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1.53 pm
Mr. Tony McNulty (Harrow, East): I begin, as all other hon. Members have begun, by congratulating the Metropolitan police service on all its activities and work in London since we last held the annual policing of London debate.
I had not intended to respond to the remarks made by one Opposition Member, who said that it was 20 months since our last annual debate, but I have asked three questions at Business Questions, at various stages since then, inquiring when the next debate would be. I know
from the history books of recent Parliaments that this annual debate has come a lot sooner than annual debates under the previous Government, when debates were biannual at best, but in some cases did not take place for quite a few years. Let us put that matter aside, because I am not one to indulge in petty party politics.
I welcome the fact that the Commissioner's report shows that there has been a downward shift in the number of police officers injured while on duty. However, more than 8,000 officers were injured in some capacity while on duty, causing 2,100 of them to be placed out of the service for the duration of their recovery. The men and women of the Metropolitan police force do a great service for London, of which we should all be proud.
I cannot let pass two items. Perhaps we shall be pleasantly surprised by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) when he winds up the debate, but most Conservative Members who dwelt on policing in London--one or two did not bother to do that, which is a novel approach to such a debate--waxed lyrical on a petty argument about numbers. They know as well as members of our Front-Bench team that there are great hidden complexities behind the numbers game. We might all do well to grow up a little and stop playing that game.
The hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) did not respond when I intervened. Either he was right, and the numbers have fallen considerably, especially during the last five years of the previous Administration, because there was a managerial revolution and a culling of the senior ranks, or, as I said earlier, the clown who is standing for the Greater London mayoralty--I do not mean the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson), but I cannot remember the other fellow's name--is wrong when he says that the Metropolitan police are run like British Leyland was in the 1970s. They cannot both be right. If I had to guess, I would put my money on the hon. Member for Ryedale. There clearly was a managerial revolution in the Metropolitan police service in the 1980s and certainly in the early 1990s. That does not explain all the figures, but it is part of the process.
I parted company with the hon. Member for Ryedale when he inadvertently offended a great portion of the black community in London. I happily accept that it was inadvertent. I am sure that he has read the Macpherson report and the proceedings of the Macpherson inquiry, but, if he had read it in detail, he would have seen that, on at least half a dozen occasions during the proceedings, the word "coloured" was used to describe someone who was either black or Asian. That rightly caused mighty offence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman) said, for a Conservative or anyone in the House, not least someone on the Front Bench, to describe people as coloured, especially when we are six months away from the millennium, is a matter of profound regret.
I respect the hon. Member for Ryedale, and I know that his comment was inadvertent, but that is the point. It is not just that he is an ex-police officer, but, as Macpherson showed, in the Metropolitan police there is a deep, latent, racist culture, and they do not know that it is racist. I fully accept that the hon. Gentleman did not mean to be offensive to anyone, but, because he did not mean to be, it makes it all the more problematic. I am sorry that he is not present.
I now come to the guts of my comments. The proposals for the Metropolitan police and the borough divisions are to be welcomed. The comments of the hon. Member for Ryedale are nonsense. He is from North Yorkshire: I cannot find it on the A to Z map. It is not in London. It is interesting that the hon. Member for Aylesbury, who will respond to the debate for the Conservative party, is not a London MP. If we cast further afield, of the 11 Conservative MPs in London, perhaps one should have made it as the official Conservative spokesperson on London. Sadly, not. The spokesperson for the Conservative party is from Oxfordshire. What that says about the quality of the 11 London MPs whom the Conservatives managed to get in the last election, I do not know: that is an internal difficulty, and is nothing to do with me.
The police in Harrow are exceptional. Borough commander Ian Carter, who has just joined us, has gone deep down into the bowels of policing and community work in Harrow. Recently, there were two racist murders in Harrow--they were certainly crimes of white on black. I do not want to dwell on the pros and cons of either case. I have known and had plenty to do with both the families involved, and I want to dwell on another aspect.
In the first case, members of the peripheral groups sniffing around for political gain at the Lawrence inquiry approached the family. They almost harassed the family of a recently murdered 14-year-old to get them to come out as anti-police. The family said, "There was a dispute, but it has been resolved. The perpetrators are behind bars, serving their time. We have no complaints about the police." Nevertheless, they were harassed by some trivial, peripheral elements surrounding the Lawrence campaign--not by those directly involved in the Lawrence campaign; I am certainly not saying that. It is to the shame of those involved.
A second case involved a group of independent television producers. I think that they were producing a documentary for Channel 4. They approached the family of someone who had been killed just after boxing day in what was, unlike the first murder, an avowedly racist murder, and particularly horrendous. The television producers wanted to conduct a detailed interview with the family--again, with the aim of getting them to attack the police. They wanted the family to talk about what the police had and had not done, and to undermine the relationship between the family and the police. The family--rather like the first family--said, "We think that the police now have a suspect, and we think that they have acted very diligently. If you want to record an interview with us to that effect, we are happy about it, but if you want us to say that here is yet another family with a murdered black son, wanting to vilify the police, we will not do so. We do not want to vilify the police."
The television production team then went away. The people involved did not want to present the positive side of a particularly tragic and harrowing case; all that they wanted was bad news. That is reprehensible.
Let me make another point about the media. When my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made his statement about the bombing outrages, I said that I found it deeply offensive and unsatisfactory that the media--as well as some politicians who ought to have known better--rode
on the bandwagon whose import was "The Grey Wolves have done it. The British National party has done it." That gave a degree of legitimacy to the existence of those nasty little groups. Hon. Members will recall the huge debate in which we engaged about the resurgence of such groups, and about their strength or otherwise. It turned out, however--this may be sub judice; I cannot remember exactly what progress has been made--that all three bombings were committed by some sad, obnoxious little nutter.
If we believed the media, however, we would believe in the existence of a burgeoning underworld of extreme right-wing fanatics, ready to burst forth in some sort of doomsday scenario. The media owe an apology to the wider community, not least the black community. That was deeply offensive.
I am glad that the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) has returned, because I wanted to dwell on his history. Let me do so for a moment, if I may. He may have missed what I said earlier; let me reprise it. Playing number games is not helpful to any serious debate about policing in London. Let me add, now that the right hon. and learned Gentleman--an habitual offender, who constantly broke the law--is present, that policing by conference rant has not been entirely helpful in London over the past 20 years.
During the last, and my first, policing in London debate--I think that an Opposition Member mentioned this--I said "Mea culpa", or rather whatever the plural of that is. I pointed out that, during the early 1980s, some--not all--of the activities of certain London councils in relation to the police were a sheer and utter disgrace. They disgraced this grand party, which is now 100 years old, and I firmly dissociate myself from them. As I have said, I am not talking about all the activities of those councils; I am talking about certain elements of what was done by the Greater London council, and by certain local authorities. It started from the vague premise that the Metropolitan police constituted some sort of oppressive occupation army of the capitalist forces. That was bunkum, and I repeat that it is to our shame.
In 1998, Harrow had a Labour council that pioneered the idea of a multi-agency forum--long before Barnet thought of it, I must tell my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore). The aim was for such forums to tackle racial harassment, and to develop a community strategy involving the police working closely with Harrow's diverse community--not in some Mickey Mouse or cosmetic partnership, but in a genuine partnership.
Yesterday, the borough held a conference celebrating all its assorted partnerships. As I said earlier, borough commander Ian Carter spent the whole day at the conference, and played an active role in all the events. The highlight, of course, was my own winding-up speech.
I say in conclusion--I nearly said Mr. Mayor. I was back at the council. I apologise. Mr. Deputy Speaker--that all sides have made serious points that are beyond politics. Whatever people think of our custody, if you like, of the Metropolitan police over the past two years, if a recruitment crisis is growing or bubbling, it has not
happened in two years. There is one, and we need to do something about it in general terms before we get to specifics.
It is of great concern that black and Asian officers still make up only about 3.55 per cent. of the force. Of as much concern is the almost neutral position over the past year or so: for virtually every black or Asian officer or cadet joining, one leaves. It is the same story with the recruitment of women, which people have not dwelled on unduly. Fifteen per cent. of the capital's police force are women. That is appalling too, and needs to be addressed.
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