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Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con): The Home Secretary talks about the difficulties of police recruitment, and I am sure that he is right. We have some wonderful police officers in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, but the fact is that, ever since I have been elected, we have heard promises about extra officers, and all that has come forward is a handful of CSOs, none of whom can deal with drive-by shootings or gun crime. When will he honour his promises and restore the morale of Nottinghamshire constabulary?

Mr. Blunkett: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the Nottinghamshire police would like to come to me—I challenge him to ask Steve Green, the chief constable, to affirm this—to ask to go back to the situation that we inherited, when there had been a drop of 1,100 in police numbers over the previous four years? [Interruption.] Oh yes there had been. Police numbers were tumbling exponentially—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. There is far too much extraneous noise from the Opposition Benches.

Mr. Blunkett: In the words of Sergeant Jones, they do not like it up them. [Hon. Members: "Corporal."] Goodness me, I have promoted him. I would rather get the rank of sergeant and corporal wrong in a fictional television programme than I would statistics about the number of police. There was a drop in police numbers up to 1997. They were dropping like a stone, and we have restored the amount; we are now 13,000 up on 1997. There was a drop in Nottinghamshire, and we have restored the force and are expanding it. There was no street robbery initiative, but we have put millions of pounds into Nottingham over the past two and a half years. There was no drugs intervention programme in Nottingham, but there is now, and it is beginning to work.

Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD): As the Home Secretary knows, the Liberal Democrats acknowledge the increases that are now appearing in some of our constabularies, but we are getting near the stage at which either he or, more worryingly, the Deputy
 
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Prime Minister will again be deciding on capping for police authorities. Before we get to that point, can he say whether he believes that any single police authority has sufficient police for local needs at this moment?

Mr. Blunkett: Not a force in the country has the number of police officers that it would like, in a world where money is of no object in being able to deliver the service. We cannot promise that, and I do not think that the official Opposition, even with Mickey Mouse figures, are promising it. Surely the Liberal Democrats are not going to make such a promise. Surely it is not the case that whatever a police chief requires in order to say that he can do his job properly, the Liberal Democrats will promise it to him. Would the hon. Gentleman like to intervene to tell me the answer?

Mr. Heath: I am happy to intervene, as we have already set out our police proposals. The Home Secretary knows that we have a figure, but I am asking him whether he will countermand the views of local people, as he did last year by nominating certain police authorities, as to the level of policing they want in their local communities.

Mr. Blunkett: I was very pleased that we did not override local people in terms of police authorities and reduce this year's budget.

The Liberal Democrat figures, with which I am of course familiar—they include 10,000 extra officers—are complete mythology. The Liberal Democrats say that they will fund the changes by not using the money for ID cards. However, ID cards will be paid for on the back of introducing biometrics and a clean database underpinning them for passports and visas. As a consequence, people will pay a charge that is additional to their passport increase. How on earth can police officers be funded from the Passport and Records Agency? How can the UK Passport Service raise the same money without delivering the service and also pass that money over to the police service instead? It is simply Mickey Mousedom. That is the end of the 10,000 police officers from the Liberal Democrats. [Interruption.] Do not argue with the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), because it is not worth it.

Let us return to the challenge laid down this afternoon by the shadow Home Secretary: how can we further reduce gun crime—we have stabilised it—and deaths from gun crime?

Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh) (Con): Will the Home Secretary give way?

Mr. Blunkett: I have been giving way all evening.

Mr. Francois: Not to me.

Mr. Blunkett: I do not want anyone to burst into tears, so I shall give way.

Mr. Francois: I thank the Home Secretary for his great courtesy in giving way. Does he agree that the officers deployed on the street in the busiest periods—Friday and Saturday nights—are a combination of regular police officers and special constables? Will he
 
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concede that, because the number of special constables has plummeted by more than 40 per cent. under this Government, when regulars and specials are combined, in many parts of the country fewer officers go out on patrol than did so in 1997?

Mr. Blunkett: The hon. Gentleman appears to think that specials are full time. [Interruption.] The matter is simple—one must aggregate the full-time equivalent. I favour specials not only because they are good for policing, but because they are part of civil renewal, active citizenship and protecting workplaces and communities, which is why we are working with employers to get a joint policy of release from work and volunteering in the community. We will work to get a better deal and better training for specials, many of whom have joined the police service because they want to become full-time officers.

The combination of 13,000 extra full-time equivalent police officers and 4,000 community support officers is more than equal to the drop in specials over the past seven years—it is quadruple the size—and it is nonsense to pretend anything else. The street robbery programme has invested additional money over and above the police grant in those areas most affected by street crime, which includes low-level thuggery.

While I am on the subject, let us put the Opposition's duplicity about the British crime survey on the record. According to the British crime survey, crime dropped by 5 per cent. last year and has fallen by 30 per cent. since 1997. The Opposition say that the British crime survey is rubbish, but it was their survey of preference for years after they set it up in 1981—Margaret Thatcher said that, and, in their bunker, the modern Conservatives are returning to Margaret Thatcher.

The British crime survey has been revered throughout the world for 23 years, in which time it has used the same methodology, but widened the sample to show what is happening to crime across the country. A recording change in 1998 and the new national recording standard in 2001 dramatically changed the amount of recorded crime, including violent crime. Reported and recorded violent crime rose from 62 to 77 per cent. over that period, which more than cancels out the increase in recorded crime between 1997 and the present day.

Mr. Eric Joyce (Falkirk, West) (Lab): I do not know what my right hon. Friend thinks, but I think that the Tories are all over the place. On 12 October, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), the shadow Attorney-General, said:

"It is certainly true that crime rates have been coming down."—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 12 October 2004; Vol. 425, c. 50WH.]

Mr. Blunkett: I am glad that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) said that, because honesty is important. If something is wrong, say so; if there is a problem with drugs in our country, say so; and if gun crime causes difficulties for young people and our communities, we must address it. However, it is no good saying that crime has increased when it has come down; it is no good saying that police numbers are lower, when they are massively higher; and it is no good saying, "We do not want community support officers," before writing to Ministers to demand more community support officers.
 
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There is no point in asking for more statistics before demanding that the Home Secretary's powers should be reduced to merely allocating a budget and setting strategic objectives. The shadow Home Secretary said that in his speech to the Tory party conference, and the policy also appeared last year in a Conservative document. One either does or does not want a proactive Home Office that bears down on crime, that takes spreading best practice seriously, that uses the police standards unit and the inspectorate to ensure that we can overcome failures, where they occur, that has the data to compare like with like and that directs the Serious Organised Crime Agency, rather than being completely hands off, as the Opposition demand.

Either one wants a Home Secretary who is held to account at the Dispatch Box and who has something to be held to account for, or one wants a Home Secretary who has a fantastically easy life and who simply says, "I have left it to the 43 forces. I have set the budget and gone out to lunch," which is an exact description of Tory party policy. The Tory party can go out to lunch next year, the year after and the year after that. When we publish our strategic plans, the Tories can go to America, they can toddle in from lunch an hour late when we debate justice and home affairs and they can take themselves wherever they like.

We need a vigorous Opposition who are intelligent and thoughtful and who act as a Government in waiting with statistics that add up, budgets that make sense and policies that address real issues. However, everyone knows—Conservative Members know this—that they will not be in government after the next general election, which is why we are acting, investing and thinking seriously about Britain's problems. We are mobilising Britain's forces to take pride in our country and do the job.

6.16 pm

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