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Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): Will the Home Secretary also listen to Westminster council on the subject of what the Licensing Act 2003—put through by his hon. Friends in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—will do for the very issues that he mentions, not just in Leicester square, but across the whole area?
Mr. Blunkett: That Department is pulling together its licensing, trading standards, health and safety and other activities to ensure that the lessons can be learned. I am absolutely certain that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport would agree that, if it were proved that those changes—the liberalisation—caused a major disadvantage or problem, we would address that. I should have thought that the Conservative party in its new free-nation mode would welcome the ability to act more flexibily at local level, although perhaps, with Charles Moore's departure from The Daily Telegraph, there will be a change in stance on the free-nation front.
The police, local authorities and all those involved welcome the new powers that we have given to them to use fixed-penalty notices, which cut out bureaucracy. [Interruption.] It is no good laughing. Wherever we go,
the police tell us that they welcome the fixed-penalty notices because they cut out the prolonged process that has bedevilled them. They welcome the investment that we making in new technology, including the Airwave system—£500 million of new technology—to make it easier to do the job. They welcome street arrests and cutting out the existing unnecessary burdens that are placed on them.But it is not this Home Secretary who is refusing to use the new video identification scheme in 18 forces; it is not this Home Secretary who is using helicopters, rather than people on the ground; and it is not this Home Secretary who introduced the mobile police, rather than the community police. In fact, most of that occurred under a Conservative Government. Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, bravely said that the initiatives—I use the word advisedly—that were taken 10 years ago and that moved away from community policing were a mistake, but they were not my mistake. They were not even Douglas Hurd's mistake. They were a mistake made, presumably, at local level; it was a trend that was picked up and used.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield): The Home Secretary makes a point about bureaucracy, but I can assure him that, on the specific issue of the bureaucratisation of stop-and-search powers and their recording, the fact that those powers will be used less because of the associated bureaucracy is causing the police serious disquiet. I have to tell the Home Secretary that that is entirely the result of his Government's policy and we pointed out at the time that that policy would have exactly that consequence.
Mr. Blunkett: It is very difficult to know what consequence the hon. Gentleman is talking about. We can judge the consequence when we have done it. We agreed to phase in a new programme, using technology and slimmed-down methods of simply writing down why someone had been stopped and searched. Correctly done, that will save time and difficulty and allow constables—who are accused constantly of racism—to have greater confidence in undertaking stop and search, as they will be able to outline why it was undertaken and provide that note. That is not impossible, but because it causes such fear in the police service we said that we would experiment, ask forces to volunteer and see which approach worked best. That is what we promised to do and that is what we are doing. I do not think that it is unfair to provide people who are stopped and searched in the street with an explanation as to why, as long as we do not burden the police—on which I agree with the hon. Gentleman—in a way that would preclude them from doing it, and there is no evidence whatever that that is likely to take place.
Let me quote from the shadow Home Secretary's speech in Blackpool, which is material to the debate this afternoon. He said:
- "No more so-called National Policing Plans"—
- "No more centrally imposed targets"—
- "No more Whitehall-based units and initiatives".
James Purnell: My right hon. Friend will remember that I used to be something of a policy wonk, and I think that the shadow Home Secretary used to be one, too. Is not the idea about sheriffs and, as my right hon. Friend mentioned, the possibility that the BNP could run policing in my area or his area, policy wonkery gone mad? Is not it the kind of ideological extremism that we would expect from the person who came up with the idea of the poll tax?
Mr. Blunkett: That is absolutely certain. Once the Opposition get into an ideological framework that has a dead end, and their leader pleads for a novel idea—as the Leader of the Opposition said the other day, no one would deny that they had not come up with eye-catching initiatives—
Mr. George Osborne (Tatton): That was Blair's phrase.
Mr. Blunkett: Ah, they were not initiatives. Fantasy island is not an initiative but a fantasy. When an initiative is from the Opposition it is a fantasy, but when it is from us it is an initiative. I am happy to plead guilty to an initiative, however, and I am happy to plead guilty to all the units that the right hon. Gentleman would also do away with, because they include the antisocial behaviour unit that we have established, which will drive forward and spread best practice at local level. Incidentally, if there were sheriffs—here is the rub—they would need information. Even if they were going to approach or e-mail the chief constable to take him or her out to dinner to plead with him or her to do something, they would need comparative information. They would need to know the performance of their own force vis-à-vis other forces across the country. Is that agreed? [Hon. Members: "Yes."] I am very pleased that it is agreed, and there were even some voices from the Opposition Benches who agreed. At the end of this wonderful quote from the shadow Home Secretary in his conference speech, he said, "and performance monitoring". Who by? Oh, by the centre. Therefore, each of the 140 police services would set up their own little monitoring unit so that they could find out what other forces were doing, how they were doing it and what the performance looked like vis-à-vis their own. That is game, set and match.
Mr. Blunkett: I am happy to give way for clarification.
Mr. Letwin: I apologise, because for quite a long time I thought that we were having an interesting debate. We now have slapstick instead.
The Home Secretary surely realises that his standards unit, which is trying to run the activities of every basic command unit in Britain, collects information from the localities, brings it to the centre and then dispenses it back to the localities to tell them what to do. We are simply short-circuiting that activity in having the information at the local level where it can be acted upon effectively without the level of bureaucratic intrusion that is required when one is trying to operate such things from hundreds of miles away in Whitehall. That is a rational proposition. We may disagree about it, but surely the Home Secretary understands that there are two possibilities.
Mr. Blunkett: Yes, there certainly are. To use the New York analogy, unless one can collate the information at the centre—that is what the commissioner in the New York force did from the various units—one cannot make sense of the data and one cannot spread best practice. [Interruption.] I shall wind up, because I do not want to be speaking after all the Conservative Members have crept off to the 1922 committee to determine the future of their leader and their party.
Mr. Letwin: The Home Secretary has put in mind a point that he will find very difficult to wrestle with. If he thinks that New York is the model, does he believe that the Federal Government or the mayor run policing in New York?
Mr. Blunkett: As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the mayor of New York had much more power over the police than I have over the police in Britain or that the Home Secretary had over the Met when he was directly responsible for it, which incidentally was the policy under the Conservative Government until we changed it. Six commissioners were sacked or removed under the previous mayor.
To return to the issue, there is a real cost in any ideas that are put forward. The real-life costs of what Conservative Members want would not be felt in Dorset but in constituencies such as mine and those of many other hon. Members. The articulate can usually get their way. Those who have access to the media usually have their voice heard. Those who have the cash can move out of the areas of greatest disadvantage and antisocial behaviour. They can install alarm systems in their houses, and they can even live in enclaves where they employ what amounts to their own protection service.
We want the same protections for the people we represent. When they approach us, we want to be able to tell them that a Member of Parliament can approach the Home Secretary and that there will be just a chance that the Home Secretary might be able to do something about the problem. We want to appear at the Dispatch Box with some levers to pull that would make a
difference to the lives of the people we represent. We want democracy to work in such a way that when people vote, they believe that it will make a difference. We want to link that to greater accountability and responsiveness at local level and to a new debate about the reform agenda for the police and those working with the police in the family of the police.We want to do that as part of the regeneration programme at local level. We want to build the capacity of people to be able to take part in that debate and to be able to bring influence to bear. If we can get this right, the new tripartite approach will not take away responsibility for operational policing, but it will restore confidence that the police will react to the needs of the local community and that the Government will remove bureaucracy. However, the Home Secretary and his colleagues in Parliament will at least be able to go into a general election accepting some responsibility for what happens in our country, for the steps that we take to spread best practice, for the units we have established in making a difference and for the investment to go effectively into changing the nature of policing. That is what we are advocating; that is what we will vote for later tonight.
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