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8 Apr 2003 : Column 200—continued
Mr. Bercow: The hon. Gentleman referred with enthusiasm to clause 38. What merit is there in imposing a financial penalty on 16 and 17-year-olds who have no money, who will get into debt in paying the penalty or who will simply fail to comply? Would it not be better to punish them in a more constructive way?
Dr. Kumar: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment, but he has not seen the study from the four pilot areas, which has demonstrated that most offenders are generally happy to pay within 21 days, so his case does not hold up.
Matthew Green: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in the pilot areas that he cites penalty notices were not applied to 16 and 17-year-olds? They were applied to those aged 18 or over, so he is quoting something that does not meet the point that the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) made.
Dr. Kumar: There is no evidence to suggest, as the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) claimed, that those people would not be able to pay. They are paying. In answer to the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green), we have no way of knowing that they will not pay.
Middlesbrough council told me that previous legislation has enabled it to become more proactive in relation to crime and antisocial behaviour. Legislation such as the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Local Government Act 2000 has given local authorities the ability to tackle antisocial behaviour head on and they are using those powers to help to win court orders excluding particular named individuals from areas where those people have terrorised whole communities of decent people.
I strongly welcome part 6, clauses 42 to 44. I see that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth), is on the Front Bench. North-east MPs made strong representations to him on that aspect of the Bill, which deals with the possession of air weapons, especially by youngsters under the age of 17, and the potential outlawing of air weapons capable of being "re-engineered" so as to fire conventional ammunition.
The misuse of air weapons has been a big issue in my constituency and across Teesside and the north-east. It led to my local paper, the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette, running the brilliant "ban the young guns" campaign, and a petition carrying many thousands of signatures collected across Teesside being presented to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on a visit to that paper's offices.
There has been case after case of youngsters using air guns and rifles in open space around some of the more isolated villages in the east Cleveland area. It has escalated into people becoming the victims of air rifle sniping. A number of families in my constituency have been lucky not to lose a son or daughter, or at least see
them blinded. The banning of the sale of air weapons to children under 17 will remove at a stroke the conduit through which this behaviour occurs.Similarly, I welcome the provision in clause 42 that bans the carrying of imitation firearms in a public place. As we know, such imitation weapons are not the cap-guns of our youth; they are carefully engineered replicas of real weapons such as those made by Smith and Wesson, Uzi and Heckler and Koch. We all know that these weapons have been used in robberies. A few months ago, a shop in the Tees Valley ran a quarter-page advert in a regional paper advertising such weapons. One possible amendment to clause 42 could involve banning any advertising of such weapons, except at the point of sale. I ask the Minister to consider such a provision. After all, we already ban the advertising of tobacco goods, and it could be argued that a similar case can be made in this regard.
I strongly welcome the Bill, and I wish it a happy passage through this House and elsewhere.
4.41 pm
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell): I, too, welcome the Government's attempts in this area, although I have to say that this is a bits and pieces Bill. Some of it is good, some of it bad, and frankly, other bits of it are pointless. However, it is a step on the road, and I commend Ministers for that. There is an awful lot more to do in an area that undoubtedly affects every one of our constituents to some degree. Society as a whole has got to get to grips with this problem; otherwise, the decline in standards will lead to an increasing number of people feeling oppressed and under siege. Indeed, those of our elderly population who come into contact with antisocial behaviour will feel downright scared, and their entire quality of life could be affected. It is therefore extremely important that we get to grips with this issue.
I want to begin by confronting the Minister head-on with the Home Secretary's comments in his opening address about police numbers. My constituency is on the fringes of London, and like many other Members with such constituencies, I see the real problems that are caused by the way in which the Government are handling police funding and rewards, and by their entire approach to policing. I want to take the Minister to task on the problems that we face, and to encourage him to look more closely at them.
The truth immediately outside London is that, far from having more police, we have too few police and the numbers are reducing. We suffer from an overspill factor: a Metropolitan police area that has undoubtedly gained more officers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), who is not in her place, said, even certain London areas do not have enough police on the streets. However, it is counties such as Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Kent and Essex that are suffering in particular from the drive to recruit officers into the Metropolitan police. We as a nation are rightly facing the huge challenges that have to be met, and the Government are right to attempt to bring more officers into the Met. We see them on the streets protecting the London Eye and this place against terrorism.
However, the reality is that a combination of the Met's aggressive outward recruitment policy in the past year or two and huge pay disparities across the London boundary—an officer in the Metropolitan police area earns £6,000 a year more than an officer in a station just two or three miles away, and receives free travel as well—has led to a huge flow of officers from just outside London into the Metropolitan police area. I see that happening day in, day out, week in, week out in my constituency. A few months ago, I stood talking to an officer in the yard of Epsom police station. He said, "I look around here and I see officers who I know are going to the Metropolitan police." The beat constable in Ashtead, the village where I live, has joined the Met. Senior officers from Epsom and Ewell have left to join the Met. I also recently visited some special constables at the local police station. The specials do excellent work in our area, across Surrey and throughout the country. They are a very under-praised resource.
Mr. Bob Ainsworth: In his tirade against the Metropolitan police, will not the hon. Gentleman accept that that force is training record numbers of recruits, and that it loses officers to other forces as well as gaining them from other forces? It is a two-way process, as the figures show.
Chris Grayling: I take issue with the Minister over that. When, as the local Member of Parliament, I visited my local police station, I discovered that the special constables are the longest serving officers in the area. They are the ones who retain knowledge of the area's particular problems, and who know who the troublemakers are. Part of the challenge of tackling antisocial behaviour is knowing who the troublemakers are, where to find them and where to watch over them. When the experience in a police area resides mostly with the volunteers, and when the regular officers are mainly raw recruits who stay around for a year or two before they cross the border for £6,000 a year more, the Minister must understand that that has an impact on policing, and on the force's ability to tackle antisocial behaviour.
Andrew Selous: I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and my force in Bedfordshire suffers from exactly the problems that he has described. Does he agree that there is something unethical about offering officers London allowances for housing and so on—and free travel—when they live outside London? It is simply not fair on forces outside London, which suffer a terrible problem of retention. Many young people do not consider joining their local county forces, but instead go straight to the Met.
Chris Grayling: I very much echo the points made by my hon. Friend. We will be able to tackle antisocial behaviour in the areas outside London only if we move away from the present arbitrary allowance structure. We need an allowance structure that gradually dips as one moves further away from London, not one that simply falls off a cliff.
Moreover, the resourcing levels received by forces outside London following changes to the grant structure mean that it is impossible for neighbourhood officers to tackle antisocial behaviour in the way we want them to.
I have another example for the Minister. One of my local police stations is just across the border in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir P. Beresford), but it also serves parts of my constituency. A couple of weeks ago we discovered that its four neighbourhood officers did not have access to a police car. I hope that the lack is being rectified, but the example shows the problems that we face in the south-east, where the structure of police funding has moved resources away from the fringe forces. The resources have either gone into the Metropolitan police area, or to forces elsewhere in the country. Ministers need to understand that.
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