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2.7 pm
Mr. David Lidington (Aylesbury): I am grateful to have the opportunity to reply to a debate that has been wide ranging and, on the whole, good humoured and constructive. As is only right, I pay tribute not only to the professionalism and dedication of the Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, but to every man and woman in his police service.
The variety of concerns that have been raised by right hon. and hon. Members have reminded us of the broad scope of the responsibilities that we ask the Metropolitan police service to carry out. The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) spoke about the pressures that are caused to decent law-abiding people by prostitution, and reference has been made to the problem of the advertising of prostitution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) spoke about the difficulties experienced in the royal parks. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) referred to travellers and growing public impatience with that problem and to the work of the Metropolitan police in countering the traffic in endangered species.
The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King) spoke with characteristic force and cogency about the drugs problem in her constituency, about how that brought decent, hard-working families almost to the point of despair and about how their solution required not only police initiatives, but those launched in partnership with many other agencies. That theme characterised many contributions, including that of the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), who referred to several initiatives in his borough to strengthen partnerships between the
police and other organisations in society which work for greater public peace and observance of the law. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) gave us the benefit of his experience of the police fellowship scheme. He also drew our attention to the length of time that police officers may have to spend at the police station after making an arrest. Conservative and Labour Home Secretaries alike have received representations from right hon. and hon. Members and from the police service about lightening the burden of paperwork to the minimum necessary so that the police can stay out doing their job.
As many right hon. and hon. Members have observed, the past year has been overshadowed by two factors--the nail-bombings in Brixton, Brick lane and Soho and the publication of the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the ensuing debate about it.
Let me refer first to the bombings which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg). Although nothing can erase the horror and tragedy of those crimes, one consolation to those of us who observed from outside was the fact that those outrages sparked the community in London and nationally to draw together. Although the attacks were directed at black people, British Asians and gay people, people from all backgrounds, all walks of society and all political beliefs agreed that they represented vicious assaults on all of us as citizens of this country.
Perhaps that public reaction was sparked by the public reflections on the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the revelations in the Macpherson report. There is a tremendous fund of good will, which crosses party and social barriers, to learn the lessons of that report and apply them in a way that will contribute to building a better and more harmonious society. That theme was reiterated many times in today's debate.
The hon. Member for Walthamstow talked of the need for the police to recruit and retain officers from the ethnic minorities and pointed out the difficulties and challenges involved. The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) complemented what he said by describing a number of innovative ways in which her local police were tackling those challenges. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) raised the possibility of relaunching a police cadet scheme, one objective of which would be specifically to draw in new recruits from ethnic minorities.
I do not have time to deal at length with the issues raised by the Macpherson report, but I was glad to hear the Home Secretary and a number of Labour Members agree with its conclusion that the power to stop and search remains essential to effective policing, but that we also needed to reflect on the way in which those powers were exercised. I can say with reference to my constituency that that also applies to forces outside London. The hon. Member for Walthamstow and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) warned us in different ways of the danger of too simplistic an analysis of the stop and search statistics. The Government should take account of my right hon. and learned Friend's points, keeping under active review the possibility that the police may have reacted to the Macpherson report or to changes in disciplinary procedures by being less willing to exercise their lawful powers, with the consequence that they may be being less effective in dealing with some crimes. The Government should remain alive to that risk.
The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow warned of the need to get away from stereotypes, talking of how the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our society were most likely to live in fear or to be the victims of crime. The Minister represents Vauxhall and may know that my own thinking on these subjects was influenced by my contesting that constituency against her predecessor just over a decade ago. There is no better apprenticeship for a Conservative politician than donning a blue rosette to go canvassing on the Stockwell Park estate.I encountered a tremendous fear of crime among many poor people, and learned of their grave mistrust of the police and the criminal justice system, particularly among the young and people from the ethnic minorities.
We all have a duty to reject racism. All crimes are horrific and should be condemned, but a crime with a racial motivation may go beyond affecting its victims, poisoning all of community life and setting people of one race or neighbourhood against others. The Home Secretary was right to say that tackling such problems can never be a matter for the police alone.
I hope that the Government accept the need for a sensible balance. Legislation will come forward to bring the police within the scope of the Race Relations Act 1976, and I was concerned to read the Home Secretary's recent letter to the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, which said that the Government were considering reversing the burden of proof in race discrimination legislation. I ask Ministers to weigh carefully what that would mean to effective policing and morale among the police.
The Home Secretary and the Commissioner have brought us good news on crime. The falls in recorded crime vindicate the criminal justice policies initiated by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe. At least in part, and for the time being, Labour Ministers intend to continue with his initiatives, and that is welcome. However, there are warning signs in the crime figures appended to the Commissioner's report. Clear-up rates for burglary and street crime are down significantly over the past 12 months in comparison with the previous year's figures. Car crime, to which the hon. Member for Upminster (Mr. Darvill) referred, rose significantly during 1998-99. As the Home Secretary has set the target of cutting car crime by 30 per cent. over five years, based on the 1998-99 figures, I am sure that he will be alive to the need to deal with that problem.
The Home Secretary talked of resources, but did not mention that the amount going to the Metropolitan police from revenue support grant and non-domestic rates had fallen this year. The council tax payer in London has had to carry the burden of paying for the Met according to page 76 of the Commissioner's annual report. The police have had considerable success in meeting overall efficiency targets, but the figures conceal the facts hidden in the report's detail about the tremendous success in tackling sickness. The Home Secretary rightly alluded to that point in his speech to the Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland the other day. However, that must be set against the Met's inability to meet the planned efficiency target on several other initiatives. That gives us a note of warning for the future.
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