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7.53 pm
Ms Margaret Hodge (Barking): I join other hon. Members who have congratulated the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis on his stewardship of the Metropolitan police, especially during the year under discussion. Of course, we all warmly welcome the small reduction in recorded crime in that period.
I was extremely concerned about what I would call the rather complacent attitude of the Home Secretary towards policing in London. If the same reduction in recorded crime that he reported to the House were sustained, it would still take us 15 years to reach the level of recorded crime that the Government inherited when they took office. That is a long time for Londoners to have to tolerate unacceptably high levels of crime. The Government cannot be trusted on crime, any more than they can be trusted on other aspects of public policy.
My contribution to the debate will focus on two aspects of great importance to my constituents and to the people of London in general. The first is the number of front-line officers working in London and the predicted resourcing of the police service in London in the coming year. The second is the police service's accountability to Londoners.
The Home Secretary is very good at claiming that he has significantly strengthened the front-line resourcing of police in London. If I may say so, he is at best disingenuous; at worst, he would appear to be misleading the House by selecting figures that may suit his argument but which do not, in my view, paint the full picture. The figures that we have are those that we gleaned from the annual report of the chief inspector of constabulary at the Home Office. I think that those returns can be trusted by all. They are not figures dreamed up by a partial group of Labour party supporters; nor are they compiled on the instruction of a senior Minister who is trying to justify what he wants the public to believe.
Mr. Howard:
They are neither dreamed up nor unreliable--they are just out of date.
Ms Hodge:
I fail to see how figures relating back to 1980, 1981, 1982 and 1983, right through to 1995, can be said to be out of date. Either the Home Secretary is claiming that they are inaccurate or he is not. I would suggest that they are not inaccurate and therefore cannot be said to be out of date. They go back 15 years.
Mr. Howard:
This clearly needs to be spelled out to the hon. Lady in words of one syllable. She began
Mr. Howard:
Yes, she did. That was how she began this part of her remarks. She made that serious charge, which I am slightly surprised that she was allowed to make, with reference to figures that I had cited--[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) want to say something?
Mr. Dobson:
No; I want you to shut up.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making an intervention; we cannot have one intervention on another.
Mr. Howard:
The hon. Lady made her point by referring to figures that I had given earlier and which she was challenging, as she is perfectly entitled to do. I am trying to point out that the reason why the figures thatI gave differ from those that she is citing is that the figures that I gave are more up to date. The figures in the document to which she is referring take us to April last year, whereas the figures that I was using take us to December last year and are therefore more up to date. It is perfectly simple.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
There seemed to be a note of criticism in the Home Secretary's remarks. I was listening carefully to what was said and did not think that the hon. Lady's remarks were such that she should be pulled up for using unparliamentary language.
Ms Hodge:
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for protecting me. I had selected my words extremely carefully. As my hon. Friends have said, the Home Secretary tries to produce seasonally adjusted figures, and the House is used to that. I repeat that the Home Secretary may have selected figures that suit his argument, but they do not paint an honest and full picture of what is happening to the resourcing of police in London.
The figures that I have before me demonstrate--the Home Secretary has not denied it--that police strength in London has not been increased substantially. It has not even been held at a level appropriate to the need. In 1990, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon became Prime Minister. In his speech at the party conference in October 1995, the Prime Minister made a commitment that he would increase the police strength throughout the country, and one presumes that that includes the police strength for the capital. The record speaks for itself. When the right hon. Gentleman became Prime Minister, the Metropolitan police strength was 28,126. By 1995, that figure had fallen to 27,574. As I read those figures, that means there are 500 fewer bobbies on the streets of London than when the right hon. Gentleman became Prime Minister.
That reduction has occurred at a time when there has been an unprecedented increase in crime levels in the capital. Yes, there was a reduction in the levels of recorded crime last year and, of course, every responsible hon. Member welcomes that, but the figures are still running at record high levels. The Government's failure
to invest in policing in London--shown by the cuts in police strength and by the cuts in the Metropolitan police's budget, which they will have to absorb next year and in ensuing years--is selling Londoners short on their policing.
No wonder the fear of crime is so high. No wonder there is a loss of confidence in the police in London.No wonder the Home Secretary is the least trusted man about town.
Mr. Howard:
Can the hon. Lady explain how a3.6 increase in spending power can be characterised as a cut?
Ms Hodge:
I am extremely happy to respond to that point, because the Home Secretary has made it several times. The 3.6 per cent. increase in spending comes partly from an underspending in the current year. That is partly how it is being financed. However, every other police force has had a real increase, as promised by the Home Secretary, of 3.6 per cent. London has been given less additional money than elsewhere and Londoners will be expected to fund the Metropolitan police in a way that they have never been before--from an underspend that was no doubt encouraged by the Home Secretary.
Mr. Howard:
The hon. Lady is piling inaccuracy on inaccuracy. It is simply not true to suggest that every other police force has an increase of 3.6 per cent. The hon. Lady simply does not have a clue what she is talking about.
Ms Hodge:
If that is not true, the commitment given by the Home Secretary that he would increase the police budgets of every police force by 3.6 per cent. was also not true. I understand that that is the commitment he gave.
We have 500 fewer police in London, but between1991 and 1994-95, sexual offences have increased by26 per cent.--those are my figures. We have 500 fewer police in London, but crimes of violence have increased by 16 per cent., and we have 500 fewer police in London but, in the borough of Barking and Dagenham, the number of burglaries has more than trebled in the past 16 years. In 1979, one in 34 households in my constituency experienced a burglary, but by 1995--the most recent figures I have available--that figure had increased to one in 11. That is a terrific increase in an outer-London borough. The same pattern exists for violent crime in my constituency. In 1979, one in 82 people in Barking had been the victim of a violent crime. By 1995, that had almost doubled, to the horrifying figure of one in 45.
I am sure that other hon. Members are also being visited at their surgeries by an increasing number of people coming to complain about disorder in the streets. Groups of residents come to talk about young people collecting on open spaces and about their fears as they watch, unprotected, the vandalising of cars and street furniture. Disorder on the streets is a growing problem which can only partly be addressed if we increase the presence of police in our streets. With the cuts in police strength in London, the ability of the Commissioner to deliver an increase in police presence in ordinary streets is undoubtedly curtailed.
Ms Hodge:
The Home Secretary may shake his head, but it is true.
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