have had some encouraging figures recently, we had a very full Budget earlier in the year, steady as she goes, thank you very much-- and sit down." The House will have to wait just seven days to discover whether he has taken my advice.
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Sadly, I do not have comparable access to Her Majesty, although my advice to her on the Queen's Speech would have been similar. We have a great deal of legislation ; perhaps we have too much. Certainly, we need to think carefully before we introduce more. A century ago, we would have had a much slimmer Queen's Speech and passed much less legislation. Were we noticeably less well governed then?This year, we have a substantial Queen's Speech, and rightly so. However, if next year's Queen's Speech is slimmer, I hope that we will not feel obliged to apologise for that. I am a believer in the old Tory adage that if it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change. In government, as well as in other fields of endeavour, there are times when less means more.
This Queen's Speech is very full. It is precisely because nowhere does it propose change for change's sake that I welcome it. Every aspect of it goes with the grain of the aspirations of my constituents--
Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton) : How does the hon. Gentleman know that?
Mr. Brandreth : I talk to my constituents regularly. I have my finger on the pulse of my constituency. That is why I am here now and will be for generations to come.
It is self-evident that we need to sort out the muddle on Sunday trading. It is clear that our education reforms must include improving the quality of teacher training and a much greater emphasis on teacher training in the classroom. We all know that businesses, large and small--but especially small--are crying out for deregulation. As well as repealing unnecessary regulations, we need to tame unnecessarily officious regulators.
Central to today's debate and to the Queen's Speech is the concern with law and order. That is rightly so, because that is central to the concerns of my constituents and, indeed, the constituents of all hthan they are about anything else.
The proposed criminal justice Bill will do much to correct the balance between victim and defendant. It will end the so-called right to silence. It will allow courts to send persistent offenders between the ages of 12 and 14 to secure centres. It will give the police additional powers to tackle the so-called bail bandits--those who persistently re-offend while on bail and who are responsible for 50, 000 crimes a year. In particular, I welcome the proposed measure to take DNA samples from anyone detained or convicted in connection with a recordable offence. That will safeguard the innocent, while helping to secure the conviction of the guilty.
All that makes sense. Indeed, much of it is common sense. However, it is also common sense to recognise that those measures alone will not solve all the problems overnight. They represent an important move in the right direction ; they sensibly attack specific problems in specific ways ; and they are focused and necessary. They may not stem the rising tide of crime at a stroke, but they will tackle real problems realistically. An essential part of a policy that puts the victim before the criminal is that even the most tolerant society cannot tolerate crime and must be intolerant of the persistent criminal.
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Notwithstanding the views of the Labour party, there is no simplistic diagnosis of the cancer of crime in our society--would that there were. Yet there are still Labour Members who claim that it is somehow due to unemployment and deprivation. That is insulting to those from areas of far greater deprivation and unemployment than our own, yet who never turn to crime. It is facile when we consider that much of the growth in crime has coincided with the growth in prosperity. In my constituency, unemployment today is 27 per cent. lower than it was five years ago, yet recorded crime is almost 27 per cent. higher.Just as there is no easy diagnosis of the problem, so there is no quick-fix remedy. As well as the sensible proposals that will feature in the criminal justice Bill and the other measures announced during recent weeks by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, we need to speed up the process of justice. Many offenders are what is known as present dwellers ; the connection between the offence and the punishment, which may come many months later, is too remote. We need to do everything we can to accelerate the operation of the criminal justice system.
We also need to do everything that we can in crime prevention. As a society, we cannot have it both ways. We cannot deplore, as people rightly do, anti-social behaviour among the young, hooliganism, vandalism, theft, under-age drinking and drug abuse, while denying those same young people the opportunities, leadership, sense of direction and sense of discipline that they need to help them to grow in the way in which we want them to grow.
No one becomes a criminal by chance ; he becomes a criminal by choice. All of us at home, at school, in the media, through the Churches and with the police can influence that choice. Many positive things can be done and I shall give hon. Members just a taste of what is being achieved in my part of the world.
This summer, on a particularly difficult estate, the Cheshire constabulary introduced a community leaders award course. It trained young members of the community to organise voluntary sports activities for the youth of their own community. The effect was a fall of 22 per cent. in recorded crime on the estate compared with the level in the summer of 1992. Even more important, there has been a sustained reduction in the amount of crime on the estate since then. That is not some do-gooder's daydream ; it is cheap and effective and is happening now.
That is what the Central Council of Physical Recreation's community sports leaders award scheme is all about. It is a reminder that we do not need to throw up our hands in despair.
My constituents regularly say to me, "Something must be done." Something is being done. Sadly, we do not know what the Opposition would do because they will not tell us. They had the opportunity to do so today, but they did not take it. The hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) was long on adumbration --
Mr. Brandreth : Indeed. The word was well chosen by the hon. Member for Sedgefield, who may be aware that the first definition of "adumbration" in the "Oxford English Dictionary" is "to indicate faintly". He chose his
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words precisely. He was woefully short on detail and offered only faint-hearted waffle--unspecific, uncosted and consequently unconvincing.Mr. Brandreth : The hon. Gentleman has a fine way with words. "Rubbish" is how he sums up his hon. Friend's contribution. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, by contrast-- [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I merely intervened to say that sedentary interruptions can lead to confusion.
Mr. Brandreth : The one thing about which there can be no confusion is that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is anything but faint-hearted. He knows what needs to be done. He knows that he is the man to do it and that he will have the support of the country as well as Conservative Members in all his endeavours. 8.30 pm
Mr. Mike O'Brien (Warwickshire, North) : I declare a potential financial interest in that I am currently discussing matters with a group of police officers and acting as their adviser. Although there has been no finalisation of an agreement yet, I feel that I ought to declare that.
I shall also take this opportunity to congratulate the Warwickshire constabulary on the effectiveness of its Operation Claw. It has begun an operation to deal with burglary in particular and with other types of crime that are escalating in our county. On the first day it arrested 71 people. A number of those people have been charged, and that operation will carry on throughout the year. I very much hope that it will be successful in reducing the escalating crime problem in our area.
It is my belief that, if every one of the Home Secretary's 27 proposals to the Conservative party conference was implemented tomorrow, they would barely dent the increase in crime over which the Conservative party has presided since it come to office in 1979. In Warwickshire, the annual crime statistics have shown that crime has tripled in our county since the Government came to office. The figures for burglary and car theft have in fact quadrupled since they came to office. It is true that there are considerable crime problems in the inner cities. It is also fair to say that, historically, crime in some of the rural areas has been at a lower level than in some of the inner cities. But crime is now rising in rural areas such as mine at a far greater rate than it is in the inner cities. That must be addressed. I feel that it has not yet been addressed seriously by the Government. I do not believe that we will see any significant and serious fall in crime--certainly not down to 1979 levels--until the long- term causes of crime increase are addressed.
The all-party Home Affairs Select Committee considered the causes of crime in its report on juvenile crime this year. It concluded that there is an unquestionable link between unemployment, hopelessness and crime ; indeed there is. There is also a link with deprivation and homelessness., I shall return to that issue in a moment. If we are to address crime seriously, we must address it as a whole. Unless we do that, the crime statistics will continue their inexorable rise.
It is right to say that there is no excuse for crime. Unemployment is not an excuse for committing a crime,
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nor is deprivation or homelessness. It should not be said that they are excuses. They are causes. When that has been recognised, the Government must examine both ends of the line. They must look at the short term. They must look at punishment and enforcement and ensure that we have sufficient police officers on the beat to enforce the law. That means looking now at the short term--the criminal--and ensuring that we reduce the number of offences that are now being committed.We must examine also the other end of the line. We must examine the reasons why those crime statistics are rising in the first place, and the causes of that offending. At the moment, the Government are interested only in looking at one side of the problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) has described, the Government have a one-club policy. They do not look at the issue in the round or as a whole. We must not deal only with crime that is being committed now. We must look to a long-term reduction in the number of people committing crime.
The Labour party wants to look at both ends of the line. We want to be tough on crime and on the causes of crime. The Government's failure to recognise what that means shows that they will not succeed in reducing crime, even to the level at which they inherited it in 1979.
People are looking not only for punishment but for effective justice and long-term delivery of policies to reduce crime. That is why the Government are losing the argument on law and order. Because of their record, they are seen to be ineffective and short-term. They are going back over policies that failed during the past 14 years. If the Government are ever to succeed, why could they not have implemented those policies before? Why have they failed to deal with crime over the past 14 years?
The Government say that they are supporting the police. We have heard many promises of support for the police over many years. Where is the beef? Where are the policies? Police morale is now at the lowest level ever. Alan Eastwood, the former president of the Police Federation, said at its last conference that police morale was plummeting. That morale was dealt an even more serious blow by the Sheehy report.
Although the Government backed off from confrontation on some of its proposals, the Police Federation well knows that many of the proposals were shelved. Some of them have been put back to the police negotiations board for discussion over the next year. No doubt some of them will be resurrected at various stages while the Government remain in office.
The police, and the Police Federation in particular, have always regarded as far more dangerous to their morale, not the Sheehy report and its consequences, but the White Paper. They regard it as far more dangerous and insidious than they ever did the Sheehy report. They have rightly taken the view that the proposals in the White Paper could result in a sharp reduction in the number of police officers on the beat.
The general secretary of the Police Federation spoke to the all-party police group in the House only a few weeks ago. He argued that the Home Secretary's demand that the core role of the police is identified in the White Paper. The policy of having a fixed budget imposed on a chief constable with a lot of discretion as to how that budget is spent will involve a political appointee--the chairman of the police authority-- standing over the chief constable throughout the period of his fixed-term contract to ensure that the policies of the Home Office are carried out.
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That chief constable will be under increased financial pressure to reduce expenditure. The core role of the police officer is being identified and the concern, particularly of the Police Federation, is that when those core roles are identified, the non-core roles will be ripe for some kind of privatisation. That is why the general secretary of the Police Federation told the all-party police group that, by the end of the decade, he envisages that, if the proposals in the White Paper are implemented, the number of police constables will be reduced from 128,000 today to about 80,000 by the end of the decade.The Government propose the political appointment of a chairman in every police authority. The Russian communist party had a way of ensuring that it kept control of its police. It appointed not a chief constable but a commissar who worked with the chief constable. We now have a Conservative Government appointing a Conservative commissar in every police authority in Britain in order to ensure that the cuts in police force expenditure desired by the Government will be carried out. That will result not in any reduction in crime but in a reduction in the number of police officers employed, a reduction in the number of police officers on the beat and an increase in crime in Britain.
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I am sorry, but the time is up. 8.40 pm
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) : The proposals put before the Conservative party conference by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary mark a sea change in attitudes which it would be difficult to over-estimate. That is particularly clear with regard to penal policy. For far too long there has been an unholy, unwritten alliance, one might almost say a liberal agenda, between the Home Office and the Treasury. The Treasury does not like the idea of building prisons because it costs money and the ruling ethos of the Home Office was that it was not the done thing to want to lock people up anyway. For far too long Conservative Home Secretaries were able to take the rhetoric to the Conservative party conference, but when they tried to put that rhetoric into action the answer was, "Oh no, Minister, that couldn't possibly work."
There are many examples of that, but I shall name just one which illustrates not only the point but the difference between the parties on the point. The proposition that it should be possible to challenge in a higher court an over-lenient sentence makes self-evident common sense. Opposition Members now call for that in particular cases. But when the matter was first raised in the Home Office it was smartly squashed and it took considerable time for that policy to come through. It is a tribute to Home Secretaries since 1979 that, faced with such insidious insider opposition, they were able to do as much as they did.
It is all too easy for a liberal agenda to deride prison, saying that it does not cure or reform anyone and costs a great deal of money. It is obvious that when dealing with young offenders there must be an emphasis on reform and, on the basis that hope can sometimes triumph over experience, one can hope that the young people will emerge from whatever custodial sentence they have served in a better position not to reoffend than when they went in.
But in this day and age, if a convicted adult goes to prison he does so because he is a bad person. If such a person manages to reform, if he sees the light, that is fine,
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but for the time being he goes there as a punishment and to be contained. The public can be sure and certain in the knowledge that while he is contained in prison he is not out on the streets offending again. For far too long such arguments put to us by our constituents were derided. It is a good thing that such beliefs are now informing penal policy.The idea that sending a person to prison represents a failure for society is complete bunkum. When an individual commits an offence so serious that he has to be sent to prison, the blame and responsibility lie fairly and squarely with the individual, not with society.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary made it clear when he announced his 27 propositions that they were only the first instalment. He was straightforward about that. It is important to realise that there are more instalments to come. In the short time available to me I shall suggest two particular areas for consideration.
The first is a natural extension of the abolition of the right of silence. It is remarkable that in this debate we should hear the Opposition deride the principle that the right to silence should be abolished. Any barrister or solicitor such as me, who practised criminal law for the best part of 20 years, knows that that rule was abused time and again. I abused it. I was asked by a defendant to advise him of his rights and, knowing his criminal record and the circumstances in which he had been apprehended, of course I told him to exercise his right to silence.
That was an abuse being perpetrated on society. It was not my fault ; I was doing my duty as a solicitor advising that defendant on the laws of the kingdom. But it would be an abuse of society if, ultimately, the House did not abolish such a law. The abolition of the right to silence is long overdue and I welcome it.
There is a natural extension of that which I hope Ministers will consider in due course. It is this. How often have barristers or solicitors appearing in a criminal court seen a defendant acquitted by a jury who, before they are released, hear the judge say, "I understand that there are other matters now to come before me," and then find that, having acquitted someone on the one offence before them, that person has a criminal record as long as one's arm? On more occasions than I can now recall I have heard the gasp of disbelief from a jury when they hear the real background and circumstances of the character appearing in the dock before them.
Traditionally, lawyers told the humble populace that they could not possibly be given information about a criminal's previous convictions because there was no guarantee that the man was guilty on this occasion and they were far too unsophisticated to be able to make the necessary judgment and not jump to conclusions.
Mr. Patten : It is patronising.
Mr. Nicholls : Not only, as my right hon. Friend so rightly says, is that patronising, but it is completely out of date. The mere fact that a person may have 20, 30 or 40 previous convictions for dishonesty does not mean that on another occasion he was dishonest as well, but surely that is information that a jury should have. I do not accept that, in this day and age, a British jury, properly directed by a competent judge, could not give that information the weight that it deserves. Except in the most exceptional
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circumstances, to deny a jury knowledge of previous convictions should be considered in the second instalment of measures. My next point concerns minimum sentences. I do not go along with the call for statutory fixed immovable minimum sentences for particular offences. That, for a range of reasons, cannot work. But, and it is an important but, surely it should be the House, comprising elected representatives of the people out there, which establishes the tariff for particular offences.In particular circumstances, that tariff will have to be adjusted by the judge in charge of the trial, both increased and decreased, but what is so wrong in this day and age with the public, through speeches made by their Members of Parliament in the House, having a direct say in what a minimum sentence might be? Why should not the House say that, for instance, the tariff for a serious assault should be five years' imprisonment?
According to the circumstances of a particular case, the sentence might need to be more or less. It would be a good idea to allow the people who send us here to have a direct, but ultimately not all-deciding, say in the tariffs imposed. The judicial bench would benefit from knowing what our constituents think the minimum sentences should be in particular cases.
All that can be derided on the basis that we should be thinking not about that but about the causes of crime. Of course there are circumstances in which crime will thrive, but the truth about crime is that people are born with free will and some will opt for a wrong, not a right, course of action. However deprived people's social circumstances might be, some will choose a righteous option and others a wicked option. We can talk about the causes of crime until the cows come home, but that proposition will not be affected. It is bizarre to hear Opposition Members claim to be tough on crime but at the same time talk as though the circumstances which might be a natural breeding ground for crime automatically justify people turning to crime. Perhaps the most pathetic illustration of that this evening was the speech of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). If one were to ask the hon. Gentleman what he thought about any one of the suggestions that have been made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, the hon. Gentleman would have no idea. Either he could not think about the suggestions, or no one had told him about them. The House was none the wiser.
I asked the hon. Gentleman straighforwardly and slowly--I have debated with him before--what he thought was an appropriate way to deal with joyriders. He mumbled about some sort of community project, so that the joyriders could channel their energies into other things. That came from an hon. Member, the leader of whose party, when asked how he felt about the legislation of cannabis said that he was relaxed about it. That is certainly no sort of a lead to give. All that can be said about that speech was that it was consistent with every other one which the hon. Gentleman has made during the past 10 years.
8.53 pm
Mr. Ray Powell (Ogmore) : The hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) was doing well in the Department of Employment, and I am sorry that he is not still there. He seems to have gone astray in his beliefs.
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On the question of law and order, the biggest lawbreakers during the past 10 years have been Tesco and the other large stores which have abused the Shops Act 1950 blatantly by trading illegally on Sundays. If any Home Secretary since 1986 had had any concern about law and order in this country, the first thing that he or she would have done would have been to ensure that the Act was enforced. Many requests have been made in the House, not only to the Home Secretary but to the Prime Minister and many others, in the hope that the Act would be enforced. When we talk about crime, we must remember that a lot of crime is committed in those shops which are illegally open. Since 1986, the Opposition have advocated, either by private Members' Bills or by pressure on the Government, that something be done to change the Act.I had the luck to be drawn in the ballot immediately after the previous general election to introduce a Bill on Sunday trading on behalf of Keep Sunday Special. Unfortunately, the Bill did not have a response from the House on Report on May 14 and it collapsed. Therefore, I welcome today's statement from the Home Secretary. When the subject is debated on Second Reading, I will support the Bill so that we can examine the three options to replace the Act which will now be available to hon. Members.
It has taken the Government since 1986 to realise that options must be made available to the House. Hon. Members will recall that when the matter was debated previously in 1986, the Government were defeated on a proposal for total deregulation by 14 votes, despite having a majority of over 100. The Government are misguided if they think that hon. Members will have changed their minds since 1986 to the extent that they would agree to total deregulation.
There are no longer four options, as were included initially in the Bill, but three. That has resulted from negotiations involving Keep Sunday Special, the organisation that I support. That organisation is set up by a trust and it expects hon. Members who support it to go around the country advocating policies on their behalf. That is done without champagne breakfasts or lunches and without entertaining hon. Members at their party conferences. The hon. Members do it because of their conviction that there are millions of people who want to keep Sunday, as far as possible, a special day.
Those people have given their opinions to hon. Members. That was reflected by the fact that, on a Friday afternoon, 214 hon. Members came to the House to support my Bill on Sunday trading. I am sure that those hon. Members will be in the House again to support the measures suggested by the Keep Sunday Special campaign and RSAR, a group that is associated with the Marks and Spencer group. The three options include total deregulation. Although the measure will be decided on a free vote, I am given to understand that the Prime Minister has declared publicly that he is in favour of total deregulation. There can be no doubt that Keep Sunday Special and the RSAR group will succeed with their option, because the Home Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and most of the Cabinet have already declared that they support total deregulation. I assume that, with all that support, the House will vote for the proposal from Keep Sunday Special.
I am concerned when reading the Bill about the offer from the Government of employment protection. I have
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read and reread the Bill and it is being examined by a number of people regarding the implementation of the Government's proposals for employment protection. The Government must look again at the proposals. I realise that they have had since 1986 to consider what they could have offered on employment protection. The Opposition have asked continually and constantly for employment protection, and did so even in 1985-86 when the House debated the last attempt to provide total deregulation.It is quite a change of heart for the Government now to be talking about protecting employees, when they have done away with wages councils and with the protection offered by trade unions since 1979. However, when it is a Government Bill about changing the laws on Sunday trading, they concede that they must provide some type of employment protection.
Something should have been done a long time ago about the lawbreakers who are spending millions of pounds to bribe hon. Members to acquiesce to their demands. They are not only bribing hon. Members, but they are blackmailing unions to change their allegiance to the option that they have given to Keep Sunday Special. The lawbreakers are threatening to tear up a properly negotiated agreement for 50,000 trade unionists if those union members were not prepared to acquiesce and agree to support the Shopping Hours Reform Council. That is nothing but blackmail, but, because of the pressure to retain their membership, the trade unions reluctantly conceded.
The Keep Sunday Special campaign and RSAR have agreed jointly that all shops should be able to open for the four Sundays before Christmas. The Keep Sunday Special campaign agreed reluctantly, but in the hope that the House would acknowledge the concessions that it has made since my Bill was presented. The first concession involved DIY stores being allowed to open, the second concerned garden centres being allowed to open with very little restriction and the third involved the extension of the size of shops in question from 1,500 sq ft to 3,000 sq ft. That is the size of the Chamber and should be sufficiently large for a convenience store. We have offered those concessions in the hope that the House will accept that we are trying to ensure that the demand from the public--if there is a demand--is met in what replaces the 1950 Act.
We believe that protection for shopworkers should extend not only to England and Wales but to Scotland and that double time should be paid to anyone who is expected to work on a Sunday.
8.58 pm
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) : I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a brief contribution to the debate because it enables me to welcome warmly the priority that the Government have placed on law and order in the Gracious Speech and to welcome the individual proposals that embody that priority. In saying that, I am sure that I endorse and echo the views of my constituents who will also warmly welcome that priority. I look forward to the legislation that will undoubtedly follow and I hope that, when we consider that legislation, we shall do so in a constructive and realistic spirit. I have been in this place only a short time, but it seems to me that we sometimes fall into two traps. The first is the use of slogans instead of arguments and the second is the creation of unnecessary and artificial divisions where there
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should be none. Having listened to the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), I believe that he fell into both traps. He is fond of the slogan, "Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime", but having listened to his analysis of those causes I am less than convinced. The longer he spoke about the causes of crime, the more I believed that he was engaging in a diversionary tactic in order to talk about anything but crime.The hon. Gentleman betrayed the unsoundness of his knowledge of the subject when he said that crime began in the 1970s. He would do well to study the history of crime in this century. Crime was at a stable and low level, with only modest increases, until the middle of the 1950s. Since then, sadly, crime has increased unremittingly under Governments of every complexion. It is very hard to make a connection between the long-term increase in crime and social or economic factors such as unemployment, housing or education, all of which have improved considerably since then.
I also have misgivings about what the hon. Member for Sedgefield said about subcultures creating crime. He is misguided if he is trying to parcel together everyone who lives in inner-city conditions and in crime is the activity of a minority.
If there is one statistic that is perhaps under-used in the debate on crime, it is that the vast majority of offences are committed by a very small proportion of offenders. Statistics from a recent Home Office study of offenders of a given age group revealed that 7 per cent. of them were responsible for nearly two thirds of crimes. I conclude that living in an inner city or in less advantaged circumstances does not inevitably mean that one turns to crime, but there is a greater likelihood in those conditions of being a victim of crime. Victims of crime are calling for tough action, and I believe that tough action is embodied in the Government's legislative programme.
People are not interested in an artificial debate about whether or not prison works. It is an artificial debate and a diversionary tactic which shows little familiarity with the way in which the sentencing system works. The public want measures to aid the police in detecting crime and in ensuring that criminals are then convicted and properly punished.
The hon. Member for Sedgefield wishes the public to take seriously his claim to be tough on crime. He will be judged on the extent to which he constructively supports the Government's proposals, on whether he supports the wider powers that the Government propose to give to the police and whether he supports DNA testing, all of which will help in the detection of crime. He will be judged on whether or not he supports the Government's proposals for dealing with offenders on bail. The Labour party has called for action. Will Labour Members support the measures or put forward their own constructive ideas? They will be judged on that, but they have said little about it today.
On punishment, I believe that the public will welcome the proposed measures to give the courts greater powers to deal with serious and persistent offenders, particularly young offenders. I warmly welcome the proposal for the secure training order which will improve the existing
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