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Mr. Slaughter: Indeed. I fear that one or more Conservative councils may feature in that. At heart, I have sympathy for the view expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes).
To continue in the positive vein, I am pleased to say that both the local authorities in my area—Hammersmith and Fulham council and Ealing—have continued the trend with different schemes, although some are more credible and well thought out than others. However, the intention, at least, is to fund additional police resources.
In the London borough of Ealing, there is joint funding between the council and the police for additional PCSOs. It is a £2 million scheme that has been split between the two of them. It is early days, but it seems to be a good idea of which there is joint ownership. In addition, and thanks to the Mayor of London, an 18-person British Transport police team is also operating in Ealing. These are substantial resources on top of the safer neighbourhood team. I pay tribute to the partnership that is going on.
Hammersmith and Fulham council decided that it wanted to put an extra £2 million per year for the next two years into a scheme to which the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) alluded. I think that he underestimated the increase in numbers on the safer neighbourhood teams, because there will be an increase in two wards only from six to 35 officers in order to provide 24-hour safer neighbourhood policing.
When the hon. Gentleman made his lengthy address, he asked me a question. I think that 24/7 policing is a good idea. If neighbourhood policing has an Achilles heel or involves unfinished business, it is due to the fact that if there are six officers per ward, it is difficult to provide more than partial coverage even during core hours let alone over 24 hours. I do not think that it is a particularly innovative idea—the Labour group in Hammersmith and Fulham have had it, and I am sure that it is in the Mayor’s mind—but, having established the teams throughout London, the next step is to expand their hours. Let us be fair—the scheme has been introduced in record time so far.
The Hammersmith and Fulham scheme should certainly succeed. If one is putting 35 neighbourhood officers, including an inspector, five sergeants and numerous PCSOs into one ward, it would be incredible if there was not a substantial effect. The principle is good, but the problem is that the practice is quite insane. The first problem is that one of the wards that has been chosen is in quite a prosperous area in Fulham and does not have the highest level of crime. I have no problem with the choice of the other ward. Shepherd’s Bush Green is one of the three wards with the highest level of crime, and it is in my constituency. The scheme is said to be for two years, but there is no business plan or exit strategy for it, but the main point is that the Conservative council—what a surprise this is—did not want to put up any money at all.
The scheme in Shepherd’s Bush Green relied on a section 106 agreement for a major developer, Westfield, to develop the Shepherd’s Bush shopping centre. Somebody who knows rather more about this matter than I do is challenging, through the district auditor, whether that is a proper use of section 106 money. We have a peculiar set-up whereby the money will be given as part of the planning consent for what is going to be
one of the largest shopping centres in Europe, but, in the main part, the money will be spent before the shopping centre opens. Members can imagine what the developer thinks about that. The developer was not keen on the scheme because, in its opinion, the police would be provided and then, when the influx of several tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people into the area began with the full opening of the centre, the police would be taken away again. The developer suspected that it would be lumbered with the ongoing cost year-on-year, which is £1 million—not an insignificant sum.
The response from the Conservative council was, “Well, don’t worry. We’re not going to pay it and you’re not going to pay it. The police will have to pay it in the end.” But, of course, the police are not actually contributing any money to the scheme. Although the police have welcomed the scheme, the fact that it is not a partnership scheme on an equal basis—unlike the Ealing scheme—raises some doubts about their commitment to it. I add in passing that in the other ward where the scheme has been introduced, there was an attempt to snaffle money from the new deal for communities scheme in a neighbouring ward. That would have meant taking money from a deprived area and spending it in a wealthier area. There was an attempt to pack the board of the NDC scheme with Tory councillors. It was only the protests from community representatives that meant that it was not possible to get away with that.
Mike Gapes: These are the new Conservatives.
Mr. Slaughter: They are pretty old Conservatives in Hammersmith and Fulham.
We have a scheme in which we have a limited period of time and intensive policing. I hope, for the sake of the people who live in that area in my constituency, that it provides results. However, some of the results that we have seen so far are proving to be detrimental. First, there is displacement of crime. We were told that that would not happen. But within days of the scheme operating, I went to a meeting of Shepherd’s Bush pubwatch, which includes all the licensed premises in the Shepherd’s Bush area. Immediately there were complaints that drug dealing and antisocial behaviour had simply been pushed to the fringes of the ward. Whereas licensed premises within the ward with extra funding were getting the benefit of the scheme, those immediately outside the ward were experiencing a detrimental effect. That is why I had some sympathy with the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), who talked about crime going over the bridge. These things have to be thought about.
The second point—this is rather more disgraceful—is that resources are being drawn from the safer neighbourhood teams in other wards. I will digress slightly by telling Members what happened when I came out of my house the Thursday before last. I was about to get into my car and drive away, but then I thought that I had better not because there were only three wheels left on it. I remembered that I had heard quite a loud bang in the middle of the night. Several years at the criminal Bar have taught me that there is no one quite as stupid as a petty criminal, so I removed the jack that they had left while they were propping the car
up to nick the wheels and kept it. As I was disposing of the car that day anyway, had they bothered to knock on my door—perhaps not at 4 am, but some other time—I would have given them £20 to take it away.
Two days later, I bumped into one of safer neighbourhood team PCs and told him that story, which he found quite amusing for some reason. I said, “What are you doing about this?” He said, “I’m not doing anything about it because I’ve been seconded to work in Shepherd’s Bush Green as part of this super-duper 24-hour neighbourhood team.” I am finding that, in all the other wards in my constituency, the small teams are being run down in order to increase the super-size team. That has reached an extreme in Hammersmith Broadway ward—which has the highest level of crime in the borough by a long way—where three of the additional officers that the previous, Labour council paid for have been cut completely to fund the 24-hour teams in wards that have lower levels of crime. That is complete madness.
There was an alternative proposal from the Labour group, which involved spreading the same resource over the five wards with the most crime in the borough. In my opinion, that was a sensible solution, because although I appreciate what people say about 24/7 economies and the fact that there is crime even between 3 am and 7 am, that crime is not at the same level that is experienced at chucking-out time or in the middle of busy days. The level of policing needed at 5 am is not the same as that needed at 11 pm.
If the 24-hour teams are to be sustainable and credible in the longer term, as we would all want them to be, the resources will need to fit appropriately. Are we seriously saying that we will pay an additional £1 million a year for every ward in London? Hammersmith and Fulham is cutting £34 million of spending, so I do not think that that is very likely. People are being taken for a ride. Contrary to the protestations that the scheme is universally popular, considerable unease has been expressed from those at the top—Len Duvall, the chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority—right down to the individual sergeants and officers on the beat.
I wish that this was not a party political issue —[ Laughter. ] Unfortunately, the Conservatives in my constituency, who are ideologues, refuse to let that be the case, and I fear that the Conservative Members in the Chamber who are laughing might be falling into the same trap. I hear a lot about Chicago-style policing. If that is shorthand for increasing police numbers—I am still not sure where the official Opposition stand on that—I am sure that we would welcome it. However, if on the right wing of the Conservative party it is really shorthand for zero-tolerance, robust, night-stick policing, we will find that the language used by local Conservative politicians is offensive not only to the local population, but to the police themselves, who privately put their heads in their hands every time they hear such macho statements being made.
Nick Herbert: I must apologise to the hon. Gentleman for speaking for longer than I intended, but that was because I took many interventions, including two from him, so perhaps his observation was somewhat churlish.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the community alternative policing strategy that is being adopted in Chicago is different in many ways from the strategy in New York? It does not employ the same kind of zero-tolerance policing, although that phrase was never used in New York. The safer neighbourhoods programmes in the Met are largely based on that scheme. Has he been to Chicago to see the scheme and does he really understand what he is talking about?
Mr. Slaughter: I do not do as much globetrotting on freebies as Conservative Members. However, let me give the hon. Gentleman a word of caution: he should check what his colleagues mean. As I said earlier, someone who sups with the devil needs a long spoon, and if the hon. Gentleman is going to follow the same agenda as the Conservative party in Hammersmith and Fulham, he will need a very long spoon indeed. Given the comments of Conservatives in Hammersmith and Fulham, there is absolutely no doubt that they are talking about the sort of policing that got the police in the borough a bad reputation 25 years ago, although they have done a superb job in getting away from that reputation over the past 20 years under a number of excellent borough commanders. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that the local Conservatives are being supportive, perhaps he will explain why they are also cutting spending on youth services, which have been cited as a means of preventing crime, by more than £300,000.
I do not want to take up any more of the House’s time, although it was right that I set out my concerns about the overly robust and rather disingenuous way in which policing is being dealt with by my local council, although not, I emphasise, by local police in Hammersmith. I have taken to the theme that localism is good and I stick by that. However, when localism is subverted by the vanity and extremism of local politicians—frankly, that is what we are seeing in Hammersmith and Fulham—there is clearly a problem. In general, however, localism is a good thing.
3.14 pm
Mr. John Horam (Orpington) (Con): I am delighted that the Government have chosen this subject for today’s debate not only because it gives one a cast-iron reason not to go local electioneering in other parts of England, for which I think that we are all profoundly grateful.
Simon Hughes: There is time yet.
Mr. Horam:
There will not be much longer, if the speeches continue to go on for quite as long as some have done. In addition, as we all appreciate, the debate gives us an opportunity to demonstrate our concern about a subject that is very high on our constituents’ list of interests. I agree that the amount of resources going into policing in London has increased in the past few years—a point made by Members on both sides of the Chamber, in fairness—and I welcome that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) rightly pointed out, it is largely Londoners, and not the Government or the general taxpayer, paying for London policing, so we can give
the Government only two marks out of 10 for that. None the less, I accept that they have increased resources generally.
Incidentally, on the point about the Mayor’s precept, I do not know what my hon. Friend found in his researches, but I found it almost impossible to discover the amount allocated to each London borough. Those figures are not forthcoming. My constituents would like to know how much they are getting in Bromley, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), whom I am delighted to see in the Chamber, would like to know the same figure, but we are denied it. I do not know whether Labour Members have the figures—
Mr. McNulty: They are readily available.
Mr. Horam: Well, they are not. I have tried to find them, and it has been very difficult. I am pleased to hear the Minister say that they are readily available; I shall certainly draw that to the attention of the Metropolitan Police Authority, and perhaps to other possible sources of those figures. It is a pity that they are so hard to find.
I accept that there are more police on the streets of London, and obviously I welcome that. I also support the concept of police community support officers; whether it was originally a Liberal Democrat idea, I do not know, but none the less, it was an extremely sensible development.
Mr. McNulty: I am sure that it was one of the parties that the hon. Gentleman has been in.
Mr. Horam: It was nothing to do with the Liberal Democrats, then; I am glad to hear that from the Minister. For once, I agree with him. The safer neighbourhood concept is clearly the right approach to take, and it is working. In that context, may I make my usual complaint in such debates, which is that Bromley does not get a reasonable share of London’s police? The fact is that we are far worse off than Lewisham or Croydon, and have fewer police than either, despite the fact that ours is the largest borough in the whole of London. My constituency takes up half of that borough, so I suffer particularly badly, as does my hon. Friend, from the paucity of police on patrol, when it comes to dealing with difficult areas. An example is Biggin Hill, which is right on the edge of the London borough of Bromley, and actually a lot of police happen to reside there. It takes about 20 minutes to get there from anywhere else, and that is a recipe for local crime, because people know that it takes time to get there from other parts of Bromley, and that there are not enough police in Bromley anyway.
Leaving that aside, I accept that there are more resources for the police, and more police in London, and that the safer neighbourhood concept is right. None the less, it is clear from the debate, despite varying interpretations of the figures, that the results have been pretty patchy. The figures that the Metropolitan Police Authority supplied to all of us—we are therefore all arguing from roughly the same brief—show that the total number of notifiable offences is about the same as it was nine years ago, which is more or less when the Government came to power. There has been a decrease
in burglary and in motor vehicle crime, but an increase in robbery, gun-enabled crime, murder, and violence against the person. I accept that there was an increase in the first four or five years of that period, and that there is now a decrease; I understand the Government’s point about that. However, the truth is that given the way in which we currently manage things—that is the important constraint—that decrease is unlikely to carry on unless the additional resources provided over the past few years continue to be put into London policing. The truth is that that is unlikely because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs pointed out, there are severe constraints on Government spending. It is highly unlikely that the Government can maintain the increase in spending and investment in policing in London of the past few years over the next few years, and that is the difficulty with saying that the trend will continue.
The number of crimes and the amount of antisocial behaviour that we are experiencing at the moment are far worse than has been the case historically. In 1931, to take a pre-second world war year, there were three crimes for every police officer, but there are now 44 crimes for every police officer, to put the matter in historical context. Sir Ian Blair said that we could easily leave our doors open—perhaps one could do so in 1931, but one certainly cannot do so today—which was a curiously inept comment. The fact is that, historically, the situation on crime and antisocial behaviour is extremely bad. If we compare the UK with other countries, it is very bad indeed. A recent UN survey showed, once again, that Britain was at the top of a list of about 20 countries whose crime rates were analysed. We were the worst country of the 20 developed nations that it looked at. My hon. Friend made a point about New York. When the authorities concentrated on crime, there was a massive fall in the amount of robbery and crime as a whole in New York. In the early 1990s, New York was way ahead of London, but it is now significantly behind London. One would expect the application of those resources to produce results, but it has not produced as much as we expected, even though it has produced some results in London, which is regrettable.
Anecdotal evidence from my constituency shows that there is growing criticism of the way in which the safer neighbourhood scheme operates. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) made a point about the shift system, the operation of which is not entirely sensible. One of my residents was told that if he did not like the shift system that was in operation in his area, as he lived close to the border of another scheme, which might have a different shift pattern, he could ring it up to make an application if he could not get his local team to respond. We therefore need much greater flexibility. I accept that there is a learning curve but, none the less, we are not getting police at the right time of day to deal with the drugs, crime and antisocial behaviour problems that are evident.
Another problem stems from the fact that it is difficult to man the local shops that were opened to operate the scheme. For all the hullabaloo, they are typically open for only two or three hours a day, so people believe they are completely useless and ask what the point of them is. We spent taxpayers’ money on opening all those things in different wards, but they do not contribute to the solution of the local crime
problem. There are therefore ongoing difficulties, which I hope that the Mayor will take into account when he reviews the system. There is clearly a difference between the resources that are put in and the outcomes, which is unsatisfactory.
The causes are interesting, and the Prime Minister himself has commented on them. Looking back over his 10 years in office, he said that his attempts to deal with the causes of crime were “misguided”—that was his word. He thought that the investment in various societal programmes such as the new deal, Sure Start, the improvement in schools, teaching and so on, would lead to a reduction in crime and antisocial behaviour. The investment has undoubtedly gone in, but we have not seen that level of reduction in antisocial behaviour. He was admitting that there had been investment, but that the way in which it had been managed was not satisfactory. That is the heart of the problem. We all agree that there has been significant investment, but it has not been managed, and the methods used to handle it have not been sufficiently good.
I point in that respect to a comment by the chairman of Kent police federation that I saw in The Times the other day. He said:
“Policing has become too focused on targets set by politicians that produce figures used by the same politicians to pat themselves on the back and that produce figures only they believe...The performance culture is choking the common sense out of policing.”
That is part of the problem. As my hon. Friend pointed out, targeting can be contradictory and over-complicated. Indeed, the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush (Mr. Slaughter) agreed, citing comments from one of his local people. The amount of paperwork and administration associated with targeting is often overwhelming. Obviously, some of it is necessary from an accountability point of view, but a lot of it is not. That centrally driven, ring-fenced approach has led to a great deal of waste and discouragement in relation to honest and common-sense policing.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that local solutions make more sense. If we can trust people locally more than we have done, that must make sense, even though occasionally there will be mistakes and perhaps things will be pushed from one borough to another. No solution is perfect, and local solutions will have their downsides, but we need more local responsibility. We also need a shake-up of the criminal justice system. This is not simply a question of policing—the system as a whole is causing these difficulties.
As my hon. Friend said, we need not only investment but reform. As so often with this Government, investment has happened but reform has not, so we have an unsatisfactory solution from which we are all suffering.
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