Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
HOME OFFICE
13 DECEMBER 2004
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Welcome
to the Committee of Public Accounts, where today we are looking
at the Comptroller and Auditor General's report: Reducing Crime:
the Home Office working with Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships.
We are very pleased to welcome back Mr Leigh Lewis, Permanent
Secretary for Crime, Policing, Counter Terrorism and Delivery-
a big job you have there, Mr Lewis, and we look forward to hearing
from you; and probably for the first time Professor Paul Wiles,
Chief Scientific Adviser and Director of Research Development
and Statistics. Mr Lewis, would you look at paragraphs 3.13 and
3.14. Mr Lewis, why are there so many partnerships?
Mr Lewis: Thank
you for your welcome to us, Chairman. Originally, when the Crime
and Disorder Act 1998 was passed it was thought important that
in effect in every local authority area it was right to establish
a crime and disorder reduction partnership in order to bring to
bear all the resources and all of the key partners in that area
together, to take action to reduce crime. That has led to the
present position, where we have 376 CDRPs, 354 in England and
22 Community Safety Partnerships in Wales. With the passing of
time, the question of whether that is the right number has become
a more important one, and as possibly you will know, in the recently
published Police Reform White Paper, the Government announced
that it is going to review that section of the Crime and Disorder
Act, with a view to reporting to ministers at the end of January.
One of the questions which that review will cover is whether there
is a case for reducing the number of CDRPs.
Q2 Chairman: So we have 376 in England
and Wales; we have 155 youth offending teams; we have 42 criminal
justice boards: how many should there be to increase their effectiveness,
do you think?
Mr Lewis: I do not know, and I
do not pre-judge the outcome of that review. As you say, we have
a number of different groupings. As you say, we have 42 local
criminal justice boards, and they mirror the number of police
forces other than in the City of London; and we have other groupings
of BCU local authorities. This inherently is not entirely simple,
and that is why we do want to look at it from first principles
and ask ourselves what is the most effective structure now for
trying to make sure that on the one hand we have effective local
engagement, but on the other we do not have a proliferation of
too many bodies, some of which may be too small to be totally
effective.
Q3 Chairman: Would you look at paragraph
2.10, please, page 23? Mr Lewis, when are you going to stop these
partnerships trying to re-invent the wheel and just get them to
adopt good practice?
Mr Lewis: I think that we have
actually done a great deal to spread good practice and to try
and ensure that we are not allowing everyone to re-invent the
wheel. I just preface that remark by saying that in every area
the issues, the position and the problems are always going to
be different, and we do want to ensure that there is flexibility
to allow local solutions to be tailored to local issues and problems.
However, we do a great deal to seek to spread good practice, and
you may want me to go into more detail later on in our hearing,
but for example just in headline terms we have a publication Crime
Reduction News, which I would be happy to let members see
copies of, which is absolutely dedicated to spreading best practice
around that community. We have a very successful website which
has exactly that aim, and we have our crime reduction centre based
in Easingwold, near York, which is part of the Home Office, which
organises the programme of structured seminars to spread good
practice. We are trying on the one hand not to stifle innovation
but on the other hand to ensure that lessons are learned and good
practice is spread.
Q4 Chairman: The whole purport of my
questions in this first few minutes of the hearing is that you
should have fewer partnerships; they should have a simpler funding
stream and they should adopt the best practices that are already
working. If you can understand the nature of our conversation,
you can tailor answers in any way you wish.
Mr Lewis: Chairman, I very much
understand the thrust of your questions. It may be that as we
conduct this review, that is where we would want to go. However,
I do not want to understate the value that we have achieved from
having that number of separate crime and disorder reduction partnerships,
nor the value that we have achieved by being willing to allow
innovation and flexibility.
Q5 Chairman: Fair enough. If you look
at paragraph 2.7 on page 20 you can see some pretty obvious thoughts
of what makes for a good project, but give us a flavour of what
are the most successful projects.
Mr Lewis: I will give you some
examples of projects that I think have been successful, because
there have been a number. There is the Tower Project in Blackpool,
which is referred to specifically in the report, but there have
been other similar projects such as in Ashfield and north-east
Derbyshire that have looked at the issue of prolific offenders,
that small number of individuals in absolute terms, but who commit
very large numbers of crimes. That has been of absolutely pivotal
importance in developing national policy. In September of this
year we launched the Prolific and Other Priority Offender Programme
nationwide, which is targeted on those roughly 5,000 to 7,000
offenders who, according to all our information at the Home Office,
are responsible for a highly disproportionate amount of crime.
In rolling out that programme nationally the Tower Project was
of fundamental importance in terms of learning. I can give you
two other examples, because I do not want to take up too much
time.
Q6 Chairman: You can always wheel them
out in the course of the hearing to impress my colleagues!
Mr Lewis: Just two more at this
stage: there is the women's safety unit project in Cardiff, a
support centre working with victims of domestic violence, which
has undoubtedly informed the whole national domestic violence
strategy and Domestic Violence Bill, and the Criminal Justice
Interventions Programme in Hackney, which was all about supporting
drug misusing offenders, has undoubtedly been one of the influences
on our national drugs intervention programme.
Q7 Chairman: Are you confident that all
your partnerships have learned the lessons from these successful
projects?
Mr Lewis: I think that would be
a very bold claim, and it is not one which I would want to assert
with that degree of certainty. What I would say, for example,
in relation to the first of those projects, the Prolific Offender
Project, is that that is now a nationwide programme: every single
CDRP throughout England and Wales is now running a prolific offender
programme.
Q8 Chairman: Why do partnerships not
collaborate more to share staff and resources?
Mr Lewis: Increasingly they do
in some cases, for example if you take that programme which I
have just referred to: four of our partnerships in Dorset, which
are small partnerships, are now collaborating more. In a sense,
we live in a country where the problems do differ in some key
respects from location to location, and this is one area where
I do not think the man from Whitehall always knows best. Second,
you can inevitably have a kind of natural disinclination to share
good practice and to work with other partnerships. People can
sometimes be inclined to think that if it is not invented here
then in a sense it cannot really be a solution to our problems.
One of the things we are trying to do through the methods I have
described, and through our government offices, which are key in
this respect, is to try and break down any such barriers and try
and ensure that good practice really is spread and resources are
pooled where that is appropriate.
Q9 Chairman: Would you please look at
page 32, paragraph 3.17? These partnerships came into being in
1999 and up to November 2003 they were not required to self-assess
themselves, were they? Why does it take so long to get any sort
of framework for self-assessment?
Mr Lewis: That is right. I think
probably with hindsight we should have introduced what we now
have, that is a self-assessment framework. As you quite rightly
say, that was introduced in November 2003. It would be wrong to
say that before then there had been no attempt to assess the quality
of partnerships—that was very much the role of government
offices working with each individual partnership. However, it
is true to say that the self-assessment framework which we introduced
in November of last year, and which is based on best practice,
in terms of the quality assurance framework, does now give us
a very clear framework within which partnerships can assess whether
or not they are doing well.
Q10 Chairman: The last question I want
to ask you is on the way you allocate funding, and this is dealt
with in paragraph 3.6 on page 28. These partnerships started in
1999, as I said; they started off with 14 different types of grant
and then simplified down to three, and now they are simplified
down to one. Why has it taken five years for you to simplify the
way that these partnerships are funded?
Mr Lewis: Because we have been
learning as we have gone along, and because in the very early
days of the Crime Reduction Programme, we did not know as much
about crime and how to reduce it as we do now. It seemed then
more logical to fund via a succession of individual funding schemes,
each tackling particular issues and problems. That has had some
signal success. I am pleased that the NAO report does believe
that this programme overall has contributed to the reduction in
crime—and for my own part I believe it has.
Q11 Chairman: Do we have any idea? We
have 5.9 million crimes in 2003-04. What the public if they were
attending this hearing, I think, would want to know about is how
much practical difference all this worthy work has made on the
ground.
Mr Lewis: I do not think we can—and
it is a question I would love to be able to answer as well—know
as an absolute the degree to which this programme, as opposed
to lots of other things we have been doing, has contributed to
that reduction in crime. It is almost inherently unknowable. What
is clear—and I share the judgment of the National Audit
Office and this report—is that this programme has contributed,
I would say significantly, to that reduction in crime.
Q12 Mr Steinberg: Mr Lewis, I expect
a lot of my colleagues will pick up these points, because a lot
of them hit you in the face, do they not? Before I start questioning
you on the report itself, is it right that the total amount spent
is almost £1 billion?
Mr Lewis: Yes, it is.
Q13 Mr Steinberg: How many police on
the beat could you have for £1 billion?
Mr Lewis: I am afraid I could
not answer that question—
Q14 Mr Steinberg: Of course you can!
£1 billion—have you—
Mr Lewis: I am simply not able,
I am afraid, to do the mental arithmetic in my head that quickly,
so I apologise to you for that, but I will let you have the answer.
In a sense, your question is rather suggesting that these are
either/ors, and I do not think they are. Of course, this Government
believes that having more police officers is extremely important.
We have more police officers now in this country than—
Q15 Mr Steinberg: This is not Prime Minister's
Question Time, Mr Lewis. I have heard all these statistics before—it
is okay. I just want to know how many police £1 billion would
pay for on our streets, and I am really surprised you cannot tell
me. If you could let us know, I would be very grateful. I am also
confused by the report as well because, again, like Prime Minister's
Question Time, we get bombarded with statistics. According to
this report, the British Crime Survey informed us that crime has
fallen since 1995 by 34%, yet the statistic given by the police
is that for the same length of time, crime has risen. What is
the truth?
Mr Lewis: I can certainly make
a stab at answering that question, but I wonder if Professor Wiles,
who is our expert in the department on this whole area, might
like to take that question.
Professor Wiles: The issue here
is how much you are looking at what has happened to overall crime.
We have to take account of how much crime the public reports to
the police, how much of the crime reported to the police is recorded
by the police, and whether both those things change over time.
Unless we understand that, then it is difficult to understand
the relationship between those two numbers. The British Crime
Survey, because it is based on what individuals and households
tell us directly has happened to them, are not mediated through
the propensity to report or record, undoubtedly gives us a more
accurate trend for crime, as it affects households and individuals.
I would stress that because, obviously, not all crime is against
households and individuals, and adult members of the households,
not children. There are limitations, but nevertheless that does
give us a better trend line, and that is the first thing. The
second thing to remember—and I am sure you are aware of
this—is that there have been a couple of things that have
happened to police-recorded crime which have changed the amount
of crime that is recorded, irrespective of how much crime is actually
occurring. The first is that we changed the counting rules quite
early in the time of this Government to mean that relatively minor
violence was now being recorded in the annual publication of crime
statistics, whereas before it had not been—and that is also
true of some lesser criminal damage as well. Secondly—
Q16 Mr Steinberg: I only have ten minutes,
so can you—
Professor Wiles: Of course, I
will try and speed up. Secondly, the Association of Chief Police
Officers has put in a new national crime recording standard, which
means that the police overall are recording more crime than it
did in the past, especially minor violence and criminal damage.
You have to take this into account when you are looking at those
two figures.
Q17 Mr Steinberg: I am sorry, but I am
still confused.
Professor Wiles: Crime has been
going down for a longer period at a steeper rate than in the memory
of anybody in this room.
Q18 Mr Steinberg: So why are the police
saying they are getting more and more crimes then?
Professor Wiles: The police are
not getting more and more crimes; they are recording more crimes
that are being reported to them, and the public are reporting
more crime than they used to in the past.
Q19 Mr Steinberg: I am totally confused,
as I say. The police say there are more crimes occurring.
Professor Wiles: The police are
recording more crime. Police-recorded crime shows an increase
in some categories—and not all categories, by the way—burglary
has gone down, even on police-recorded crime, since 1997 by 20%
and vehicle crime has gone down 19% on police-recorded crime,
since 1997. The categories of police-recorded crime have gone
up on the two I identified early on—violence, particularly
minor violence, and criminal damage. The British Crime Survey
shows that violence is actually going down: more of it is being
reported and more of it is being recorded.
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