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Mr. Clive Efford (Eltham): Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman care to comment on the effect of the implementation of the Sheehy report on the number of Metropolitan police officers? One of my police officer constituents told me that one of his colleagues--who pounds the same central London beat as he does, but joined after the report was implemented in 1994--is paid more than £400 less for doing exactly the same job. My local police inspector told me that that factor is the biggest barrier to increasing the number of Metropolitan police officers.
Mr. Howard: Most of the Sheehy report was not implemented. The report made a number of recommendations--earlier in the debate, we heard about the police service's reaction to those recommendations--but, for the most part, the report was not implemented. Some of the report was implemented, including the provision to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.
In looking at the provision for housing allowance, it was quite difficult to justify that type of provision. It is made in very few other jobs. It did not seem the best way of dealing with the problem of recruitment. However, to take housing allowance away from people who had joined the police service on the basis that they would receive it also was very difficult to justify. Therefore, we said that those who have the allowance will keep it, but that those who join the police service after the decision had been taken and announced--they knew exactly what the terms and conditions were going to be when they decided to join--will not get it.
Of course, decisions that are taken against a particular labour market background cannot be expected to last for ever. Government decisions are not set in stone, never to be reviewed. The circumstances in the London labour market have changed and it is probably more difficult to recruit officers now. If circumstances have changed and certain policies are no longer appropriate, they should be reviewed. I have explained the reasons for my decision. It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but these things need to be looked at as circumstances change.
Mr. Efford: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that, as a result of his decision, new police recruits were £400 worse off and that that has made it more difficult for the Metropolitan police to recruit officers, who come primarily from outside London and find it difficult to cope with the costs of that move?
Mr. Howard: I do not know how many times the hon. Gentleman wants to put the same question and get the same answer. I do not know the exact numbers, but it is true that the terms and conditions were changed. Police officers who joined knew what the terms and conditions were. At that time, there was an abundance of applicants to join the Metropolitan police and there continued to be a healthy surplus of applicants for some time after the introduction of that change. That may well no longer be the case. It was several years ago and circumstances have changed, so it may be appropriate to look at the situation again.
My final plea is simple. I hope that when the Home Secretary explains what is happening and tries to justify Government policy, he gives the whole picture, not just part of it. When he is talking about police numbers, perhaps he will be good enough to say that, although they may have fallen in the last few years of the Conservative Government, they increased by 16,000 between 1979 and 1997, that during the four years when they were falling, the number of constables continued to increase and that during those years the amount of money made available to the police was enough to maintain the numbers, in sharp contrast with the position under his stewardship. I cannot stop him from talking about crime doubling under the Tories, but perhaps, to complete the picture, he might point out that it rose even faster under the previous Labour Government, that it started to rise again under his Government and that the only occasion on which it has consistently fallen--the biggest fall since records were first kept in the middle of the 19th century--was between 1993 and 1997, when it fell by nearly 18 per cent.
5.33 pm
Mr. Bob Blizzard (Waveney): Most of what I have to say is based on the experience of my constituency, but I hope to draw out some general points of wider relevance.
I moved to Lowestoft, where I now live, in 1986. Every week when I looked in the local paper, I saw reports that a garage had been broken into and garden furniture stolen, or that a house had been broken into and a purse or some jewellery stolen. I began to form the view from those press reports that I had moved into a community with massive amounts of crime. After a while I discovered that those crimes were reported because they were virtually the only ones and garden tool theft was newsworthy.I also had a pleasant surprise when I looked at my home contents insurance policy with Co-op insurance, because it had a special low rate for Suffolk--I believe that it was the only county to which the rate applied. Those relatively low levels of crime were my benchmark.
Over the next 11 years, I saw crime rise and rise. Trends in my constituency were part of the overall picture, in which crime doubled under the previous Government. The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) says that that happened in the early years. In my part of the country we tend to lag behind and crime continued to rise in the later years. In the view of people where I live, the Conservative party ceased to be the party of law and order.
With the election of the new Labour Government came very high expectations, particularly in view of the Prime Minister's slogan of being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. However, we had to stick to another manifesto commitment--to keep to the Tory spending limits for the first two years. That was an important commitment for many people who voted for us. It was necessary to bring the deficit in the public finances into balance and contribute to the economic stability of the country. We should remember that those were Tory spending limits. Had the Conservatives won the election, they would not have spent any more than we did in the first two years.
Mr. Howard: We hear that trotted out time after time by Labour Members, but it is complete tosh. If the hon. Gentleman knew the first thing about how any Government worked, he would know that three-year expenditure plans are the best estimate that can be made at the time, but they are revisited at every subsequent expenditure round. The figures are always adjusted. If the hon. Gentleman looks back over the 18 years of our Government, he will see that such adjustments always took place. It is tosh to suggest that we would necessarily have stuck to those figures. The hon. Gentleman should recognise that it is ridiculous.
Mr. Blizzard: We now know that the Conservatives promise to spend even less on fighting crime because of their tax guarantee. They launched a plethora of pre-manifesto guarantees last autumn, including the patients guarantee, the parents guarantee and the rest, but there was not one guarantee on law and order or crime fighting. That reflects the fact that they do not intend to spend any more money on fighting crime.
Mr. Heald: Police numbers in Suffolk have fallen by 30 since the general election. We have pledged to provide the money to restore those numbers. What does the hon. Gentleman want to happen?
Mr. Blizzard: I shall talk about police numbers in Suffolk later.
Crime is now high on people's list of concerns. In my constituency, it now rivals unemployment, which has been a long-standing concern. I shall focus on developments in my area in the past three years. However, it is not easy to make comparisons from the figures. This Government have been more honest than the previous Government in asking the police to compile statistics that more accurately reflect levels of crime. The performance summary from Suffolk police's annual report shows that total crime went down in 1997-98 from the level in the Tory years, but it went up again in the following year, reflecting a new method of calculation. House burglaries per thousand dwellings went down in 1997-98 and again the following year. The story on violent crime is not so good, because it has risen, but the police are now required to use a wider definition of violent crime when compiling their statistics.
In the top corner of the performance report on crime management, Suffolk police write:
- Changes in the way the Home Office records offences make comparisons with previous years' figures difficult. However, the overall underlying trend is still downwards.
Another difficulty in making comparisons concerns the boundaries one uses. If we take Suffolk as a whole, the crime rate is one of the lowest in the country. The county is at the bottom of the league table--a league table one relishes being bottom of. That is a tribute to the police in Suffolk, and to the honest people of the county. Of course, crime is not uniform across the county and is higher in some parts than in others.
All too often, as soon as one mentions Suffolk--a rural shire county--statistics are used to advance arguments about rural policy. However, Suffolk contains urban areas such as Lowestoft and Ipswich: areas where crime is highest in the county. Crime is still an issue in rural areas. Where previously there has been scarcely any crime at all, one notices even a slight rise in crime. The rate may remain relatively low, but people fear crime and do not want it to become as bad as it is in other places in the country. Often, those people have sought retreat in a shire county from somewhere where there has been higher crime.
The thin blue line is thin in rural areas, and single police officers often have to cover a load of parishes. Where there is a crime, the response is sometimes not as good as the people or the police would like. I say that because the arguments advanced on sparsity are valid. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister appears to have accepted the arguments. We look forward to a positive outcome from the comprehensive spending review on these issues, as Suffolk--like other parts of the country--needs more police.
Not all Suffolk is rural, and most of the crime in my constituency is in the town which, unfortunately, has one of the highest rates in the county. Even now, however, crime rates in Lowestoft are about average for the country. The conditions that breed crime, or are associated with it, have in parts of Lowestoft been deemed comparable to inner cities by the director of public health, in his annual report. Unemployment, deprivation and low pay statistics back that up.
I am pleased that the area has single regeneration budget status, assisted area status and objective 2 status from the Government, and there is a new bid for other
parts of the SRB in the next round. It is important to tackle the causes of crime, but that takes time and people are rightly concerned about tackling crime now.The perception where I live is that crime is rising. On election day, I went to vote and found that my next-door neighbour had been burgled. I was told that a lot of homes in my area had been burgled also. People who have been burgled are not happy voters and some do not bother to vote at all.
Looking at the figures for Lowestoft is difficult because of changes in the sector boundary and the methods of measuring crime. It appears that the trend in house-breaking in the past three years has been about level. The trend in violent crime has been up but, thankfully, the trend in the dealing and supply of drugs has gone down. I want to pay tribute to the previous chief inspector, Owen Lower, and the current chief inspector, John Everitt--and their teams--for the work they have done.
The good news is that following the two years in which we kept to the Tory spending limits, there is now clear evidence of the Government's three-pronged attack on crime working in Lowestoft. I was delighted that, on 17 May, we heard the announcement that the 5,000 extra police would come in this year and next. That means that, this year in Suffolk, there will be 31 extra police, with 14 extra the year after.
There will not just be 31 extra police, but 12 on top of that. Suffolk police carried out a brave and creditable exercise by consulting the people of Suffolk on what they wanted from the police. They went round the county, held public forums and even had electronic voting. The police asked people if they wanted to pay more to have more police, how much they were willing to pay and how many police they would like. As a result, Suffolk police are funding an additional 12 police this year from an increase in council tax. I commend the police on that, and I hope that my area gets a good share of them. It is certainly good news for Suffolk as a whole.
On police numbers, I had a conversation with the chief constable a few months ago in which I asked him this--if money appeared on his table, what would he do with it? Chief constables, of course, are responsible for police numbers. He said that apart from one or two pieces of kit, he would use the money to employ civilians. By doing so, he could get more police out from behind their desks and on the beat. I say that to demonstrate how we can have more police on the beat, even though it may appear that police numbers have not increased or decreased. I hope that Conservative Members will take note of that.
The other good news is the £193,000 awarded by the Government for more CCTV cameras. The cameras have made a difference. Sometimes the public are disappointed with the results from these cameras, and we must improve the way in which they are used. However, they are very welcome.
As part of the Government's crime reduction programme, we received £33,000 under the reducing burglary initiative. That has been targeted on the parts of Lowestoft with the greatest need, and it is a partnership between the local authority and Suffolk police. It is part of a larger multi-agency programme aimed at tackling youth crime.
The engagement locally by the police in crime reduction partnerships has been good. My local authority has responded positively and has carried out audits. It was one of the first in the country to succeed with an anti-social behaviour order. It is difficult for the district council to play its part in the partnerships as well as it would like.
What tends to happen is that the lead officer for the partnership is often busy already and sees it as just another thing to do. The same is true of the local drugs action team; the officer nominated is usually a busy person. Following the comprehensive spending review, I would like to see money passported through to authorities to employ specific additional people to drive the partnerships forward. They will succeed if we do that.
There is so much in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, including the potential for community involvement in crime prevention and reduction. If we can harness that, we can do much more. I would like neighbourhood wardens to be employed--using SRB money, if possible--to support the police. Such wardens could do valuable work in gathering information and intelligence, visiting people and liaising with schools, for example, to deal with children who cause trouble on the way to and home from school.
In this Session, we have seen a large amount of legislation to improve the criminal justice system, and I support that. However, my constituents want the existing laws to be enforced as well as they can be. Catching people is the most important thing. It is important to prevent crime, but we must make sure that we catch people who break the law. My constituents will welcome the extra police, but will hope that there are plans in the comprehensive spending review to employ still more.
We have had a debate about whether it is size or what one does with the police that counts. Of course, it is vital to have efficient police, but a bigger efficient police force has to be better than a smaller efficient police force.
One of the Government's core beliefs, which I share, is that we should combine fairness and enterprise. I believe that the Government have shown a commitment to both. Crime is particularly unfair. It is unfair on people who work hard to provide for themselves, their families and others. It is a tragedy when their hard-earned property or their money is stolen or when they suffer attack and personal injury.
It is the Government's policy, which I support, to be the champion of ordinary, hard-working people. To do that, we must protect them and protect their families, homes and property. That is why our policies on crime are so important. I believe that, now that we have got through the difficult first two years, the Government are showing a good lead, and I hope that they continue in that way.
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