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11.32 am
Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham): I join in the tributes to the Metropolitan police, particularly Sir Paul Condon. In some ways, the past year has been an annus horribilis for the police. There was bad publicity in London surrounding the Lawrence inquiry but, in many respects, there is a very good story to tell of crime reduction. Those two things need to be seen together.
May I add, on a personal level that, during the year, I re-established, with the help of some hon. Members who are present, particularly the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Mr. Fitzpatrick), the all-party group on the police? During that work, I have had much co-operation from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Grieve and the Police Federation. It is clear that they want to talk to Members of Parliament, that they want their operations to be transparent and that they want to communicate. I am delighted by the way in which they have dealt with that issue.
It is clear that this debate has to take place under the shadow of the Lawrence report. It is right that the police should want to draw a line under it historically, to move on and to learn the right lessons, but we have to keep coming back to some of the underlying problems. One that I am particularly concerned about is racial violence and assaults.
I have tabled a series of parliamentary questions to the Home Office about underlying trends. The figures for the whole of London appear, at least on the surface, to be very alarming. They show that, last year, there were about 7,800 violent racial crimes. In the previous year, there were about 1,100; there was an increase of about
700 per cent. I do not pretend for one minute that racial violence has increased sevenfold in a year. I am sure that much of the increase is due to improved statistical collection and greater awareness of the problem; none the less, the figures contain worrying elements.
In my area, which is a predominantly white suburb--our ethnic minority population is about 5 per cent.--there were 100 violent racial incidents last year. What is striking is that that is more than in Brixton and Notting Hill. In the area immediately adjacent to Hounslow, there were four times more. The figure for the area is now the largest in London.
I suspect that there is a pattern. Whereas people in inner cities have in many ways learned to live in ethnically mixed societies and to co-exist happily, much of the bigotry has spread to the suburbs--that is where the violence is beginning to manifest itself.
A second point arising from the Lawrence inquiry is the sensitive issue of stop and search, on which the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the former Home Secretary, spoke at some length. There are two sides to that. It is clear that stop and search is an important part of policing and that the police should not be inhibited from doing it. At the same time, it is clear that, as long as there is suspicion of police attitudes--which will take a long time to dispel--practice has to improve.
Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon):
I was troubled by what the former Home Secretary said on statistics. I think the answer to the point that he was making is this--I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would comment on it. The former Home Secretary concentrated on what he saw as the rough parity between people who are arrested after stop and search--it is irrespective of their ethnic grouping--but should not the focus be on the people who are not arrested? If 88 per cent. of people who are black are not arrested and 88 per cent. of people who are white are not arrested, but three times as many people who are stopped are black, rather than white, does not that effectively mean that people are three times more likely to be stopped, even though they are innocent, if they are black?
Dr. Cable:
Like the hon. Gentleman, I was a little confused by the logic of the former Home Secretary. There was an element of self-justification about it. The central point is that stop and search is an important police technique and must be used in a way that is acceptable. There is a good section in the Commissioner's report on how stop and search should be monitored and adapted--not abandoned--to fit in with multi-ethnic policing.
The final point on the subject relates to recruitment. It has not yet come across how serious the problem of under-recruitment of ethnic minorities is. I know that much effort is going into that in London. The Metropolitan police have devoted many resources and much thought to it, particularly in recent months. About 6 per cent. of the people they are recruiting are from ethnic minorities whereas, at the moment, people from ethnic minorities make up about 3 per cent. of the force.
The figures that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) has sent the Home Secretary suggest that, if the Home Secretary's target is to be met over 10 years, exactly half of all new recruits
need to come from ethnic minorities. Clearly, that target will not be met. That is not a criticism of the target, or even of the police, but we are way behind all other police forces in the UK in terms of meeting that target.
That relates to a broader recruitment issue. The hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) made pertinent points about the recruitment problem in London. It is not simply a question of numbers--there is the question of the quality of recruits. One of the points that Sir Paul Condon makes frequently in public and in private relates to his sense of alarm about the quality of recruits now available to the Metropolitan police. We are talking not about ethnic minorities, but all recruits.
There are great difficulties in recruiting graduates. If the police do get graduates, they will be at the bottom end of the qualification level. It is difficult to get police officers who have come from London; they come from out of London and so do not know the area. The whole recruitment situation is potentially disastrous. Frankly, it is a question of money and the local labour market. The Government and police chief constables will have to wake up to the fact that there will have to be big regional differentials in pay if the recruitment crisis in London is to be solved.
The figure that has been quoted to me--it seems plausible--is that a starting salary for a police officer in London may need to be about £5,000 above the rest of the country to meet London costs. Until chief constables in general and the Home Secretary grasp that, there will be a continuing recruitment problem.
Recruitment is part of a more general debate about numbers. We had a rather sterile debate about which Government were better or worse in the numbers game. The brutal fact is that it is a politically neutral trend. My police division is, I suspect, much the same as any other. Since the general election, it has lost 30 police officers--about 10 per cent. In the previous five years, it lost another 10 per cent. Casting blame one way or the other is not the issue. The fundamental problem is that police numbers have declined worryingly. We need to think through some of the consequences of that.
It may be, as the Home Secretary explained, that numbers are not everything and that one can increase productivity, reduce sickness and deploy police resources more efficiently. I accept all those points. However, where there has been a big reduction in numbers, there are fewer police officers on the street. It is not simply that people are more fearful of crime because there is a reduced police presence; there is a much greater incidence of petty, unreported crime. Certainly in my area--my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) tells me that the same applies to his constituency--which is an otherwise quiet, law-abiding suburb, there has been an enormous mushrooming of graffiti, smashed bus shelters and the like. Youngsters are running amok, knowing perfectly well that they are largely immune from being caught. They are undermining the quality of life for others.
When the Home Secretary first took office he spoke about zero tolerance of small-scale petty crime. However, the opposite is the case. As a result of the significant reduction in police numbers, the police are, quite understandably, concentrating on violent crime and more
serious offences, and petty crime is quietly proliferating. In addition, lower priority activities such as traffic policing have been cut quite drastically.
The numbers issue is important particularly in relation to London. Since the Government were elected, there has been a reduction of some 1,000 police officers, 600 of those in London. It is linked to the funding problem. We can argue until the cows come home about which Government have been more or less favourable to the police in terms of resources, but the funding formula clearly works against London.
The Audit Commission report includes a damning table which describes how funding allocations have worked over the past five years. London is one of three police forces that have experienced a real reduction in police funding. There are 20 per cent. increases in Lancashire, Durham and other areas. In comparison with police spending overall, London has suffered considerably. That can be traced back to a new formula funding arrangement that was agreed in 1995-96. I do not know the background to it, but I suspect that it may have had something to do with the previous Government's desire to switch resources from the big cities to country areas, but, whatever the rationale behind it, it now discriminates strongly against big cities with complex problems such as racial difficulties. I hope that the Government will take a fresh look at the funding formula and what lies behind it.
Let me make one further point about funding. It is not simply a matter of the Government coming up with more money or switching resources from one region to another. Prudent action can generate income and reduce costs. I have a few proposals in that regard. For example, the Home Office should do more in respect of detoxification. An enormous amount of police time and money goes into handling drunks. Research carried out in my constituency shows that every time the police have to deal with a drunk and disorderly person, it costs about £100 in police time and resources.
A large part of police effort goes into handling drunks. A focused programme of dealing with drunks and drying them out would save police resources and time. It would also avoid the police having to deal with some of the most difficult personal cases on their books. I had a careful look through the cases of the 17 people who died in police custody last year and found that seven of those people were severely intoxicated, so a more focused programme on drunkenness would save a great deal of money and would result in better policing.
The Government should also consider forms of income generation. As we heard in the debate on drugs a few weeks ago, the police are already beginning to bring in small but welcome amounts of money from drug barons by expropriating their property. The same could apply in respect of smaller crimes. I should like fines for traffic offences to be put back into the police force instead of disappearing into the Treasury.
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