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Mr. Matthew Banks: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. McAllion: I shall not give way, because I do not have time.
The reality is that the Government talk tough on crime, but act soft on crime. They make it easy for drug traffickers to get their poisonous material into our country because they do not want to spend public money to support the Customs and Excise officers around the country.
I understand that, on the night when three young men died at the rave in Hangar 13 in Ayr, there were about 1,250 youngsters at the dance venue. The police believe that about 50 per cent. of them purchased the drug Ecstasy in pill form, that there were about 25 pushers and that the drugs were selling at £15 or £20 per pill. That means that 625 youngsters buying just one pill each would net £9,375 for the pushers on that night. Each pusher would make an average of £375 for a single night and, in one year of such nights, would bring in £19,500. If the only way in which a drug user, hooked on drugs, can feed his drug habit is to get access to that sort of money by pushing those drugs, he will not be deterred by minimum sentences.
Mr. Ian Davidson (Glasgow, Govan):
This Bill provides the Government with the opportunity to tackle some of the problems relating to crime in Scotland, but unfortunately they have simply chosen to sloganise and try to identify issues that they think are politically popular. Many of my colleagues have covered those points, but I should like to touch on one or two of the issues that the Government have not dealt with properly.
In an intervention, I raised the issue of delays in cases coming to court. The Government must do something about the number, particularly of drug pushers, but also of those convicted of violent assaults who spend 18 months, two years or sometimes longer waiting to go to court. During that period, they are seen by people in the community as having behaved with virtual impunity. In many cases, they reoffend, but nothing happens.
Does the Minister have any idea of the corrosive effect that that has, not only on the police, but on community spirit? What incentive is there for people to offer to be witnesses if they know that they will have to spend perhaps two years waiting for the case to come to trial, while they live in proximity to the accused, in danger of being assaulted or worse? The Minister must ensure that the Government take steps to deal adequately with that problem. I regret the fact that the Government seem prepared to leave the problem aside, because it does not involve a simple slogan.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton):
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that intermediate diets, which we introduced in recent legislation, should go a long way to help to bring cases to trial more quickly? We are anxious to act along the lines that he suggests.
Mr. Davidson:
I accept that that measure will bring forward some cases more quickly, but it is not sufficient to deal with the scale of the present difficulties. Many of those involved in drug dealing will seek to draw out the process for as long as possible and, owing to the scale of the money involved, they will have the money to buy the legal talent to do so.
I and others like me are handicapped by the way in which the Government operate the Data Protection Act 1988. We are being refused access to information on individual cases on the grounds that the information is held electronically. If we could gain access, it would help us to provide further information--perhaps to the Minister--about cases where people have been charged, but have not been brought to court for some considerable time.
The second issue concerns youngsters who are effectively out of control. There is no measure in the Bill that would deal adequately with the problem. Let me give as an example the case of youngster S, now aged 15, who has recently been charged with police assault, robbery on several occasions, indecent assault, house-breaking on several occasions, various thefts, driving offences and, not least, vandalism, whereby he has caused thousands of pounds' worth of damage to community facilities and schools in my constituency.
The existing mechanism has been useless in dealing with that youngster. He has been caught by the police on innumerable occasions and released. He has been reported
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Years--and dozens of offences--later, that youngster has been put in secure accommodation, but the community was terrorised by him over a long period. There are other youngsters like him in my community, but nothing in the Bill will address the problem. That leads the community to feel deserted by the Government and by the system, and the police too become disillusioned.
Has the Minister any idea how long it took the police to catch that youngster when he absconded from accommodation, or how many hours were spent looking for him when better use could have been made of that police time? Has he any idea of the effect on the community, when windows by the score were smashed in a community centre with a devolved budget, and money had to be spent repairing the damage instead of running the facilities for decent youngsters in the community?
The Government are not tackling the problem, which is extremely corrosive in local communities. There is no recognition of the fact that, although the children's panel system works for many youngsters, it is ineffective for many others, whose parents are not prepared to play a constructive part in dealing with bad behaviour. There are cases in my constituency where the parent is "known to the police", as the phrase goes, and encourages the youngster to misbehave. A superintendent's or inspector's warning is counterproductive because the parent is pleased to see that his youngster is behaving in an anti-social manner and regards it as a badge of honour. A subculture is developing which nothing in the Bill adequately addresses.
Similarly, the Government seem unwilling to recognise that many of the methods of disposal of youngsters through children's panels are counter-productive for other youngsters in the community. I know of cases where youngsters are sent off to IT--intermediate treatment--groups. Other youngsters in the community become jealous of them because they see the youngsters in IT groups being taken to swimming pools, leisure facilities and McDonald's. I understand the reasons for that, but ordinary, decent youngsters see bad behaviour being rewarded. They wonder what they have to do to get themselves sent on that project and taken on all those outings without having to put their hand in their pocket.
During the last summer holidays some local organisations were running summer play schemes. Youngsters in those play schemes complained to the volunteers who were running them and asked why the staff were not doing as much for them as the staff of the IT scheme did for the youngsters in their care. Youngsters in the IT scheme could go to McDonald's and the swimming pool on the same day, but the youngsters who were better behaved and who were being delivered by
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When bad behaviour is rewarded, is it any wonder that youngsters abscond from school? That is a sensible and rational solution to the difficulties they identify. They see it as, "If you misbehave, you get rewarded. If you behave, you don't." Is it any wonder then that youngsters go out, dodge school, break windows and the like? But there is nothing in the Bill to resolve that problem. Similarly, there is nothing in it to address the difficulties of trying to separate bad youngsters--if I can use that term--or youngsters who misbehave, from decent youngsters by ensuring that community facilities and youth groups are available to keep youngsters out of mischief.
Many youngsters drift into crime simply because there is nothing else for them to do. I recognise that it costs money. The Government are willing to sloganise on issues of crime but unwilling to spend the money that is necessary to ensure that facilities are made available to stop youngsters drifting into crime. If the Government are serious about tackling crime, they must also be serious about maintaining community facilities, maintaining the youth service, and maintaining the uniformed and non-uniformed youth and voluntary organisations that cater for youngsters. They must be prepared to spend money on sports organisation for youngsters to stop them drifting into evil ways.
The Government do not adequately deal with the major difficulty of getting convictions--dealing with problems related to witnesses, witness protection and witness relocation. The costs of relocation are underestimated and not adequately provided for. One of the by-products of the sale of council houses is that local authorities no longer have the flexibility of alternative accommodation to allow potential witnesses to relocate, to provide them with the security that would be necessary if they were prepared to step forward as witnesses. None of that is addressed in the Bill.
Similarly, the Government do not address the anti-social behaviour of many people in our communities. I recognise that this is a very low priority for the existing system of law enforcement, as domestic violence used to be. It seems to me that the existing system is adequately geared to deal with big, one-off events like a murder, an assault, a rape or something similar, but not to deal with small, repetitive offences that have a cumulative and corrosive effect. We really must give these matters more attention, because they impact on more of my community than the major issues, the major assaults, murders and violence that I have mentioned. The Government have to be prepared to deal with these matters in a more up-front manner than they have to date.
I shall touch on the question of prisons, because a number of my constituents are sent to prison. I wish that the Government were sending more of them off and more quickly. I recognise that, although long sentences protect the public, they do so only for the length of the sentence. If simply by lengthening sentences the Government let people out older instead of improved, I am not sure that much has been gained. I visited Barlinnie last summer and was very disappointed to see how little the prisoners there were getting of what could be said to be "improving". There was little opportunity to do what I consider meaningful work, and little opportunity to do anything that could be considered meaningful education. Many of
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The Government have to be prepared to tell us that they are willing to spend money on turning prisoners around, because many of the youngsters in my area drift into crime for the reasons that I have given. There is little else to do. They get up to mischief. It is a ladder towards prison. They end up in prison and nothing is done to enable them to remedy their ways. I have spoken to many of them when they have come out again, and they express the view that they wish that they had been given the opportunity to turn themselves around, but if they come out to no jobs, and no prospects, there is little likelihood that they will do anything other than trundle back into prison again. As long as the Government see prisons simply as warehouses for prisoners, the vicious circle of recidivism will not be broken. I regret that the Government are unwilling to tackle that, simply, I fear, because to do so will cost money.
I also regret that the Bill provides inadequate support for crime prevention in its widest sense. Crime prevention expenditure on things such as target hardening has been enormously effective in my area in cutting the number of burglaries of individual homes and commercial premises. Yet there seems to be no prospect of the Government spending the amount of money necessary throughout Scotland in order to reduce burglaries and the number of people who get drawn into them as an easy way of making money.
Similarly, the Government should be willing to spend more on street lighting in order to cut down on street crimes. There is a clear correlation between the quality of lighting and the amount of crime in streets. It acts as a deterrent, and it is much cheaper than longer sentences.
The Government should also be prepared to spend money on public transport in order to reduce the extent to which people are put at risk as a result of being unable to afford or to find public transport to take them where they want to go when they want to go at a reasonable cost. The Government seem unwilling to address that difficulty.
I regret that the Government have not given local authorities the option to give police the power to move along youngsters who are hanging about, as they were able to do under the old loitering byelaws. Such powers are not an answer to all the problems faced by people in the community, but they would be of considerable assistance. The vast majority of the public wish the police to have such powers, and the police, too, wish to have them. I fail to see why the Government are unwilling to bring forward such proposals.
We should be willing to accept tagging if we are convinced that it works. I have no objection in principle to a system of tagging as an alternative to custody if it would allow someone to keep his job and his family together and so be less likely to slip into a life of crime or idleness. It would allow offenders to maintain the fabric of their family life while making some contribution to society, perhaps by way of a recompense order which would take some money from them. Tagging should not be a soft option, but if it kept a family together it would be worth while.
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