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Mr. Maclean: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that17 and 18-year-old users must be supplied from somewhere, and that some night clubs are major sources of custom for dealers, who can make thousands from their evil trade? Is not Ecstasy a death-dealing tablet?
Mr. Hughes: It is, although not to the extent of tobacco or other drugs. We must put matters in perspective.
Mr. Hughes: I am quite serious. The figures are entirely clear. They show that the number of deaths from
Ecstasy is small compared with many other drugs, including drugs that the Government promote or allow to be promoted. Let us not get the balance wrong.The Minister is right to say that dealers must be clobbered, but 100 police officers are not necessary to pick up one or two dealers in a club. My point is that that is a huge use of police resources. If the police know the dealers, they can arrest them in a club perfectly easily.
The policy on closed circuit television is odd. CCTV should have been deployed in some parts of London but has not been, whereas places where crime is lower have received money for CCTV. Something is badly wrong with the mix.
Some other matters concerning policing in London clearly need to be remedied. I shall not elaborate the argument, but we need a democratic police authority--every other part of the country has such an authority--and I have no doubt that one will be established soon. We need a better sequence for consultation on Metropolitan police strategy. The police and community consultative committees and the police and neighbourhood forums need to take part early on, so that the strategy each year is properly formulated. It is good to have such a consultation process, but it would be better if it were carried out in good time.
We need a guarantee that someone will be on the desk at every police station at any hour of the day or night.I have taken this matter up locally and found that that is not always so. One must sometimes wait a long time for all sorts of reasons. Police station desks should have someone available all the time.
We need to tackle the fact that, for historical reasons, a conspiracy of silence often allows people who commit the most serious crimes to get away with them. Peer group pressure means that grassing on others does not happen, and we must make sure that every facility is provided to make it more likely that people will give information.If someone is stabbed, attacked or, worse, murdered in a pub or club or on the street, we should not have a situation where 50 people were there but nobody saw anything. That can best be avoided by better appealing for information locally, or by making an appeal particularly to the pride of a local community.
In relation to racial incidents, we must ensure that last year's problems with Operation Eagle Eye are not repeated. The figures concerning both the victims and the perpetrators of racial attacks must be given objectively, factually and accurately. There is no reason to keep the figures secret.
The most important groups are the young and the old. It is clear that a huge number of crimes are committed by a minute proportion of young people, who can start their criminal activities under the age of 10. They then play truant from school and are out on the streets. Young people hanging around are not the criminals: only the young people who are out of control, either on their own or with others, are the real bugbear of life in our capital city.
The hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) intervened to say that that matter must be dealt with by a network of projects, including out-of-school assistance, homework classes and, in particular, the youth service. Training and employment opportunities will help to keep
youngsters on the straight and narrow and stop them becoming diverted into a life of crime. Vulnerable youngsters often join gangs such as the one to whom Philip Lawrence lost his life defending one of his pupils. Sadly, more gangs are seeking to recruit more youngsters outside more school gates.
Such gang members harm and hurt the elderly most. We had a successful campaign in Southwark a couple of years ago against street robbery in which we tried to get across the message that street robbers are cowards. Young people--or anybody else--who jump out on elderly people on their own at a bus stop, going home or in a lift are the scum of the earth, and there should be no remission of their punishment. While the police have a good record in responding to community feeling, it is about time that the rest of us made it a priority to defend the old and the vulnerable. They are the most afraid in our capital city, and many of them have given the most to this city. We must make the streets safe for them again.
Mr. Richard Tracey (Surbiton):
May I begin with an apology to the House for my enforced absence from the early part of the debate, as I was called away to duties upstairs on the Public Accounts Committee? I missed some of the remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), and I must tell my right hon. Friend the Minister of State that I may have to leave again during his speech.
This is a most important debate, and hon. Members on both sides of the House will welcome the fact that, this year, the business managers have enabled it to held on a Monday. I recall too many occasions in the past when similar debates were held on Fridays. We can now have something of a prime-time discussion of the policing of the metropolis, although it is unfortunate that there are fewer London Members in the Chamber than many of us would have hoped.
We have an opportunity today to discuss with the Home Secretary, as the police authority for London, what is happening and what we think should be happening to the police on the streets of London, and to reflect what our constituents are saying about the priorities for police operations. It is also a good day to pay tribute not only to the chief officers, who must manage the London force, but to those great stalwarts, the home beat officers and all the people who participate in the consultative committees and the sector working parties. They form a most important network of communication in the policing of our great city.
I congratulate the Commissioner and the Metropolitan police force, as did my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, on the enormous success of Operation Bumblebee. There is no doubt that that has reaped a great harvest of arrests, convictions and returned property.I was invited to the Operation Bumblebee roadshow for south-west London, which was held at Sandown park racecourse.
I found strange the enormous amount of property that had been recovered in swoops on burglars' premises in various parts of London but not reclaimed. Senior officers wondered whether it would ever be reclaimed. People do not mark their property. It amazes me that some of them do not realise that it has disappeared or do not seek it more assiduously when it is stolen.
The roadshows, where the public are invited to come and see whether any of their lost property has turned up, are good. I have encouraged the Commissioner--andI again publicly ask him--to hold more Bumblebee roadshows in all the 32 London boroughs so that people do not have to travel too far to be able to inspect property and, if it theirs, to start the process of laying claim to it.
It has been mentioned that the Commissioner sets the priorities and the prime objectives for police operations each year. He consults the 84 London Members of Parliament and the police consultative committees in the boroughs. In their turn, the chief officers in our areas ask us what we think about the various aspects and the way in which they are setting priorities.
For as many years as I can remember, in my area of Kingston upon Thames and Surbiton, the No. 1 priority has been domestic burglary. It remains so this year and so it should. My constituents, whenever I talk to them or when they write to me, have no doubt that they want police to set the prevention of burglary as theNo. 1 objective, but if the police and our good citizens cannot prevent it, they want burglars to be pursued and arrested.
An allied problem is that many elderly people fear attack on their homes by burglars. That fear is over-accentuated--unfortunately, sometimes, by the many television programmes about crime. Although they deliver good returns in catching the perpetrators of crime, the issue of whether elderly people are being excessively frightened by such publicity deserves discussion.
Nevertheless, the police should be aware that there is a fear of attack, as there of vandalism, especially in the quieter streets. Hon. Members who represent the more suburban parts of London will have seen much evidence of mindless vandalism, graffiti and, even worse, damage to people's houses and gardens--garden walls that have been pushed over and damage to motor cars.
I must pay tribute to a constituent of mine, a doughty individual who lives in Tolworth, Mr. Donald Parker, who for a long time has campaigned against mindless vandalism in the streets. He operates almost as a sheriff in his road. Early last year, he collected a petition of residents of the road which he asked me to present to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. A result of his efforts, the local police superintendent met Mr. Parker, myself, and officers, including the home beat officers, with the result that policing has almost eliminated vandalism in that area.
The efforts of the local people have caught the perpetrators who, for too long, had managed to escape because information had not been co-ordinated. Thanks to those local efforts, vandalism has been rooted out of that road for the time being. However, the efforts of the local people and the neighbourhood watch need to continue. It is good that we have such a thriving neighbourhood watch network across London.
The visibility of the police is regularly mentioned by my constituents. I was grateful for the pledge of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at our last party conference
to have 5,000 more police officers over the next three years. In London, which is covered by that undertaking and is, to us, the most important part of policing in Britain, I understand that the commissioner is to put180 more full-time police officers on the beat.
We must also consider the contribution of the special constables. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, together with the commissioner, wants650 special constables to be recruited in London--of whom, apparently, 400 have already been recruited. That is something to which local neighbourhoods can make a great contribution.
Wandsworth council has always put a high premium on the visibility of police on the beat. That led Wandsworth, a year or two ago, to talk about extending its parks police to patrol on the streets and be more visible. It has recruited special constables. Local business has donated one vehicle, as a start, to assist with that operation. I believe that that has also happened in Knightsbridge, where a store has contributed a vehicle to assist the special constabulary. That is the sort of police visibility that our constituents want.
I was slightly surprised by the attitude of the Liberal Democrats. The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) spoke in a slightly confused manner about his party's approach to police officers on the beat. I thought that he was calling for more such officers, but then I discovered a policy document that was produced by the Liberal Democrats in September 1993. The document, entitled "Tackling Crime Together", contains the rather extraordinary statement:
That argument would not carry any weight with my constituents, who want to see more police on the beat and more evidence of police surveillance in public places.In that regard, I signal--in the best cross-party spirit--that I shall support the efforts of Kingston council to secure a grant from my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office, the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), for installing closed circuit television cameras in the main public areas of Kingston and Surbiton.
There is no doubt that closed circuit television contributes greatly to combating crime and to ensuring that the police obtain evidence of criminal or less violent, anti-social acts committed on our high streets and around our stations. Those of us with pubs and young people's clubs in our constituencies know the sort of crime that can centre around them. My right hon. Friend should note that, at the next round of grants, I shall push hard to have closed circuit television installed in Kingston.
I now turn to the extremely important issue of illegal drugs, which I raised by way of intervention during my right hon. and learned Friend's speech. We must move to combat the sale of drugs in all areas. I am afraid that nowhere in London--be it leafy suburbia or central London--seems to be free of the hazards of drugs and drug peddlers. Whenever politicians from all over the world meet to discuss our fears for the future, without exception the main topic of conversation is drugs. Drugs are far too easily available these days. They come from many parts of the world and cause great harm, especially
to our young people, often pushing them to the point of mental illness and suicide, and shattering families, local neighbourhoods and groups of old friends.
I believe that the schools and youth clubs should undertake many more initiatives in conjunction with police forces to provide information to those who wish to root out drugs. At the end of last week, I attended a first-class seminar at the well-known Tiffin girls school in my constituency. The parents association and the staff at that school organised a seminar which was addressed by experts from the excellent Kaleidoscope project in Kingston, which is an anti-drugs counselling service. Staff from the centre told parents what to look for if they suspected that their children were using drugs, and alerted them to the signs of drug pushing and supplying.
"increasing the number of police officers has had no measurable impact on the level of crime. Putting more police officers on the beat will likewise have little effect in reducing levels of crime, although there may be other arguments in favour of it."
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