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Opposition Day
Crime
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): I inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
5.22 pm
David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con): I beg to move,
That this House notes the rising tide of firearms offences that has led to one gun crime being committed every hour; is appalled by the recent spate of gun-related incidents across the country; believes that after seven years the Government has failed to deal with the scourge of guns in towns and cities; further notes the link between gun crime and drugs; deplores the rise in violent crime; resolves that 40,000 more police are needed on the streets to reverse this trend; and believes that local communities should be given greater freedom to direct the efforts of their police force if streets are to be made safer.
When he was appointed, the Home Secretary said:
"I enter this job with key priorities in mind: tackling crime, particularly violent crime, and fighting those trafficking in drugs, people or guns."
Since 1997, gun crime has doubled. It now stands at 10,000 a year—one every hour of every day. Attempted murder with firearms has doubled to more than 1,200 a year—more than three attempted murders every day. Serious wounding with firearms has more than doubled to more than 400 a year—440 was the last estimate—and those last two categories have increased significantly in each of the past six or seven years. All that should be set against a backdrop of burgeoning drug addiction and drug trafficking.
The motion is principally on gun crime, but as we shall see, hard drugs are often the main cause of gun crime. The Prime Minister, when he was shadow Home Secretary, coined the phrase "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". I am afraid that what we see with gun crime is a Government who are neither. In the past few weeks, we have heard a great deal about gun crime in Nottingham. Gun crime is a major problem in a number of cities—most obviously, Manchester, Birmingham and London—and a possible problem in many others.
The reason we have called for this debate today is not that gun crime affects every corner of Britain—so far, it does not—but that in some parts of our nation it has spiralled out of control. In my view, the problem can be checked by a series of measures, and in today's debate I propose to put a series of questions to the Home Secretary to determine whether he intends to take those measures. If he implements them, we will give him our full support. First, however, we need to understand the causes, to stop such outbreaks before they become an epidemic that afflicts the whole country, and they might do so because the conditions that create such gun cultures exist in many parts of Britain. If we focus on one city, Nottingham, and on why this attractive, historic, medium-sized city in the heart of England has suddenly faced this assault on the lives of its citizens, we will understand the dangers that many British cities face.
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A few months ago, the chief constable of Nottingham said:
"Since January 2003, 51 people have been shot, another 164 have been robbed at gunpoint and 300 have been threatened with a firearm."
In the last weeks, the nation has been horrified by the senseless and apparently random killing of a child. I am sure that the whole House, especially those who were not here earlier, will join me in reiterating the sympathy and condolences that the Home Secretary offered to the parents, relatives and friends of Danielle Beccan. The murder of 14-year-old Danielle is one of a long line of gun crimes in a city where police dealt with more than one shooting a week last year.
Some of the other killings that have given Nottingham a reputation as England's gun city include that of Brendan Lawrence, a 16-year-old killed in February 2002 as he stepped out of a car close to his home in St. Ann's, and that of Marvyn Bradshaw who was shot dead outside a pub in August 2003. The parents of the man convicted of Mr. Bradshaw's murder were thereafter shot dead. In September 2003, Marian Bates was shot dead at her jewellery shop; two months later, Omar Watson was shot in a barber's shop; and, in May this year, Donzal Munn was shot dead as he sat in his car. Finally, little Danielle Beccan was murdered. We should remember that many of these victims were innocents, caught in the crossfire. It is not just gangsters who are murdered. In the words of one police intelligence briefing:
"In Nottingham, as in other drug-ridden cities, if you live by the sword, it may not only be you but your family, friends or neighbours that die by it."
These horrific murders are not the whole story. For every actual murder with a gun, there are 15 more attempted murders. Nationally, there are between 1,200 and 1,300 a year, double the figure in 1997.
In Nottingham this year, there was the case of Derek Senior who was viciously attacked along with his girlfriend. He gave evidence against the attackers, leading to their conviction. The very next day he was shot three times on his own doorstep. What we are seeing in Nottingham is a culture of enforcement and revenge killings—a culture of vendetta and reprisal; a culture of corruption and intimidation of witnesses; a culture of both contract killing and casual murder; a culture in which the law is failing. That, in turn, has led to a street culture that leads young men to grow up believing that they buy respect by carrying weapons. That creates an environment in which they wear body armour and carry guns—real or replica—in a sort of macho fashion statement. Today, it is estimated that, around the country, there are 20,000 youngsters in gangs dealing in guns and drugs. In Nottingham, a youth of 13 has been found with loaded weapons and another police authority, Manchester, has had to use antisocial behaviour orders to prevent young men from wearing body armour precisely because that leads to violence.
What creates the conditions for this casual viciousness and the cavalier use of lethal firearms in a manner reminiscent of Chicago in the 1930s rather than an historic English town? The biggest single cause of the explosion in gun crime is the growth of the hard drugs trade. With that trade come drug gangs, drug barons, drug territories and drug wars. Britain now has for the
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first time more than 1 million class A drug users. In Nottingham, it is estimated that there are 6,000 crack cocaine and heroin addicts. Hard drugs are all too easily available, as is shown by the falling price of drugs on the street. In Nottingham, the prices for class A drugs are said to be some of the cheapest in the country. One can buy crack cocaine for as little as £10 rather than the national average price of £22. The average cost of heroin on the streets of Britain has fallen dramatically—from £80 in 1997 to under £40 today.
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that drug prices in Nottingham are not a product of anything that its local authority or communities are doing, but that they are entirely due to the supply of drugs to the country as a whole? Although Nottingham has been targeted today, any other city in the country could just as easily be targeted in precisely the same way tomorrow. We must address the question of how drugs get on to the streets in the first place.
David Davis: The hon. Gentleman makes an apposite point. I believe that his constituency includes St. Ann's.
Alan Simpson: I lived in the St. Ann's area for most of my life, but it now has the honour of being represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell).
David Davis: I apologise to the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell). Of course the prices in Nottingham have nothing to do with its local authority or any of its local politicians. As the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) says, they are due to a combination of access to Britain and what criminals do with the drugs when they get here.
The price of drugs throughout the country is falling because the Government are failing to disrupt supply both at home and abroad. At home, we have what the Metropolitan Police Commissioner rightly calls our "porous borders". It is too easy to smuggle anything into this country, be that people, guns or drugs. Our border controls have been allowed to become too weak.
The failure abroad has been just as dramatic. The G8 countries nominated the British Government to control and eradicate the drug trade in Afghanistan. The Government accepted the task, but an American anti-narcotic official described the effect of that to me. He said:
"Last year Afghan heroin flooded the British market. This year, if it is not under control by the October crop, it will flood the world market."
Regrettably, the Government have yet again failed miserably this year to act effectively against the Afghan drug producers.
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