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Mr. Straw: I will of course give way to the hon. Gentleman, but first I want to make a little progress.
Over the past year in London there has been a significant rise in robbery especially, which is up by 36 per cent. for the period April 1999 to March 2000, compared with the previous year. Thefts of mobile telephones have been a major factor in this increase. They account for up to a third of robberies in some boroughs, many of them committed by schoolchildren against other schoolchildren.
The increase in robbery is disappointing after three successive years of falling figures. The bulk of the increase was contributed by "hot spots" in eight boroughs, mainly in inner London. I shall return to two important steps that we should take with respect to robbery.
We should keep London's crime rate in perspective. London is still a remarkably safe city by international standards. Murder is one of the most reliable offences with which to make international comparisons and a good indicator of the general level of violence in society. London's homicide rate is roughly one fifth of New York's, a little over a quarter of Amsterdam's, and lower than that of most European capitals, including Madrid, Paris, Helsinki, Berlin, Dublin, Lisbon, Budapest and Prague.
Stemming the increase in street crime is a high priority in the coming year. Under our crime reduction strategy, the Met has set challenging crime reduction targets for the next five financial years, including a 15 per cent. reduction on the 1999-2000 levels of street crime. The targets also foresee a 10 per cent. reduction in domestic burglaries, and a 31 per cent. reduction in vehicle crime--that is, 7,500 fewer domestic burglaries and 50,000 fewer vehicle crimes.
To bear down on street crime, the Commissioner has launched the safer streets initiative, which began last month in Lambeth and will roll out progressively to other boroughs. It is an initiative led by individual borough commanders, who will liaise with partners and communities to develop street crime intervention plans, tailored to meet local needs. Boroughs will have access to specialist support in key areas such as intelligence gathering and analysis, surveillance and the investigation of offences. It is still early days for the operation in Lambeth, but the initial results are encouraging.
The Government are particularly keen to help the Met in its fight against robbery, which everyone understands is one of the most distressing of crimes for its victims. Last week--
Mr. Geraint Davies (Croydon, Central): Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Straw: In a moment, but I shall give way first to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes).
Last week we announced an extra £20 million of funding to help the police fight robbery in the five big cities where it is on the increase, and £9 million of that will go to the Met.
Mr. Hughes: I do not dissent at all from the Home Secretary's proposition that London is much safer in terms of serious crime than many other cities, and the objective should be to make it safer still. Will he report on two matters? First, what is happening to the attempt to increase the clear-up of serious crime, particularly
murder? There have been a number of murders over the years that have not been cleared up and the Met was going to make a particular effort to do so.Secondly, will the Home Secretary think again about crimes that have not been solved, about which there is a feeling of great injustice in parts of the community, geographical or otherwise? Many people would welcome an independent examination of how those crimes were investigated, as in the Lawrence case.
Mr. Straw: On the hon. Gentleman's first point, following the Lawrence inquiry the previous Commissioner and the present Commissioner allocated hundreds of officers to the investigation of serious crimes. I believe the figure is 350, but if I am wrong, I will correct it during my speech.
On the second point, if there are specific crimes that have not been cleared up and about which the hon. Gentleman wishes to write to me, I shall follow the matter up. However, I do not believe that a full-blown judicial inquiry of the kind that I established into the death of Stephen Lawrence is a mechanism that should be used other than very sparingly, for the most obvious of reasons, but there are occasions when other investigations need to take place. For the longer term, we are committed to establishing a much more rigorously independent complaints system, with an independent team of investigators, for the investigation of serious complaints.
Mr. Davies: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. First, does he know that in Croydon we have the largest population of 10 to 17-year-olds, and there has been a large growth in the incidence of thefts of mobile phones, Pokemon cards and so on in that age group? Will he factor that into resourcing and strategies? Secondly, I have written to my right hon. Friend about considering stop and search in respect of people carrying spray cans, in view of the massive increase in graffiti. Has he reflected on that?
Mr. Straw: As my hon. Friend knows, the allocation of resources in the Met is a matter for the Commissioner. I have no doubt that the new authority will also take a close interest in it. It is inevitable that there will be arguments between areas; it was ever thus, and that will continue, whoever is Home Secretary. I understand the anxieties in Croydon and I am delighted to know about several initiatives there, not least the Croydon against shop theft initiative which was launched recently.
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire): Will the Home Secretary give way?
Mr. Straw: May I finish the point first? The second point that my hon. Friend made was about spray cans. I have already replied to him; I took a lot of trouble over the reply. My hon. Friend asked whether paint spray cans could be placed in the same category as glue, which is prohibited from sale to over-18s--
Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton): Under-18s.
Mr. Straw: Sorry, under-18s. Lord Patten and I and other hon. Members worked together in the early 1980s
and were instrumental in introducing the change about the sale of glue. My hon. Friend will understand that, given the wider lawful use of spray cans, it is much more difficult to prohibit their sale to under-18s. I said that in my reply to him. However, as ever, we keep those matters under review.
Mr. Heald: There is anxiety about the acceleration of the increase in crime. Is the Home Secretary right to say that the rate of increase in crime in London is 11 per cent.? In an answer on 15 May the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), said that the figure was 12.6 per cent. Has the Home Secretary given us good news--that the figure has fallen--or is his figure wrong?
Mr. Straw: Both the figure that I gave and that which my hon. Friend provided are correct, but in different ways. [Interruption.] There is a straightforward explanation for that. Early on in my post as Home Secretary, I agreed with recommendations from the police and statisticians that we should change the counting rules to increase the total number of recorded crimes. It was not a self-serving change; indeed, it was the reverse because the change in the counting rules is one of the reasons for the significant increase in the number of recorded crimes of fraud and forgery.
In the past, the theft of a cheque book counted as one theft. Now the use of the cheques in the book amounts to 15 or 20 thefts. If an individual broke into a secure car park and broke into 15 vehicles in the car park, it counted as one offence. Under the new rules it counts--in my view, rightly--as 15 offences. However, the figures for robbery have risen because robberies have increased, and some crimes, such as burglary, have been unaffected by the change in the rules.
The statisticians have made comparisons between the figures that did not take account of the rule change and those that did. The figure that my hon. Friend the Minister of State gave--12.6 per cent.--took no account of the effect of the rule change and is correct; my figure--11.2 per cent.--is also correct and took account of the change. I hope that that is a satisfactory explanation.
Let us revert to the issue of robbery. We want to send a clear message to violent criminals that they can expect the stiffest penalties if they commit robberies or other street crimes. In recent years, the general response of the courts, especially to violent crime, has been to send greater numbers of offenders to prison, for longer periods. For example, the custody rate for offences such as wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm increased from 76 per cent. to 90 per cent. between 1992 and 1999, with average sentence lengths increasing from 36.5 months to 46 months. The trend is similar for other violent and sexual offences.
The one exception appears to be robbery. While custody rates for robbery offenders of all ages have remained static, average sentence lengths, especially for adults, decreased by 9 per cent. between 1999 and 1999. They have decreased from more than 39 months seven years ago to 35.7 months. There has been an increase in life sentences for robbery, possibly as a result of the mandatory life sentence on conviction for a second serious offence, which we implemented in 1997. However, for the vast bulk of robbery offenders there seems to have been a decline in the length of the prison term to which they are sentenced.
I see no obvious justification for that. More to the point, neither does the Court of Appeal. In a series of appeals before it by the Attorney-General against unduly lenient sentences for robbery, the Court of Appeal significantly increased the sentence of the original court. On Monday, Lord Justice Rose increased from six months to three years the sentence for two defendants--Mullins and Edwards--who had robbed a student in Bristol city centre. So far this year, the Court of Appeal has increased the sentences in each of the nine unduly lenient robbery appeals it heard.
Robbery is a serious offence and extremely distressing to its victims. I am sure that that view is shared by every Crown court sentencer. However, it is important that they take full account of the clear guidance now emanating from the Court of Appeal that sentences should be severe. When courts are tempted to impose a lenient sentence, they should recognise that the Attorney-General is prepared to appeal those sentences and that the Court of Appeal has usually accepted those appeals.
I hope that the courts will also take into account the need to take serious and prolific offenders out of circulation while they await trial. There is nothing more disheartening for the police than to spend weeks tracking down prolific street robbers or burglars, many of them addicted to drugs, and some with 20 or more offences to be taken into consideration, only to see them walk straight out of the courtroom door on bail. There is a serious problem in several metropolitan magistrates courts which do not take proper account of police and prosecution representations on granting bail. The number of cases that I see from time to time of people who have committed offences on bail beggars belief.
I hope that the courts will begin to take the representations into account and recognise that it is distressing to the victims, and deeply demoralising to the police officers if they go to a lot of trouble to apprehend a prolific offender only for that person to walk out of court. Everybody knows, except, apparently, the court, that such offenders will commit more offences until they are convicted.
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