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The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety (Ms Hazel Blears): As a northerner, I am delighted to have the opportunity to wind up this debate. Like the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), I have heard excellent contributions on a range of issues from Members with constituencies right across London, and my knowledge of the city has been dramatically enhanced by listening to the debate. The debate has highlighted London's position.

We have heard a bit of an own goal from the Opposition, and I wonder just how in touch with his constituency the hon. Member for Cities of London and
 
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Westminster (Mr. Field) is. The leader of Westminster city council comes to see me regularly to tell me how well the crime figures are doing in his area, how the council has tackled antisocial behaviour and how it has used all the new powers provided by the Government dramatically to reduce crime in Leicester square over the past few months. Yet the hon. Gentleman spent the whole of his contribution telling us how policing is not working, crime is out of control and antisocial behaviour is a problem. If he talks to officers on his doorstep he will find that things are getting a great deal better.

I want to restate our Government's commitment to London's continuing economic, social and cultural success and to the way in which it is enhancing its status as a world-class city. It is crucial to me, in my part of the country, that London continues to do well, that it is a magnet for inward investment, that it drives the economy of the rest of the country and that it helps to ensure that we have record numbers of people in work throughout Britain. As many Members have said, we also now have record police numbers, including the new community support officers, and more police officers on the beat. There has also been a massive increase in bus services throughout the capital and in the number of people using them. There is a range of things in London of which we can be proud.

Following the references to the Beach Boys and the Pogues this afternoon, I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) did not join together on one issue, and that was in singing the proposed London anthem. However, every Member who spoke conveyed a genuine sense of pride in representing London.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Linda Perham) made an excellent speech in which she outlined action by the Metropolitan police on antisocial behaviour and discussed the step change programme. She conveyed her own pride in being a Londoner and highlighted the fact that the Tory motion was—I hesitate to use these words—a long whinge that talked London down and lacked self-confidence. There was no London pride among the Conservatives.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) provided an analysis of support for policing, and praised the work of community support officers, who are on the beat, day in, day out. They are not distracted from their work, establish relationships with local people, and are making an impact in my hon. Friend's community.

There was an interesting competition between the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) about which was the leafiest borough in London. I am not in a position to decide the issue, but I can tell them both that the deployment of police resources in London is an operational matter for the police. Resources will be directed to the areas of greatest need, but they will know that the introduction of the step change programme will result in 100 new teams of officers across London. In every single borough there will be three teams of police officers and community support officers dedicated to
 
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local neighbourhood reassurance policing, which is what local people have told us they want. Wherever people are in London—in a leafy borough or an inner-city area—they will get better policing and better reassurance.

Mr. Horam: The hon. Lady made the point that we will get teams throughout London boroughs, but only three wards out of 30 in a typical borough will benefit. What will happen in the other 27?

Ms Blears: The hon. Gentleman wants more, although we have obviously made an extremely good start. His party opposed the precept in the budget of £184 million extra for policing. He cannot have his cake and eat it—he cannot have extra police officers unless he is prepared to find the money for them.

The hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) spoke about the health service and education. The health service in London, as in the rest of the country, is improving enormously as a result of Government decisions to increase investment in the NHS, slash waiting times, increase choice and make sure that people across the capital can get better health services in future. I urge her to re-examine her party's policy on the patients' passport, which, far from being a passport, would be an exit visa from the national health service and would not lead to improvements in services for local people.

I am afraid that I was disappointed by the contribution of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). He praised crime reduction in London, and I was grateful to him for going through the figures. As he said, the latest figures will not be available until next week, but for some years they have shown that London is safer place in which to live and work and for businesses to operate in. We are making genuine progress, and I was grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. However, on antisocial behaviour, he has an extremely poor record. His party voted against the Third Reading of the Anti-social Behaviour Bill, and in that debate he said that

"we must ask ourselves whether, if we were in government, we would want the Bill on the statute book, and the answer is no".—[Official Report, 24 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 991.]

That comment will come to haunt the hon. Gentleman because, in typical Liberal Democrat fashion, not all his councillors share his view, and hold different opinions in different areas of London. One power in the Anti-social Behaviour Bill to which the hon. Gentleman took particular exception was the power to disperse people who were intimidating and harassing local people. There have been huge problems on the Butts Farm estate in Feltham, including stalking, intimidation, threats to kill and abusive and threatening language, often targeted on vulnerable residents. It was decided to use the dispersal powers in Feltham, and a Liberal Democrat councillor said:

"This will have a benefit for the law-abiding majority of youth and residents. . . They have nothing to fear . . . but the people who commit anti-social behaviour have."

The hon. Gentleman takes one view; his councillors take another view. That is a familiar situation among Liberal Democrats.
 
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Simon Hughes: The Minister would not dare pretend that there is never a difference between the Labour Front Bench team and any Labour member anywhere in the country. Does she agree that things are often much better when there is a partnership? Will she commend my borough, run by Liberal Democrats, which the other day was given by her colleague the Minister a beacon award for community safety for the measures we implement on the ground, which are the best in London and the best in the country?

Ms Blears: I understand that the foundations for the partnership, which takes a long time to mature, were laid when the council was under Labour control, but I am delighted to pay tribute to local authorities throughout the country and across London that are working hard in their community safety partnerships. I understand that about £30 million has gone into those partnerships over the past year in order to make that significant difference for us.

I want to highlight the success in reducing street crime across London—a 21 per cent. reduction in robbery, and 11,000 fewer victims. Sometimes we forget the human cost when we speak about numbers and percentages, and 11,000 fewer people were robbed in London as a result of the action taken by the Metropolitan police and their partners. I am also delighted that youth crime is down 7 per cent. in the past year alone. Our young people are the citizens of the future, and it is vital that they are able to live in a safe community. We speak a great deal about young people and antisocial behaviour, but quite often young people are the victims of crime as well. The vast majority of our young people are good, decent young people who make a positive contribution to our community.

Many hon. Members mentioned the record numbers of police in our capital, about which I am delighted. The Conservatives spoke about an extra 40,000 police officers, but they have gone very quiet about that in recent months. Since they found they could not fund that as well as the fantasy island asylum policy, we have heard little from them. Today we heard from the Opposition that they are interested not in extra police numbers, but in how they are deployed. The Labour Government, however, have a record of extra police numbers across London and extra community support officers.

I shall deal with the issues raised by the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) about resilience and preparedness in London. The local response capability is one of our key building blocks. That is why it is so important that at the centre we keep in touch with the locality and with London about preparedness. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that regional resilience teams are in place in every Government office. In future, the Government offices will be much better organised and in a much better position to tackle not just the terrorist threat, but any of the civilian threats that we face.

But the hon. Gentleman is right. The threat from terrorism remains real and serious. It is a worldwide issue. It is not unique to the UK. It will be with us for the long term. That is why it is vital that we plan properly. I am delighted to be able to tell him that we are putting an extra £61 million into the Metropolitan police service next year to help it counter the terrorist threat. Since September 2001 we have taken a range of measures to
 
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strengthen our anti-terrorism legislation, to make sure that people cannot hide behind the immigration and refugee protections, to proscribe terrorist organisations and to increase the funding not just for the Government offices in London but for the fire service, which for the first time has all its staff trained on CBRN.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the exercises that have taken place. I can tell him that hundreds of exercises have taken place across London. They take place weekly. The exercise that he highlighted, OSIRIS II, is only the most visible exercise, but we have had three major command and control exercises, also connected with the military, making sure that we keep in constant contact with them. The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the business community. The business community is totally engaged with our preparations and is part of our structure. He spoke about the need for public information—

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