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Linda Gilroy: I thank my hon. Friend for that information. The cost of issuing such a ticket is £2, because the police time involved in bureaucracy is eliminated, compared with £90 if the case has to go to court. So measures that the Leader of the Opposition ridiculed at Prime Minister's Question Time only a short time ago are proving extremely effective.
 
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Plymouth also took part in the summer alcohol misuse enforcement campaign, which involved developing a partnership approach to tackle alcohol-related violence and disorder and to target those who encourage under-age and binge drinking in our city. In the nine weeks from 8 July to 5 September, the campaign proved somewhat successful, as Ministers found when they visited Plymouth.

A small part of that programme included a night bus pilot scheme, with part of the money coming from the Home Office and part from Plymouth city council. On two weekends, arrangements were made to ensure that buses were available at the times when clubs tend to close and people tip out on to the streets in large numbers—sometimes 10,000 people do so on Union street in Plymouth—and the buses took them away to the outlying estates. That seemed to prove effective, even though it was available only on those two weekends.

The programme also made use of a dispersal order under section 30 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, which was in force between the end of July and the beginning of September and was often used to disperse groups on the streets in Plymouth.

What was the result of that summer campaign? Offences of grievous bodily harm were down by 50 per cent.; common assault was down 18 per cent., most of the reduction occurring in weeks 4 to 9 while the dispersal powers were in use; street offences were reduced; and there was a spread in the peak of offending, which tends to happen every Thursday to Saturday night. When the clubs close, crime tends to peak and policing is difficult, but running those buses seemed to help to spread the peaks, helping the police in the area and producing the sort of results that I have just mentioned.

If the figures on offences of drunkenness are removed from the area covered by that project—drunkenness is not part of the Home Office violent crime statistics—violent crime fell by 2 per cent., against an increasing 10.2 per cent. trend in the southern sector, which is the surrounding area, since April 2004. Using those powers and the partnership approach proved very effective. Indeed, the city council and the police will consider how to build on this through the community safety partnership in the busy period, the run-up to Christmas.

Plymouth has also made good use of antisocial behaviour orders, on which we also enjoy strong partnership work, involving the youth offending team and ensuring that we explore alternatives before using ASBOs as a last resort. There are currently more than 40 ASBOs in the area covered by the Plymouth basic command unit. Their huge potential to reduce crime has been illustrated in Stonehouse, which I have often referred to as being the poorest ward in England in 1997—thankfully, we are moving away from that position now—since proceedings were instigated against Clark Graham, a prolific offender who was obviously responsible, with his associates, for a substantial amount of crime in that area. If the trend that was established when the ASBO had been in place for a month or two continued, it would represent an enormous 28 per cent. annual reduction in crime in the area, a 25 per cent. reduction in police calls and a reduction in calls to my office in Plymouth. A
 
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substantial number of my constituents have contacted my office there and said, "Please help us", and the ASBO is providing an effective means of doing so.

We have also used the new powers to close two crack houses in Prince Rock and one on the Barbican. Again, that has made a transformational difference to residents there, bringing a new calm to areas that were previously blighted by crime and antisocial behaviour. The local evening paper quoted a resident who said:

"The community feels a lot safer. At times we used to have up to 40 people hanging around the houses. They would call round at any time of day or night and shout up at the windows or throw stones to wake them up. We were finding it impossible to live."

Again, the new powers and initiatives that the Home Office has introduced are proving very effective in bringing greater peace and security to parts of Plymouth.

My hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety knows that I go out most Saturday mornings with my team to conduct a roving surgery. Over the past six months, I have conducted an antisocial behaviour survey in that way. One of the things that I have found is that crime is incredibly localised. In some parts of the city, the majority of people still rate drugs as an issue, but in other places not very far away, drugs do not feature at all in the survey. People say things quite spontaneously. There is no tick box for this; people just fill in the part of the form for other comments. They say, "Police are much more visible", "I'm quite happy—no major issues", "Things are better", "Area has cleaned up", "Things pretty good now" and "Very happy with all local issues." I am not sure how this fits with antisocial behaviour, but some say, "Pensions are good", "Health service better now" and "Vandalism better than it was." So the Home Secretary's remark that we should not lose sight of the good news stories is extremely important.

We have also had considerable success with the introduction of neighbourhood beat managers, who are beginning to instil confidence in communities that they will be listened to. As I know from some of the phone calls that I made this weekend, there is still an enormous amount to be done. Over the weekend, I put about four or five people in touch with the contact for their neighbourhood beat managers, who are keen to hear from and work with the communities. For years, the communities have been asking for the police to go back on the beat, and with the extra police numbers that we now have in Plymouth it is possible to make that happen.

My hon. Friend the Minister appreciates the partnership work that underpins all that. There will be an awful lot of competition for the together programme bids that she or the Home Secretary is considering. I hope that, from what she and her colleagues have seen in Plymouth, we will be one of those successful bidders. She can be absolutely certain that we shall make very good use of that programme. If the money for special initiatives is not welcome in Surrey Heath, it is certainly welcome in Plymouth. I am already thinking, with Chief Superintendent Maurice Watts, of things that could be done. Just today, I was talking to him about how we could crack down on binge drinking and the resulting misbehaviour that plagues our communities.
 
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I recently saw on London television that one of the police forces, I think, in or around London is using the embarrassment factor of having a large bucket of soapy water—containing disinfectant, I hope—to clean up the mess made by people who urinate in the street. The Home Secretary was very concerned to hear of the extent to which that is a feature in some of our communities in Plymouth. Zero tolerance of those antisocial offenders has a bearing on creating the climate in which we can achieve major reductions in all sorts of crime, including violent crime.

There are many good news stories in Plymouth, but my hon. Friend the Minister will also understand that we have persistent levels of serious violent crime, including murder in the city.

Two such crimes stick out in my mind and it would be remiss of me to concentrate only on the good news stories in Plymouth. I am sure that people in Plymouth will recognise these cases, the first of which is the tragic death two years ago of baby Perran. Despite many reports from members of the community, he died a tragic death. He should never have been left in the care of the couple who were his so-called parents, and he died in tragic circumstances. They were drugs users, and reports from people in the community should have been taken note of, but they were not. However, when a ward has approaching 200 looked-after children in a population of only 10,000, the challenges for the public services are significant.

The same is true of the recent tragic death of Flo Seccombe. Last week, her murderer, Hartshorn, was put down for 14 or 15 years—for once, a sentence that fits the crime. The young man had been drinking and high on drugs for many hours before he committed an unprovoked knife attack on a woman who was sleeping rough in a bus station. It took many months to trace him, because some of the many criminals of that description better fitted the profile than he did.

People tend to call for reviews after such tragedies, and while it is important to learn the lessons, we must pay attention to what has happened before and to the action plans that come from the reviews. When reviews are put in place, they often do not recognise that things have already been done in the community in response to previous reviews and to the stringent audit and inspection processes that we now have across the public services—whether local government, social services, health services and so on. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety will agree that it is important that those reviews are proportionate to, and take account of, changes already in hand from previous inspections and reviews.

We have had a number of such reports in Plymouth—from social services, the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection, internal reviews of serious cases and incidents, and the good guidance emanating from Lord Laming's review into the tragic death of Victoria Climbié. Many of them have already resulted in changes to senior management, to action and recovery plans, to closer working relationships, to more joined-up working between the public services and to joint commissioning of services between social and health services.
 
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I worry that, because the reviews are expensive in terms of management time in particular, money and management time could be better used in developing front-line services and in investing in things such as Sure Start, children's trusts, programmes to tackle domestic violence and all the initiatives that the hon. Member for Surrey Heath so derided. For example, substance abuse and alcohol dependency contribute much to the circumstances that result in the tragic deaths that are all too frequently reported in the press. Some would agree that investing in preventive measures has far more to contribute to turning round the fractured families and communities about which we all share a concern.

7.44 pm

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