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Mr. Michael Stephen (Shoreham): The right hon. Gentleman rightly points out the cost of keeping people in prison, but what about the cost of leaving them at large to burgle our constituents' houses? What about the costs to the insurance companies, our constituents, the courts and the police who arrest those people time and time again?
Mr. Beith: We want offences prevented. The whole of the Government's policy approach is from the wrong end. It says, "Let us accept that there will be lots and lots of burglaries and violent crimes and then let us lock up people for longer and longer and in such a manner that they will be even more likely to commit further crimes when they eventually get out." The Government's policy does not deal with crime prevention.
The transfer of resources involved in building 12 new prisons will decimate the programmes necessary to prevent the offences from being carried out in the first place. In particular, the potential impact on policing is disastrous. Of course, it will not happen. We know--and the Government know--that those 12 new prisons will not be built. No part of this policy will be implemented--it is gesture politics. The Labour party should not fall for gesture politics. I acquit the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) of doing so with the Scottish Bill, as the Labour party made clear its fundamental opposition to it. Labour's opposition is not so clear when it comes to the English Bill. Indeed, if it does not oppose the Bill, it had better say how many prisons it is prepared to build and how much expenditure it would approve for a massive prison building programme. We will oppose the Bill because it is fundamentally misconceived and will damage programmes to prevent crime.
Sentencing is only a small part of fighting crime. Policing, preventing crime in every community and teaching young people the practical skills of parenting and citizenship and making them feel that they have a place in society will all be severely damaged by the transfer of resources involved in the proposed Bill, yet they are essential if we are to tackle crime.
Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton):
I do not know why the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) says that it is gesture politics to promise to build 12 more prisons. We have built 22 prisons over the past decade and a half at a cost of £1.4 billion, providing 11,656 new places. If we have done it once, we can do it again. The right hon. Gentleman's remarks are just one example of the Liberal Democrats' ridiculous attacks on the Government.
The ludicrous speech of the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) should not pass without mention. As the Opposition see their lead in the public opinion polls slipping away, they are beginning to panic. As a result, the noise as they leap on to every passing bandwagon is becoming deafening. The whole country knows that their record on law and order is a disgrace. They have opposed or failed to support practically every toughening measure that the Government have introduced over the past 13 years.
Many of the ills in our society are due to the years of weak, wet, feeble socialism that the Labour party now rejects, but that found its way into all our Departments of State, including the Home Office. The Opposition seem to think that the public are less intelligent than they really are in noting such nonsense. They will get a big surprise when the next election comes if they stand on a law-and-order platform.
In contrast, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is determined to protect people from crime. He has presented this country with a series of excellent
measures for the protection of society. They have the support not only of the police but of those whom we represent in this place. I shall come to those measures in a moment, but in passing I want to mention handguns. The Home Affairs Committee found that there was no rational case for banning handguns. That position was vindicated by Lord Cullen--someone who could not be considered to be a member of the Conservative party or to be looking at the matter through political eyes. However, there is a political imperative, because in a democracy a Government who ignore the deep feelings of a large number of people do so at their peril. So there is some justification for doing what the Government propose, despite there being no practical, rational case for banning just handguns.
On the Police Bill, I welcome the Government's response to the Home Affairs Committee's recommendations on organised crime--a national crime squad and closer liaison between the police and the home security service. I also welcome the Bill's provision on employees' criminal records--again, something that the Home Affairs Committee recommended in its report on the private security industry. As one who originally encouraged the Stalking Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson), I commend the Government for making the Bill so much more useful and effective after proper and due consideration than it would have been had it been rushed through.
The Home Affairs Select Committee has not had time to consider the issue of combat knives. I find it very odd, however, that, after the many years in which we have been talking about this issue and as recently as January 1996--during the passage of the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland)--Labour agreed that there was, as yet, no definition that could exclude combat knives. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) has suddenly decided that there is a definition for such knives. Unfortunately, he could not remember the definition, or there was not one, and he did not have it written on the piece of paper that he had in front of him.
The hon. Member for Blackburn told us that the police, or representatives of the police, have changed their minds on the subject. They said that there must be a definition. But where is the definition? The British public will laugh at the hon. Gentleman and at the Labour party for saying, "There is a definition, but we cannot tell you what it is."
Labour says, "There is no need for a definition for sales and display restrictions." But that is nonsense if one cannot define what it is that one cannot sell or display. Moreover, it is spurious nonsense, because anyone found with a combat knife in a public place without a good reason would be liable for up to two years' imprisonment under the Offensive Weapons Act 1996, which Conservative Members introduced and passed earlier this year.
I come now to the main issue that we are debating: the sentencing Bill. Ordinary people have grown fed up with what they consider to be rising crime. I do not think that it is necessary to argue about whether they are fed up with increasing crime or with an increase in reported crime because more people are reporting crimes. Whatever the facts, people are fed up with the situation and with the inability of the police, the courts and the criminal justice system to do very much about it. In any given part of the
country, they are fed up with a relatively small hard core of offenders who are back on the streets a short time after being arrested, who then commit more crime. The public are fed up with the absurdity of judges telling offenders that they will go to prison for four years, and the offenders being out and about in a year or two.
So the Government are doing something about the situation. The Government have taken a string of action to reduce crime. That action has been effective, because crime has fallen by 10 per cent. over the past three years. There is more to be done, however, and we are not complacent about the situation. The proposals have the people's overwhelming support, as measured in public opinion polls.
I must make one very important point. The proposals are not justified only because they are popular, but because, in our free society, our criminal justice system works only if it has the approval and support of the people it is protecting. Public approval and support are important for the containment of crime. Without that support, witnesses will not come forward, jurors will not serve--or, if they do serve, they will not convict--and crime that should be unacceptable if a society is to remain healthy and free becomes more acceptable. That is why it is vital, first, to restore honesty to the sentencing process.
Under these proposals, the sentence served will--more closely than ever before--match the court's sentence, with a small discount of about 16 per cent. for co-operation and good behaviour, which will be continually assessed. There will be no early release and parole, and time off will not be a right regardless of good behaviour. I am sure that the public want those measures, and that they will support and encourage them. If the measures result in an increase of about 10,000 or 11,000 prisoners, so be it--we will build those prisons. It is ridiculous to say that what we have done once before we cannot do again.
It is not only necessary and sensible for the system to ensure that the sentence served by prisoners is nearer the sentence delivered by the judge, but--if we are to have public support--we must put a stop to the more persistent and the worst offenders. Who are they? They are offenders who simply cannot get violence and hatred out of their systems. They are those who cannot stop inflicting serious sexual violence on women and children. They are those who make a profession of crime, such as the professional burglar--the crime that most people fear, because of the desecration of their homes and prized possessions, and the shock of catching villains in the act. They are those who push drugs to our children and to young people in schools, in pubs and on the streets.
Those offenders get up every morning to go to work with their tools, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines packed in their bags, and they come back at the end of the day. That is their work, and they are professionals. The public, whom we represent, expect--they have a right to expect--the Government to do more than they have so far succeeded in doing to stop those types of crime.
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