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Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire) (Con): I apologise on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), who could not be in the House today. I also thank the Home Secretary for an early copy of the statement.

From this morning's headlines and programmes, we could have been forgiven for thinking that the Home Secretary's statement would be entirely dedicated to dealing with antisocial behaviour. This morning the Prime Minister rejected the Labour Government of the 1960s and the actions of his mentor, Lord Jenkins. But for the ordinary people of Britain, there was no liberal consensus, as the Prime Minister suggests. They did not want political correctness stuffed down their throats. They did not want to be intimidated by young hooligans or to have to step over vomit in the streets. In the light of the Prime Minister's statement this morning, will the Labour party—and for that matter, the Liberal Democrats—apologise for all their bedfellows of the past 30 years, who told us that the criminal was the real victim? Or is it just another example of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary grabbing headlines without substance? Why should we believe this lot of initiatives? Why should we believe that they are any better than the 155 others that we have had since the last election?

We welcome the extra resources for our security services and for anti-terrorism measures. In principle, we welcome the resources for crime reduction, although they fall significantly short of our commitment to fund the extra 40,000 police officers necessary to achieve the quantum leap we need if we are to get real neighbourhood policing to work.

A year ago, the Home Secretary published his last strategic review. He was going to reduce crime, the fear of crime and antisocial behaviour. Today, he claims a reduction in crime that no one believes. That is not surprising because he is counting only part of the figures. His figures exclude illegal drug use, which is up 16 per cent.; retail crime, which has doubled; sexual offences, which are up 42 per cent.; and, most importantly, crime against young people, which is also up. The truth is that after falling for five years under the Conservatives, recorded crime is up by 800,000 a year under Labour.
 
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Violent crime is at an all-time high and there was a gun crime every hour of every day last year. With the latest crime figures due out this week, is it not the case that violent crime will be up again?

Last year, the Home Secretary also set a target to ensure effective delivery of justice. That was a laudable aim, but the good intention has failed. The proportion of convictions and cautions compared with recorded crime fell to its lowest level for well over a decade. It peaked in 1997, and has fallen, year in year out, under Labour. Why?

Now the comprehensive spending review sets new targets, including to reduce crime by 15 per cent. in high-crime areas. Will the Home Secretary tell us specifically which the high-crime areas are? What are the baseline figures, so that we can judge whether he achieves his target? He pledges to improve the delivery of justice by increasing the number of crimes for which an offender is brought to justice to 1.25 million. That is another laudable aim, but the figure has not reached 1.1 million under Labour and is falling, so how does he expect to achieve it?

The Home Secretary pledges to reduce unfounded asylum claims—

The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety (Ms Hazel Blears): He has done it.

Mr. Paice: Well, the Home Secretary pledges to do it in the future. The Minister should read the review that was published last week. What is the baseline against which he can be judged in a year's time? What is also obvious is the long list of targets that have disappeared. Can the Home Secretary tell us whether that is because he accepts our position that there are too many targets, or because virtually none have been met or have any chance of being met?

The Home Secretary refers to 12,000 extra police officers and says that the police can make 3 per cent. annual efficiency gains. They probably can, but not unless he lifts the yoke of central bureaucracy from their shoulders. So when he gets rid of 2,700 civil servants, how many forms, how many targets, how many ring-fenced funds and how many Home Office units will go with them?

The Home Secretary refers to tagging. Will he clarify whether he considers the tagging of prolific criminals as part of their sentences? Is that an expansion of the early release scheme, which we were told last week would not be expanded, or is it a long-term protection for the public, especially from paedophiles? Is tagging really a sufficient punishment, or is it driven by prison overcrowding?

The Home Secretary pledges in his statement to develop new electronic border controls. He says that a system of automatic tracking of travellers entering and exiting our country will provide monitoring and data. Will he explain what he is saying? Is he today announcing the re-introduction of embarkation controls? If so, of course, we welcome that adoption of Conservative policy as an effective measure to control immigration.

The Home Secretary also says that he will give local people power to ensure that laws are implemented. What does that mean? I agree with him, of course, that
 
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antisocial behaviour has many causes and that the community needs to be involved, but who is he blaming for not using the law—the police, the Crown Prosecution Service or the courts system?

The Home Secretary has announced the extension of fixed penalties. Will they work? Does he really think that they are what people want? I suggest to him that people want a penalty that is both a deterrent and that provides a chance of rehabilitation. They do not want a minor penalty that becomes a badge of honour for some young oik.

The Home Secretary also refers to the increase in community support officers. Let me repeat our support for the role of civilians in helping the police. Our concern has always been about giving them police powers, especially the power of detention. So what has happened to the review of those powers, which we were promised at the time of the legislation, or the national evaluation that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), promised only last week, an hour before the Chancellor announced 20,000 more CSOs?

Will the Home Secretary tell us what discretion chief constables will have over the use of the money? Will they be able to spend it instead on full police officers? If not, what has happened to his drive for local accountability? What happened to his statement in last year's White Paper that

"Home Office research has found that delegation of resources and responsibilities can . . . increase responsiveness"?

The people of this country are fed up with units, targets and initiatives. They want a Government who do not confuse good intent with achievement. When a crime is committed, they want a police officer, not an incident number. What they have got is centralised control, 10,000 more bureaucrats, 40-plus units, overcrowded prisons, record crime levels and a Home Secretary who says that he has not got a clue how many illegal immigrants are in the country. What they are offered is a new public service target of reassurance—a new word for spin, a patronising word from a Government who know best. Does the Home Secretary realise that reassurance will come not from words or money alone, but from results: fewer crimes, quicker justice, secure borders and a Government on the side of the law-abiding? He cannot buy reassurance; it will come by itself when he delivers the rest.

Mr. Blunkett: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his second appearance in two Mondays. The Opposition Front Bench is characterised this afternoon by no money, no policy and no shadow Home Secretary. I am almost beginning to forget what he looks like—he has been missing two Mondays running.

Let me take the questions that have been raised head on. Yes, when we have got in place the electronic border surveillance, we intend to reintroduce embarkation controls, which were abandoned 10 years ago, as hon. Members know, under the former Conservative Government. However, that was understandable because, without the new electronic surveillance and computer system, such controls were a complete waste of time. If we do not know who has come in, there is no point in trying to track who goes out. If we do not have identity cards, we do not know who is here anyway, so
 
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we cannot know whether they are legitimate or not in terms of drawing down on services. I am glad that we are agreed on that.

We appear to be agreed that we should all be tackling antisocial behaviour. The hon. Gentleman asked me about fixed-penalty notices. Some 20,000 fixed-penalty notices have been issued, and they are effective and speedy. They contribute to the reduction in bureaucracy that the police service has been seeking. They ensure that, instead of four to five hours for arrest, a fixed-penalty notice can be issued within 30 minutes. That means that the police can go about their business rather than returning to the station. It means therefore that we can release people for front-line services and we can bring in civilian staff to undertake the backroom work. That, again, frees police officers to do their job. The 20,000 additional community support officers are available on the streets on a permanent basis. That frees the rest of the community beat team and their colleagues to target particular offenders, including prolific offenders, who cause so much havoc in the community.

Yes, the prolific offenders programme will involve electronic tagging and satellite tracking. The hon. Gentleman asked me whether that would be instead of prison sentences. No, it will be part of the new supervision programme that was passed in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and it can really be effective as part of that programme only if we know exactly where people are and can track their movements down to the last few metres. This will be a major drive to prevent the scourge of prolific offenders, and often prolific victims. That is why our victims programme is so crucial.

On immigration, we have a record to be proud of. We have turned round a major problem in world movements and, from 18 months ago, we have reduced unwarranted asylum claims by 60 per cent. The baseline level is 2002, but we are actually saying that we will reduce unwarranted asylum claims year on year, so we will be reinforcing that message.

The hon. Gentleman asked me what baseline we would use and how we made a judgment on the areas with the greatest density of crime. For the first time ever, a baseline assessment is published on the website that shows a comparator force by force and command unit by command unit in terms of the crimes committed and therefore the density and proliferation of crime. We and the force at local level can target resources to make that happen.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether we would give freedom to chief constables. They already have it. We will, of course, provide the funding for the additional community support officers and, through the police grant and the amalgamation of the crime fighting fund, the retention of the record police numbers that we have put in place. They will have the freedom to use those resources sensibly. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is heckling from a sedentary position, as his colleagues did throughout my statement; they were not really interested.

Police chiefs will obviously be able to make decisions about deployment and they will not be rigidly told that they can employ only community support officers. When we passed the legislation to bring these in, both
 
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Opposition parties said that police forces would not use them and that the police service would not welcome them. Well, every police force in the land is clamouring for them; neighbourhoods are clamouring for them. What people want is not more of one thing and less of another; they want more of both. They want uniformed constables and an intelligence model; they want community support officers; they want us to clamp down on organised crime; they want to treat drug users sensibly; and they want to reinvest in youth inclusion and overcoming criminality by young people.

In short, people want us to have the comprehensive overview, the coherent policy and the balance of prevention and enforcement that I have laid out this afternoon. No other political party, now or in the past, has laid out such a comprehensive and, in my view, balanced programme. In doing so, I am proud to be Home Secretary.

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