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Mr. Boateng: I want to get on a bit before I allow the right hon. Lady to make her points. She raised some issues worthy of consideration.
Let me set the Bill in the wider context of all that the Government have done to reduce crime and protect the public better. In doing so, I can respond directly to the challenge made by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire. I always enjoy his speeches, and he always stood up well for his county when I spoke on police matters. I happen to have the figures for current spending on policing in Bedfordshire. For 1999-2000, the amount was £61.4 million; for 2000-01, it was £64.1 million. His county has benefited by a total of £492,000 in crime reduction funding. That money is more than was expended when the Conservatives had stewardship of those matters. It would not have been spent had not a large number of people in his county and an even larger number of people throughout the country voted to return a Labour Government in order better to protect the public, and to address the doubling of crime that occurred while the Conservatives were in power--the latter point is an admission that my right hon. Friend finally managed to drag from the hon. Member for Surrey Heath.
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
The Minister has given the latest figures; we were grateful for that modest turnaround in
Mr. Boateng:
I have no doubt that the right hon. and learned Gentleman's figures will be correct. Nor does he doubt for one moment the figures that I am sharing with the House; he is gracious enough to acknowledge them. It is a matter for his chief constable, in whom we both have the utmost confidence, to determine how that money is spent on police numbers on the ground.
The Bill must be seen in a context that includes the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 and all the other measures introduced by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. Furthermore, important measures have been implemented by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor--as my hon. Friend the Member for Erdington pointed out--and other right hon. Friends to tackle social exclusion and the causes of crime.
Mr. Boateng:
I shall not give way at the moment. The right hon. Lady will have her chance.
On electronic tagging, it is important to give the lie to the suggestion that the home detention curfew has been anything other than a success in its first year of operation. Of 16,000 offenders released to HDC, 95 per cent. successfully completed their curfew. Only 5 per cent. were recalled to prison; the most common reason for recall--for 68 per cent. of offenders--was the failure to comply with the curfew conditions. The rates of release for different types of prisoner show that the risk of reoffending is a key factor in the release decision. There were 45,000 prisoners who were assessed for risk and suitability; the release rate was 31 per cent. Great care is taken by the Prison Service before decisions are made on release.
It would be uncharacteristically dishonest of the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald to deny that, when the Prison Service or any Government are administering a system for licences or for home detention curfews, there will regrettably be occasions when people who are released commit offences. To build a whole edifice of opposition around that fact is unprincipled; it is unworthy of the right hon. Lady.
Miss Widdecombe:
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way at last. It is the right hon. Gentleman who underestimates the seriousness of the debate. If he had come to the Dispatch Box and said that he was concerned about the failures--especially about some of the more serious ones; that there were lessons to be learned; that he was asking the Prison Service and others how such lessons could be learned; and that he wanted to improve the system, rather than dismissing the 5 per cent. of failures and saying that there was a resounding success; and if he had at least attempted to express some sympathy with the victims of those whom
Mr. Boateng:
I am only too happy to respond to the right hon. Lady. Of course there are lessons to be learned. Of course risk assessment must be kept under constant review. Of course it is right, in cases of grave failure, to ask why. I shall write to her about one such case. As it is sub judice, she will understand why I do not mention it at the Dispatch Box.
I assure the right hon. Lady that we are asking those questions. I genuinely look forward to the Committee, because there are issues that we need to address. The value of the Bill is that it creates the legal framework that will enable us to pilot and develop the new technology so that the public will be better protected. We shall feed into that process the lessons we have learned from the operation of the HDC.
The right hon. Lady has made her point; it is a nakedly party political one. It falls into the trap of the one-off press release--such as the one I have in front of me--as a substitute for thought. Nevertheless, we must move on from that. We shall address those matters in Committee.
Mr. Boateng:
I shall give way in a moment. I want to respond to some of the other issues that were raised during the debate.
We must strengthen enforcement. It is vital that the probation service deliver to courts and to sentencers a sentence that is so administered as to command public support and confidence. In order to have credible community sentences, the present inconsistencies and failures in dealing with breaches must be addressed.
In relation to the points made by Liberal Democrat Members, those matters must be dealt with in the context of a clear understanding that some offenders have chaotic and disordered lives. However, those offenders must realise that that chaos cannot be allowed to continue--leading as it invariably does to increased and repeated offending in a vicious cycle. We need a clear and focused legal framework to restore order to that chaos. Order can be restored only when there is an understanding that breaches will lead to imprisonment. There are no two ways about it and there is no soft or easy answer. It must be understood that community sentences are not meant to be a soft option. When someone fails to take advantage of the opportunity that a community sentence offers, he will go to prison.
Mr. Hughes:
The Minister talks tough again, but surely he understands that there is a world of difference between the sort of breach that results from someone just failing to turn up for an appointment and someone, when out on a conditional sentence, assaulting another person. We cannot have just one remedy--lock them up--no matter what a person has done wrong.
Mr. Boateng:
The hon. Gentleman refers to someone just failing to turn up for an appointment. He must get real. It is just failing to turn up for an appointment that brings community sentences into disrepute, wastes the
I want to say a few words about the importance of multi-agency work. The issue was touched on by my hon. Friends the Members for Erdington, for Clwyd, West and for Lancaster and Wyre in particular. However, significantly, the issue was also mentioned by the right hon. Member for Fareham, based on his experience as a Minister. It is clear that prisons, the probation service and the voluntary sector need to work ever more closely together. We are looking to develop closer synchronisation of the work of the Prison Service and the probation service. Announcements will be made in the fulness of time about how a strategy to that effect might be best developed.
At present, we are ensuring that jointly accredited programmes between prisons and the probation service can be delivered in both a custodial and a community setting. They will have a capacity for follow-through and that is never more important than in relation to employment, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Erdington and other Members in connection with drugs.
We need to ensure that agencies are not only provided with the necessary resources to work effectively together, but are provided with the structures that promote such work. The Bill does that. Yes, there are issues of resources and we have not ducked them. We have provided £217 million. That includes £57 million to support more sustained and better drug education and prevention work in schools and the community; £21 million for schools to support the training of teachers and the delivery of effective drug education programmes; £18 million for anti-drug publicity programmes; £18 million to set up the Home Office's drug prevention and advisory service; £60 million for the implementation of the drug treatment and testing order; and about £60 million for treatment in prison. A further £70.5 million has been allocated to drugs services in the community.
That is serious money and it has to be applied in ways that are evidence based. The evidence shows that there is a link between acquisitive crime and drug taking. Evidence shows that link for class A drugs, but we have not closed our minds about class B drugs. There is no question of our going soft on class B drugs, but the evidence is not there at the moment to justify the implementation of the provisions for such drugs. It is right that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary should have available to him the capacity to extend the use of the powers, and no one can doubt that he will not hesitate to use those powers when the evidence suggests that it would be right to do so.
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