House of Commons
Thursday 4 July 1996
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
City of Westminster Bill [Lords]
Order for consideration read.
Amendments agreed to.
Private Finance Initiative
1. Mr. Clapham: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made as to the extent to which money from the private finance initiative will compensate for the reduction in capital finance originally undertaken for 1996-97. [34517]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Tom Sackville): Private finance initiative replaces public capital where it offers better value and is a useful addition to any public capital provision.
Mr. Clapham: I am surprised by the Minister's answer because he did not refer to any figures. He must be well aware that the Home Secretary announced with a great fanfare that an extra £20 million would be available in revenue for extra police. By a sleight of hand, there was a £23 million cut in capital provision, compared with the total in the annual report. Can the Minister assure the House that private finance will make up for the £23 million cut in capital provision this year?
Mr. Sackville: We expect £151 million to be spent on capital contracts, most of them already agreed, in the current year. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that all Home Office funding for specific police building projects is being maintained this year. There have been no enforced cuts in major building programmes, but it is open to police authorities to enter into PFI contracts. I recently visited a police force that is making considerable progress down that road. There is no reason for police building in future not to take advantage of private finance.
Mr. John Marshall: Has my hon. Friend noticed the vendetta against the private finance initiative launched by Opposition Back Benchers? Is he aware that the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott)
claims to have invented the PFI and that the Leader of the Opposition claims to support it? Is not that another example of new Labour being out of touch with 80 per cent. of its Back Benchers?
Mr. Sackville: It is significant that we have received no complaints about the PFI from Labour Front Benchers recently. Opposition Members who have cast aspersions on the initiative, locally or otherwise, are totally out of touch with their own party.
Juvenile Crime
2. Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what new measures he is planning to tackle juvenile crime; and if he will make a statement. [34518]
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Michael Howard): The Government continue to take firm action to tackle juvenile crime and its causes. In particular, we have strengthened the courts' powers to give young offenders custodial sentences where they commit serious crimes or offend persistently; we have given the police the power to attach stricter conditions to bail; we are proposing to give the police new powers to seize alcohol from young people drinking in public and to destroy it; and we have set up a ministerial group on juveniles, which is working to ensure that all relevant Departments and Government agencies, together with local government and voluntary agencies, co-ordinate their efforts--so as to target children who are at greatest risk of offending and to maximise the efforts made to steer them away from a life of crime.
Mr. Greenway: I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend's reply and all the measures that he is taking. Does he agree that if juveniles are set on a life of crime, that will prove disastrous for the rest of their lives and for their families? Does my right hon. and learned Friend further agree that if juveniles receive moral and spiritual teaching, that will assist them to move away from crime? Will my right hon. and learned Friend do all that he can to provide such education, as well as preventing juveniles from reoffending if they commit a crime for any reason?
Mr. Howard: I agree with my hon. Friend, whose points go far beyond the criminal justice system. Greater emphasis must be placed on the part that teachers and parents can play in educating children in the difference between right and wrong. The greater the emphasis placed on that matter in children's formative years, the less prospect there will be of them becoming career criminals later in life.
Mr. Straw: I entirely endorse what the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) said. But is the Secretary of State aware that, so great has been the Government's failure over 17 years to tackle juvenile crime, there are countless examples across the country of persistent young offenders who wait for months--in some cases for more than a year--before being punished? Meanwhile, they offend again and again before their cases get to court. Why are these delays continually becoming worse? Does not the Government's inability to tackle youth crime contrast starkly with Labour's proposals to
reform the youth justice system, and particularly with our pledge to halve the time that it takes to bring serious young criminals to justice?
Mr. Howard: The pledge might be just a trifle more impressive if the document to which the hon. Gentleman refers gave the slightest indication of how the pledge is to be maintained--but it does not deal with that at all. What we have seen from the Labour party is a series of attempts to undermine all the measures that we have taken. It has attempted to wreck the steps that we have taken to give police the power to attach conditions to bail, and it has sought to make it impossible for secure accommodation to be made available for young offenders, with Labour-controlled local authorities consistently refusing to provide such accommodation. What we get from the hon. Gentleman is a conspicuous example of the new dangers that new Labour brings.
Drugs (Prisons)
3. Mr. Ian Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps have been taken to combat the use of drugs in prisons. [34519]
Mr. Howard: Since last April we have introduced mandatory drug testing in all prison establishments. All establishments have also produced local strategies for reducing the supply of and the demand for drugs.
Mr. Bruce: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that answer. How successful has that policy been? Does he recall that he received no support in voting for those measures from the Labour party or from the Liberal party? They tried to say one thing in the media but failed to support the policies in the House. Will he confirm that it is absolutely essential that we clean out drugs from our prisons, because a prisoner coming out who is dependent on drugs almost certainly will go back to a life of crime?
Mr. Howard: I agree with my hon. Friend. I think that it is too early in the mandatory drug testing programme to be definitive about its success, although the latest figures for those testing positive--at 27.6 per cent., which, of course, is still far too high--show a welcome reduction on the 37 per cent. who tested positive in the first month of the introduction of the programme in February last year. Although there is more to be done, the signs are encouraging.
Mr. Bermingham: Can the Home Secretary please tell me how he can reconcile, first, an expected expansion of 7,000 in the total prison population by April next year; secondly, an expected 1,200 reduction in the number of prison officers because of the 5 per cent. to 13 per cent. cuts; and, thirdly, a total freeze on recruitment in the Prison Service? When he is reducing the numbers of officers and increasing the numbers of prisoners, how can he ever have an effective drug policy--unless he introduces drug-free wings in prisons, and perhaps uses specialists who can begin to educated prisoners away from the drug habit?
Mr. Howard: We are doing both of the things that the hon. Gentleman suggests. In particular, a significant increase is under way in the number of prisons in which
drug treatment programmes are available. The hon. Gentleman is quite right and I entirely accept that, in addition to mandatory drug testing, we need more treatment available in our prisons. That is exactly what we are providing.
Dame Jill Knight: Does not my right hon. and learned Friend recognise that the largest proportion of drugs going into prisons come from visitors visiting inmates? Does he accept that there is a very real need to stop that, particularly by stopping visitors and inmates touching, which is so often how drugs are passed?
Mr. Howard: I agree with a good deal of what my hon. Friend says. In particular, we are introducing on a pilot basis closed visits for those who have been found to be in possession of drugs who are suspected of having had those drugs passed to them through visiting, in precisely the way that my hon. Friend has suggests. We are determined to do all that we can to root out the disgraceful state of affairs in which drugs are taken in our prisons, and closed visits may have an important part to play in achieving that objective.
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