Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
HOME OFFICE
7 MAY 2008
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Welcome
to the Committee of Public Accounts where today we are looking
at the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report on Reducing
the Risk of Violent Crime. We welcome the Home Office, Sir
David Normington, who is the accounting officer and Mr Simon King,
who is head of the Violence Reduction Unit. Sir David, congratulations,
you seem, in recent years, to have achieved an overall reduction
in violent crime, but there are some worrying aspects, including
the increase in gun and knife crime, and we read about this particularly
in paragraph 1.7 where we see on page 10 that: "the Home
Office is increasingly concerned about the carrying and use of
weapons, particularly by young people. The number of 15 to 17-year-olds
convicted of `having a blade or point in a public place' doubled
between 1998-99 and 2005-06 ...". I suppose I have to ask
you, first of all, why are we seeing this happen, do you think?
Sir David Normington: You are
absolutely right in drawing attention to growth in both gun crime
and knife crime, but within the overall context of violent crime
reducing quite sharply. I think that knife crime is particularly
related to young people. It is a fact, I think, that more young
people are carrying knives. They say they are carrying them in
order to protect themselves but, of course, by carrying them to
protect themselves they put themselves at danger. In response,
we have been toughening both the law in relation to knife crime
but also encouraging the police and prosecuting authorities to
be tougher in prosecuting people for knife crime. Nevertheless,
it is the case that knife crime has been going up.
Q2 Chairman: It says here, "30%
of excluded young people said that they had carried a flick knife
in the previous year." That is pretty bad, is it not?
Sir David Normington: Yes. I do
not want to minimise this at all, it is a serious matter, but
it is the case that knife crime is about 7% of violent crime which
in itself is a small proportion of overall crime. We are not talking
about vast numbers of people but, of course, these are the most
serious and dangerous offences.
Q3 Chairman: From the answer you
have just given me, it appears to me you think the solution lies
in more severe penalties. Is that what you are saying?
Sir David Normington: I think
it lies in everything from improving the education of young people
about the dangers of carrying knives through to being very tough
in the enforcement against people who do carry knives through
to when people are convicted, making sure that their treatment
is not only a punishment but involves, again, showing them what
the dangers are of their actions. You are right to highlight things
like school exclusions and truancy. Some of the most vulnerable
children and young people in relation to knives are those who
have problems at school, are excluded from school or truanting
from school. They are a particularly vulnerable group, and that
is highlighted partly by the Report.
Q4 Chairman: You are getting more
police into schools, are you?
Sir David Normington: Yes. The
Report talks about Safer School Partnership and has some criticism
of us in that regard but, nevertheless, the Safer School Partnership,
putting police officers in schools, is a very important way of
both improving the discipline in schools and also improving the
links between the school and those pupils who are at greatest
risk of going wrong.
Q5 Chairman: Why do we read in figure
4 on page 11 of this part of the Report that: "recorded crimes
involving a firearm almost doubled between 1998-99 and 2006-07".
What is the reason for that?
Sir David Normington: There are
certainly more guns around and there are more guns available.
I think that it is something to do with the prevalence of gangs.
It is not as though gangs have lots of guns, but they do often
have a gun that they hand around. I think, again, one has to tackle
all parts of this problem, but particularly the supply of guns,
not just real firearms but imitation firearms, and also the reactivation
of deactivated firearms. Those are all things which are a problem.
The use of imitation firearms by young people is a particular
issue, of course. They are not a danger to anyone else, but they
are a danger to the young person themselves when they wave it
at someone else. That is a particular growth area.
Q6 Chairman: You mentioned gangs,
they are mentioned in the Report, at paragraph 2.12: "The
Home Office is taking action to address increasing public concern
about the perceived prevalence of weapons in society and levels
of gang membership ... " How much progress do you envisage
making in dealing with gangs? I think there is an interesting
case study, case study number two, which deals with gang membership.
Mr Burr: Number four
Q7 Chairman: Number four sorry, page
20. It is the Birmingham Reducing Gang Violence Project. I wonder
whether you feel this sort of project can be rolled out elsewhere,
whether it is useful.
Sir David Normington: I do think
that. What we have been doing over the last six months, and it
is very much how we have been operating, is we have taken the
four areas of the country where gangs are most prevalent—Liverpool,
Manchester, Birmingham and some parts of London—and we have
very intensively worked with the police in those areas and others,
both in bearing down on gangs but also in learning what the best
practice is in those places. That Birmingham project, which is
tackling why people become gang members, and also the battles
between gangs, is a particularly good bit of practice which we
are now spreading to other parts of the country. The aim of this
is to take the best practice and spread it. This is a really tough
problem. People join gangs, they say, partly, again, for their
own protection in a place and trying to stop that happening is
a tough proposition.
Q8 Chairman: We read in 2.20 a pretty
mixed message about the response to the Report and about how effective
you are in spreading good practice. About half of respondents
say you are not bad at it and about half have neutral or negative
views. It does not really tell us a great deal, does it?
Sir David Normington: Yes. I was
disappointed in that because we have put a huge amount of effort
into trying to draw out the good practice and spread it. It is
clear that only half of the partnerships, and there are 373 of
them, think that is working really well and actually since this
Report was written we have been stepping up our efforts in that
regard with all the things you would expect in terms of taking
best practice, putting it on websites, having conferences, having
online discussion between experts about the best way of doing
it, producing good practice, and so on. In the end, we are very
reliant on the partnerships picking it up and doing it. There
are, and the Report shows it, plenty of examples of things which
can be done to tackle gangs, to tackle guns and to tackle knives.
Q9 Chairman: I wonder whether you
should not try and focus on less, but be more sustained. If we
look at figure 9, there are various programmes here, fine, but
perhaps there are too many different programmes, perhaps you do
not have a sustained enough approach.
Sir David Normington: We try to
focus on the things that we think will have the greatest effect.
If you go back to 2004, we took two big issues in violent crime,
one was domestic violence, which has a much bigger impact in numbers
terms than guns and knives, and also alcohol-related violence,
which again accounts for 46% of violent crimes. We do try to focus
on the places where we think working with others we can have the
biggest impact. Having done that, and having learnt the best practice,
and we hope embedded it, we then move on. We try not to do everything
at once, but there are many different causes of crime and obviously
crime is also changing.
Q10 Chairman: Obviously we like to
feel we make a difference in this Committee. If we look at appendix
5—my last question—"The Home Office's response",
you see we made various recommendations about all these partnerships,
better data sharing, we made recommendations on funding, for instance,
more ability to analyse, and frankly your record in carrying out
what we recommend has been pretty patchy, has it not?
Sir David Normington: It has not
had the impact that we wanted it to have everywhere. We have tried
to tackle the big issues that were identified there on funding,
on data sharing, on getting the best practice in partnerships
drawn out. The job is not done, as you can see. If you take funding,
we have moved almost all our funding now onto a three-year basis,
which is what was recommended, there is a small part that we have
not, but almost the whole of our £9 billion is now provided
on a three-year funding basis, which does actually predate the
Report. I agree it has taken time, more time probably than it
should.
Q11 Nigel Griffiths: I notice that
in figure 1, page 5, violent crime has fallen by around 9%, which
I understand is about 200,000 fewer cases, but that more serious
violence has not fallen by as much. How much has it fallen by?
Sir David Normington: 6% I think
is the figure over the last five years, serious violence 6% down.
Q12 Nigel Griffiths: It is 6% down?
Sir David Normington: Yes, just
under.
Q13 Nigel Griffiths: I saw an 8.5%
figure somewhere.
Sir David Normington: I think
that is overall.
Q14 Nigel Griffiths: The general
trend?
Sir David Normington: Basically,
crime is down, violent crime is down and serious violence is down
a little less.
Q15 Nigel Griffiths: Am I right in
interpreting figure 4, "recorded crimes involving a firearm.",
that last year was a five year low?
Sir David Normington: Is that
table 4? Yes, there have been now two years when the figures,
having peaked in 2005, have come down.
Q16 Nigel Griffiths: Right. So the
latest figures show a further—
Sir David Normington: Yes, but
it is a little early to tell whether the tide has properly turned
although that is very encouraging, obviously.
Q17 Nigel Griffiths: Sure. Which
specific actions have been taken in that five year period, or
now six-year period, which have helped that trend?
Sir David Normington: I think
that is about changing the law. I think that is about having—to
coin a phrase—zero tolerance of the possession of a firearm,
getting other people to carry the firearm, the dealing in firearms.
I think we have some very tough laws in this country and you can
see from the international comparisons that we have relatively
less use of guns still than many other countries. That is not
so true of knives; it is true of guns. I think you have to put
that down to both the very tough legal framework we have and also
the action of the police in enforcing it.
Q18 Nigel Griffiths: Was it the Mayor
of New York who said London is a more violent city than New York
or something like that? Is there evidence to sustain that?
Sir David Normington: He may have
said that, but I do not know that I want to agree with you.
Q19 Nigel Griffiths: I think we all
share the Chairman's concerns, and probably yours, about not taking
up the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership's best practice.
Is there anything Members of Parliament can do to foster that
locally?
Sir David Normington: I think
that giving a higher profile to the importance of the police and
the local authority and the health authority particularly working
together would be helpful. I think that they do to an extent,
but when you ask them to share data, to analyse that data together,
to look at the hotspots around their area, some of the practice
there is very variable. Anything in your contacts you can do with
each of those parties to say how you are working together and
actually you have all got data here and you are all analysing
it, if you pooled that you would have a much better picture of
what is happening in your area, I think that would be really useful
and helpful.
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