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6.35 pm
Mr. Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks): First, I congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on your elevation to the Chair. We entered Parliament together in 1983, but you have progressed much further than I have or ever will--and certainly to a better class of suit.
It is my pleasant duty to congratulate, on behalf of the House, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) on his maiden speech. It was an extremely polished and articulate speech. I am almost tempted to describe it as ambitious, but I am not sure whether ambition is now one of the necessary virtues of the new model Labour party. The hon. Gentleman described the new hospital to which his constituents and mine are looking forward. He omitted to mention, however, that the hospital is being developed under the private finance initiative, first pioneered by the previous Government, but I welcome the fact that the hospital will serve both our communities.
I shall not tangle with the hon. Gentleman today on the subject of a minimum wage. The Conservative party always resisted that proposal and I believe that there are other better solutions to the problem, not least in the form of minimum tax. That, however, is well outside the remit of today's debate and the amendment before us.
Conservative Members were glad that the hon. Gentleman paid tribute to Jacques Arnold. I know, from the neighbouring constituency--my colleagues who were here in the last two Parliaments will also know--just how hard Jacques Arnold worked for all his constituents, and it was right and proper that he was thanked for that. We shall miss him and it is no disrespect to the new Member for Gravesham that we express the hope that we shall see Jacques Arnold take his place again among us.
I also have the duty of paying tribute to my predecessor for Sevenoaks. Mark Wolfson was one of those hon. Members who never sought self publicity; nor did he
achieve ministerial office, but he served the House for 18 years. It is right, too, that I should pay tribute to the work that he put in for all his constituents throughout the Sevenoaks constituency. Indeed, I commend his career to some 70 or 75 per cent. of the new Labour Members who will not have a chance to enjoy ministerial office but who will, we hope, find other ways of serving the House as well as their constituencies.
I am not a new Member; I am what is now described in the jargon as a "retread". I checked with my local garage and I understand that retreads are not necessarily dangerous, provided that they are correctly balanced. I assure the House that I am correctly balanced; what is incorrectly balanced is the Queen's Speech. There is an imbalance between its aims, which are a mixture of the uncontroversial, the pious and the banal, and the means, which are mandatory, minatory, bureaucratic and often contradictory.
There seems to be much about new Labour that involves banning things, whether it is tobacco advertising, fox hunting or the voting of hereditary peers. Much about the Queen's Speech is certainly contradictory. The very paragraph that speaks about the need to decentralise goes on to offer us regional development agencies that will take power away from county councils such as Kent, and strategic authorities for London that will take power away from the boroughs that currently serve it.
In the realm of home affairs, we see the Queen's Speech at its worst. We see a disturbing amount of social authoritarianism. A network of national homework centres is to be established. We are to have parental responsibility orders. The Government are even to set up healthy living centres. All those measures take the state further into the realm of the family, parenting and the local community. I doubt whether we improve parenting by substituting for it. In my view, the role of the state in that area should be to ensure that people are protected, crime is punished and good education is provided in our schools.
I am extremely wary of such all-embracing and comprehensive measures of social authoritarianism, not least from our own experience in government. Too often, we, too, were tempted into the trap of all-embracing social legislation. The Children Act 1989, the Dangerous Dogs Act 1989, and the Broadcasting Acts 1990 and 1996 come to mind. Even the institutions that we created--local police authorities, grant-maintained schools, NHS trusts--though we gave them devolved budgets and modern management and though we encouraged them to market themselves, were still in the end regarded as branches of central Government--branches of the Department for Education and Employment, the Department of Health or the Home Office.
We must think more deeply about how we make such institutions more local and how they can build up stronger ties of loyalty and affection in the communities that they serve. That applies particularly to our system of criminal justice. We need a system that more directly serves the local community.
I welcome the Government's proposal to make justice for young offenders more rapid, but we also need to ensure that it is made more local. Too often, we not only read of delays between the offence and the trial, or indeed between the trial and the sentencing, but we are told that the offenders cannot be named or that they cannot be punished in the usual way.
I hope that in opposition as well as in government, we can think again about how we encourage more transparency in our system of criminal justice, to ensure that the sentences that are handed out better reflect opinion in the local community. I therefore urge the Government to be wary of national solutions--general curfew orders or national requirements that they seek to impose from Queen Anne's gate.
I have never understood why the Home Secretary should have to approve the length of the police baton that the chief constable of Merseyside wishes his officers to deploy. I hope that the new Ministers at the Home Office will reflect on the need to move with greater common sense and to reflect more directly the local experience of the communities in which our police serve.
Those comments about criminal justice apply more widely to the way in which our own system of law is increasingly being encroached on from Europe. It is no accident that the laws that are least respected are those that are made most remotely. Nothing has brought Europe into more disrepute than the interference of the two European courts and the other institutions of the European Union.
I therefore deeply deplore the proposal to incorporate the European convention on human rights into our legal system. I do not want a Portuguese judge, however well qualified, to have the casting vote on the time limit for abortions to be carried out in Britain. Incorporation of the European convention is further pandering to the European institutions and will further reduce the rights of the House to make law for the people of this country.
In the end, the British will not be directed by commissioners, whether in Brussels or Strasbourg. I hope that in the fullness of time those who promote the European idea will realise that there is another way to co-operation and trade on our continent than the coercive, harmonising and centralising proposals being put forward in Brussels and Strasbourg.
The Sevenoaks constituency is fortunate. We enjoy a good level of prosperity, we have a low level of unemployment and we enjoy a good measure of choice in all types of schooling. That prosperity and choice are threatened by the Queen's Speech. The proposed new taxes and regulations will not encourage business or create new jobs. The grammar schools and grant- maintained schools on which parents in my constituency rely are under threat from the proposals presented by the new Education Secretary.
Mr. Clive Soley (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush):
I welcome the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) back to the House, and ask him to pass on my best wishes to Mark Wolfson, his predecessor, who served with me when I was Chairman of the Northern Ireland Committee. That was not always the easiest subject, but Mark was extremely helpful on a Select Committee which, for
Before I deal with the issue of law and order, I shall comment briefly on two other aspects of the Queen's Speech, which is one of the most radical and exciting documents that it has been my good fortune to read for many years, and by far the best in the past 18 years that I have been a Member of Parliament--but I would say that.
I draw attention to a matter that we shall have an opportunity to debate on another occasion: the commitment in the Queen's Speech to reform the British constitution and the way in which Parliament works. We must carry all Members of this House with us when we do that, but I cannot over-emphasise how frustrating it is that the House of Commons, which set the world standard for so many centuries, has not reformed itself sufficiently over the past 70 years to make itself a modern Chamber. The same applies to the constitution.
The remarks by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks on the European Court of Human Rights was one of the saddest comments on the modern Conservative party. That human rights legislation was drawn up by the British and introduced in Europe precisely to stop the abuses of power that had taken place in Europe in the period leading up to the second world war. We should be proud of that and we should sign up to it with pride. We wrote it, we brought it about, and we did that because we believe that human rights are a fundamental right of the people of the world. We should continue to say that proudly.
The other issue that I shall touch on briefly is Northern Ireland. I welcome the progress by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Prime Minister. It was right to start talks at a particular level in a particular way with Sinn Fein. It is important to break the logjam that has developed. I pay tribute to the last Government--particularly the then Prime Minister and now Leader of the Opposition--for putting Northern Ireland at the top of their political priorities. The right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) was the first Prime Minister to say expressly that he was doing so and he deserves credit for that.
Unfortunately, the peace process in that sad area was bogged down by the mathematics in this place and the problems involved with getting the Unionists to shift position. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) has left the Chamber. He also served on the Select Committee and he was quick to condemn, quite rightly, the violence of the IRA. However, it is easy to forget that Unionist paramilitaries have killed almost as many people as the republican paramilitaries. The House and British and Irish people everywhere must be even-handed in their approach: killing for political purposes, whether by Unionists or republicans, is absolutely unacceptable. It is also counter productive. We should say that to both sides equally.
I return to today's debate on law and order. I am encouraged by the thinking emanating from the Home Office. For 18 years, we saw crime increase dramatically while the prison population accelerated out of control and prison sentences had little effect on the number of crimes committed. The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), who spoke on behalf of the Opposition today, made great play of the increased number of policeman that the Conservative Government
put in place--although that is debatable--and the many ways in which his Government had got tough with criminals. The reality is that the majority of criminals are not caught and convicted.
I was burgled the weekend following the general election, so I feel like getting tough with burglars. I have been the victim of three or four attempted burglaries in the past few years, and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that, in my experience--which is considerable--burglars do not wait around for a police car to appear on the scene before they commit their crimes. Most burglars check the street for police and station someone outside before they commit their crimes. Crime prevention is the key.
As I said when we were in opposition, we reduced burglaries on one estate in Shepherd's Bush in my constituency by 66 per cent. in two years. We achieved that result almost in spite of the Government. The number of burglaries has fallen in my constituency because the police and local authorities have learned to work together on good crime prevention schemes. I pay credit to the previous Government for providing some money for a concierge system in high-rise blocks. If that system operated in all high-rise blocks, burglaries in those buildings would be cut dramatically and they would become much better places to live. Crime and vandalism--particularly the sort of vandalism that stops lifts working--could be prevented. That would make people feel safe and improve their quality of life.
I make several appeals to the Minister of State, myhon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth(Mr. Michael). I am delighted to see him on the Front Bench; he has extensive knowledge of crime prevention and his work in the youth system will stand him in good stead in his present position. We must get the police forces of this country, in conjunction with local authorities, to compile a map of crime--we have one already, to some extent. We could then pinpoint the types of crimes that are causing most problems in certain areas and direct our resources in that direction. Crime prevention is about good targeting, which is achieved by encouraging the police and local authorities--and sometimes the voluntary sector--to co-operate. That has occurred in some of the examples that I have mentioned. It is vital to compile such a map.
It is not sufficient to view crime prevention in terms of stronger locks, better windows, and so on. My hon. Friend is aware of the importance of the youth service. Many hon. Members have talked in their maiden speeches about the links between unemployment and crime. That link has always existed, not because the unemployed are more likely to be of criminal mind but because unemployment breaks down families. The children of broken families--who have never been near a job because they are supposed to be in school, but often are not--frequently get into trouble and commit crimes. Many crimes are committed by 14, 15 and 16-year-olds, so we must target them.
The last Government did virtually nothing in that area. They ignored the problem until late in the day when they began to realise that locking people up and throwing away the key was not the answer. We should lock up persistent offenders and those who are a danger to the public, but we must not believe that it will prevent crime in the future. Incarceration is not an answer in its own right--and it never will be.
I hope that my hon. Friend will examine the Scottish family court system because I believe that it provides a better opportunity for dealing with families and offenders, who are often 15 or 16 years old. I am particularly interested in the opportunities presented by the new disorder legislation to which the Home Secretary referred. Such legislation must be used carefully, but it will provide considerable opportunities if we get the balance right.
I want to involve victims and the local community in the process of dealing with criminal offenders so that we can alleviate crime through social pressures. However, we must not follow the same road as the United States, where the victims of crime are allowed to watch--and often appear to enjoy watching--the infliction of punishment on offenders. For example, in some states, victims of crime are allowed to witness the death sentence being carried out. That practice--and the death penalty itself--is totally abhorrent and must never be allowed to happen here.
Perhaps we could design a structure that allows the court to enable--rather than order--the victim to meet the offender in certain circumstances in a controlled setting. Such meetings could be chaired by a police or probation officer or someone like that. That would make the offender confront what he or she has done to the victim. It would be difficult to do that in the case of violent crimes, but even then there are exceptions.
I know of a care in the community patient who is now in a secure unit and who stabbed someone in the street. Some years later, the victim is trying to write about his experience. He has come to terms with the stabbing and would like to meet the offender so that he can explain his actions. It would enable both parties to understand what happened in that dreadful incident. We should allow that to occur, but we must be careful to strike the right balance.
Returning to the disorder legislation, we have all heard about one or two families who have caused mayhem on a particular street or an estate. I see no reason why, if we had a suitable structure, we could not involve such families in discussions with their neighbours. Some months ago, I intervened in such a case in my area when I saw that some youngsters were not attending school. When I asked them what school they attended and told them to go there, I received the answers that one might predict in such circumstances. I could not deal with them brutally, grab them and say, "Look here, I'm taking you to school." So I did what I had to do in such a situation and, after several days, I called the police who took the lads to school.
Those youths were also causing problems in the immediate area, and it would be helpful to involve their families in discussions with the school and with others who were affected. I should like to have the opportunity to explain why I was concerned about the welfare of those children. I know that, if I could spend some time with them, they would not simply shout abuse at me. I am sure that I could establish a relationship with them.
The courts can be quite imaginative in such cases. However, the previous Government were keen on boxing in the courts and forcing them to give certain sentences for certain offences. I want to give judges and magistrates more leeway. We need to be more flexible. In doing so, we must be careful, as there are certain legal rights that have to be respected. We must ensure that the right of
appeal is always there. We could do far more about involving victims and offenders in resolving the problems that afflict those areas. I have no hesitation in saying that, in the estates and streets that suffer problems from particular families, we should have much greater powers to move that family out of the flat or house where they are causing mayhem. It then becomes not only part of the punishment but part of the solution.
That is the sort of imaginative thinking in which we should get involved. There are difficulties and dangers, but all I am asking at this stage is that my right hon. Friend includes in his Bill the power to experiment with such measures. I think that we would be surprised at how much we could achieve. Other countries do it, so why not here?
Another point that I wish to highlight is the wider crime prevention issue, because I heard the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the previous Home Secretary, condemn drug dealers right, left and centre. I have no problem with that, as I do exactly the same, but I also remember how, when he was Home Secretary, he persistently ignored not just questions but a letter from me asking him to ban alcopops. What message do we send out when we say, "Let's get tough on drug addicts, but let's sell alcopops to teenagers and thus encourage under-age drinking"?
The body that is supposed to regulate the drinks industry had better get tougher with it, because if the industry is not prepared to regulate itself, the message should go out very loud and clear from here that the House will have to regulate it. It is unacceptable that soft drinks that are laced with alcohol are sold, and encouraged to be sold, to young people. We have to stop it, because we know that there is a close link between crime and alcohol.
Parenting is the other underlying problem which the previous Government just could not recognise. I complained bitterly throughout the last five or 10 years of the Conservative Government that they were doing nothing about parenting or family structure. All they did was make moralistic noises about single parent families or about whether one was married, both of which are pretty irrelevant to the problem of parenting. What matters in parenting is good relationships between the child and the parent, and the child growing up in a secure setting.
Obviously, it is easier if there are two parents, and that is generally to be encouraged, but let us get away from the scapegoating role and focus instead on how we can help people to be good parents. We can do that through nursery education and by not putting families with young children into high-rise blocks, where the children either have to play indoors all day--how would we cope with that if we were the parents?--or they play outside unsupervised and fairly quickly drift into petty vandalism and, all too easily, crime.
It is also about teaching parenting skills in schools. Teachers tell me that it is quite difficult to teach those skills at times. I accept that. I am not skilled in that area, but I do know, however--teachers also seem to accept this--that we can teach relationship, education and social skills, and out of that comes the recognition about how to bring up children to have respect for themselves and for others. For too long the previous Government allowed families to split apart, encouraged by matters such as unemployment and inappropriate housing, which made it
easier for families who were just about surviving, who were just about good enough parents, to tip over suddenly into crisis. When that happens we all sit back and wonder why the kids are a problem. The kids are a problem because we failed the families.
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