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Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman is not comparing like with like. Everyone knows that police strengths fluctuate at different times of the year. To make a proper comparison, one must compare the same month of two different years. If the hon. Gentleman were to compare December 1994 with December 1995, he would find not a decrease, but an increase. However, I expect that that simple point is too complex for the hon. Gentleman to grasp.
Mr. Straw: One thing we remember from the Secretary of State's time at the Department of Employment was his ability to switch from seasonally adjusted figures for unemployment to the actual figures as and when it suited him. If he has an argument about the figures, he had better take it up with his chief inspector of constabulary. The figures come from the chief inspector's report, and I am astonished--it is now obvious--that the Secretary of State has not even read it.
Mr. David Congdon (Croydon, North-East): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Straw: No. I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman later. I shall deal with the important point raised by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington(Mr. Forman), who mentioned the example of New York.I think that there are lessons that police in London can learn from police in New York, although the two cities have very different levels of overall crime and different political relationships with the police.
The decline in the homicide rate in New York, which has been much talked about, has been matched by declines across the United States. In any event, as the Secretary of State has acknowledged, the homicide rate has decreased from a much higher base. However, I think that the decline in the amount of street crime and disorder, and the palpable sense that people there have of a more peaceful city, can in part be attributed to the measures which Commissioner Bratton and the New York police department have taken--and those measures are worthy of further study.
Mr. Forman:
I was listening carefully to what thehon. Gentleman said. He said that those measures are worth further study. That is precisely what the Metropolitan police are doing. Will the hon. Gentleman go further and commit his party in any sense to pursuing the policies that are taking place in New York?
Mr. Straw:
Yes. As the hon. Gentleman may know,I too went to New York in the summer to look at the
There are lessons to be learned from the policies being followed in New York in relation to disorder and tackling the petty disorder and petty crime that people all too often turn their faces away from, and which the police sometimes say they are too busy to deal with. I am happy to commit my party to tackling those problems.
Mr. Congdon:
I should like to refer to the point about police numbers. I was not sure whether thehon. Gentleman agreed with my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary's statement that, at the end of December, the number of Metropolitan police was the highest ever. Does he agree with that?
Mr. Straw:
I cannot agree, based on the report of the chief inspector of constabulary. The number of police officers employed in Greater London was greatest in 1992.
The important issue of juvenile offenders is related to the issue of disorder. As the commissioner's report shows, one half of all offenders in London are less than 21 years old, and one half of those are less than 17 years old. Juveniles in London are responsible for a significant proportion of crime and for much of the disorder on the streets. The criminal justice system in England and Wales is ramshackle at best but, in my view, its defects are nowhere more obvious than in respect of juvenile offenders.
Despite a reduction in the number of cases going before youth justice courts, the delays in cases reaching court are worsening. There are ludicrously complicated rules for the use of secure accommodation, which almost defeated, for example, the police in Mansfield. They certainly defeated the police and social services in Peterlee, County Durham, for a long time. Even where the hurdles of the rules for secure accommodation are overcome, there is a severe shortage of local authority accommodation in which to put young offenders.
Even more worrying is the fact that a bed desk clerk at the Department of Health headquarters in Leeds is daily effectively making judicial decisions and balancing whether one young dangerous offender should be found secure accommodation against the need of the community to find secure accommodation for another young offender.
There is uncertainty about the very concept of criminal responsibility for those who are less than 13 years old, after the House of Lords' recent decision on the concept of doli incapax. That matter is worrying for many of those who are involved in youth justice. I understand, from some of those who are involved, that the decision means that few offenders who are younger than 13 are now even being brought before the youth justice courts. There is a lack of real involvement of parents in the system and a failure to recognise that deficiencies in parenting must be involved in huge amounts of juvenile crime and disorder.
In my view, reform both of the juvenile justice system and of the Crown Prosecution Service in London is long overdue. We need a separate Crown prosecutor for London. There must be changes in the criteria that the Crown Prosecution Service uses for bringing cases, clear and enforced time limits on the timetable for cases and an inquiry into the appalling decline in the proportion of cases that ends with a conviction or caution of the offender.
As the reaction of the people of Brixton to the December riots showed, the Metropolitan police, under Sir Paul's leadership and that of his predecessor, have done much positive work to improve relations between the police and ethnic minority communities, including the Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities in Greater London. For example, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) mentioned, racial harassment is now treated extremely seriously by the Metropolitan police service, and rightly so, but it is widely recognised that much more needs to be done in the area of community and race relations.
First, there must be renewed efforts not just to recruit ethnic minority officers, but to ensure that they remain in the service. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) was entirely right. During the year, there was a small increase in the total number of ethnic minority officers, to 730 or 2.6 per cent. of total strength, but the Commissioner's report also shows that the Metropolitan police had to run fast to stand still. In 1994, 1,277 ethnic minority officers were recruited, but 1,384 left the service--100 more, and a higher number than the total of all officers who retired at the end of their service. That is plainly unsatisfactory, and suggests, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow made clear, that, although from the outside the service is attractive to ethnic minority recruits, something is going wrong when they get into the service. I know that the Commissioner is very worried about that.
Miss Hoey:
I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend, but does he agree that, sometimes, there is a deliberate intention by some people--a very small number--from the ethnic minority community to target those young ethnic minority policemen and policewomen and to make their lives extremely difficult? Those young ethnic minority officers need extra support from the police service as well as from the community.
Mr. Straw:
I accept that they are sometimes subject to the most appalling--and, in some cases, criminal--intimidation by other members of the community. As my hon. Friend says, that is all the more reason to ensure that ethnic minority officers have much more support that they get at the moment.
Mr. Spearing:
I join my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) in expressing concern about that issue. The Newham police community consultative group has discussed the matter and, where there are large ethnic minority populations, groups like that may be able to assist in finding out why the turnover is so great. Is not that yet another reason why those groups should be more closely integrated into the advisory committees that advise the police authority--the Home Secretary?
Mr. Straw:
I accept my hon. Friend's comments.
Secondly, we should put into proper perspective the likelihood of those from the Afro-Caribbean communities to commit crime. In my constituency, for example, or in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, virtually no crime is committed by blacks, because there are virtually no members of the black communities living in those areas. In parts of London, much of the crime happens to be committed by black males, not because they are black, but because there are large Afro-Caribbean communities in those areas and a proportion of those communities--as in white and Asian communities--engage in crime.
A recent Home Office research study called "Young People and Crime", which contains the most thorough analysis of the question this decade, suggested that there is no difference between the propensity of the black community to commit crime and that of the white community. The report shows that the cumulative participation rate in crime by young people is 44 per cent. for whites, 43 per cent. for blacks and, as it happens,30 per cent. for Indians, 28 per cent. for Pakistanis and13 per cent. for Bangladeshis.
The report raised another issue, which may be a small one, but it shouted at me when I read it. The Commissioner reported that, during the year, two officers died and 883 officers were injured on duty in road traffic accidents. By definition, police officers do much more mileage in more dangerous circumstances than members of the public, but on my rough calculation a police officer is 50 times more likely to be involved in a road traffic accident and receive an injury than an ordinary member of the public in Greater London. That must be a matter of serious concern for the police and the public.
It is no accident that the New York police department has been able to show such sensitivity to public opinion about crime and disorder. The police service in New York is accountable to the people of New York. There is, however, no similar accountability to the people of London for the running of their police service. This debate is the only formal occasion for the House to hold the Home Secretary, as the police authority for London, to account.
Despite the Home Secretary's profession of concern for policing in London, this debate is taking place 10 months after the year that we are discussing. Between 1992 and 1994, there was no debate at all on policing in the capital. All that would have been different if the Secretary of State's predecessor had implemented a pledge that he gave the House in March 1993:
Six weeks after the Home Secretary made that statement, there was a new Home Secretary, and six weeks later there was one of the fastest U-turns on records. The Home Secretary revealed that Londoners were not to be trusted with a democratic say over the running of their police service.
Instead, Londoners have had foisted on them a new, toothless quango--the Metropolitan police committee. Even the Conservative representative on the joint London Boroughs Association and Association of London Authorities delegation to the Home Secretary called the
procedure for making appointments to the committee astonishing. The committee meets in private, its minutes are confidential to the Home Secretary and, despite the fact that it began to meet during the year 1994-95, no report of its work has yet been published. That is no way to treat Londoners or their police.
The Commissioner is on record as saying that he would prefer a proper, democratically based police authority for London, and the Commissioner is right. The only coherent excuse that the Home Secretary has given for refusing a police authority for London is
The Home Secretary's separate argument in favour of the current arrangements is that the Metropolitan police service has certain national functions that make it different from all other forces. The Home Secretary knows that it is the opinion of senior officers at New Scotland Yard, as it was of his predecessor as Home Secretary, that those national functions could easily be ring-fenced in the short term and continue to be subject to separate accountability. In the longer term, those national functions may in any event come under new national policing arrangements, as was suggested when the House discussed the Security Service Bill recently.
"to establish for the first time a police authority for the Metropolitan police on the new national model separate from the Home Office and with essentially the same tasks as police authorities elsewhere."--[Official Report, 23 March 1993; Vol. 221, c. 766.]
"The Metropolitan Police have unique national responsibilities";
and
"the national interest in the work of the Metropolitan police makes it right tht the Home Secretary should remain the police authority for London"--[Official Report, 28 June 1993; Vol. 227, c. 666.]
There is national interest in the work of all police forces. That does not mean that the forces of Kent or Lancashire should be centrally controlled. Nor should it be so in London. Most crime in London, as elsewhere, is local. It is only right that local people in London should have a proper say in the policing of their communities.
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