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Mr. Boateng: Those are the facts.

Mr. Straw: Those are indeed the facts. [Interruption.] I am not surprised that the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald laughs. It is a record that she seeks to forget, but which everyone else remembers.

The Bill's financial effects are set out at the end of its financial and explanatory memorandum. We are also ensuring that the police and other criminal justice agencies are better resourced, so as to make best use of the measures in the Bill. One important aspect of that are the resources available to the police. Between 1993 and March 1998, under budgets set by the previous Administration, the number of police officers in England and Wales fell by about 1,400. That was despite a pledge to the House by the right hon. Lady that numbers would be increased by 5,000. Numbers have fallen under the first period of this Government under the spending plans regarded as reckless by the Opposition. We are now, however, putting in place a co-ordinated programme to boost recruitment to ensure that more officers are used in front-line operational duties and to bring about in two years the recruitment of the additional 5,000 officers that was originally planned for in three years.

Yesterday, I gave details of the £157 million investment under the capital modernisation fund for a range of new information technology systems and other measures to speed up justice and to reduce the unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on the police and others who work in the criminal justice system.

The Bill is a coherent package of measures that builds upon proven successes and harnesses new technology in the fight against crime. The restructuring of the probation service, the new enforcement regime for community sentences, and the enhanced role for electronic monitoring and drug testing will all promote an evidence-based approach to fighting crime. The enforcement regime, drug testing and electronic monitoring measures will also enable the courts and others to adopt a more targeted approach to offenders.

Together, the measures will promote a tough, effective and focused approach to reducing both crime and the fear of crime. I commend the Bill to the House.

4.27 pm

Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald): I could hardly believe the utter complacency of the right hon. Gentleman's peroration. Until then, this debate had been almost sensible, but, listening to him, one would not have thought that, for example, the steepest falls in crime since the second world war actually happened in the last three years of the previous Government. One would never have thought, from listening to him, that we now have the

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first rise in crime for six years and that he has presided over a fall of 2,300 in the number of police officers. However much he may seek to blame us, the fact remains that that has happened under his stewardship in the past three years. Listening to him, one would have thought that thousands of drug dealers, sex offenders and killers were not being let out of prison early.

I found entirely spurious the right hon. Gentleman's argument that the previous Government let mandatory prisoners out of prison early, because we never let out a single mandatory prisoner who had not completed his tariff. My objection is not that he is letting people out at the earliest point at which release is possible, but that, under his tagging rules, they are let out before that point. Enough of them are reoffending to cause a sane person serious concern, but not apparently the Home Secretary. If he believes that soundbites and smoke-and-mirrors tricks, such as his famous fiddle on police numbers, will cut the crime rate, he is even more out of touch than I thought.

Unlike the right hon. Gentleman and his friends when they were in opposition, we shall not oppose measures that aim to cut crime. Therefore, we will not divide the House on Second Reading. Although we support some measures in the Bill, others will need refining and will certainly need a more open-minded approach than the right hon. Gentleman demonstrated in his response to some of the interventions that he took. Other measures will need substantial scrutiny and major amendment. That is a responsible attitude, which is in complete contrast to his behaviour when he was in opposition.

The Home Secretary might like to recall that Lord McIntosh of Haringey, then the Labour party's Front-Bench home affairs spokesman in another place, described the mandatory sentences for drug dealers and burglars proposed by the previous Government as "nonsense" and "gesture politics". That was as late as 1996. I doubt whether the Home Secretary would repeat those words now that he has taken credit for rolling them out, as he likes to phrase it.

I had hoped that, when the Minister of State announced the U-turn on the name "community punishment and rehabilitation service" in response to the timely question of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) two weeks ago, the Government's fervour for mind-blowing political correctness had at last been extinguished. Unfortunately, my hope was short-lived. Having dropped the outlandish new name for the probation service, the Home Secretary has decided to press ahead with changing the names of probation, community service and combination orders. It is extraordinary that the right hon. Gentleman, having finally realised that his zeal for political correctness was a step too far, even for the hon. Members for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg) and for Leeds, Central (Mr. Benn), has decided to retain the probation service and to change the names of the orders instead. So we shall have a service with one name, but the measures that it enforces will have names that were not good enough, even in the Government's eyes, to be retained for the service as a whole. Perhaps the Bill's provisions show us all the true mess of the third way.

Under clause 10, the Home Secretary will have wide powers to take over the new local probation boards in almost any circumstances. Even at this stage, he has no faith in the way in which his new creations will work. All appointments to the boards will be made by the Home

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Secretary and the Lord Chancellor. There is no guidance in the Bill on who will be appointed. We know from last week's report by the Commissioner for Public Appointments that the Government have packed the national health service with their cronies. [Interruption.] It was an independent report.

We can only hope--[Interruption.] It was probably indignation at their iniquity. We can only hope this week that the Government will not end up packing the probation service. [Hon. Members: "Do not be absurd."] But why is it so necessary to take control of every appointment? Why is it absurd to ask for assurance that there will be independent appointments?

If the Home Secretary had any concern for democracy and for the scrutiny that the House is supposed to give to Bills, he would want to answer my questions rather than sit on the Government Front Bench as if invalid questions are being asked. An independent report shows--the right hon. Gentleman did not heed it--that the Government packed the health service.

I welcomed the Minister of State's answer yesterday that the Government are working to ensure

the highest standards of openness and transparency.--[Official Report, 27 March 2000; Vol. 3471, c. 13W.]

I am sure that the Government will wish to be judged on their record, which has not stood up to much scrutiny so far.

It is strange that the nationalisation and centralisation of the probation service has been undertaken by a Government who, when they were in opposition, attacked national control and centralised appointments. Has the Home Secretary forgotten his own attack on the Crown Prosecution Service's "monolithic nationalised system" in 1996? Does he not recall the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael)--his deputy both in opposition and in government, before he went away to make a mess of Wales--attacking the concept of central appointments to police authorities as "highly damaging".

Does the Home Secretary not recall the early-day motion tabled by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth of 11 January 1993?

Mr. Straw: I have forgotten.

Miss Widdecombe: I understand that the Home Secretary's memory is short, so I shall refresh it. It was signed by the current Minister with responsibilities for the probation service, the right hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) and by other current Home Office and Cabinet Ministers. It stated that any attempt to introduce "nominated boards" of the Home Secretary's own choosing would do terrible damage to "accountability and public confidence".

Does the right hon. Gentleman remember the words of the then shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), who has since moved on? He said in a press release that the notion of central appointments was a disastrous proposal and stated:

We need more, not less, local accountability on appointments. Perhaps the Home Secretary will enlighten the House about his party's change of mind.

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The House will need to look in detail at how disqualification orders will work in practice. The Home Secretary did not devote much attention to those orders in his speech. I do not criticise him for that because he could not cover everything, but I want to raise one matter with him. I wish to make it clear that Conservative Members totally abhor those who abuse, or otherwise take advantage of, vulnerable children, whether physically or sexually. Those criminals are among the worst and should expect to face the full force of the law. However, the Bill contains several apparent loopholes that may need to be plugged. For example, the new disqualification order will apply only to those sentenced to 12 or more months' imprisonment.

I remind the Home Secretary of the case of Paul Gadd, who is perhaps better known as Gary Glitter. In November, he was rightly jailed for possessing indecent photographs of children that were described by the judge as filthy and revolting, but he got just four months in prison. The Bill would not automatically disqualify from working with children somebody committing a similar offence and receiving a similar sentence.

The list in schedule 4 of offences that will qualify offenders for disqualification orders does not include assault occasioning actual bodily harm. More alarmingly, it does not include the supply of controlled drugs. Is it the Government's view that drug dealers who sell to children should expect to face the severest punishment, including tough mandatory sentences, which is what we have proposed? It is strange that those who peddle drugs to children should not be subject to the new disqualification orders proposed by the Home Secretary.

As I said to the House in November, we welcome the introduction of drug testing for criminal suspects, but we have a number of concerns about the detail of the Bill. The Home Secretary has said that drug tests will be used to identify those who commit crimes to feed their habit, but is it not the case, as I asked him earlier, that those who use drugs commit sexual and violent crimes as well as acquisitive ones, and that there is often a direct link between their drug use and those crimes?

Last week, for example, Christopher Tilling, a heroin addict, was jailed for 12 years for manslaughter after he set fire to a house, killing a seven-year-old child, in return for £200 to feed his drug habit. If the Home Secretary is to break the link, as he puts it, between drug habits and crime--we do not dispute that aim--the provision should be extended to all serious crime, and not apply only to acquisitive crime. Tilling did not commit a property crime, so there would have been no mandatory testing under the Bill and no establishment of the link that the Home Secretary seeks to substantiate.

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