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Mr. Michael Howard (Folkestone and Hythe): The Home Secretary frequently refers to the fall in police numbers in the last four years of the previous Government and he has just referred to a fall in real-terms funding for the police in one of those years. What he never points out--and I would be grateful if he would confirm my figures, which come from the Library--is that during my time in office as Home Secretary, spending on the police increased in real terms by 4.2 per cent, whereas under his stewardship, spending on the police in real terms has fallen. In other words, while I was Home Secretary, chief constables had the money they needed to maintain police numbers had they chosen to do so, whereas the right hon. Gentleman simply has not given them the money. Is not that the difference?
Mr. Straw: I have great respect for the staff of the Library, but my figures--which are on the record and I am happy to exchange them with my old friends the Library statisticians--show a real-terms increase in spending of 4 per cent. between 1997 and 2000. For this year, budgets will rise by 4 per cent. while the GDP deflator will increase by only 2 per cent. I notice that the right hon. and learned Gentleman turned to the Tories' usual alibi of blaming someone other than themselves for the fact that police numbers fell. Of course, they do not give this Administration that concession. In the small print of his question, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he had provided the money--which, by the way, he had not--to the police service to spend on increased police numbers, if chief constables chose to do so. It turns out that the fall in numbers was not the right hon. and learned Gentleman's fault for cutting real-terms spending on the police in 1995-96 by 0.4 per cent., but the fault of the chief constables for not spending the money properly.
Mr. Howard: The Home Secretary has challenged my figures, but they show that in 1993-94 spending on the
police in real terms--at 1998-99 prices--was £7,001 million. In 1997-98, the last year for which I was responsible, it was £7,294 million. For 2000-01, it is only £7,369 million. If the Home Secretary compares the figures year by year, he will find a 4.2 per cent. increase in real terms in my period in office and a fall in his.
Mr. Straw: I am sorry to disagree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Such matters of arithmetic are not easy to resolve.
Mr. Straw: With great respect, I have already given way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman twice. My figures, which are produced by Government statisticians and based on Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy police statistics--on which his statistics will also be based, because they are the only source of those figures--tell a different story. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will have an opportunity later to explain away how he promised 5,000 additional officers in 1997 on budgets that could not conceivably deliver them.
How little has changed! In recent weeks, we have heard senior Tories sniping at our police service over the May day riots and over rural policing. They pay lip service to the police in one breath and constantly second-guess their professional competence in another. When the Tories are not making excuses and searching for scapegoats, they are holding up the war on crime. They waffle tough words--such as we heard today--but act to the contrary.
The Conservatives' motion talks about putting victims at the heart of the system, but the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald and the Tory party have vehemently opposed our Bill to stop the misery caused to victims by persistent offenders stringing out less serious cases by choosing jury trial when there are no good reasons for doing so.
Our Bill will help victims and speed up justice. I have long accepted that there are times when the so-called establishment mobilises against common-sense policies to tackle crime. This is one such occasion, but who do we find standing full square with the lawyers and the liberal establishment, and against the views of all the police associations, of the Lord Chief Justice, of the senior judiciary and all the magistrates? It is none other than the Leader of the Opposition, with the right hon. Lady in his wake.
Miss Widdecombe: The Home Secretary says that his proposals to reduce the automatic right to trial by jury will benefit victims. Does he agree that he has said that two thirds of the savings under the measure will be achieved as a result of fewer people being given prison sentences? That will happen because magistrates give fewer and shorter custodial sentences. How will it comfort and reassure victims to know that under his proposals more people who should be in prison will instead be on the streets?
Mr. Straw: The right hon. Lady knows very well that if magistrates believe that their sentencing powers are not adequate when someone is convicted in a magistrates court of an either-way offence, they can transfer that person to the Crown court for sentencing. She cannot
wriggle out of it and pretend that she does not know that. She also knows that our proposals will speed up justice and stop criminals spinning cases out to the point where victims are so fed up or intimidated that they will not go to the court--which, almost invariably, is further away from where they live than the magistrates court. She knows, too, that our proposal will save time wasted unnecessarily by prisoners on remand.I turn now to the issue of anti-social behaviour orders. In government, the Conservative party refused to implement those orders. In opposition, it sought to water them down, and it now describes them as a gimmick in need of repeal.
As the House has heard, more than 40 ASBOs have been granted in the past year. I want many more such orders to be granted, in the same way as I want there to be many more convictions for theft, burglary, violence and other crimes. The Opposition, however, do not want there to be any anti-social behaviour orders at all. They want the protection that the orders offer removed altogether.
The Opposition want the three young thugs in Preston who were making the lives of the residents on the Callon estate a misery to be free to carry on their criminality. They want the same licence for thugs and criminals in areas across the country--both rural and urban--where anti-social behaviour orders are in force.
Anti-social behaviour orders are in force in 25 areas, which include Weston-super-Mare, Camden, Liverpool, Yeovil, Middlesbrough and parts of Sussex and Suffolk. They are helping in the prevention and detection of crime.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West): Recently, a shopkeeper in Lymington went out to defend his property against a mob of drunken youths. A police car passed by. The policeman in the car looked at what was going on, and the car passed on. The shopkeeper subsequently made representations to the police station, but he was told that the policy was that an officer would not get involved in an incident if he was on his own and had no back-up--but the citizen involved was on his own and had no back-up. If the police are not prepared to intervene to assist citizens, how can any justice be had, ever?
Mr. Straw: I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern, and I congratulate the citizen to whom he refers. I can say, modestly, that I have been in that situation myself on four occasions over the past few years. However, the hon. Gentleman knows that there will always be some instances of unhappiness about the way in which an individual police officer has behaved in an individual circumstance. The answer is for the hon. Gentleman to take the matter up with the chief constable, or with the superintending officer in that area.
I am not alone in saying that anti-social behaviour orders are having an effect. Robin Searle, assistant chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, has said:
- Through new legal powers the police and other agencies are also sending out a clear message to the most persistent young offenders, who previously thought that they were untouchable, that we will target them and take the strongest possible action.
The right hon. Lady complained that we had established targets for each police force area, in co-operation with those police force areas.--[Interruption.] She keeps waving her hands as an alternative to rational argument.
Madam Speaker: Order. I ask the right hon. Lady to contain herself while in a sedentary position. She has made her speech and should let the Secretary of State make his.
Mr. Straw: The right hon. Lady cannot help it, Madam Speaker--we should have sympathy for her plight. [Interruption.] I apologise, Madam Speaker, for any impertinence I may have shown to you.
The right hon. Lady waves her hands like a semaphore flag, which I have to decipher. I gather from her semaphore that she is not too keen on targets. Last year's crime figures, as they relate to previous years, show, underneath the overall totals, a very variegated situation. The right hon. Lady laughs. Of course we want to get overall crime figures down. Figures for some crimes are coming down, such as domestic burglary and violent crime, which we have targeted as a matter of policy.
Some police services do very much better than others even though they may have the same resources, powers and number of police officers. I am delighted to say that one of those is Lancashire which, with a less good budget settlement than many other forces, managed to reduce crime by 10 per cent. in the last full year.
What is true for police forces overall is also true for individual basic command units. That is why we have asked forces to set targets at a basic command unit level. I am astonished that the Tories should oppose that, because it was their policy in relation to schools 15 years ago. Far from the police objecting to them, the targets have been welcomed by the Association of Police Authorities and by Superintendent Peter Williams, the national secretary of the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales.
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