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6.18 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey): I am glad to have an opportunity, two and a half hours after the beginning of the debate, to present the Liberal Democrat view. I shall do so in respect of both the generality and the specifics.
According to a much misunderstood verse of the Bible, Jesus said that the poor were always with us. It is a much quoted fact that crime is always with us. That could well be true, but the challenge to politicians is how we can reduce the amount of crime and bring about a society in which all people can lead lives that are as law-abiding as possible.
As far as I can remember, we have dealt with a criminal justice Bill or a crime Bill, or both, every year since I became a Member of Parliament; but we clearly have not found all the answers yet. There are no easy answers, which is one reason why we keep returning to the subject. This is the first debate on these issues that I have led for my party, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) and for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Burnett). It is already a little tiring that some of the proposals that we are discussing appear not to have benefited from full and careful consideration, and also that we go around the same circuit every year without trying to ensure that we learn the lessons of the past while securing maximum agreement in the House. However, the Government have the right to introduce a Bill. They have done that and we must start from here.
Let us consider the big picture. There is a huge amount of crime and figures are rising. They had decreased, but they are rising again. It is paradoxical that, in one way, the increase in the figures may be good because it shows that we live in a society where more crime is reported and that people now speak out about crimes that they would not have reported some years ago. The large increase in violent crime is especially worrying. Reducing the amount of violent crime, much of which is alcohol or drug related or induced, is a challenge to us and our society.
On Sunday, I spent some time at a benefit event for a family whose husband and father of six children has disappeared and is believed to have been murdered. Some people have been arrested in relation to that. Wherever our constituencies are, we all live with recurrent, serious and searing crime. Much of it is ghastly and horrible, and undermines the core values of our society. We must try above all to deal with that. That sort of crime worries most the people whom we are sent here to represent.
The second current big issue is that people are exercised about whether there are enough people to undertake crime prevention and reduction. The debates about police numbers are therefore important. People notice when there are more or fewer police. We were glad about yesterday's announcement, in response to a parliamentary written question, that the money allocated to police authorities will be topped up yet again.
Until last summer, the Home Secretary claimed that police numbers were not up to him, yet since then he has twice announced more money for more police officers. Police numbers are therefore up to him to some extent--it is up to him to add to them, but never up to him to
reduce them. However, we welcome the increased resources for the police in the approaching financial year. Many of us have argued for that. The number of police at the end of the Parliament will still not match the number at the beginning. Those figures will not be achieved until well beyond the next election, if at all, but at least the Government have heard the public's message.
The third element in the big picture is that the number of people in prison has sadly and worryingly increased. The numbers will probably continue to rise, and the Government appear content about that; they accept it and are willing regularly to introduce measures that increase the numbers of people who are likely to go inside. It has been estimated that up to another 15,000 people who breach non-custodial orders might go to prison as a result of the Bill.
More people going to prison for longer does not constitute a solution to our problems. We cannot produce a better society by that method. There will always be people in prison and we must take away the liberty of those who cannot manage it properly; we have to punish. However, there is too great a temptation, in borderline cases, to put people inside rather than leaving them outside. More and more offences lead to mandatory prison sentences. We believe that the sentence should be left to the court; Parliament should not determine it.
On the other hand, the Government want to increase electronic tagging. Unlike the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), we welcome that. When the technology works, it is better that people who pass the risk assessment tests, and can be released safely, are outside at the end of their sentences rather than locked up.
Drugs constitute the fourth big issue. Viscountess Runciman and her eminent colleagues today produced a report, which has been published by the Police Foundation. We cannot have a royal commission, because the Government are apparently unwilling to establish a body that provides independent, objective advice on drugs, their misuse and reform of the relevant legislation. The Police Foundation has therefore acted as a substitute. We welcome the thorough report, which I have had the opportunity to glance through, as other hon. Members will have done. The public hope that the Government will respond positively to it. Early signs, as expected, are weak. The deputy head of the federal Bureau of Justice said, when he visited this country a year or two ago, that only a stubborn Government do not accept that the law on drugs may need to be reformed.
I hope that the Government are neither stubborn nor deaf on the issue of drugs, or on the recommendations of the Runciman report. I hope that they hear the clear message that, unless we distinguish between the severity and implications of different drugs, we cannot hope to reduce the number of people who are addicted or use drugs. An intelligent, considered response, drug by drug, to dealing with the user and the dealer is appropriate.
Lastly, the outgoing president of the Prison Governors Association told us today about the severe overcrowding in prisons and the difficulty that he and his colleagues now experience in doing their jobs. The criminal justice system is therefore in difficulties, and we must tackle that.
Like other hon. Members, I pay tribute to the Prison Service and its staff. I pay tribute, in particular, to the staff at Lancaster prison. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) knows that I recently visited the prison. My visit was interesting, informative and helpful. I was extremely impressed by the drugs rehabilitation work that I asked to see. I was impressed not only by the staff, but by the prisoners, who were motivated and clear about the benefits of the work. The more such work is undertaken in all our penal institutions, the better. Simply preventing drugs from coming into prisons is no good if sufficient work is not done with prisoners to ensure that they do not reoffend through drugs when they leave.
I add my tribute to those of other hon. Members to the probation service. It is delighted that it will keep its name. It does a good job and we all owe it a debt of gratitude.
The Government must balance trying to meet the public demand, which is misplaced in some ways, to be tougher and to be seen to be constantly devising new initiatives, with getting the policy right. As with other matters, the Government introduce plenty of initiatives, but many appear to be kneejerk reactions and the result of ill-thought-out ideas. Two current ideas appear to have sprung from unprompted and unheralded suggestions by the Prime Minister. It sometimes seems that policies are not rationally considered and are led, if not developed, by spin doctors. That is especially unhelpful in penal and criminal justice policy.
It is all very well legislating through providing for a power here and another there, but sometimes those powers are inappropriate. We need fewer one-off initiatives and more considered policy. We need joined-up government. Yesterday, the Government announced that they wanted more joined-up thinking on the youth service and young people. That is welcome. It should apply across the board, including to the Prison Service and the criminal justice system.
We should allow time for changes to bed down. For example, a set of orders is already available to the courts. They relate to drugs and include drug testing and treatment orders, and they appear to work well. Many people argue that the Bill provides for further and unnecessary orders when existing orders work adequately.
The precondition to all this is that we need as much crime reduction and prevention as possible. People around the country are all agreed that practical measures such as crime partnerships work well to deliver local ideas--some are societal, some are practical, some are to do with the design of houses, some relate to where to put play areas and some deal with how to bring up children and what their education they should be--but I repeat that having enough police out there on the streets is a key part of that exercise. We need police in the community and we need the neighbourhood wardens, which the Government have now introduced. We have long argued that more community-based policing is needed and the neighbourhood warden idea has now arrived, and not before time. In due course, we shall put forward further ideas on developing the police service to ensure that there is more coherent neighbourhood policing. We think that that is what the public want.
I want to say a word about young people, some of whom all too easily become young offenders. The more we can do to prevent young people from becoming young offenders, the better our society will become, although
concentrating on prospective criminals of the future is not an excuse for not being equally attentive to the large number of people already in prison. There have been good initiatives and the Youth Justice Board is a good thing, but the reduction in the youth service around the country is a bad thing. The more constructive the activity young people undertake in and out of school, and the more they are educated for life through energetic pursuits that enable them to use their lives to the full, the less likely they are to be criminals.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett), the Chairman of the Select Committee, was right: the more training and work that young people receive, the more likely they are to be full members of society, not criminals. It is more likely that there will be crime where there is less work and more unemployment and we have to reflect on the fact that many people at the bottom end of society, where there is still a large measure of social exclusion, are not doing well. Some people at the other end of society are doing very well indeed. The more unequal our society, the more likely it is that there will be crime among the have nots.
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