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Ms Buck: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Simon Hughes: I greatly respect the hon. Lady's contribution in London and I will give way in a moment. However, I first wish to give a couple of examples of how money could be saved.

City hall now has more people running its press operation than does Downing street, and that is clearly mad and unjustifiable. On new year's eve, for the first time in four years, we had a London celebration, of a sort. After nothing for three years, we had a £1 million firework display. It was paid for from public funds and had no private sector sponsorship. In theory, it was supposed to last for three minutes, but in reality it was less. However, as I know from chairing the Thames festival, one can get a much longer and better firework display for a quarter of that sum. It could also probably have been entirely funded from private sponsorship. The Mayor just does not understand that the money he spends is that of many hard-pressed Londoners, not his. We would do things very differently.

Ms Buck: The hon. Gentleman mentioned services in Southwark. Will he comment on the fact that in both Southwark and Islington services for children—in particular, nurseries—have borne the brunt of major spending cuts, in contravention of the Government's programme to expand child care places? It cannot be claimed that services have been improved and enhanced across the board, as the hon. Gentleman implies.

Simon Hughes: I am happy to debate that point with the hon. Lady at another time and place—[Hon. Members: "Oh!"] No, I deny that spending on children's services and the quality of those services in Southwark have been cut. I do not think that that is true. I know less about Islington, but I can check. I doubt that it is true in that case either. The hon. Lady knows, from both the boroughs that she represents, that when councils are under severe pressure to keep council tax increases to the low single digits, the pressures are enormous. That is why she supported, as I did, the case for London that would give a better funding settlement to all our local authorities. Of course we want more money, including for social services, and I shall join her in arguing that case both for children and the elderly. When we took over in Southwark, we moved a lot of money in the
 
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social services budget to children's services because they had been badly underfunded, according to the Audit Commission, when Labour was in control.

Mr. Coleman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Simon Hughes: I said that I would give way, and I will.

Mr. Coleman: I grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. May I take him back to 29 January this year, when he told the Jon Gaunt radio programme that, by April—that is, now—he would be second in the polls and closing very quickly on the Mayor? In fact, of course, a further poll taken since shows that he is five points down and 30 percentage points behind the Mayor, who currently has 46 per cent. compared with his 16 per cent. Will he now answer the question that he has consistently refused to answer when asked on the Frost programme and in many other interviews? As it is obvious to anyone who reads any of the polls that he has absolutely no chance whatsoever of winning the mayoral election, what will he advise—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Gentleman has had a long run on an intervention. I am tempted to tell him to ask the question that he was allowed to put, briefly.

Mr. Coleman: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise.

Will the hon. Gentleman now advise the House what he will tell the few supporters whom he will get on 10 June what they should do with their second vote?

Simon Hughes: On the first half of the hon. Gentleman's long question, I advise him to remember what happened in Brent last autumn and in Bermondsey some years ago—both of which were Labour-held seats. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) should behave herself properly in the Chamber, and not in that manner. She should apologise to the House for what she was doing.

Sarah Teather (Brent, East) (LD): I apologise to the House; it was very inappropriate.

Simon Hughes: I remind the hon. Gentleman to look at the history of Liberal Democrats frequently overtaking the Conservatives and beating Labour. I will happily talk to him about the result on 11 June.

On the second issue, my advice is for people to give us their first preference, and they can choose what they do with their second preference. I hope that the Labour party and others give exactly the same advice to their voters.

Crime and security are hugely important issues. First, I join the Government in the words in their amendment that pay tribute to our security services and the police. On Saturday, I was privileged, as the representative of my party, to join Lady Thatcher, Baroness Scotland and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner at the Yvonne
 
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Fletcher 20th anniversary event. That reminded me, if I ever needed reminding, that all police officers can find themselves in the front line and that everyone's life is at risk when in the public service in that way.

There are two halves to the crime and security debate. First, the Mayor has to ensure that the security of London, not just its policing, is enhanced. I do not take the view that the current Mayor, the commissioner and the Government have done nothing, but I do take the view that more could be done. The public could be given more information and those members of the public who want to contribute could be part of a civil emergency volunteer reserve. Business could be engaged more actively in preparing against terrorism, and it would be helpful for the Mayor to have a seconded adviser from MI5 permanently on the mayoral staff.

I have suggested to London Underground that it should not continue to explore the use of mobile phones on deep tube lines until we can be sure that they cannot be abused, as terrorists have done in other European capital cities. I was grateful to London Underground for responding positively to my suggestion.

The most important thing may be to ensure that fanatics and fundamentalists do not lead young members of the minority communities, particularly the Muslim community, astray. We all have a duty to have that dialogue to make sure that they feel fully part of our communities and do not get led into fanaticism, which is a danger with every faith and not just theirs.

We have a very clear view about crime and have argued from these Benches for many years that every bit of London should have good community policing. To put it simply, we say that there should be a community policing guarantee that goes further than the current programme of the outgoing Mayor and the Government. We call it the "four-by-four proposal". There would be four police and four others in all wards, with the person leading it on a four-year contract. There would be a ring-fenced and guaranteed community police service in all wards, and it would not be taken away. Its implementation will start—as the Met tells me, if I am elected—next year and it will be fully implemented over the following three years.

I take a zero-tolerance view of violent crime. That is the priority in London. If gun crime is the real menace, and if the police in an area where gun crime is on the rise and is a real threat want to be armed, they should be able to be armed for a temporary period. If a certain group of the police, such as a territorial support group, feel that they need to be armed for a limited period, they should be able to be armed too. That is the way to protect us from an overbearing argument to arm police generally, which I resist. That is something that the police would rather have, too.

I am afraid to tell the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster that I want to refer to his colleague, crime statistics and the way in which the Conservatives are trying to misuse them. We must be careful not to allow the misuse of crime statistics. I understand that they are difficult, but we must have zero tolerance of their misuse too.

I shall not go into great detail, but I will select those things that seem to me to be important. I appreciate—and the Minister knows this—that the latest crime statistics for the year just ended will not be available
 
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until next week, just before the campaign begins. We will then have the latest picture. However, London, I believe, has the second lowest rate of violent crime of the 10 regions in England. The Met, for all sorts of historic reasons, has recorded a higher percentage of crimes than any other police service in England, although police services will soon have a common recording system, which we welcome. I realise that my figures are only recent comparables and I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, and I am willing to be corrected. However, my figures show that the percentage of adults who are the victims of violence in London for the last two full years for which figures are available has gone down from 8 per cent. to 5.7 per cent. Indeed, we are not the worst region in England. Yorkshire and Humberside and the south-east have a higher incidence of violent crime. The theft of or from vehicles in London in the last two full years has gone down from 1,472 to 1,205 vehicles per 10,000 households, and that figure is not the highest in England. The figures for the north-west and Yorkshire and Humberside have been higher for both those years than those for London. Burglaries from households in London have gone down from 308 to 284 per 10,000 households. The decline is not huge, but the figure has gone down.

There have been significant drops in those three categories and the fall has been faster than the average fall across England and Wales. London is sixth—not the worst—out of the 10 regions in terms of violent crime per capita; second out of 10 in terms of vehicle crime per capita, whereas it was first; and third in terms of burglary.

There is far too much violent crime and far too much crime. There needs to be far less and the clear-up rate needs to be higher. However, it does nobody any good to exaggerate the figures, because that undermines the work that has been done to add to the number of police, which we support, and the commitment of us all to make sure that the streets of the capital are safer. I hope that, from now on, the Conservative candidate will not misrepresent the figures in this election, because that only adds to the fear of, in particular, the vulnerable, the lonely and the isolated in our capital city.

I have two other one-sentence criticisms. The criticism of the outgoing Mayor is that neighbourhood policing, which has been a Government programme, has not been delivered any more quickly in London than anywhere else, and it could have been. The criticism of the Conservative candidate is that he speaks very good language about dealing with crime, but he puts no additional money on the table, and until we see that his proposals will be paid for people will not believe that there will suddenly be huge numbers of extra police on the streets.

Another big issue is transport—we all know that. There needs to be more walking and cycling. Scooters, motor bikes and taxis ought to be able to use all the bus lanes all the time, and some of those lanes could be used by cars at certain times of the day. We support the congestion charge and, unlike the Conservative candidate, we would not abolish it but, unlike the outgoing Mayor, we would not extend it westwards to Kensington and Chelsea. We would make it much more user-friendly, including allowing people to pay in
 
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advance and, instead of clobbering people with a fine if they forget to pay by 10 o'clock that night, we would allow them to pay up until the end of the following day.

I have talked to the London Retail Consortium, whose manifesto launch I attended yesterday. Our proposals to have no charge between Christmas and new year, to give people five charge-free journeys a year and to stop the charge at 5 o'clock are very popular with the consortium, the latter because early evening business would not be nearly as badly affected.

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