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PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE
Ordered,
That a Select Committee of seven Members be appointed to join with a Committee to be appointed by the Lords, as the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, to review parliamentary privilege and make recommendations thereon;
Ordered,
That three be the Quorum of the Committee;
That the Committee shall have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House; to report from time to time; and to appoint specialist advisers to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the Committee's order of reference.--[Mr. Jamieson.]
That Sir Patrick Cormack be discharged from the Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons and Mr. Richard Shepherd be added to the Committee.--[Mr. Jamieson.]
Mr. Grieve:
On a point of order, Sir Alan. We have been subject to a timetable motion this evening. I understand that the purpose of such a motion is to enable the House to transact its business within a time framework that allows full discussion. In the circumstances, is it not extraordinary that we are concluding at 8.25 pm a debate on major constitutional issues that are to be put to the people of Wales and Scotland? With a sensible timetable motion, we could have debated those issues for a further hour and 35 minutes.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): We have been debating the issues on the basis of a timetable motion that was agreed by the House.
Closed Circuit Television
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Jamieson.]
8.26 pm
I am glad to have the chance to debate this topic. It has particular significance for my constituency, but it also has national significance for hon. Members in all parties, given the successful spread and use of closed circuit television schemes over the past few years.
The purpose of the debate is to elicit guarantees from the Government on two specific issues that are extremely relevant to the future success of CCTV schemes and, most important, to their spread. First, there are the guidelines for applications. Towns and other localities that wanted CCTV schemes had become used to the competitions that were organised under the last Government, but there is now some doubt about how the Government intend to proceed with those applications.
Secondly, and perhaps even more important, is the question of money--whether the Government will commit enough to allow this extremely successful form of crime prevention and deterrence to continue in the current Parliament as it did in the last. I hope that if, by the end of this short debate, the Government have made those two commitments, we can all--as Madam Speaker put it earlier today--pack our buckets and spades in a much happier frame of mind.
Tenterden, in my constituency, is a small town, which is normally peaceful. There is a good deal of civic pride and community involvement in the town, which, in many respects, is the model of a small English market town, in which worries about crime are not at the forefront of people's minds. Nevertheless, over the past decade or so, fear of crime has increased markedly in Tenterden, and, I dare say, in many towns like it throughout the country. Shops in the high street have been ram-raided, local policemen have been injured in fairly serious attacks, and there is a general feeling, particularly among the elderly, that the place is not as safe as it used to be.
Therefore, the town council, in partnership with local bodies such as the police and the local business community, has decided to apply for CCTV to be installed in the town. The council applied last year, but for various reasons it did not succeed. It is trying again, and there is a new scheme on the table for 12 cameras to cover the most important parts of the town centre. The council thinks, and I agree, that that would have a dramatic effect on crime in Tenterden.
Not only is the town council trying again, but it is trying with a will. Over the past few weeks, while it has been trying to put together the town's contribution towards the cost of the scheme, it has received 400 pledges of money from individual citizens. In less than a month, it has raised £5,000, which is half the target for personal donations. The council has promised another £10,000, and Ashford borough council has promised £35,000. The town centre group, which is organising the scheme, is confident of raising £30,000 from the town's 200 businesses. The total cost of the scheme is about £250,000.
Some unease is being caused by lack of knowledge about the bidding guidelines, and the council would like to have that matter cleared up as soon as possible.
As I have said, the council is already in the successful throes of raising money, and it would be easier to do that if it knew the exact form in which the application should be made. I appeal to the Minister to give the people of Tenterden, and no doubt those in many other places, some certainty about that. I hope that the debate can be the means by which we can move forward on that.
The people of Tenterden and I are keen to move positively on the scheme. That is evident from what is happening on the Stanhope estate in Ashford in another part of my constituency. It has had many of the problems associated with inner-city areas. There have been problems with drugs, petty crime and vandalism. In many ways, Stanhope and Tenterden are different, but the people of Tenterden and other villages can see how effective CCTV can be in an area that has had much bigger problems with crime.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Alun Michael):
I want to answer the debate as fully and as accurately as I can, but I am little puzzled. The hon. Gentleman spoke about applications from Tenterden, which I think he described as a village; perhaps it is a village--I am not sure of the exact description. I apologise for not knowing that, but the hon. Gentleman did not say that he would raise this specific topic. As far as I am aware, there has been no application from Tenterden. Perhaps he could clarify the issue, because it will be difficult to answer questions about applications if there have not been any.
The town was included in a wider application by Ashford borough council. Tenterden is one of the Cinque ports, but its council is not a borough or district council. It has a town council because Tenterden has a proud history. I am surprised that the Minister knows nothing about the application, because I shall shortly quote from a letter that he sent to me on the subject.
CCTV is only part of a long-term policing initiative, and on the Stanhope estate its effects as part of a wider policing initiative are clear. Since 1993, when CCTV was introduced, recorded crime has gone down by 42 per cent., violent offences have gone down by 30 per cent., burglaries have gone down by 16 per cent., and car theft has fallen by 46 per cent. That is clear, hard evidence of the beneficial effects of that form of policing. It is not a panacea, but it helps, and, significantly, it is extremely cost effective.
There are many fixed CCTV schemes, and I hope that the Minister will agree that the next stage should be mobile schemes. My constituency, and no doubt many others, contain villages in which full-time, fixed CCTV would not be cost effective or worth while. However, specific crime hot spots would be well served by mobile systems, which could be prominently displayed as a deterrent or quietly installed to catch specific criminals.
The Minister spoke about being confused. In a letter to me dated 12 July he stated:
To broaden the issue from the problems in my constituency to the national picture, I should tell the House that so far there have been three competitions and that the Government have paid out more than £37 million. As a result, there are now more than 6,000 closed circuit cameras in operation, many of them doing extremely good work. I am aware that there have been some objections. In particular, it is said that CCTV infringes civil liberties and that rather than cutting crime it simply shifts it to areas that are not covered by cameras.
Mr. Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge):
Perhaps I could draw my hon. Friend's attention to my constituency, which has two borough councils. Runnymede has a Conservative-controlled authority and Elmbridge is controlled by a coalition of Liberal Democrats and ratepayers.
"We are considering the future of CCTV Challenge Competitions as part of our review of existing expenditure programmes. A decision on whether there will be another round of the Competition--and if there is, what form it would take--will be made later in the summer."
30 Jul 1997 : Column 426
It is now later in the summer, and I hope that the Minister can say when that decision will be made. The delay is slightly disheartening, because there is much evidence that many local authorities have succeeded in bids after failing the first time.
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