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1.27 pm

Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley): I am grateful for the opportunity of contributing a short speech to this vital debate. I have been interested in law and order issues, and been campaigning on them, ever since I was elected to Parliament. I held three public meetings in my constituency on the single issue of law and order. I have been out with the police force in my constituency, visited the courts and Strangeways, Lancaster Farm and Preston prisons and talked to justices of the peace. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), responded earlier in the year to an Adjournment debate I had on crime in the Ribble valley.

The fact that I represent a rural constituency, where the incidence of crime is less than in many urban constituencies, does not mean that each crime perpetrated in a rural area is not significant to victims of those crimes. There have been dramatic increases in crime in rural areas over the past few years.

The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) said that increasing crime since 1979 is obviously the fault of the Government. The fact is that crime has been increasing in the western world since the second world war. In recent years, the drop in crime has been to the credit of the Government because the measures that have been introduced are proving effective. The message that should go from the House today should be that the measures and the approach to crime of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary must continue. This is no time to go soft on crime.

We have heard that the fear of crime is far greater than the incidence of it. That means that we must take extra measures to ensure that that fear is reduced. We have heard about several such measures today, including those aimed at greater crime prevention. We should also pay

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special regard not only to the police, who do such a tremendous job protecting us from criminals, but to the specials. I do not believe that they have been mentioned, but they make a valuable contribution to combating crime. I hope that more citizens will take the opportunity, if they have the spare time, to ensure that they contribute towards hitting back at the criminals. We should also congratulate those involved in neighbourhood watch schemes, of which there are 1,632 in Lancashire. That is superb.

The presence of operational police stations is also important. It is quite appalling that Clitheroe police station is closed from 10 pm until 8 am. I have yet to see any proof that that closure means that the people of Clitheroe are better protected than they were when the police station remained open. In future, I hope that that policy will be reversed so that we have a 24-hour police station in Clitheroe. Many imaginative means could be adopted to reopen that station, for example, it could be manned by a civilian. At the moment it is not good enough that, at night, people have to rely on the telephone box outside the police station from which they can ring for help from someone in Colne.

I also congratulate the Lancashire partnership, which has proved tremendously successful. That partnership includes Lancashire police, the local authorities-- including Preston and Ribble Valley--and businesses as well. We did not need the law to state that businesses should get involved and contribute financially, and in other ways, to ensure the existence of that partnership-- those businesses wanted to be involved. That partnership does not just include big businesses such as 3M, British Aerospace and Castle Cement, but many small businesses such as Gibbon Bridge hotel of Chipping and Syd Brown's of Longridge. They are all involved in the fight against crime in Lancashire.

That partnership demonstrates that everyone wants to get involved in tackling lawlessness within our society. All those businesses should be congratulated on their contribution, which means that far more is done to tackle crime than would otherwise be the case. The partnership has successfully provided 14 cars for the Lancashire specials to go about their duties. That is an excellent boost and shows what can be achieved through the initiative of such partnerships.

Operation Christmas Cracker has been mentioned in the debate. Lancashire police did not get involved in it, and I telephoned to find out exactly why. In fact, Lancashire leads the way in such operations, as it does in so many other ways, because it launched its own operation, Operation Castle, on 28 November. That resulted in 309 arrests and the recovery of £100,000 worth of stolen property, including £35,000 worth of antiques. I congratulate the police on that initiative. The public would like to see far more of those operations, which raise the profile of the police. They also demonstrate clearly to criminals that they must be on the look-out for such operations. That is superb.

I welcomed the installation of closed circuit television cameras in Clitheroe. The hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Mrs. Prentice) said that the Government were spending just pennies on such schemes, but they have spent £15 million. The fact that the hon. Lady describes such expenditure as "pennies" demonstrates what we would face if there were a Labour Government--the

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expenditure of millions of pounds would be dismissed as "pennies". The Government deserve to be congratulated on that extra expenditure.

Clitheroe will benefit from the installation of those cameras. The Home Secretary attended the opening of that system in September, but it is somewhat disappointing to note that because of installation complications, the cameras have not been fully operational since then. The local authority has now sacked the contractor and has appointed someone else to get the cameras operating. I call on all those involved to get a move on so that the cameras are made fully operational and protect local people. They have proved successful in the other places where CCTV has been installed, including King's Lynn, where there was a 97 per cent. decrease in theft from cars in car parks in which those cameras were installed.

Let us hope that we can get those cameras operational as soon as possible, not only in Clitheroe. Many other places might benefit from the installation of those cameras. Longridge, another village in my constituency, is desperate to get cameras installed and to win some money to pay for them. I hope that we can do something there.

Amazingly, civil liberties groups say that those cameras are a terrible intrusion into the public's privacy. That is tosh. I know that we have had the problem of the sale of video-tapes from CCTV cameras, and I hope that that seedy little business is stopped. Nevertheless, those cameras protect ordinary citizens. I believe that ordinary citizens have civil liberties as well as people from fringe organisations. I fully endorse the installation of those cameras--we want more of them--but the use of the video-tapes from them must be controlled.

Mrs. Bridget Prentice: I say "pennies" because, in comparison to the amount of money that is lost to local businesses as a result of theft and so on, the amount of money that has been put into CCTV has been pennies. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree with that.

Secondly, will the hon. Gentleman join me in supporting the unique position in Lewisham, which I described, where the video goes directly to the police station and the police make the decision about what is done?

Mr. Evans: I am grateful for that intervention, and I am sure that the hon. Lady would welcome the Government's initiative. It is £15 million.

Early in his speech, I gave the hon. Member for Pendle an opportunity to tell me how much extra money a Labour Government would provide for policing on the streets, but I did not receive a straight answer. Extra money and resources have been provided for law and order. They are proving to be extremely successful. That is why we must carry on with the Government's current policies.

We need more police on the beat. They are effective. They are an effective deterrent. In rural areas, especially villages, one tends to find that the police officer comes from that community and knows several of the people in the district so that, if someone who is strange or from outside the district passes through the village, they tend to know about it. I suspect that neighbourhood watch or rural or farm watch were invented in the Ribble valley because people tend to know what is going on in the area and, if anything strange happens, they can at least alert the authorities and try to put a stop to it.

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It is essential that we have more police on the beat, especially in rural districts. I made my representations to Pauline Clare, who has featured greatly in the debate, that the extra resources that are made available to the police authority should not necessarily be spent on more equipment, but should be used to provide extra police, especially in rural areas. That is essential.

Therefore, I was delighted when, in the Budget, an increase of 5.1 per cent. was announced. I hope, irrespective of what the hon. Member for Pendle said, that Pauline Clare takes the opportunity to get those extra resources into manpower. I also hope that extra attention is paid to the civilianisation of some of the posts in Lancashire. Although 160 posts have been civilianised since 1985, it has been noticed that there is scope for at least 310 more. Something needs to be done about that urgently.

Punishment and discipline are vital. We have heard a lot this morning about prisons and the question, "Do prisons work?" Of course prisons work and, yes, we have more prisoners in Britain's prisons today than was the case 15 years ago. We should make no apologies for that because the system is working. I have toured three prisons in my constituency, having a look at the good work that is done there.

I was interested to hear the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) that burglars should go to prison even on their first conviction. We need to consider that seriously, because it is not as though people accidentally break into people's homes and steal from them. We should seriously consider a policy, especially in the case of serious thefts, of ensuring that people receive a custodial sentence in the first instance. As the Home Secretary said at the party conference, if people do not want to go to prison, they simply should not commit crimes.

I was delighted when the Government took action to prevent some young offenders from being sent abroad on character-building holidays; it was outrageous--a slap in the face of every victim of crime in this country--and the last thing that we wanted. I am delighted that, instead of those holiday camps abroad, we are now introducing boot camps which will instil into young people the discipline that they do not receive at home and, unfortunately, do not seem to receive in some of our schools. It must be instilled in them that there is a difference between right and wrong, and that if they do something wrong, they will receive the punishment that they richly deserve.

I congratulate the Home Secretary on introducing harsher, stiffer and longer sentences for those who perpetrate crime. When offenders are in prison, they cannot be out in the streets perpetrating crime, and the public support our policy 100 per cent. Last year I sent out a "Westminster Viewpoint" leaflet to my constituents asking them for their ideas on crime. A constant theme ran through the responses that I received: people want offenders to be given longer and stiffer sentences. An austere regime in our prisons has to be welcomed.

I hope that the Home Secretary carries on with his vigorous regime to ensure that we have the right policies to tackle crime and that the police have our full support, not simply through numbers and pay, which was so drastically cut under the last Labour Government, but

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through the provision of the necessary armaments and body armour. The police should be equipped with side-handled batons, the introduction of which I supported because I believe that it is right to provide the police with protection while they protect us. I hope that the Home Secretary does not give in to the soft ideas of some of those who may be advising him, whether civil servants or Opposition Members. We have the right policies to tackle crime and we should continue to use those policies in future to protect the citizens of Britain.


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