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Linda Gilroy: The hon. Gentleman is making some—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman had concluded his speech.

7.58 pm

Mr. Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab): I shall make a brief contribution to a debate in which several hon. Members on both sides of the House have raised good points. However, one of the problems with the debate is the fact that the motion is designed to serve too many purposes, which probably explains why the shadow Home Secretary had such difficulty addressing it. There is a serious problem with guns and drugs about which several hon. Members have made valid points, but there is also a problem with the Conservatives' ludicrous promise of 40,000 extra police, which no one believes and the shadow Home Secretary could not explain. Of course, the final part of the motion refers to greater freedom for communities to direct policing, but that concept is clearly so difficult to explain that he did not bother to address it.

That seems to have been the difficulty with our debate tonight. When Members have been free to concentrate on real issues, we have heard valid contributions. However, it is absurd that the Conservative party, whose leader allowed police numbers to fall by more than 1,000 when he was Home Secretary, should now say that it will increase them at a rate of 5,000 a year and achieve a 40,000 growth within five years. It is absurd that, while the Conservatives plan to cut £1.6 billion from the Home Office budget, they say that they can afford policing costs that will run at about £1.3 billion. It would be better for the public if we did not waste time on what is clearly political nonsense designed solely to catch the odd headline and achieve nothing.

That damages the case that Opposition Members could make. I was interested when the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), who is not now present, mentioned special constables. There is a valid argument that we could make greater use of special constables. I am intrigued by the number of senior policemen who tell me that, because they cannot rota special constables, they are not as useful as they could be. We should be considering the array of support available: community support officers, special constables, and neighbourhood and other wardens.

Mr. Heath: The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. There is an analogous example in the case of the retained firefighter, who can be rostered and trained to the same high degree as a regular officer. Is there not a case for retained police officers, directly analogous to firefighters, who could fill some of the gaps and be proper, omnicompetent constables?

Mr. McCabe: I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's point. I was about to say that I accept that, at one level, we need a larger police force. I believe that we need specialised officers—people who can deliver a
 
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particular service. When the public talk about the visible uniformed presence, they want reassurance. I am not sure whether that always requires a fully trained, highly specialised police officer and I believe that there is scope for examining how we could add extra support. We would make more progress if we were all honest about that and did not waste time with ludicrous claims about police numbers that no one believes will ever be achieved.

In the same vein, we would make much more progress with the public, and with people's anxiety about crime, if we confined ourselves to talking about things that are actually true. It is easy to see how politicians get themselves locked into a position in which they bid up ideas about crime and the fear of it. We are witnessing that at the moment. However, the reality is that a small number of serious crimes are causing problems, and we should all be applying ourselves to tackling them. Against that, we should acknowledge that general crime figures are coming down. It does not pay to tell people lies about what is happening.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con) indicated dissent.

Mr. McCabe: The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. I should perhaps tell him that the West Midlands police's own figures show that crime is coming down according to all their main indicators. Burglaries, vehicle crime, street assaults and thefts are all down. I suggest that he speaks to the commander at his local operational command unit if he does not believe that that is the case.

Mr. Mitchell: If the hon. Gentleman looks at his own Government's Home Office website, he will see that, since 1997, when the Conservative Government left office, crime in the west midlands has increased.

Mr. McCabe: The hon. Gentleman is making an obvious mistake, although I do not know whether that is by design or accident. He will know that we changed the method for recording crime and we made it obvious that there would be an increase in figures based on that more accurate record. The fact is that the trend is going in a particular direction, and I think that he knows that perfectly well. Recently, when I met the chief superintendent in the operational command unit that covers my constituency, he showed me superb figures for the work that the men and women of West Midlands police are doing. Rather than trash or attack them, we should be commending them for their achievements, and I find it outrageous that people are not prepared to do that.

I concede that, despite the fact that the police are making progress, there are some problems and certain crimes that we have to be anxious about. We have heard about them tonight—drug and gun-related offences. There is also the constant fear of antisocial behaviour, which fuels people's fear of crime and makes them feel less safe even when the statistics are moving in the right direction. On the motion, therefore, we would be better served if we could concentrate on the real issues, and steer clear of nonsensical policing figures and hysterical and untrue arguments about crime.
 
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I want to make a couple of specific points about guns. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) made a number of useful points on guns, but he was wrong to emphasise compensation. That is not the route to getting guns out of the hands of criminals or to cutting the supply. If he were to look at the South African experience, he would realise that compensation is often the way to increase the flow of guns. We should be making it more difficult for people who have no reason to have a gun to have access to one. I make it clear again that I am not against legal gun clubs or people who use guns for legitimate sporting purposes, who are normally responsible and reliable. I have no problem with them, but it is far too easy for people to get their hands on guns.

I will give one example. The other week, it was possible for me to buy a gun from the eBay internet site. The way in which the sellers work is simple. They advertise an empty bag or box. The buyer bids for that bag or box, and when that is done, the seller throws in the gun for free. In this case, I paid £80 for a .22 air pistol, which is technically legal. However, the gentleman who sold it wanted to conduct the sale in a motorway service station, where he produced the gun from the boot of his car, complete with gas cylinders—which promptly took it beyond the legal range. It would have been possible for a 12-year-old child to purchase that weapon and have it sent through the post. That is why we have a problem with guns, and that is what we should be seeking to tackle. We should be trying to cut the supply.

Considering the money that an organisation such as eBay is worth, it has no need to engage in that trade. One group that proudly advertises on its site is known as Guns2thugs. I strongly recommend that hon. Members look at the site, because I can assure them that they will be appalled. We should focus our attention on cutting the supply of guns and taking active steps to reduce the number of replicas available. A police officer confronting a replica has no way of knowing whether it is a real gun.

About two years ago, according to the most recent statistics that I have seen, 85 per cent. of the incidents to which the West Midlands police armed response unit was called out involved replica weapons, but there was no way for the police to know that they were replicas at the time. If we want to take the guns out of our society, we have to find ways of ensuring that people who do not need guns do not have them.

Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington) (Lab): My hon. Friend knows that, in the Greater London area, the majority of gun crime is committed by persons using replica weapons that have been rebored so that they can be used to shoot bullets. The police and all concerned groups are calling for a complete ban on replica weapons.

Mr. McCabe : I agree entirely—that is the only logical step for us to take. It is far too easy for people to acquire replica weapons and for the weapons to be re-engineered in back-street workshops, then sold in back-street pubs or traded on things like the eBay internet site. The only thing to do is ban them. The idea that definition is a problem is absurd. If we want to stop weapons getting
 
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into the wrong hands, we can do it. It is surely not beyond the legal minds of this country to come up with a simple, straightforward definition.

That is an area in which we could make real progress and about which hon. Members on both sides of the House want something to be done. We should ask people, "Why do you need a gun?" and restrict the ways in which guns can be bought and sold. We should take every possible step to ensure that guns cannot be transferred through the postal service. It is ludicrous that guns can be sold on internet sites. We should seriously consider whether there are any present or potential laws that could be used to tackle organisations such as Guns2thugs, which proudly tells its customers that it will get them the real thing to do the real job. In this day and age in a society such as ours such things are almost beyond belief. If we focused our attention on that area we could make a big difference to communities across the country.

My final observation about today's debate is to say how struck I was by the comments of the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) about the final part of the motion and the proposal to give

"Local communities . . . greater freedom to direct the efforts of their police force".

I am slightly surprised that the Liberal Democrats intend to support the motion because I thought that two thirds of the hon. Gentleman's speech was telling hon. Members why they should not support it. It is extraordinary that he wriggled himself into opposing his own instincts; perhaps that is Liberal Democrat policy. However, he made a valid point: we should think carefully about what we mean by that phrase. It would be absurd to have direct elections for people who can control the police. That would be the last word in politicising the police and it would open the door—or at least pose a risk of doing so—to the problem of groups such as the British National party getting control of our police forces. That would be a terrible way to proceed.

To return to my earlier point about the need to deal with real crime, not the fear of crime, and not to exaggerate, we must bear it in mind that, in some areas, those who, for some political reason, had a vested interest in whipping up the fear of crime would be the ones who ended up controlling our police force. They would not make rational decisions about where crime is high, which problems need to be tackled and what type of policing would have the greatest impact. They would act solely out of narrow prejudice, bias and political positioning. That would damage the police and the public's relations with the police.

Such a policy makes a nice soundbite—it is superficially attractive—but it would have long-term consequences that none of us should want. I am glad that the shadow Home Secretary decided not to refer to that part of the motion because I would have hated to hear him trying to defend such a thing. It is in our interests to drop such notions, which would not help us to tackle crime but would damage the public's relationship with the police. I cannot see how any decent law-abiding citizen would gain from that.
 
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8.15 pm

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