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Mr. Luke: I apologise for missing part of the Minister's speech. I had to deal with an urgent issue outside the House. However, I am sure that the speech was expertly crafted and delivered with great thought.
I do not believe that any debate of this nature can seem untimely and any focus on the issue must be welcome, whether it comes before the imminent publication of the Select Committee report on hate crime or after it. We need to continue to focus on this: tackling the problem is an evolutionary process based on awareness, discussion and, I hope, promoting alternative responses to the issues that we face.
As a Select Committee member, I know that we took a lot of evidence on the specific issue and that the Minister has already taken note of some of our suggestions, including on disability. The order that has been put through the House gives more emphasis to hate crimes against people with a disability. We welcomed that and congratulated the Minister on it at that stage.
A multi-agency approach is needed, and I shall speak briefly on two elements that are vital to it. The first has to do with education. The hon. Member for East Antrim (Mr. Beggs) set out a positive agenda that is followed in many schools, but made the point that more must be done, despite the good start.
The Minister said that of all constituencies represented in Committee, his constituency—Warley—probably has the greatest mix of ethnic groups. Dundee has a fairly significant ethnic minority population, although it is not as large as that in his area. Part of my involvement in a multi-agency approach was as a housing convener, so I can talk with some experience of the issues to be faced. Dundee city council was the first council to evict a tenant for racial abuse of a member of the Asian community. A provision on that was written into the local authority's tenancy agreements. Some comments were made about that at that stage.
Let me return to the subject of education: we need to concentrate on these issues early. During my time in local government, I, like the hon. Member for Belfast, South, represented a university area. It had a large concentration of different ethnic groupings and there was a large concentration of children from those groups in the school there. There were representatives from Northern Ireland, too, as of all the universities in the United Kingdom, Dundee has one of the highest percentages of students from Northern Ireland.
There was a wide mix of people, so ensuring that there was understanding of the different ethnic values and religious festivals was an important part of that school's curriculum, because there was often trouble in the playground, which parents, including me, had to
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address. That was important for my own children, who obviously would have been involved with different groups, and for constituents' children who felt that they were being bullied by the white majority. In fact, there was no white majority and there were large numbers of ethnic students at that school.
With regard to the ethos within the Department of Education and the objectives of the education service, I was glad to hear from the Minister, when he answered the question I put earlier, that there is an obligation in relation to the school board regulations in Northern Ireland.
I raised several issues relating to housing and I am sorry that I did not hear the Minister's response on those. Housing, as part of a multi-agency approach, has a fundamental role to play in tackling racism. I had the privilege of standing in for the Minister—last month, I think—at the Chartered Institute of Housing conference and of giving an address on its report on social housing in Northern Ireland.
The topic of the conference had to do with diversity and sustainability. There was quite a focus on the multi-racial nature of some communities in Northern Ireland, and the Chinese community again made representations and delivered a view. So, if we are considering a multi-agency approach, we should also consider as widespread an approach as possible. I am an advocate of that.
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive says on page 14 of its 33rd annual report that it
''changes lives and shapes communities through the huge volume of business it conducts each year.''
It would be wrong of politicians not to recognise that. We must ensure that it is delivering goals that we see as positive according to that agenda. The Housing Executive also refers in its end-of-year performance report to the objectives it has set itself. Objective 7 talks about promoting tenant involvement, which is vital if we are to achieve our goals. The Housing Executive also sets the goal of promoting social inclusion and encouraging community involvement. Opposition Members have said that that should be a priority.
In the end, however, it is through involving people in the community, achieving tenant participation and working with local councils that we will create debate from the grass roots. Some people will not have recognised that this is a matter of urgency, but I hope that we achieve progress and substance with regard to the approach adopted.
I move on to the agenda that the Northern Ireland Housing Executive set itself for 2004. In my area, the introduction of community safety partnerships has made a positive change to issues of racial hatred and housing, and to tenants' and residents' issues. I know that it is central to the Housing Executive's policy to promote such partnerships, which will allow groups from different communities to sit around the table with the police force and educationists to talk about the problems they face as members of the community.
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I hope that those community safety panels will include different types of housing tenure representative and representatives from different ethnic groups in the community that they serve, because that is one way of getting a positive dialogue.
Thank you for letting me speak, Ms Anderson. My final point is that we are making progress by having this discussion, and I hope that the strategy will be put in place. We took quite a bit of evidence from different communities, primarily the Chinese community in Belfast, but I am sure that other communities throughout Northern Ireland are now the target of similar attacks. They must be brought into the process. I strongly advocate that the Government continue to put meat on their multi-agency approach to solving the problem.
5.12 pm
Mr. Spellar: I thank my colleagues for making this an informative and diverse debate. Several Members talked about differences in the statistics, and I believe that there have been some difference between the numbers on crimes and on incidents. It is important that we get a common database, and I undertake to write to colleagues about providing one, after which we can proceed more effectively.
The hon. Member for Aylesbury asked about the response in areas in which ethnic minorities feel vulnerable. As I said in my initial contribution, the Police Service of Northern Ireland is considering high-visibility patrolling in those areas. That is important not only for the ethnic communities, but for their good neighbours who feel intimidated by the antisocial behaviour of the more limited number who are bad neighbours. Measures such as high-visibility presence and the Crimestoppers phone line provide reassurance to those neighbours and can help to crack the problem more effectively. Early intervention becomes very important in that regard.
That ties in somewhat with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East, who quite properly mentioned the role of the Housing Executive. We have recently introduced several measures, including changes in procedure, such as adopting from England the practice of using introductory tenancies; antisocial behaviour orders; and taking a tougher position on those who breach their tenancies. We have also, as the hon. Member for North Down will know, undertaken a number of prominent evictions in the Holywood area. Those measures have started to change the balance of power in those areas. There is more to be done, but improvement has started in those neighbourhoods. We need to send out a clear message that such behaviour will not be tolerated, not only within our properties, but within our estates. It is not only tenants of the Housing Executive who are affected; owner-occupiers and tenants of privately rented properties in Housing Executive estates can be equally affected. The Housing Executive has a responsibility not just for its properties, but for its estates and the tenants who reside on them.
Several Committee members talked about the relatively low level of prosecutions, into which we
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need to dig further. In my initial contribution, I reflected that that is often due to the reluctance of witnesses to get involved, sometimes, because of straightforward intimidation—which is a common problem in prosecutions generally. It can also be due to delays between an incident taking place and the police investigation and the instigation of the prosecution, which creates more scope for people to be intimidated and for their confidence in the system to be eroded. That is one of the reasons why in another stream of work we are conducting a major drive on delay in the criminal justice system. We are already starting to get some reductions in the long lead times, but we have by no means reduced them enough.
The PSNI is determined to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable. It will do everything possible to support victims, to encourage the courts, to gather information and intelligence, and to provide support for witnesses. We will probably also need to think about professional witnesses, as we have had to do in other areas.
The statutory duty on local authorities is important. The Government's intention is to look at that issue within the context of the review of public administration. Public debate has to some extent focused on the number of authorities, but their roles and responsibilities are also important. We take that point on board.
The hon. Member for North Down in particular raised the question of long-term funding for voluntary groups. The taskforce on the voluntary and community sector that I chair is looking into developing long-term relationships between the Government and the voluntary and community sector, and account is also being taken of the need to have longer-standing relationships between Government Departments and other institutions and individual voluntary groups. We take on board the point that, rather like Labour party agents who used to spend most of their time raising their salaries rather than undertaking their work, there is a problem with a number of groups that have to spend a lot of time preparing bids and raising money. Also, as I have said before, even when they start to get commitments they have to seek some degree of assurance beyond the next financial year. We lose some good people as a result of that.
The right hon. Member for Upper Bann talked about the good work done by the Wah Hep organisation. It received some £15,000 in 2004 and has received about £144,000 since 1998. It has done a lot of work in development and infrastructure in the Chinese community. I am not sure about the details on the after-school club that he mentioned, but I undertake to look into that and to write to him.
The right hon. Gentleman also talked about work in relation to the migrant workers in Dungannon. I understand that the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister recently published research produced by the Institute for Conflict Research, and that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment has published research in the past few days. Last but not least, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland is working on best practice with a
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number of employers. I take on board the right hon. Gentleman's point that, very often, because employers—particularly some of the larger employers—play a primary role in bringing people to this country, they have a responsibility in relation to welfare.
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