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Caroline Flint (Don Valley): I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. Having in the past few weeks spent an evening on patrol with officers from the Edlington police in Don Valley, I am sure that they will welcome what he has said about consistent sentencing policy and stiff penalties for those who commit second offences of a violent or sexual nature.
What emerged from that evening was the fear among my constituents of people who have stolen from their homes, yet who then come out into the streets and walk around bold as brass, as if they had got away with it. The survey clearly shows a lack of confidence in measures such as community safety orders and other community punishments. In moving towards community punishments, which have a vital role, how can we ensure that victims feel confident that they would be best served if such punishments were imposed?
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her remarks. The purpose of community safety orders is to provide swift and effective ways of securing injunctions against those who commit persistent disorder and the kind of intimidation that she describes, who are not dealt with effectively by magistrates or Crown courts at the moment. The establishment of community safety orders, with more intensive policing of the kind she has described and other provisions of the kind I have announced this afternoon--including, for example, parental responsibility orders, which may be attached to community safety orders--should enable law-abiding people and the police to regain
Mr. Damian Green (Ashford):
While joining my right hon. and hon. Friends in welcoming the vast tracts of the Home Secretary's statement which build on the policies implemented by the previous Government, may I urge him a few more feet down the right road? When will he finish his review on mandatory minimum sentences? Will he implement mandatory minimum sentences for repeat burglars? Is he aware that, if he cannot give a completion date for the review, many will regard his tough talk--regrettably--as a mere sham?
Mr. Straw:
The position that I have announced today is the same as that announced by the previous Government in their White Paper, presented to the House in April 1996, which said:
Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley):
Does my right hon. Friend realise that, as the fear of crime and of anti-social behaviour is, regrettably, one of the worst problems in this country in the 1990s, his statement will be very much welcomed? He also knows that a large proportion of crime is drug related. How can we find out the true percentage of crimes which are drug related? What steps can we take to tackle the root causes and stop the wide misuse of drugs, which is growing throughout the country?
Mr. Straw:
Drugs lie behind a large amount of crime--not just drug crime specifically, but burglary and theft. The Home Office has conducted a study to try to ascertain the precise relationship between drug and alcohol abuse and those who commit crimes. The preliminary results are alarming and will be published in due course. We are taking other active steps to strengthen the arrangements which the previous Government commendably set in place to improve co-ordination in the fight against crime. A UK drug director will shortly be appointed and, as I have announced this afternoon, we intend that a drug treatment and testing order should be available to the courts as a community punishment to take account and make use of mandatory drug testing.
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley):
May I congratulate the Home Secretary on many of his familiar proposals? Could he say more about the removal of passports from young offenders? There can be few things more distressing to victims of crime and others than to read in a newspaper that a young thug or young offender on probation has been taken on safari to Africa or a cruise in Egypt. Taking away his passport would stop such schemes. Will he look also at domestic probation "punishments" with particular reference to an incident in which a lad was taken to Butlin's for two weeks with a probation officer--during which time the young offender was stealing from other residents' chalets?
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his approbation of my proposals, which are familiar because
As for passports, at the moment, those who are subject to community supervision are not supposed to go abroad except in "exceptional and compassionate circumstances", but I have discovered that there are no arrangements for enforcing that. That is why I have asked for urgent work to be put in hand to ensure that when people are subject to such punishments, they literally cannot go abroad without breaking many other laws.
I entirely share the hon. Member's view about the inappropriateness of sending those who are subject not only to treatment but to punishment on what appears to be a pleasure holiday. Nothing has damaged confidence in community punishments more than that and I want an end to it.
Gillian Merron (Lincoln):
I welcome the statement and I know that it will be very much welcomed by my constituents, whom it will show the true determination to act which they believe is long overdue. My experience is that fear of crime is one of the most insidious features of our current daily lives. Many people are kept prisoners in their homes because of it. It is unacceptable that my constituents have to approach me with their fears of constant harassment in their homes, rubbish thrown over the back yard, verbal abuse, shopping bags snatched and, most recently, an elderly gentleman being knocked to the ground and his glasses trodden on.
Does my right hon. Friend feel that we need a comprehensive approach to the conditions in which crime breeds, in an attempt to tackle crime? Is it a comprehensive approach that we need?
Mr. Straw:
Yes, it is. My hon. Friend's description of the problems that some of her constituents face underlines the need for a strategy of zero tolerance that tackles disorder as well as crime. A recent Home Office survey showed that, in areas of instability of the sort she described, there is not only more disorder, but a four times greater chance of people being the victims of violent crime. Disorder leads to crime. Both have to be tackled.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield):
While I welcome much of the Home Secretary's statement--leaving aside his Pauline conversion, which I do not want to go into--to pick up on what has just been said, there appears to be ample evidence that the seeds of delinquency are sown in early childhood. A number of surveys, particularly in the United States, have shown that provision targeted towards those most at risk at a very young age produces substantial knock-on effects 10 years down the road.
The last person to take an interest was the then right hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon when he was Home Secretary, but because that subject does not necessarily enjoy immediate electoral appeal, it is often bypassed. I have always been convinced that a twin-track approach on both those problems will be necessary if the causes of crime are to be tackled. I urge the Home Secretary to consider that and, in particular, whether any
money can be made available through a Home Office budget as well as through other services to deal with that issue.
Mr. Straw:
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right and makes some important remarks. The evidence from the headstart programme analysis in America shows that effective nursery education is better at deterring offending behaviour later in the teenage years than anything else. That is one reason why we are committed to expanding nursery education. I have no doubt about that. He is also right to say that it is inevitable, perhaps, that Governments of both persuasions have had to go for more short-term solutions because there is a problem of juvenile crime there now that we have to deal with, but I accept what he says.
As for money, that would fall to the Department of Education and Employment and I regret to tell him that, since we are following the previous Administration's public expenditure survey control levels for the next two years, there is no money available for that project.
Mr. Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley):
I think that it was the chief constable of Cornwall who said, "If you cure the drug problem, you can halve your crime problem." I am interested in the introduction of the seven-year sentence, but it is the drug traffickers who worry me. Drug dealers will certainly always take the chance of seven years, and the traffickers, who will put up the price, will make them do it even more. I am worried about the trafficking side in the light of my right hon. Friend's statement. Has he anything to say about that?
"The Government's objective is to implement the various proposals, taking account of the Parliamentary timetable, the need to provide additional prison places and the resource implications."
It is a question not of a review, but of whether it is appropriate to take action, bearing in mind those considerations.
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