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1.32 pm
Mr. John Cryer (Hornchurch): The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) sneeringly referred to what he called the cosmopolitan elite on the Government Front
Bench. It is deeply ironic that someone like him should make such a comment. He used to represent a working-class constituency in the north-east. Working-class men and women put him here, but what did he do when he got down here? He kicked the ladder away, joined the Social Democratic party and then disappeared. I am sure that those people were glad to see the back of him, given that they had not seen the front of him too much for the previous few years.The last royal commission report on the police was published in 1962. Since then, both society and the police have changed almost beyond recognition. There are now 4 million illegally held handguns in the country. A range of statistics demonstrate a clear link between crime involving drugs--especially class A drugs--and other crimes. There is a huge network of motorways that did not exist in 1962, which has enormous implications in terms of car crime.
Even in the supposedly leafy borough of Havering, which I represent, and in the area represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Mr. Darvill), who spoke earlier, drug crime, gun crime and knife crime combine to constitute a serious problem. Although it is not given a great deal of attention by the media, there is an enormous problem in outer London generally. The media tend to focus on what happens in inner London, but outer London contains pockets of severe deprivation. I want to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister of State to the fear that outer-London boroughs will suffer if officers are drawn from outer London and concentrated in inner London. There is fear in Havering that that will happen--it has happened in previous years, and there is a danger that it will happen again.
There is no substitute for bobbies on the beat. All sorts of attempts have been made over the past 30 or 40 years to come up with substitutes for officers on the beat. It does not work. Investment in CCTV and information technology is welcome, but those things complement people on the beat; they do not replace them. We need people on the beat to reassure our constituents.
Like other hon. Members, I pay tribute to the work of police officers--in my case, those in Havering. Chief Supt Bob Youldon, the borough commander, has done a terrific job. Since he and his team arrived in Havering a couple of years ago, the profile of community policing has increased enormously, and partnerships of the kind envisaged in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 have been established. Other boroughs were already pioneering such partnerships, and arrangements of the kind had been made for many years. In Havering, they simply did not exist, and much pioneering work has now been done.
I echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster about the pathetically inadequate standard spending settlement that the Government have provided for Havering. That hits a range of public services, particularly the police. Partnerships cannot be properly fulfilled and community policing is put under enormous pressure as a result of cuts in social services and other services. The SSA is made under a formula introduced by the previous Government, but we have persisted with it. Discussion of SSAs is not directly in order for this debate, but the system has direct relevance to how the police conduct themselves.
Recruitment is a problem in the whole of London. There is no shadow of a doubt about the key factor in the Metropolitan police's inability to recruit more officers--
the Sheehy proposals of 1994 and the abolition of the accommodation allowance. I welcome wholeheartedly my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's announcement today, which will go some way to repairing the damage inflicted in the early and mid-1990s by the previous Conservative Administration. The hon. Member for Orpington was completely wrong to say that the Labour Government had damaged the police--the Labour Governments of the 1970s implemented the Davies report, which gave one of the biggest-ever lifts in police pay.The police have suffered more under Tory, and even Liberal, Administrations than at any other time; we should not forget that the police strike of 1919 was broken by Lloyd George. He had the leaders of the strike in and made a deal with them, then he stabbed them in the back by making the strike and their union illegal. The Police Federation that has existed for the past 80 years was the result.
The federation has called for a royal commission to investigate the state of the service, and there is a case for doing that. The bottom line is that we need more resources for the police and public services. We always hear that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has billions at his disposal, and he must open the coffers and sink a lot more money into the police. Moves are being made in the right direction, but much more money is needed for the police service and public services in general.
1.39 pm
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): In deference to Labour Members who wish to speak, I shall give the potted version of my speech, and shall try to do so quickly. I wanted to add my voice to the sentiments expressed this morning by saying that although there is much in life that is not just about numbers--class sizes, for example--the number of police officers is extremely important. The hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) has just said so, and so did most of his hon. Friends. It is equally evident to the citizens of London.
Rather than developing the argument, I shall simply put to the Minister a few simple questions. Could the Minister please tell us exactly how many Metropolitan police officers are currently available for ordinary duty? Can he tell me the current wastage rate and, therefore, how many officers he projects will be available for ordinary duty over the next three to four years? Those are very simple and straightforward questions, and it would be helpful to have answers to them.
I should like to mention--in passing, but only because of time, not because of a lack of importance--the closure of police stations. I have had one police station closed, in Chislehurst, which, for understandable reasons, has caused much local disquiet. Police stations are a visible sign of police commitment to the local community and are a reference point for that community.
Police have tried to explain the closure of my police station and to make substitute or alternative arrangements, but the local community is not and will not be satisfied. The community believes that the disappearance of the police station is a symbol of how much the Government do or do not care about what is happening locally. It can be no coincidence that, since 1997, two police stations in the borough of Bromley--one at Biggin Hill, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), and one in mine at Chislehurst--have closed. I should love to hear the Minister's explanation for that.
It is one thing to talk about the incidence of crime, but another to examine clear-up rates--which best reflect the police's perceived and actual effectiveness and affect us most. The figure that I have on the Metropolitan police area clear-up rate is 16 per cent. If that figure is correct, it is scandalous. However, it is supported by the figures that I have for Bromley.
I have glanced through the latest figures that I have on the Bromley division's clear-up rates, and they vary from as high as 30 per cent for violence against the person, and 26 per cent for sexual offences, to as low as 13 per cent for robberies, and 6 per cent. for burglaries. On the figures that I have, the overall clear-up rate is 14 per cent. I do not want to blame my excellent local police service for that--it has my admiration for what it does--but, with those clear-up rates, I should think that the unease felt in Bromley and across London is very understandable.
I should like to add to the comments of the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr. Cohen) on the huge distress caused in our communities by anti-social behaviour, neighbour problems, property damage and extreme misbehaviour, very often by very young people. We really have to find a way of dealing with that. The types of measure that the Government have introduced recently are simply not working. It seems that, for whatever reason, police and local authorities are not yet prepared to use the powers available to them to try and demonstrate that we really have to get to grips with the problem.
All London Members must be aware of the distress caused daily--usually to elderly, vulnerable and frail people, even in their own homes--by the type of anti-social and violent behaviour that can be caused by a small number of very disruptive people. We have to find a way of getting a grip on that. If we do not, it would be unforgivable. I shall give whatever support I can to police, local authorities and the Government in introducing measures to deal with the problem.
I am grateful for the opportunity to put those few points on the record. The brevity of my remarks should not be taken as an indication of any intention to skip over them. However, I want to give as many Labour Members as possible an opportunity to contribute to the debate.
1.44 pm
Mr. Martin Linton (Battersea): I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) for his brevity. It is nice to hear him talking about local issues in his constituency.
I pay tribute to the quality of policing in my part of London, which I think can be attributed to four factors. The first is the strong sense of partnership between police, council, health authority and probation service in working together on an effective crime reduction strategy.
The second is the community's active involvement in the neighbourhood watch and Battersea crime prevention panel, which raises huge sums to pay for summer schemes for young people--this year, the Home Secretary opened the scheme--and to provide security locks for the elderly.
The third is community policing, which began many years ago in Battersea and has ensured that we now have many police officers with knowledge of the community that they serve.
Fourthly, leadership has been shown by the borough commander Brian Wade and by Battersea's former divisional commander Mike Fuller. They have done a lot to reduce burglaries and to fight auto crime, drug crime and especially racial crime. I do not think that they can be blamed if they are suffering from the Londonwide problem of a rise in street crime. The figure for April was 156, nearly twice what it was in the same month a year ago. It is often 10-year-olds robbing nine-year-olds in what are essentially designer crimes. It used to be trainers, mountain bikes and scooters; now it is mobile phones and Pokemon cards.
Local crime reduction strategies alone cannot always solve such crime surges. The mobile phone industry might be able to do a lot more. It could learn from the car industry, which has been working in partnership with police and the Home Office to deliver the Prime Minister's target of a 30 per cent. reduction in auto crime. The mobile phone industry could lend its mind to that problem.
In such a debate--I am keeping my eye on the time--we should look beyond crime fashions of the day and local issues to the underlying problems of London policing. I see those as essentially recruitment and retention. The Macpherson report was right to identify ethnic minority recruitment as a vital issue. A community that is 25.5 per cent. ethnic minority cannot be policed with a police force that is only 3.9 per cent. ethnic minority. That is why the advances being made are so important. The Met deserves to be congratulated on passing the 1,000 mark; it had 1,015 ethnic minority officers at the end of April.
The Met is putting huge efforts into not just recruitment, but retention. The unit that co-ordinates that effort, the positive action team, is concentrating on ways in which to improve the retention rate, especially among ethnic minority police officers with nought to five years service--which is the most vulnerable period--and to improve the progression of ethnic minority officers through the ranks of the service. After all, the promotion of ethnic minority officers will do most to encourage people in the ethnic minorities to join in the first place. The promotion of our former divisional commander Mike Fuller is a great encouragement to many serving black officers.
The issue is whether the police force is representative of the community that it polices. That is a much wider question than ethnic minority recruitment. On the latest figure, the Met takes 56 per cent. of its recruits from outside London. That has significant consequences for the police, the community and, indeed, criminals. It means that the police will never fully understand the community that they are policing. Even recruits from the home counties, who form a quarter of the Met's intake, live in a completely different world, which is 3 per cent. ethnic minority, not 25 per cent. It means that the police will never be an integral part of the community, as they are in many other parts of the country.
If people live in London, certainly if they live in inner London, they can discount the possibility that their neighbour, or the man sitting at the next table in the pub, will be a police officer. It simply does not happen. That means that the whole community feels less protected and that the criminal has more air in which to breathe.
Many very good officers in my area live in Surrey and come in every day, mainly for reasons to do with the cost of housing. One or two do live in the constituency and on their beat. It may be uncomfortable for them sometimes to live among people whom they have arrested, but I salute their dedication and determination to make community policing a living thing.
That is why it is important that the Met is coming home to London. On 3 July, the Metropolitan Police Authority will be established, ending an injustice that has been tolerated for 171 years and giving us what the rest of country has taken for granted for at least 100 years: a police force that is accountable to the community that it serves.
The first thing that the MPA will want to see is a Met that is largely drawn from the ranks of Londoners. It will not need to convince the Met itself of that. It is already committed to it. In a recent Home Affairs Committee report on police recruitment and training, the Met says:
- it remains our clear intention to draw recruits from London communities, who have had exposure to the nature of London life and understand the local issues. Applicants from beyond the Metropolis are likely to be less well equipped to deal with all the different features of the London environment and are less likely to reflect the diversity of our public.
Most people can afford to live in inner London only because they already do so. They have already bought their house or qualify for social housing. New people coming in on salaries of £22,635, for example--which I understand will be the salary--will often fall between the two stools, earning too much to go on the waiting list but too little to qualify for a mortgage. It is a crying shame that the Met was allowed to sell off so much of its police accommodation in London. We could desperately do with it now. Housing is important for the Met to allow it to attract new recruits from other professions such as teaching and nursing.
It is well known that the northern police authorities practically encourage applicants to go and join the Met and then to go back up north when they are trained. A leading police officer in the north said:
- We quite often used to say to candidates that they would have more of a chance if they got some experience in one of the bigger city forces, such as the Met, and then they could transfer back.
I am saying not that the Met should not accept good applicants from the north--we have many good officers from the north in my area--but that we need people who know or can get to know the area, who stay with the problem and integrate with the community. The whole point about modern policing methods is that we must
enlist the help and support of the community to win the fight against crime. The best policeman is the guy next door, because people are more likely to listen to him and tell him what they know. Somebody who comes for a short time and goes on somewhere else does not have the chance to win the confidence of the community.We are beginning to get a change towards preventive policing, with success no longer measured by the number of arrests but by the actual crime rate. The police's job is seen as the prevention of crime, rather than screeching around on two wheels, sirens blazing, to the next emergency.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is using his budget to fund some very imaginative projects. In my constituency, we have had £73,000 for CCTV in Battersea park and, recently, £19,000 for a burglary reduction initiative in the area that we now know as New Balham.
In contrast to the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, I do not think that the number of officers is the key issue. So often in crime prevention people concentrate on the wrong issue--the number of arrests, the prison population or police numbers. The issue is the reduction of crime.
Of course, increasing police numbers has a part to play, but we should never forget the fact that under the previous Government police numbers were increased from 110,000 to 125,000 between 1979 and 1992, during which time crime doubled. Over the next six years, under the same Government, the number of police officers in the Met fell by 2,000 and, for the first time, crime was reduced. To base a policy on the assumption that police numbers are the key to solving crime is completely wrong; indeed, history seems to indicate the reverse. We must keep our eye on the essential ball--the number of crimes.
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