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Home Affairs and Communities

I would not dream of doing that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise. The Liberal Democrats said during the election that they would use for other policing purposes the money that would, under the current proposals, be spent on the charging base for ID cards. That is a fantasy, and they should not be allowed to get away with it. The Government should, however, revisit the question of charges and costs for ID cards. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which, under the present structure, asylum seekers are virtually being given ID cards, but we are saying that honest, law-abiding British citizens, who will co-operate with a system that the Government say is a good idea, should end up having to pay for it out of their own pocket. That is not right, and I do not think that the British public will tolerate it. I hope that it is not too late to revisit that matter. On youth crime and community punishment, I have a lot of sympathy with the view of Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, but I do not want people punished for a fashion trend. That is ridiculous, but where commercial premises ban or exclude particular types of behaviour because they realise that those are bad for business and for honest, paying customers, they should get our unequivocal support. We should not have any doubts about whose side we are on. If someone wears an item of clothing that is deliberately designed to conceal his identity while he is planning to commit an offence, the courts should take that into account. There should be an additional element of sentencing when someone is guilty of that. We should not duck that issue. I do not want to see chain gangs of youngsters in orange jumpsuits up and down the country. We have seen enough of people in orange smocks being degraded by their torturers, their jailers and, sometimes, their murderers. We want to get away from that. What my constituents and I want is good, honest community punishment orders. I want to read in the newspaper the precise details of such orders, just like league tables. I want to know what a person did, what the punishment was and what sort of useful work in the community that person will be doing as restitution for their crime. I want to know why, in God’s name, the number of CPOs issued in this country decreased by 4 per cent. between 2002 and 2003. I want to know why only 5.5 per cent. of people convicted of an indictable offence in the west midlands are given a CPO. I want to know why the figure for the west midlands is lower than for the rest of the country. I want to know why, across the country, only 8 per cent. of males and 3 per cent. of females get CPOs for criminal damage offences—the very type of offence that one would expect to attract a CPO. What happens to the third of people who breach a CPO? Why on earth are magistrates allowed to deal with breaches by means of a fine in 46 per cent. of cases, or a further CPO in 28 per cent. of cases? Such people should go to jail, but currently only 12 per cent. do. It is a disgrace. They are laughing at us and we should not tolerate it. Why do we not have league tables for parenting orders and child curfew orders? That is what the public want. I welcome the comments about guns that I heard today, but it is not good enough to say, as the former Home Secretary said in the foreword to the review:"““We . . . believe that licensing of imitation firearms would be unenforceable.””" He is wrong: licensing works in Canada and Australia. If civil servants read the review, they will find that on pages 26 and 27 it describes what has been done in places such as Malta, the Netherlands, California and Connecticut. When someone is pointing a replica gun in one’s face, it is not good enough to be told that the civil servants think the problem is too hard to deal with. If we are to tackle such issues, we have to get on with that agenda.