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Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: It was Lord McCluskey who said that--not Lord Macaulay, who is a very senior judge.
Mr. Gallie: I thank my right hon. Friend for that correction.
I welcome the change--it was an amendment for which I pushed--allowing the procurator to appeal against solemn court judgments that are seen to be lenient. I believe that that has been highly successful and I look forward to that right being extended to sheriff court judgments by the Bill on criminal proceedings in Scotland. That is an important step forward.
My constituents keenly await the introduction of the right of the police to confiscate alcohol from under-age drinkers. That is a testing matter for my constituents, who experience constant problems with young--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris):
Order. I call Mr. Soley.
Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith):
I want to concentrate on family issues, crime and crime prevention. I have been commenting on those issues since well before the recent media coverage of the alleged moral crisis that we face. In 1994--the United Nations Year of the Family--I chaired an all-party committee on the family; many of the recommendations in our report concern the questions that we are discussing now.
It is a tragedy that it took Dunblane and the murder of Mr. Lawrence to make everyone sit up and take notice. The media should recognise that it is important to pick up such issues as early as possible, and that many of them should have been addressed in 1994, the Year of the Family. When people pick on the media and say that they cause violence, they frequently blame television without recognising that newspapers--especially the tabloids--have a problematic way of presenting crime and that they increase the fear of crime by the repetitive reporting of certain cases.
The current general debate about the family should not panic us into thinking that everything is disastrous. Many good things are happening within family groups and in society as a whole. Many of the young people whom I meet have a high standard of moral behaviour and are deeply concerned about society and about the environment. We are in danger of belittling what they are doing and saying if we carry on pretending that everything is bad.
I caution hon. Members against looking back at some golden age that in my judgment never existed. I went to school in the 1940s; there were failing schools then and there was plenty of violence in and around our schools. I do not doubt, however, that the situation is much worse now. Hansard will show that I have spoken on the issue in the House over many years, and that the Government were warned about what would happen. In the early 1980s I said that the crime rate would rise faster here than in other European countries if we continued with some of the social and economic policies that were then being pursued.
I take no satisfaction in saying that I also predicted that there would be a riot in our prisons, before the riots that took place in the early 1980s, and I warn the Government that it will happen again if we continue to use prisons as dumping grounds for people with multiple problems, giving them the impression that we have locked the door and thrown away the key and that even if they behave well they cannot expect any improvement in their conditions or any hastening of their release time. We then expect prison officers to deal with that crisis. That is neither fair nor responsible.
My next point relates to parenting and crime. Again, there is a danger at the moment that we assume that all crime is the result of bad parenting. Bad parenting is a crucial factor in the causation of crime--I do not doubt that--but it is not the sole factor. Much is also down to the social and economic structure. One reason why parents often fail is that they are tipped into crisis by an economic or social problem that they face--frequently, for example, homelessness or unemployment. If families with young children are put into bed-and-breakfast accommodation--for example, when their houses are repossessed--or if one of the parents of a family that is only just coping, only just holding together, is put into long-term unemployment, the children are more likely to get into trouble. That is why crime goes up when unemployment is higher and tends to go down when it is lower. That is one of the reasons why we must get it right.
If I had a single message to get across to the Government today, it would be to say to them what we said in 1994 in our all-party parenting committee: they must have a policy on the family. This is not about marriage or single parents: it is about all types of families, because families come in different shapes and sizes and it ill behoves this place to start moralising to people about what kind of family they should have. Many hon. Members--particularly Conservative Members in recent years, but it could apply equally well to Opposition Members--will fall by the wayside if we start moralising in that way. It does not help. Instead, we have to try to help families, and particularly the children, to cope well.
The one recommendation that I would make would be that a sub-committee of the Cabinet should be set up to look at family matters and to co-ordinate between Government Departments and outside agencies, including local government. People throughout the country are crying out for such co-ordination. We could have aims which, though simple, would affect the crime rate. For example, we could say that no child will be kept in bed-and-breakfast accommodation for more than a month or two.
Another good way to deal with crime committed by young people would be to ensure that any child expelled from school, as increasingly happens, is back in some full-time education structure, be it a school, a special unit or one-to-one tuition, within a week or so of being expelled. Otherwise, they end up adrift in society, lose their place in the educational queue and become liable to crime.
The same applies to parenting education. One cannot just dump parenting education on schools and expect it to work. The policy on it needs to be thought out. Nobody in the Government or the country at the moment--other than voluntary groups and one or two people who are ahead of the field on this--is giving much thought to that.
Let us get tough on crime. My great criticism of the Government is that they have never been tough on crime, in the sense that they need to stop crime happening. They are soft on crime. On punishment, they think that they are hard, but in fact they are just muddled. If they were to say to a hardened criminal, "We are going to lock you up for life if you carry a gun, and you will get the same sentence if you kill the person you faced," the criminal might as well kill that person. To go down that rather stupid road would endanger the public. We can ban the sale of guns. In 1985, when I was shadow Minister for home affairs, I put it to the House that there should be a standing committee of the Home Office to consider the question of imitation guns. At that time, two youngsters had been shot while holding imitation guns that the police thought were real--understandably, in the circumstances. There was also Hungerford. We should have taken action there and then.
What about knives? Who can believe that it is beyond the wit of the House to legislate to prevent the open display and advertising of killing knives? Of course it is within our capacity, and we should have legislated against that ages ago.
Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East):
I begin my speech on the home affairs debate on the Loyal Address by applauding the Government for all the measures that have succeeded in halting the rise in crime in my constituency. The Bournemouth police division is experiencing its second successive year of falling crime. Particularly encouraging to my constituents is the dramatic decrease in burglaries of domestic homes--so far this year, 34 per cent.--while crime in general has decreased, by 13 per cent. I thank the Government for those measures and for the greatly increased resources and police manpower that are making my constituents more secure in their homes and safer as they go about their business.
Under the Conservatives, since 1979, spending on the Dorset police has increased by 112 per cent. in real terms--by £57 million. Police strength has risen and there are an additional 467 officers and staff. I understand that we are to obtain a further 66 officers following last year's announcement of an extra 5,000 police over the next three years, and, for the first time this year, the Home Office will pay the security costs of the Conservative party conference, which took place in Bournemouth a couple of weeks ago, to the tune of £1.5 million, all of which is good news for my constituents.
Nevertheless, despite those achievements, the chief constable of Dorset remains concerned that his force remains undermanned and under-resourced, particularly in comparison with other areas. For example, the population-police ratio for Dorset is 1:527, compared with the average of 1:494 for all the non-Metropolitan police forces. Two months ago, one of my constituents, the mother of a 16-year-old boy, telephoned 999 to report that her son had been assaulted by a number of youths in an attack involving knives and CS gas. The father subsequently went off to confront the youths alone. The mother complained to me that the police did not respond to her call. Apparently, in attempting to respond to her call, the police were diverted to other calls; it was proving to be an exceptionally busy evening and all local officers were already committed to other duties, including the policing of an AFC Bournemouth football match.
I accept that difficult decisions had to be made that evening, but personal experiences such as that are rightly encouraging my constituents to press for more police for Bournemouth. I hope that the Government will fully accept and implement the recommendations of the Elliot report, which found that Dorset's present area cost adjustment does not adequately and fairly reflect our costs. The recommendations would mean extra resources for the Dorset police authority.
The success of Dorset police in reducing crime in Bournemouth is attributed to more effective intelligence-led policing, leading to the conviction and imprisonment of persistent offenders. I pay tribute to the police for that. It is also put down to habitual burglars receiving longer gaol sentences from the courts. In the light of this local experience, I welcome the proposal in the Queen's Speech for a new crime Bill providing for stiff new minimum prison sentences for professional house burglars. Because so much crime today is drug related, I welcome the stiff new minimum prison sentences for persistent dealers in hard drugs. Only by keeping such hardened criminals locked up for longer can our constituents be better protected from them and others deterred from following their example. I hope that, while in prison, criminals are made to spend their time more productively. I believe that prisons should be profit making, that prisoners should work to pay compensation to their victims and pay for the cost of their accommodation.
Of course, longer sentences may mean heavier demand on prison places. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is already responding to that with more places and new prisons. However, I urge him to consider the position of people who end up in prison for minor offences, such as non-payment of television licences or default on fines, when that was not the court's intention. Richard Tilt, the head of the Prison Service, recently referred to that. Community work and curfew orders were intended for such people, and electronic tagging was intended for young offenders. Prisons should be a last resort, to be used for people who pose a real threat to the rest of us in the community.
I welcome the Government's decision to introduce legislation to curb stalkers and to establish a national register of child sex offenders. The cases of two of my constituents were referred to me recently. Their quality of life is being destroyed by stalkers, one of whom is
apparently working in collusion with others. Those tragic cases can be dealt with only by new and effective legislation.
The establishment of a paedophile register has been welcomed by my local newspaper, the Bournemouth Evening Echo, which has given a lead with its "protect our children" campaign. It has pioneered the establishment of a register available to key groups working with children in the community. That campaign was in response to a one third increase in the number of Dorset children facing violence, sexual abuse and neglect. It has already been picked up across the water in France by newspapers in Cherbourg. Given the events that have taken place in Belgium, it should be emulated there and throughout the European Union. Just as there is a single market for jobs, we should establish common standards of protection for our children. Perhaps my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Scottish Office will deal with that matter in his winding-up speech. Why cannot the lead taken by the Bournemouth Evening Echo result in a Europewide register available to all?
I welcome the Firearms (Amendment) Bill. It is a fair and realistic compromise between the Cullen recommendations and the reasonable demand of gun owners and clubs for the retention of target shooting with low calibre pistols, which, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary reminded us, is an Olympic sport. Given the figures quoted in the media, I suggest that the amount to be set aside for compensation is totally inadequate. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister give me an assurance that it will adequately compensate not only for guns but for ancillary equipment, such as holsters, magazine pouches and shell slides, which will become useless, and possibly illegal, under the Bill?
7.16 pm
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