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Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon) (Con): May I commend you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on your wisdom in calling me immediately after the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy)? I wish to raise one of the city-wide constituency cases that she has just mentioned. I agree that many good things are happening in Plymouth and that we are blessed with an excellent police force that is well led by Chief Inspector Maurice Watts. Much progress has been made. However, it is worrying that violent crime is still on the increase, and that is one of the points that I want to address in my remarks.
Linda Gilroy: I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman was listening when I said that serious violent crime had gone down and that the programmes over the summer period in which more people were caught had resulted in the figures going up.
Mr. Streeter: I am grateful for that point but, not many weeks ago, I sat in the same meeting with Chief Inspector Watts as the hon. Lady. We were told that violent crime was on the increase, and I certainly believe that to be the case in Plymouth. Many things are positive but, sadly, we must address that problem.
I want to commend my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary for a very powerful and positive speech setting out serious points and asking serious questions of the Home Secretary. I confess that I normally enjoy the Home Secretary's speeches. He is a talented man and speaks well. I am afraid that I do not know what went wrong today. We were treated not to a serious response to some very credible questions but to sixth-form party political debating points. That did him no service and did not grace the debate. I was disappointed to witness that; it is not normally the way that he performs.
We have heard a little of the infamous saying by which the Government came to power claiming that they would be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. I want to tackle a couple of issues relating to that in what I hope will be a fairly brief speech. A primary cause of crime is drug addiction, and in Plymouth we face a serious problem. We heard earlier that Nottingham has perhaps 6,000 heroin addicts and crack cocaine users, and we normally use a figure of 2,500 to 3,000 for Plymouth. I want to put it on the record again that the waiting time for treatment for a
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young heroin addict who bravely comes to the decision that he wants to kick the habit is still about 12 to 18 months. That is far too long to be meaningful.
The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety (Ms Hazel Blears) indicated dissent.
Mr. Streeter: The Minister frowns and shakes her head, but I invite her to look carefully at the statistics. I have checked recently with some of the voluntary agencies that are involved with these brave young lives, and they confirm those figures. She may have figures that come from a mandarin in Whitehall, but I assure her that young people are waiting months before they get the treatment and help that they require to kick a drugs habit that is fuelling crime and causing much distress in Plymouth.
Another primary cause of crime is surely mental health difficulties, which seem to affect many people and may be on the increase. I raise with the Minister the troubling case that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton mentioned about the recent tragic murder of Flo Seccombe and the conviction on Friday of her killer, Ian Hartshorn. I refer briefly to something that the judge said when he passed sentence in that case. A newspaper report points out:
"Judge Taylor said that in the run up to the killing Hartshorn had been drinking for 13 hours on an empty stomach, had taken cannabis and also his daily amphetamines.
The judge said: 'You ignored your curfew and stayed out getting into difficulties'.
Judge Taylor said that Hartshorn eventually went to Bretonside Bus Station where he came across 'the prone figure of Flo Seccombe as she slept in a duvet'.
He said she was a 'frail and particularly vulnerable person who posed no trouble to Hartshorn as she was fast asleep and snoring'.
He said Hartshorn told her to stop snoring or he would stab her and when she didn't he 'thrust a knife into her neck so that it severed a vital blood vessel on the opposite side'."
As the story unfolded, it became clear that, before the killing, Mr. Hartshorn had been to seek help from the psychiatric services in Plymouth.
"Paul Dunkels, defending, in mitigation, said to the court: 'He thought there was something wrong with him.' . . . Hartshorn was referred to an adolescent consultant psychiatrist on September 23, 2003, when he showed signs of 'frustration and anger'. Mr Dunkels said that the psychiatrist said Hartshorn expressed 'paranoid, morbid thoughts about his family, constantly wanting to know they were safe'. He was also suffering from night sweats, panic attacks, and had 'particular thoughts of harming other people'.
Mr Dunkels said Hartshorn 'assaulted his own sister in the past and has stopped himself from stabbing her by removing himself from her presence'."
The psychiatric report on Hartshorn concluded that he
"was not in need of psychiatric care"
and Judge Taylor said of the report:
"I could not believe that I read that"—
and nor could I. It is easy to second-guess professional people, but it seems that there is a crisis in mental health support and provision in Plymouth, Devon and perhaps other parts of the country.
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What do I want from Ministers? I do not expect to hear answers about the specific case this evening, but I invite them to call for an urgent report on the case to determine what lessons that can be learned from it so that law-abiding people in Devon and Cornwall are kept safe from violence flowing from mental health problems. If the Minister calls for such a report, I hope that she will write to me to tell me how it is getting along.
I pay tribute to the police for the way in which they tracked down and prosecuted the killer of Flo Seccombe. They attribute that to good old-fashioned detective work, and I agree with them. I pay tribute especially to Detective Chief Inspector Andy Boulting and his team for solving such a difficult case.
I put it on record that I appreciate that it is extremely difficult to deal with disturbed young people. We should not deprive people of their liberty lightly, yet we cannot force people to choose what is best for their lives. The provision of quality care, and especially residential care, for such troubled young people is expensive, and such issues raise all kinds of complex challenges. I accept all those facts, but Ministers have an overriding duty to protect the public.
Ian Hartshorn had a turbulent history and was well known to the authorities. When he killed poor Flo Seccombe, he had just come off a tagging scheme, which was the sentence for burglaries that he had committed, and he was under a police curfew. However, the murder took place in the middle of the night, so what was the point of him being under a curfew that did not work? Will the Minister review how the curfew system operated in the case?
Ian Hartshorn was in supervised social services accommodation, although I am not yet clear about precisely what kind. What kind of supervision allows a disturbed young man to drink himself senseless and wander around the streets of Plymouth with a knife in his hand in the small hours of the night? Will the Minister call for a report on that matter?
My main worry about the case is the fact that Hartshorn had a history of mental health problems and that he presented himself to the authorities to ask for help only nine days before the murder. He was an alcoholic at the age of 11 and indulged in self-harm. He was consistently involved in a range of crimes for which he had received a variety of sentences, and he was infatuated with knives and other sharp objects, but when he went for help nothing was done. How could a psychiatric consultant conclude that he was not in need of psychiatric care? Judge Taylor could not believe that, and neither can I. Will the Minister please examine that matter?
I am worried about the way in which mental health services are delivered in Plymouth and I suspect that there are such concerns elsewhere. Perhaps too many agencies are involved. We heard earlier that the answer to all our problems was a multi-agency approach, but sometimes that is another way of saying that no single person or organisation takes responsibility, and I fear that that is happening in Plymouth.
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The report on the case in the Plymouth Evening Herald said:
"A spokesman for the Strategic Health Authority, overseeing all health care, said: 'The South West Peninsula Strategic Health Authority will consider the internal investigations into the care and treatment of Mr Hartshorn by Plymouth PCT and Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust before deciding on what further action is necessary."
It seems that the primary care trust, the hospital trust and social services are involved in the process, but who is responsible for delivering mental health services in Plymouth? How could a disturbed young man such as Ian Hartshorn slip through the net in such a way? Does anyone know what is supposed to happen to him and people similar to him? Perhaps they should receive institutional care, but if so, where? Plymouth has the Glenbourne unit at Derriford hospital, but that small unit is nearly always full, so where are people supposed to go? Such people may use halfway house accommodation, but the rules in such places are so lax that nocturnal prowling with a knife is permitted. We need to get more of a grip on the situation.
As the case was raging in our local media throughout the weekend, a person told me about their experiences of dealing with Plymouth's mental health services. His son had been on cannabis and had tried to kill his parents—I am sure that hon. Members will agree that that is a serious matter. The son spent two months in the Derriford hospital psychiatric unit, and in the first two weeks after he left the unit, 13 different people tried to help him. He did not see the same person twice. After that time, he received only one call per week from the mental health services to his mobile phone. He is now slipping back into his old and violent ways. I am forced to conclude that there are insufficient places for disturbed young people in Plymouth and that they do not get the right treatment from the mental health services. That situation contributes significantly to Plymouth's crime levels, so I ask the Minister to address the problem.
The pressure on services is getting worse. Recent revelations that cannabis can cause a violent reaction in 10 per cent. of users alone should have caused the Government to rethink their idiotic and shameful decision to reclassify cannabis as a class C drug. The more that I learn about the case—I read that Hartshorn had taken both cannabis and vodka—the more I realise that such substances can cause certain people to have a serious reaction that can lead to violent crime.
The problems are likely to increase. More and more young people in our society are growing up in homes that fail to nurture and support them. More and more young people are on hard drugs or experiment with cannabis and indulge in binge drinking. More and more young people are being affected by disturbing experiences. That situation will produce—and is producing—more and more young people who experience various forms of mental health challenges. For their own sake, such disturbed young people need better help than they are receiving at present, and Ministers need to take more effective action to protect the public.
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An internal review is now under way into Plymouth's mental health agencies, but that is not enough. I ask the Minister to intervene and call for a full report before someone else gets killed.
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