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Mr. Efford: Would you care to comment on the £400 a month reduction in the salaries for police officers and its effect on recruitment to the Metropolitan police? Your Government did it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Gentleman must use the correct terms. It is nothing to do with me.
Mr. Clappison: The hon. Gentleman has had his answer. If that is the quality of the excuses from Labour Members, they should watch out. The local election results were only the beginning.
Mr. Phil Hope (Corby): Will the hon. Gentleman explain why he and his party voted against the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, which will tackle organised crime and drug trafficking? The hon. Gentleman claims to support the fight against crime, but he voted this month to stop powers to tackle crime.
Mr. Clappison: I understand that my hon. Friends took the view that the powers in that Bill were not strong enough. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the history of the last Parliament, he will see that the previous Government introduced measure after measure to crack down on drug traffickers and drug trafficking, some of which broke new ground. I give Labour credit for not always opposing those measures, but they did oppose several measures that have proved helpful to the police, including the change in the law on the right to silence. The Home Secretary himself opposed that change, but it has assisted the police greatly in tackling crime.
Mr. Heald: Does my hon. Friend think that the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Hope) might find it helpful to read the reasoned amendment on Third Reading? It makes it clear that the powers in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill will be inadequate for the police's purposes.
Mr. Clappison: My hon. Friend is right. The issue of honesty in sentencing is also connected to prison numbers. I invite the Minister to reflect on the view expressed on both sides of the House about the mess that sentencing in the criminal justice system is in. Whatever view one takes of the efficacy of prison, honesty in sentencing--what the courts give an offender and the sentence he actually serves--is important. It cannot be honest for courts to sentence an offender to prison for six months and then, six weeks later, for him to be released. We have talked about how victims feel, but I cannot think of anything more disillusioning for a victim of crime--perhaps an elderly person--than to see the offender sent to prison for six months only for that person to be released six weeks later, so that the victim might bump into him in the
supermarket or the pub. It cannot be right to tell the public one thing and then for something completely different to happen.The Home Secretary mentioned the economies to be made by ending the right to trial by jury. However, there is no trade-off to be made between good law and order and civil liberties. The Government demonstrate that because their law and order policies do not work, at the same time as our civil liberties are being reduced. As The Guardian said--and I happily quote it on this occasion--civil liberty is the poor relation of this Government. That applies especially to trial by jury. The Home Secretary, when he commended the abolition of the right to trial by jury this afternoon, forgot to remind the House of what he said when the same measure was proposed in 1997 by a review under the previous Government. The findings of the review were not adopted, but they were considered. He came out and said that that review's proposal for curtailing the right to trial by jury was wrong, short sighted and likely to prove ineffective. Nothing has changed since then, but the Home Secretary has now adopted that proposal.
There is no trade-off between civil liberties and law and order. Both are going downhill under this Government, whose ineffective authoritarianism does not protect members of the public. People want an effective system of law and order more than anything else. They also want their traditional civil liberties to be preserved and the justice system to be administered fairly.
Unless the Government get a grip on the problem and cease to be complacent, I predict that there will be more speeches from hon. Members about fear of crime in their constituencies, which was the burden of the contribution from the hon. Member for Waveney. Conservative Members are right to focus on a matter that is growing in public importance largely because the Government are guilty of dereliction of duty with regard to the police force.
6.11 pm
Helen Jones (Warrington, North): Like many hon. Members, I come to the debate only too aware of those of my constituents who have suffered from the effects of criminal behaviour. Some are victims of crime while others suffer from the effect of crime on their neighbourhoods; and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) that the fear of crime is almost as pernicious as crime itself. That fear has grown in our communities over the past few years, and must also be tackled.
All hon. Members will have seen examples of how the fear of crime stunts people's lives--the elderly ladies who are afraid to open their front doors; the people who are afraid to go out at night or to leave their homes empty for any length of time. That fear is not always related to the most common forms of crime, but it is real: it destroys and disfigures communities, and it stems from a feeling prevalent during the previous Government's period in office--that nothing could be done and that the thugs and criminals were getting the upper hand.
Mr. Hope: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Conservative party is deliberately trying to promote the fear of crime for political reasons? My hon. Friend has
come to the House to contribute to the debate on this Opposition day motion. Is it not surprising that only three or four Conservative Members have done the same?
Helen Jones: My hon. Friend is right to point that out.
More important, however, was the way in which the previous Conservative Government failed to tackle crime and the fear of crime. I believe that that was an offence against a civil society that the Tory Government committed time and time again. There are recidivists on the Tory Benches, and their collective amnesia reminds me of the rewriting of history that is the subject of the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four".
We should not allow the Conservative party to rewrite history. If the Opposition are to be taken seriously when they talk about crime, they must answer some important questions, the first and most important of which is the one to which we keep returning: how is it that the party that poses as the defender of law and order allowed crime to double during its time in government?
Mr. Heald: Did not the hon. Lady hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) explain that crime fell during the previous Parliament for the first time since the second world war? The Labour Government have taken the country back to the bad old days of rising crime. Should not the hon. Lady think about that?
Helen Jones: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's thesis. His Government have to be judged on their whole period in office, not just on the figures for a few years.
The previous Government failed in other ways. They said that prison works, but for it to do so, criminals must first be caught and taken to court. Under the previous Conservative Government, the number of offenders brought to book fell by one third, whereas the period between the arrest and sentence of young offenders rose to four and a half months. In contrast, the conviction rate under this Government has risen to the highest level for 20 years.
The Conservative party tells us that burglary is a destructive and damaging crime. It is, and its victims feel violated in their own homes. So how did it happen that, under the Conservative Government, the chances of being burgled rose from 32:1 to 13:1? Conservative Members have many questions to answer.
My constituents know about the fear of crime. They learned a great deal about it during the 18 years of Conservative Government. That Government talked a good fight, whereas, in contrast, this Government have acted to reduce crime. The figures for domestic burglary have fallen by 20 per cent. under this Government, and crime has fallen by 7 per cent. overall. I know that the Opposition do not want to hear those figures, but they show the real picture.
Jackie Ballard: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Helen Jones: I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me, but I have given way several times and want to make progress so that other hon. Members can speak in the debate.
The figures that I have cited, and the Government's action to reduce crime, are not based on some remote theory but on the real experiences of our constituents.
Those decent men and women tell us what they want to happen in the criminal justice system. They want to live in safe, quiet communities. They do not want to be terrorised by young offenders who are out of control, or to have their lives rendered unbearable as a result of harassment by a few people.That is why the Government have introduced anti-social behaviour orders. If any Conservative Members think that those orders are merely a gimmick, they should come and talk to the people who come to my constituency surgery. They will be told how vital the orders are.
We reformed the youth justice system because people had had enough of seeing young offenders walk away laughing at the system after repeated cautions. We have also introduced a final warning for young offenders--something that the previous Government failed to do in 18 years in power. We are well on course to halving the period between arrest and sentence for persistent young offenders--a pledge that I recall the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said could not be delivered. This Government are delivering it.
Labour Members know that our constituents were sick and tired of seeing criminals go to court for the same offences time after time without being properly punished. That is why minimum mandatory sentences have been adopted. It is hard to believe that some Opposition Members have called for the abolition of mandatory sentences for murder, the most severe crime of all. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will make it clear in his response to the debate that the Government value human life far more than that.
Many hon. Members will agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) said earlier--that crime in many areas of the country is largely drug related. My hon. Friend was right to say that greater powers are needed to protect witnesses in those circumstances. Almost every week I meet people who know who the drug dealers on their estates are but who are afraid to come forward with that information. In their position, I, too, would be afraid. We must do much more to protect those people when they give evidence. The police need to be given much more in the way of resources for surveillance of people who deal in drugs so that they can use that evidence in court.
We have taken steps to tackle the menace of drug-related crime. That is why we are introducing the power to test certain people for drugs on charge, and why we introduced drug-testing and treatment orders--measures which were opposed by the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe). That is why we are putting £20 million into arrest referral schemes.
We have to act to get people off drugs if we are to tackle the menace of drug-related crime at one end of the spectrum while ensuring that those who profit from that evil trade are not allowed to keep the profits that they make from dealing in human misery. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will talk about how those powers might be strengthened.
In the light of that, I hope that Conservative Members will reconsider their opposition to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. They opposed a Bill that gives
police more power to tackle organised crime such as drug dealing and money laundering. That sits very ill with some of the statements that we have heard from the Conservative Benches.
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