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Mr. Oaten: Let me just explain our position, then Members can cross-examine me on it if they wish.

In my judgment, going beyond 10,000 police would be unrealistic. The Home Secretary does not portray our funding figures accurately. We believe that providing 10,000 police and 20,000 community support officers in the course of a Parliament is an effective way forward.

Mrs. Humble: We have heard a lot of discussion about police and community support officers and community wardens, but other people are involved in reducing crime. I met some of them a couple of weeks ago in Fleetwood—they are the individuals who help people with drug and alcohol abuse problems. We need to take a multi-agency approach. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is doing that by targeting the small group of people who, through their drug abuse, contribute to a disproportionately large amount of crime?

Mr. Oaten: I am pleased that I accepted the hon. Lady's intervention, because I could not agree more. The Government have been at their best in relation to such policies, particularly in youth justice, where I have witnessed some of the exciting schemes that are taking place. If the Government are brave enough to extend
 
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that beyond the youth area to work closely with probation services, that will be a creative way in which to tackle crime.

We made the judgment that 10,000 police is a realistic approach to take over the next five years.

Brian Cotter: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not only the numbers but how the police are deployed that is important? I had a meeting in my local police station recently and I was reminded that some incidents give rise to eight hours of paperwork.

Mr. Oaten: That is an excellent point. The Home Secretary listed some ways in which he has tried to cut the time spent on paperwork, but whenever I speak to police that is still one of the first subjects that they bring up. A police officer in Devon last week told me that following every incident of domestic violence to which they are called, they have to fill in a matrix of 17 questions about every individual in the house. He told me that following an incident that was merely a domestic row and involved no abuse, the police were at the scene for only two minutes, but the process of filling in the matrix took about three hours. We should give the front-line police the ability to make a professional judgment on whether it is really necessary to fill in such forms.

Mr. Drew: The problem is not only what the state asks the police to do but the fact that if the procedures are not carried out properly—regardless of whether they are laborious—a defence solicitor can point that out and the case may be dismissed. Any police officer knows that that is the dilemma.

Mr. Oaten: Absolutely. We have talked before about our increasingly litigious society and the blame culture. Perhaps we need to allow police officers to get it wrong on occasions, as the price for giving them some discretion. The problem is that, in some sensitive cases, the consequences of getting it wrong can be tragic. I accept that it is a difficult balance.

I found it interesting that the shadow Home Secretary chose to ignore the part of the motion referring to an extra 40,000 police and to concentrate mainly on gun crime. We have a problem with the 40,000, because we do not think that it is frank or fair to talk of such a figure. The Home Secretary said that the figure is more likely to be 20,000 over a Parliament.

The idea that we can achieve the 40,000 figure by having some sort of offshore processing for asylum seekers has not been properly explained to the House. We have tried to identify the island before, and offered to bring in atlases, and now we are told that an offshore process has been developed, but we need many more details about how it will happen, where the funds will come from and what evidence there is that it would be cheaper than the existing system. The question was asked earlier whether it would be possible to begin recruitment immediately, and I wonder whether it would be possible to move immediately to an offshore processing system. There are many gaps in the Conservatives' proposals, and I believe that they did themselves an injustice in coming up with a 40,000 figure that, in the rigour of a general election campaign, will be seen by the public as unrealistic.
 
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Our police need to be more visible, and one way of achieving that is to start giving them more technology. There have been real breakthroughs in technology in some forces, and some police officers have the same kind of kit that I have—a mobile phone and a palmtop, and perhaps a mobile fingerprinting kit—but that is quite rare, and we need to do much more to give them technology that will enable them to be on the street much longer. If one calls out the AA or the RAC, the patrols that arrive will have more kit than the average policeman on the street. The Government would be wise to invest more in that area.

The Home Secretary briefly mentioned that he wants to do something to tackle the problem of the amount of police time wasted in magistrates courts, which would certainly be welcome. I hope that the Minister can say more about that initiative. Far too many police officers waste mornings outside courtrooms not being called and finding that other professionals asked to give evidence are called before them. We need to change the rota planning.

Mr. Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester) (Lab): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most effective things that the police could do in working with magistrates is to implement an antisocial behaviour order on conviction, as that has a serious effect on low-level crimes? If an ASBO is active on someone when they come out after a short sentence, there is not much bureaucracy involved, because it has all been completed already to get the conviction in the first place.

Mr. Oaten: My point about magistrates courts concerned police having their time wasted when being called to give evidence, and I hope that we will hear from the Home Office about plans to reduce that. Clearly, ASBOs can be a useful tool, which police and magistrates can work through together, but my experience is that other measures also need to be in place to change the individual's pattern of behaviour over the longer term.

The final part of the motion concerns the need for policing to be more local and for the community to have more say and more direct involvement in what the police do. I was very disappointed that the shadow Home Secretary did not expand on that point, because there is an interesting debate to be had among all three parties on what we mean by localism, and where we are going. The previous shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), talked about sheriffs and elected individuals, and the Home Secretary has a consultation paper out on the concept of more directly elected bodies.

As a democrat, I am extremely hostile to such ideas, and not, as one might expect, keen on direct election for those who would run the police. There is not a great appetite out there for individuals to vote in elections, as we have seen in both general and local council elections. The idea that people on a rundown estate with severe problems are going to rush out to take part in this is not entirely convincing. The danger is that, on a low turnout, a set of individuals will vote with particular ideas that may not chime with our own about how the police should be run or, worse still, BNP-style
 
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candidates may run successfully in such areas. That could lead to a headlong collision with a chief constable who is given orders that he or she finds impossible to implement, but that will be hard to say no to, given the democratic mandate. I advise the other two parties to tread carefully in this area, because there could be damaging consequences.

As the Government have acknowledged, tackling crime involves being tough on its causes, too. The Government have not done enough on that. I would like to have talked more in this debate about their prison policy and tackling reoffending, and about education and retraining to make punishment work and reduce crime committed by individuals who have already been to prison. We need to tackle that, as reoffending rates are far too high. I would like to have been able to explore issues about community punishment, on which the Government have some good ideas, including their concept of prison without bars. We could do more with tagging and with giving the community a say in sentencing.

I hope that we can step back a little from knocking the figures back and forth and acknowledge that there are some complex issues. Given what the shadow Home Secretary said on firearms, we will support the motion, despite the 40,000 figure—the Conservatives have made some positive suggestions on firearms.

6.39 pm

Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): I do not represent the area in which Danielle Beccan was killed—it is represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell)—but I lived most of my adult life in St. Ann's. For many years, I was the chair of governors of the school that Danielle attended, and all my children went to that school. I now represent the adjoining constituency, which includes areas such as the Meadows, Radford and Lenton.

Such places are often caricatured as areas of conflict, in which gangs of young people are permanently at violent odds with each other. Indeed, I regret some of the past week's press coverage, which has painted the city that has become my home in terms that I often do not recognise. I walked around the streets in many of those communities over the weekend, and talked to families that I have known for decades. The people who make up Nottingham are kind, decent and generous, and the city needs to be understood and recognised as comprising such people.

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