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Resources can be found. My party has said that we should scrap the plans for an identity card system. If that were done, we would have the necessary resources to put into police deployment. I also agree with the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) that resources would be freed up if we were to deal with the whole red tape issue. However, I wish to make a cautionary statement. My daughter’s partner is a black American and when they visit us from the United States I am very aware of how difficult it still is in London to be black and, perhaps, someone who does not dress conventionally, such as in a suit. My daughter’s partner—my son-in-law, as it were—is regularly stopped. That happens at immigration control—the Minister knows about that topic—and he is also regularly stopped by police who
might just happen to be looking for someone of his description. He is followed in almost all the shops he goes into, too. That is utterly wearing. He has been unaware that he has the right to have a piece of paper from the police explaining why that is happening; he will know in the future. There is pressure in respect of having that piece of paper. It is rarely offered; it has to be asked for. We must be careful about discarding such pieces of paper.
Mr. Khan: There are further points to be made in addition to those about the individual merits of scrutiny and a system that creates transparency. As an employer, the commissioner will be able to see where there is best practice. There might be areas with a diverse population where stop-and-search figures are not high, and other areas where the population are not so diverse but stop-and-search figures are very high. If that is the case, questions can be asked about whether the police in the latter areas are properly implementing the law in respect of stop-and-search.
Susan Kramer: I agree. Information is key, especially in the highly sensitive times that we are living through. Knowing that history teaches us that this system has not always been fair and that a great cultural change is necessary, if we are to have a fair system for all it is incumbent on us to ensure that we have the information that we need, and that the commissioner has the information that he needs to monitor the system.
When I speak with police officers, by far the major complaint is the paperwork that gets done at the police station. The core of the problem is not the content of what has to be written down, but the endlessly non-communicating IT systems that require that that is done time and again. I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of man to pull all the relevant strands together and free up police time. I am glad that Sir Ronnie Flanagan will be looking into this. No Member thinks that it is clever that the moment an officer makes an arrest they will probably be off the streets for the rest of their shift. That does not make sense, and there must be a way around it.
Business crime is key in London, but we have not yet addressed it. I accept that in the City large-scale and highly organised business crime receives a great deal of attention and considerable resources from the City police and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. However, there is also a great deal of business crime in the rest of London. That is inevitable in a city that is as wealthy as ours and that has so many small businesses. Fraud in that area is not addressed in anything like a meaningful way by the Metropolitan police. The Minister must address that. He might have constituents with similar experiences to those of some of my constituents. They might, for example, have been defrauded by someone who has set up a company as a builder, started a job and deliberately taken the cash for it, and then worked for only two days before disappearing. Such a person might then have done the same thing to someone else—perhaps to someone who lives across the borough boundary, so that the crime falls within the scope of yet another police unit. I have spoken to many firms that are the victims of serial liquidators—people who start doing business with them, take the cash, do not deliver the service and go into liquidation. I have spoken to business
after business that has gone to the civil courts and secured a judgment, only to find it impossible to enforce it. I have asked one layer after another of the Met how such crimes can be addressed, and it is clear that the necessary resources are not available.
I fully accept that the process is very time-consuming, and that it is necessary to go through computer records and, sometimes, to understand a range of financial issues. Such crimes do not have the immediacy of crimes against the person—the victims have not received a blow to the head—but people often lose crucial savings as a result, and families are put under stress and companies collapse. They look to the police and to the system for justice, but it simply is not available. Under the present structure and given the current level of resources, I see no way that it ever will be available.
One underlying problem—this feeds back into our discussion on statistics—is that there is no line item that captures such crimes in the British crime survey; they fall into the category of “other”. The police, being human beings and knowing how the press will report the next set of crime statistics, inevitably focus their attention on the eye-grabbing statistics, be they on robbery or murder, which of course matter greatly. Because there is no line item for such fraud and no police focus on it, a significant number of criminals have sussed out this gap in the market, as it were, and decided that they will fill it. They know that they can function with impunity, as long as they keep the scale of each separate little activity at a level that will not trigger an adequate police response. That is not fair to the people of our city.
Justine Greening: The hon. Lady is making an important point. Although there is clearly an opportunity to involve local businesses in safer neighbourhood panels, which frequently consist only of residents, in my experience they are often not involved. They seem to feel that such panels are indeed for residents only, so they set up their own business forum, with which the police then work. Does the hon. Lady agree that much more work needs to be done to ensure that small businesses in particular are integrated into safer neighbourhood panels?
Susan Kramer: Small businesses in the communities in my constituency have been integrated effectively into safer neighbourhood teams. However, those teams deal not with fraud but with shoplifting, graffiti and other such issues that are appropriate for them to deal with. These conversations between residents and small businesses—I did not mention this in discussing safer neighbourhood teams—are excellent. They provide detailed feedback in both directions, which those teams then genuinely use to guide their actions and to determine the issues on which they place their emphasis. They really work well.
I agree that when one steps back to a level larger than the ward and starts dealing with more complex crimes than those dealt with in the safer neighbourhoods arena, the whole communication structure breaks down. I have looked at how the accountability issue is dealt with in some parts of the United States, and direct accountability
is incredibly effective at engaging the public and local businesses. I am very pleased that the Minister talked about a desire to find the right way to achieve that in a UK and London context. That is the missing piece in the current puzzle.
Others have talked about the Met’s performance, and I do not want to reiterate figures, but it is fair to say to the Met that the general trend of rising crime that we saw after the creation of the MPA can legitimately be attributed to the lack of resources, which took time to build up. I am pleased, as is my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), that that trend seems to have turned a corner at some point during 2002-03 and is beginning to get on the right track. However, we are all conscious that very serious violent crimes—grievous bodily harm, robbery—are falling outside that pattern.
I am sure that the whole House is distraught at the violent crime that we have seen among and against children. After all, teenagers are just children who are 1 ft taller. Such crime has rightly caught public and media attention. I do not suggest that there are easy solutions and I agree that the issue is more complex than can be solved by a policing solution alone. However, somewhere in the picture of the general rise in violent crime and the copycatting of violent crime by youngsters, drugs and alcohol are playing a significant role, but we do not address those issues. When we do address them, we focus on drugs and do not deal with alcohol. I am appalled that in my community much of what is called the drugs and alcohol budget contains practically nothing for alcohol issues, as it is nearly all ring-fenced for drugs issues. However only a tiny portion of the community abuses hard drugs, compared with the portion that abuses alcohol. I am not arguing that we should cut the drugs budget, but we should also give serious consideration to the alcohol budget.
This is not a debate about dealing with offenders, but behind much of the rise in violence and the gang culture—because gangs have a leadership that tends to be older than their membership—is a pattern of reoffending that is getting worse, not better. Someone else will know the statistics better than I do, but for the group of young men aged between 19 and 25 who receive short-term sentences the reoffending rate is some 92 per cent. It might just as well be 100 per cent. That suggests that things are going desperately wrong. It is crucial to tackle the issues that I have just mentioned, and if the glib notion that tougher penalties would do it had been true, all the numbers would have been falling. Instead, the complexity of the issues has been increasingly exposed.
Like many of the people in my constituency, I bang my head at the difficulty of getting through to the police on a non-urgent issue. I know that they have been trying hard to improve, but it is a nightmare. In 2003, my colleagues on the London assembly did a survey of every police station in London to check the response rate to non-urgent inquiries. Of the 132 police stations they called, they were unable to contact anyone at 52 of them and of the remaining 80, 30 took more than a minute. Perhaps a minute is not so bad for a non-urgent call. They repeated the experiment in March 2007, when one would have thought that all the improvements in communication that have been talked
about would have taken effect, and the pattern was very similar. No significant improvements had been made. That cannot continue. Part of the problem is technical and part is resources, but it is not something that we should have to live with. The Met confesses that in 2005-06, 52.3 per cent. of calls were not answered in the target time. How many of those are never answered at all is an interesting question. It is an underlying problem, which undermines public confidence.
The issue of terror in London, especially after 7/7, will always be centre stage in any consideration of policing. Others will probably cover the issue in much more detail, but the post-7/7 review identified the failure to achieve really good co-ordination of the emergency services—an issue that took the London assembly some effort to tease out—and that must be addressed. The one thing that we cannot do is allow such lessons to go unlearned. I and many other people are very worried about terrorism in the context of the 2012 London Olympics. The threat is so great that there can be no bigger policing challenge than that involved in protecting the games against terrorism. It is therefore crucial that all the lessons are learned.
I turn now to the use of closed circuit television. It is one of the many tools available for keeping London secure, but a lot of my constituents are desperately concerned about its expansion, and about the addition of listening and speaking devices to the cameras. The Information Commissioner has described that innovation as “talking CCTV”.
Of course we must monitor and anticipate crime, and try to prevent it from happening, but a balance must be struck. We cannot turn London into a city in which people feel that they are constantly under surveillance. London must remain healthy and thriving, and the next step with CCTV may be going too far.
Contributors to this debate have argued repeatedly that the presence of police on the streets is what has reduced crime. Similarly, the work done by the police to build relationships with local people has helped to engender trust, identify underlying problems and create a much stronger sense of community. That is the direction that we must pursue, rather than surveillance.
I conclude by saying that I and my party very much appreciate the work that the police do throughout London. The city is much safer than it was some seven years ago, when the London assembly was first introduced. The Government deserve our congratulations, but the most dangerous thing would be for us to sit back and say that everything has been done, as there is a great deal still to do.
2.52 pm
Mr. Andy Slaughter (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush) (Lab): The Mayor’s office, the MPA, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and local forces always provide us with a lot of briefings for debates such as this. I am grateful for that, as the information shows that, in both the short and medium term, there have been substantial falls in almost all types of crime, and substantial increases in the numbers of police officers and PCSOs. I am pleased that that has been acknowledged by the Liberal Democrats.
Moreover, the figures show that there are many more officers from ethnic minorities. For example, 21 per cent. of officers in the safer neighbourhood teams now come from BME groups. The achievement is very significant, and I wish that the official Opposition had been able to give it a more ringing endorsement. I accept that the Liberal Democrats did so, although they also claimed credit for all the ideas. Perhaps some of their ideas do get pinched, but thank God the Liberal Democrats are never allowed to implement any of them themselves, as we would never get anywhere then.
I notice that the Conservative Benches are almost completely empty, but I hope that any speech made from them will acknowledge that crime statistics are very flexible and can be made to prove anything. Instead of going through endless figures, therefore, I shall share with the House some of the profound thoughts sent to me in preparation for this debate by Colette Paul, one of my borough commanders in Ealing. Normally, I would just plagiarise her and pretend that her words were mine, but instead I emphasise to the House that her comments are her own and not the Met’s.
“We need to challenge the balance between national crime targets and what local people want...Over concentration on meeting targets skews”
“Targets are useful in terms of giving direction but quite often they conflict with each other or overlap in certain areas.”
Her view is that there should be four main indicators: crime detection, which we should continue to improve; crime reduction in general, rather than specific crime targets; victim satisfaction; and public attitudes. That is a sensible approach, which, as she says,
“would lead to some considerable leeway for innovation and creativity and local response to local issues and would ultimately lead to an even better relationship between public authorities and communities.”
That message is probably accepted on all sides, including the Government. As the borough commander concedes, targets are important in that they show relative and absolute performance, but over-concentration on them is bad, so I hope that we can all move towards a greater degree of local policing.
Another red herring—or false lead—is that sometimes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) said, politicians follow the media, who in full cry are as unhelpful as they can be on these issues. Reference was made to the interview given by Sir Ian Blair to The Guardian. I have not read all of it, but I have heard the reports that led the news. It is slightly unfortunate that once again the media has gone for the idea that there is a gang culture and a rise in gangs. Sir Ian was reported as saying—I hope accurately—that there could be a child protection issue. That could be right in some cases, where behaviour amounts to criminality or where there is serious disruption in families, but I cannot see how delinquent behaviour in general can be dealt with through child protection measures. The media’s absolute focus on issues such as gang culture may be making the problem worse.
My hon. Friend mentioned the death earlier this year of Kodjo Yenga, a young man who was her constituent but was killed a few yards outside my constituency in Hammersmith Grove. I shall say nothing about the case, because four children, two of whom are 13 years old, have been charged with the murder and that extraordinary and tragic event is before the courts, but it was extremely rare—I cannot remember a similar case. There was another tragic death, of Kieran Rodney-Davis, in Fulham about three years ago, but such events, thankfully, are rare.
There was no particular evidence of a link to gang culture in either case. I talked to my local police officers in Hammersmith and Fulham about that point and their response was that although there is organised criminal behaviour by young people, which is a serious matter, it may not amount in all cases—certainly not in my constituency—to the gang culture that we are told may exist in other parts of London or the UK, and certainly exists in the United States. We need intelligence-led policing and local solutions to the problems, so the more that the media, and sometimes politicians who want cheap soundbites, get involved, the more unhelpful it is.
My theme is that local solutions, whether in target setting or policing, are proving to be the best. The clearest example, which has been discussed extensively in the debate, is safer neighbourhood policing. The Mayor of London introduced that programme in record time across all London wards. I have a particular interest because exactly a year ago, as I am sure the House remembers, I introduced the Neighbourhood Policing Bill under the ten-minute rule. It was the day before the local elections so the House was as packed as it is today to hear me speak.
In a past life, I was the leader of a London borough council, and I think that I am right in saying that we were the first local authority to pay directly for additional police services by introducing additional safer neighbourhood teams in wards that did not have them and introducing supplements to the safer neighbourhood teams in town centre areas. That idea has caught on and there are now many compacts between the police in the boroughs and individual local authorities.
Mike Gapes (Ilford, South) (Lab/Co-op): My hon. Friend’s point about the role of local councils is crucial. Does he agree that, far too often, local authorities do not provide the necessary level of support and commitment, particularly with regard to antisocial behaviour? The police are expected by the community to be at the front line in dealing with such problems when the local authority that bears the responsibility and should take the political responsibility is often not engaged. As a result the Government or the police are blamed for problems that are, unfortunately, usually caused by Conservative local councils.
Mr. Slaughter: I am trying to be positive but my hon. Friend need not worry. There is some negative stuff coming up.
Mr. Khan: Negative but truthful.
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