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20 Jan 2003 : Column 15—continued
Police (Gloucestershire)
10. Mr. Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury): If he will make a statement on the financial settlement to Gloucestershire constabulary for the forthcoming financial year. [91432]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Michael Wills): My right hon. Friend the Police Minister announced the provisional police funding settlement for English police authorities on 5 December 2002. Gloucestershire police authority is provisionally set to receive a general grant of £57 million—an increase of 3 per cent. Gloucestershire is also provisionally set to receive up to £2.33 million through the crimefighting fund, £780,000 in rural grant, and £190,000 towards the cost of the airwave communications system. Gloucestershire is therefore
provisionally set to receive an increase of 3.5 per cent. We expect to announce the final funding settlement on 5 February.
Mr. Robertson : I am grateful to the Minister for that detailed response. However, I had a one-and-a-half hour meeting with the chief constable on Friday and he said that the money for Gloucestershire is sufficient to cover only the increase in pay that has been awarded and the increase in national insurance that the Government have forced on the authority. The chief constable asked me to ask the Minister how on earth he can be expected to finance the extra work in the national policing plan.
Why did the Minister state in a written answer to me on 30 October that he intended
- "to provide sufficient resources to support Gloucestershire . . . in maintaining stable levels of service", [Official Report, 30 October 2002; Vol. 391, c. 845W.]
Mr. Wills: The hon. Gentleman has missed out a statistic in his full and detailed question. Gloucestershire police are at record numbers. I remind him that in the last five years of Conservative Government, the number of police officers in Gloucestershire declined by 41. Under this Government, there are 50 more police officers than in 1997. The extra money is being spent on more police officers to fight and reduce the fear of crime. The Conservative Government signally failed to do that.
Mr. Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester): May I reassure my hon. Friend that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) omitted more than one statistic? On 23 December, £180,000 was announced for providing video interview and rape examination suites in Gloucestershire. Our current police force comprises 1,183 officers, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows. That is far more police than we ever had in Gloucestershire previously. When the Conservative party was in power—
Mr. Speaker: Order. It is not for the Minister to reply to such matters.
Drug Seizures
11. Mr. Chris Bryant (Rhondda): How much (a) crack cocaine and (b) heroin have been seized by the police each year since 1997. [91433]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Bob Ainsworth): The most recent data available show that the amount of heroin seized increased threefold and that that of cocaine increased nearly fivefold between 1997 and 2000. In the same period, the amount of crack cocaine seized fell. The updated drug strategy contains specific measures for high crime areas where crack is often a significant part of the problem.
Mr. Bryant: I know that my hon. Friend will be aware of the terrible scourge that heroin represents in constituencies such as my own, in which 28 deaths have been caused by heroin overdoses in the last 18 months.
I know that he will also want to congratulate all the officers involved in Operation Tarian, which has been particularly successful in seizing heroin and crack cocaine in the south Wales valleys over the last six months. Is he aware, however, of the concern being expressed by many local police officers that there is not strong co-operation between the different police forces in south Wales or with the Avon and Somerset police force? Does he agree that co-operation is essential if we are to ensure that drugs do not sweep through from Bristol into the south Wales valleys?
Mr. Ainsworth: My hon. Friend is right to flag up that difficulty. Operation Tarian was funded partly by the Home Office to the tune of £500,000 a year, to provide exactly the cross-border co-operation that is needed between the three police forces in question. When providing that money, we said that it would be essential that those forces should not only co-operate with one another to deal with the very real problem that exists in south and mid-Wales but work closely with police in Avon and Somerset and the west midlands. The middle market, as we call it, into south Wales is often routed through Birmingham or Bristol, and the problem cannot be dealt with in isolation.
Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park): As a matter of interest, has the Minister considered how much money the Treasury would have made out of charging VAT on the heroin and crack cocaine that has been seized, and what value that money could have provided in terms of the treatment of addicts and the reduction of crime?
Mr. Ainsworth: That is not a calculation that I have immediately in my head. The hon. Lady should consider, also as a matter of interest, the size of the public health problem that we might have if we went down the road that she is suggesting. The prevalence of the use of class A drugs is nothing like what it could be if we implemented the policies that she is, in effect, expounding.
Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): Does my hon. Friend agree that concentrating on cutting off the demand for illicit drugs is far more important than concentrating on their seizure, and that concentrating too much on seizure might have the perverse effect of raising street prices and, consequently, of increasing crime?
Mr. Ainsworth: Both are important. I think that my hon. Friend would recognise that we have tried, in the updated drugs strategy, to rebalance our spending towards harm minimisation and treatment and, therefore, towards demand reduction. We cannot, however, abandon the attack on availability or the attempts to dismantle the groups that bring these substances into the country. Lower prices and more ready availability would surely only lead to a bigger problem. The two issues must go hand in hand: we must attack both availability and demand. The most effective way to do that, as I think my hon. Friend knows, is to get addicts into good treatment, which is why we are emphasising that provision at the moment.
Gun Crime
12. Mr. George Osborne (Tatton): What plans he has to introduce targets to reduce gun crime. [91434]
16. Mr. Richard Bacon (South Norfolk): If he will make a statement on gun crime. [91439]
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett): The immediate target has to be to reduce the year-on-year increase in gun crime associated with organised gang criminality. That is why we have already made changes to the law on minimum penalties for those illegally carrying guns, banned the import of guns that can be converted, changed the law relating to replica guns and the carrying of guns in a public place, and introduced measures relating to the age limit for the purchase and ownership of air weapons. All those measures form part of a jigsaw to tackle the unacceptably high level of organised gun crime in this country.
Mr. Osborne: What the Home Secretary did not say, of course, is that gun crime is already up 90 per cent. under this Government. Does he really think that his jigsaw, which includes yet another departmental taskforce, yet another amnesty and more headline-grabbing attacks on the rap music industry, will seriously trouble hardened criminal gangs that use guns and feed off the crack cocaine trade? If he thinks that his strategy will work, why does he not set a specific target, as he has done in many areas of Home Office policy, on reducing gun crime?
Mr. Blunkett: I have just indicated that the task ahead of us is to reduce the exponential rise, and we have made no bones about the danger and the difficulty that that poses, but the measures that the hon. Gentleman has just attacked were all put forward either by the police or by those deeply associated with the job of reducing gun crime. We have responded, as any sensible Government would, to the suggestions made, including at the round table meeting that I held on 10 January, which was extremely productive and engaged a range of agencies, enterprises and community groups, all of which have a part to play.
Mr. Bacon: Most people will be very dissatisfied with the Home Secretary's answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne). Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that when the Government came to power there were about 12,000 firearms offences, that the number is about 22,000 today and that in the past five years the number of offences involving handguns has more than doubled? When is he going to take the problem seriously and stop offering the House of Commons no more than a reduction in the increase in gun offences? We need a decrease for the people of this country.
Mr. Blunkett: Reducing does mean decreasing—at least it does in my dictionary—and I have every intention of ensuring that we do that together, but action on air weapons, conversions and the import of Brocock and similar weapons are all a critical part of the process. The Metropolitan police revealed at the round
table meeting that 75 per cent. of the guns that they picked up were conversions, so the measures that we are taking are directly related to the problem, linked as they are to changing the culture in the communities most affected. Sometimes we get the blame for what others do; sometimes others get the blame for what I do. I am afraid that the hon. Member for Tatton is wrong in his presumption that I have blamed rap—although gangs using rap are an entirely different matter.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling): I welcome the measures that the Home Secretary has taken to toughen some gun laws. All of us want guns off our streets, and one way to do that is to enforce those laws and ensure that people who use guns face the full weight of the law. Does he recognise that to prosecute people in the courts we need witnesses to come forward? Will he consider ways to encourage community members to come forward with information and to protect witnesses from the intimidation that they feel, which prevents many from giving the police information that would lead to prosecution?
Mr. Blunkett: That is a critical point, and it was raised at the round table meeting. I can assure my hon. Friend that we will take the necessary steps suggested by community groups, in terms of a substantial strengthening of the protection of victims, the availability of that protection, and encouraging the communities from which people are giving such evidence to be part of the process. That should include the ability to provide information confidentially, providing a hotline that is trusted and understood by those who can give such information, and getting the message across—this has been done in individual instances—that in extremis we can give people a new identity until the issue has been properly dealt with.
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