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6.38 pm
Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth): In that case, it is obvious that the hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir J. Spicer) has not listened to or understood a great deal while he has been sitting here.
This has been an extraordinary debate. Not only did the Home Secretary try, by publishing another White Paper, to distract attention from the White Paper that he had chosen to debate, but he was joined on the Government Front Bench by the Secretary of State for Scotland, whose published proposals on sentencing are quite different from those of the Home Secretary. What a way of running what was supposed to be a crime week, intended to regain the initiative from the Labour party.
Crime Week has been a disaster for the Home Secretary. That was bound to happen, not only because he seems to get everything wrong, but because the difference between the two parties is that the Labour party is serious about tackling crime. The country knows that, and will see it when we are in government.
We have heard the White Paper torn apart by the former Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd), who said that the Home Secretary's proposals would be visibly unjust and counter-productive, would not do much for deterrence, and needed sensible rethinking.
From the criticisms both inside and outside the House, it is clear that, although the Home Secretary has now woken up to the problem on which the Labour party has focused for a considerable number of years, his White Paper is less robust than the proposals that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), the shadow Home Secretary, has already published, and does not stand up to the same scrutiny.
Indeed, the Home Secretary was so concerned not to give credit to my hon. Friend that he put himself into the absurd position of defending the presence of eight and nine-year-olds on the street well into the night. He tried to wriggle out of it by saying that the police already have the power to act, but he is wrong, except in very specific and limited circumstances. Anybody who has come across the problems in practice knows that that is not the case.
One police superintendent said that he supported
During the debate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Sweeney) gave loyal but misguided support to the Home Secretary. But the hon. Gentleman does not take crime in the community as seriously as did his predecessor, and we look forward to the return of John P. Smith at the general election.
I share with the hon. Gentleman the police division of the Vale of Glamorgan, and I am pleased that we now have extra police on the streets. However, it was the Secretary of State for Wales who for several years denied the South Wales police the cash they needed, so it is foolish for a Conservative Member to draw attention to the Government's failure in that regard. It is also foolish for Conservative Members to talk about the Government's record on police numbers, as the Home Secretary did when he intervened desperately on my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ms Coffey), despite the short time available to her, because he did not seem to have confidence in his Minister of State.
In the run-up to the 1992 general election the Government promised an extra 1,000 police officers, but what has happened since March 1992? By 30 September 1995 the number of police officers had decreased by 860. What a record. The Home Secretary has nothing to be proud of in connection with police numbers and with his support of the police.
The hon. Members for Vale of Glamorgan and for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. Butler) were both signatories to the report of the Home Affairs Select Committee which demanded statutory regulation of the private security industry. I am surprised that neither of them has been consistent enough to demand its implementation in the debate.
Today's White Paper would allow employers access to criminal records. That is sensible, especially with violent offenders and sex offenders who might wheedle their way into working with children. But the police and the private security industry, as well as the Labour party, have demanded statutory regulation to protect the public against rogue crooked employers too.
By bringing in only half the prescription, the Home Secretary will allow crooked employers, about which we have already given evidence, access to the records of those whom they seek to employ. The Mafia would be delighted with such an arrangement. We keep being told that the Home Secretary is still considering the Select Committee's report, but when the Home Office gave evidence to the Select Committee, its representatives said that it was not really interested, and did not support the idea of statutory regulation. Is it not true that the Home Secretary is unwilling to provide, or is prevented by his Cabinet colleagues from providing, the statutory regulation needed to protect the public?
Anyone who has followed the events or the long-drawn-out investigations in north Wales knows, even if the full report does not reach the public domain, that
paedophiles plotted and planned the systematic abuse of children. To allow people in positions of influence as employers in the public or private sector to know details about sex offenders, without themselves being investigated, is surely a recipe for disaster.
The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery(Mr. Carlile) feared that listing acquittals would allow rumour to have the force of a conviction. That is a difficult area, but the level of conviction for child sex offences is very low, and the fact that so few offences come to light is a scandal. We need to do more to protect children against the predators. Yet in recent weeks the Conservatives blocked a Bill to establish a register of paedophiles.
Given the overwhelming evidence that paedophiles are the most devious and cunning people in the world, as well as the most despicable, and given the evidence from "The Cook Report" that most child sex offenders expect to reoffend on release, and use their time in prison reflecting on past abuse and planning future abuse, it is an absolute scandal that only last week the Home Secretary led Conservative Members into the Lobby to defeat amendments to the law which would have helped to protect children by preventing witness statements and photographic evidence from circulating in prison as a stimulus to future offences.
Belatedly, the Conservative party has woken up to the disastrous level of crime, to its impact on ordinary people, and to the fact that Conservatives are no longer believed by the public. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) condemned the Government for taking 17 years to get round to tackling crime. He was right, but he then went on to make a total fool of himself by trying to blame the Labour party for the failures of the past 17 years.
We shall take no lessons from that hon. Gentleman, who by his own admission has not taken an interest in law and order debates for many years. We shall take no lessons from a Conservative party that has yet to apologise for the introduction of the poll tax. As somebody who has been a magistrate since 1972, and has worked successfully for many years on projects to reduce crime in my constituency and in the rest of my area, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I did not discover crime and the need for clarity of punishment when I entered the House--and nor did many of my hon. Friends.
I can tell the hon. Gentleman and his constituents this: the leader of the Labour party was right to promise to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Under a Government led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), with my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn as Home Secretary, that will become a national strategy rather than a mere promise by the Labour party, and it will be welcomed by the police and the public alike.
The Conservative party is condemned by its own record. The level of crime is twice as high as when the Conservatives came into office; only one offence in 50 leads to punishment by a court; only one in 750 leads to a punishment involving a custodial sentence. We need the practical and comprehensive policies of the Labour party to nip young offending in the bud, to tackle violence, to deal with nuisance neighbours, and to introduce consistency of sentencing in a way that will work, instead of doing as the Government do when they have to amend their own legislation every other year--and indeed, sometimes almost in the course of a single year.
"proposals aimed at keeping vulnerable youngsters off the streets at night and away from potential criminal activity".
19 Jun 1996 : Column 929
He agreed, as many youth workers have, about encouraging and enabling parents to take proper responsibility for the care and control of their children, and continued:
That is precisely what my hon. Friend proposed, which is in general a sensible way of tackling a real problem.
"We are happy to discuss the curfew proposal, but some form of legislation would be required before we had any power to impose such a blanket measure and extensive consultation with the community would also be needed".
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