| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Miss Widdecombe: I could not contain myself just now because I simply could not believe what we were being told. The right hon. Gentleman talks about crime reduction. Is crime going up, or is it not? Is it the first time in six years that it has gone up, or is it not? Is it happening under his stewardship, or is it not? Is it happening against a background of falling police numbers, or is it not? No matter how much waffle we hear, those are the facts. Will the right hon. Gentleman please address them?
Mr. Straw: I am addressing all those issues, and the waffle is coming from the Conservative party. The right hon. Lady knows very well that recorded crime overall rose by about 3 per cent. in the last year for which we
published full figures. Within that figure there are major variations. Therefore, there are lessons to be learned. Yes, there is the issue of overall resources; we are addressing it, something that the previous Government failed to do. There is also the issue of how those resources are best managed.I regret that police numbers have fallen. However, the last people in the world to lecture us about police numbers are the right hon. Lady and other Conservative Members. The Conservatives promised an increase of 1,000 in police numbers in their 1992 manifesto and then began cutting police numbers in 1993, so that they fell by 1,400 by 1998. The Conservatives' pre-election spending plans, published just before the election, would have led to an even greater loss of police numbers, with no strategy to reverse that decline.
The right hon. Lady presented the police budget for 1997-98 in a debate in the House in January 1997. She is staring at the ceiling, praying that I will not remind her of what she said. She said:
- I have already reminded hon. Members of the commitment . . . to provide funding for an additional 5,000 police officers over three years.--[Official Report, 29 January 1997; Vol. 289, c. 457.]
Mr. Tim Collins (Westmorland and Lonsdale): I hope that the Home Secretary can give a calm answer to my question. When does he propose to act on the report commissioned and received by the Home Office on the sparsity element in its funding formula for police forces? As the right hon. Gentleman may be aware, that is worth £2 million to the Cumbria constabulary and would make the difference between the continuation of reductions or turning them around and reversing them.
Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. In the current police grant, £35 million is for sparsity. We shall be acting on the matter in the context of the comprehensive spending review. The Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) recently visited Cumbria--a very rural area--and talked to officers about the matter.
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere): The Home Secretary has been in charge for three years, but he complains about police numbers under the Conservative Government. Will he confirm that police numbers have declined during the past three years? When does he expect police numbers to match those he inherited in 1997?
Mr. Straw: I confirm that police numbers have gone down. The hon. Gentleman knows that--there is no dubiety about the matter. What I am trying to do is to explain that decline. We decided to stick to the spending plans of the previous Government for the first two years--even though we did not have to do so--because we were not willing to make promises to the electorate that could not be delivered. We learned a few lessons in opposition--the current Opposition have failed to learn them--so, although I am happy to hear complaints about the fact that police numbers have gone down from police officers, police services or the public, the people who cannot complain about that reduction are members of the previous Administration.
Moreover, the Conservatives tried to trick the electorate by saying that police numbers would rise by 5,000--as the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald said just before the general election--while allocating an amount that ensured that numbers were bound to go down. We are dealing with the matter. We are injecting funds so as to reverse the decline in police numbers. This year, £59 million is ring-fenced from the crime fighting fund; there will be more next year to accelerate--in two years, rather than three--the recruitment of 5,000 officers more than previously planned. After those two years--
Mr. Straw: No, I shall not give way.
On the basis of the projections provided by police forces, we expect a return to the 1997 numbers. As for more police officers, that is a matter for the comprehensive spending review.
Many hon. Members were rather perplexed at how subdued the right hon. Lady was on Monday during Home Office questions. I was, too, until I read what she had said on Sunday on the BBC programme "On The Record", where she, and her spending plans, were taken apart by the relentless questioning of Mr. John Humphrys.
This matter is like the Tories' pensions pledges--they make a pledge in the morning and it falls apart in the afternoon. We saw that today. The right hon. Lady talks about honesty in sentencing; what she actually means is that she plans to cut sentences in half, with no licences for those people who come to the end of their period of imprisonment. Her plans will cost at least £1,900 million, but she gagged and fluffed--just as she did in the House--and tried to convince an incredulous Mr. Humphrys that the cost would be just a fraction of that amount--£200 million. This year, we have put an extra £300 million into the police service alone. The right hon. Lady's calculation is as worthless and hopeless as the ones she made before the election; it is doubly undeliverable, because under the Tories' so-called tax guarantee, there can be no extra spending anyway.
Oppositions can always make headlines. I know that; I spent 18 years in opposition. However, I also know that if Oppositions are to become Governments they require more than headlines. They need credibility; and to be credible, they cannot in one breath promise the earth on education, health, police, prisons and pensions and, in the next, promise to cut taxes. It simply does not add up.
The British people drove the Tories from office in 1997 not only because they had failed comprehensively on law and order, but because they broke the trust of the British people, cynically making one promise after another that they knew could not be delivered. By contrast, the promises that we made are being delivered--getting on top of the legacy of high levels of crime and of criminality with a strategy for the long term. We have put that strategy in place with the most fundamental reform of our criminal justice system in a generation to make our society safer and to allow people better to live their lives free from fear.
I urge the House to support our amendment.
4.35 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey): We welcome this debate on crime and we welcome the opportunity to examine the Government's record and to hear what the Conservative party proposes to do.
First, I shall consider the Government's record just over three years on from the general election. It was perfectly valid for the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) to remind the House that the Labour party went to the election with the theme of tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. That was its selling point and message and we must judge what it has done against that claim.
Of course, there has been some good legislation, some good initiatives and some worthwhile and considered proposals. In my conversations around the country, I pick up that the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 is generally welcomed and that police and local authorities in England and Wales welcome the new crime partnerships. I also pick up from my conversations that the new structure for dealing with young offenders is a good initiative and that it is much more likely to deal with young people effectively. Certainly, there have been good initiatives on crime reduction, and it is not always the big national schemes, but the small local initiatives that count. In many areas, the Government's actions have been welcomed, as they have been by the Liberal Democrats over the years. The Government have been clear about certain forms of crime, such as racially motivated crime. They have deserved support and have made progress.
We do not come to the debate with the attitude that, by definition, all we can do is criticise the work of another political party. That would be an unreasonable and unfair starting point. However, we have to consider what works, a phrase that was inherited from the previous Conservative Government and used again by this one. The test is what works to prevent, detect and deal with crime.
Perhaps, because he was understandably concentrating on the Conservatives, the Home Secretary did not hear my attempts to intervene on him. I absolve him of responsibility for that, because he is normally willing and courteous in giving way. However, I understand that he may have had difficulty in picking up my requests to intervene.
Let me paint the picture of the serious position that we are in and that is a challenge to us all. We need to go from where we are and not where we would like to be. On Monday, I quoted Home Office statistics to the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) and--along with those published by the House of Commons Library, which are often prayed in aid--those statistics are the most authentic that we can quote. The latest figures show that, of 100 offences committed, only 45 per cent. are reported, only 24 per cent. are recorded, only 5.5 per cent. are cleared up and only 3 per cent. result in a caution or conviction. The figures are worrying whatever the level of crime.
The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald was wrong to deny that crime reached a peak under the Conservative Administration. In 1992, the number of recorded crimes was higher than it had ever been before or has been since. Although the figure goes up and down. we clearly want a system that, whatever the level of offences, prevents crime more effectively, detects it better and deals with it more effectively.
Let me share with the House the other statistic that I wish to quote. It shows that, of the men who are convicted and imprisoned, more than half reoffend within two years and, of those who are under 21, more than 70 per cent. reoffend within two years. In addition to the fact that people are not being deterred, something is badly wrong when, despite a rising prison population and a general trend for longer sentences, a significant number of people are coming back into the system. That is as important as other matters that should be addressed as policy areas.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |