House of Commons
Friday 23 June 2000
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Policing (London)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. McNulty.]
9.33 am
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): It is a real delight to open today's debate on the policing of London. As I do, I should make to the House an apology that has already been communicated to the Opposition, which is that I shall leave after the Opposition Front Bencher has spoken. I hope that the House will accept in mitigation the fact that my attendance in the House has been fairly regular--in fact, this is the fifth occasion on which I have spoken from the Dispatch Box this week. [Hon. Members: "More--not enough."] I thank my hon. Friends, but it is quite enough for me.
The debate comes at a pivotal moment in the history of London's policing, for, on Monday, the Metropolitan Police Authority is to be launched and the following week, on 3 July, the authority will formally assume its legal responsibilities. That will, in a sense, complete the first 171-year chapter in the history of the Metropolitan police. The change comes at a time of other fundamental reforms amounting to the biggest programme of change in the history of the Metropolitan police service. The focus of those reforms is improved performance and service delivery, especially in crime reduction. The new Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, has pledged to make London the safest major city in the world.
Such a goal is realistic today only because of the Met's long and distinguished history. The Metropolitan Police Act 1829 provided for the setting up of the Met--the nation's first police force. That Act set in train legislation soon afterwards to empower and later require local government elsewhere to establish police forces throughout the country. The most distinguished of my predecessors as Home Secretary, Robert Peel, showed great foresight in setting up the Metropolitan police service, but that was not immediately appreciated at the time. Known because of the colour of their uniforms as "raw lobsters" or "blue devils", one historian has noted that hostility to the new London police was "immediate and universal". They were the butt of endless abuse from the public and the press and bitterly criticised for their alleged infringement of people's freedoms. None the less, by the end of the 1850s, they had gained the public's affection and, in the latter half of the 19th century, they proved instrumental in the steady fall in the capital's crime rates.
I shall deal later with matters of pay and recruitment in today's Metropolitan police service, but disputes over such matters are not new. In 1872, 180 officers mutinied
over pay, and pay and appalling living quarters were major causes of the 1918 and 1919 police strikes, in which more than 1,000 striking officers were dismissed. The collapse of the 1919 strike led to the outlawing of industrial action by the police and the formation of the Police Federation, better to represent police officers. Throughout its history until now, the Met has been the responsibility of the Home Secretary, who has acted as its police authority. That arrangement ends on 2 July.Over the past year, the Met has continued its record of operational success. The millennium night celebrations saw the successful policing of an event involving more than 3 million people. At the May day demonstrations, the police defused a potentially explosive situation and kept disruption and damage--unacceptable though any such behaviour was--to a minimum. Meanwhile the Met has continued to improve its use of resources, for example, through cutting sickness absence, which has resulted in absence falling from an annual average of 14 and a half days per officer in 1997-98 to nine and a half days now. That is lower than the average across England and Wales and equivalent to putting almost 200 officers back on duty each day during 1999-2000.
The previous Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, was, of course, responsible for the millennium policing. I paid tribute to Sir Paul's outstanding record of achievement during last July's debate on the policing of London, and I do so again today. I am sure that the whole House joins me in congratulating his successor, Sir John Stevens, and his officers and staff, on their further successes and in thanking them for their continued dedication to duty.
In the past year, the Metropolitan police have made considerable progress in implementing the action plan on the recommendations of the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. In particular, the Met has concentrated on improving its approach to diversity. Through its establishment of the racial and violent crime taskforce, the service has made great strides in combating racist and hate crimes. It is a huge compliment to the work of Assistant Commissioner John Grieve and his colleagues that, in the space of two years, the Met has developed such a reputation for the investigation of such crimes that people outside London now call for John Grieve's force to be brought in, the better to investigate such crimes--indeed, that demand was made during a recent demonstration in difficult circumstances. That is a real compliment to the service.
The Met has taken active steps in adapting its use of stop-and-search powers, in line with recommendation 61 of the Lawrence inquiry. The Government wholeheartedly support the use of stop and search, as did the Lawrence inquiry. Those powers are plainly important for the detection and prevention of crime. There has been a drop in the numbers of searches made in the past year, and there have been some ill-informed claims that the rise in street crime in London is attributable to officers not using stop-and-search powers for fear of being accused of racism. However, the research evidence shows that those claims do not stand up. It is simplistic and statistically unsustainable to make a direct connection between the falling number of stops and the rising number of crimes.
We have put in place an extensive programme of research with the Met to improve our understanding of stop and search and better to inform decisions about its fairness and effectiveness. Everyone wants to see fewer stops that do not reveal evidence of crime, and more stops
that result in the arrest and conviction of those who prey on law-abiding citizens, but everyone needs to recognise that police officers are faced with difficult and near-instantaneous decisions. They are not clairvoyant and they are bound, by definition, sometimes to stop people who are entirely innocent and sometimes to make mistakes. Where those mistakes come within a reasonable range, we should support the police and not be overly critical of them.Over the past 10 years, crime has fallen in London. Between 1992-93 and 1999-2000, discounting the changes in counting rules, crime fell by 8.6 per cent., but it has risen by about 11 per cent. in the past year. There is a mixed picture across the country. Crime fell in 23 of the 43 forces, according to the figures made available about six months ago. A similar pattern is emerging from the figures that are due to be published in mid-July.
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): I accept what the Home Secretary said a moment ago about the need for research into the effects of stop and search, but does he concede that there is at least a prima facie possibility that the backwash of Lawrence and what has flowed from that, and the change in the pattern of police behaviour, may well have contributed to the increase in crime in London that he has just outlined? If that is the case, or even if it were possibly the case, can the Home Secretary give an undertaking that the research will be completed quickly, so that we can resolve the matter and give the police the freedoms that they require?
Mr. Straw: The research is being conducted as quickly as possible. Like all research, once it has been properly evaluated--not by Ministers, but by independent peer reviewers--it will be made publicly available. Of course we should draw whatever lessons are to be drawn from it. I understand--it would be idle to pretend otherwise--that the Lawrence inquiry process and the report's conclusions were traumatic for many police officers in the Metropolitan police service, particularly those who felt that they had been doing a decent and impartial job. I understand that.
Also I am wholly unapologetic for the fact that I felt it necessary to establish the Lawrence inquiry. There may be those who feel otherwise, but I do not believe that they are very many. I ask people to think for a moment what would have happened if that incredible resentment, not just of the Lawrence family but of the entire black and Asian community, had continued without any proper and legal focus.
There has been some increase in street crime in other metropolitan areas, so the phenomenon is not confined to London. We must identify the causes and above all--this is what the Commissioner is doing--implement Lawrence, put behind us the temporary trauma of the Metropolitan police and support the Commissioner in his determination to get street crime down.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey): Will the Home Secretary give way?
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