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Home Office

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for giving us the opportunity to debate Home Office issues. I congratulate him on responding to his leader’s call earlier in the week to stop dumping on the public sector and on not making the same mistake as the leader of his party, who misquoted the Home Secretary when he said that Mr John Reid had described his department as unfit for purpose. As the noble Lord acknowledged, he said no such thing; he said that the systems in place to deal with immigration were not fit for purpose. Mistakes have been made at the Home Office, some of them serious, especially over convicted foreign prisoners. Both the former and present Home Secretaries have frankly acknowledged this. They have been open about it. I was taken by what else the Home Secretary told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on 23 May at Question 866. He said that,"““we are in a state of transition from a paper-based system that was not designed for the problems we are facing, towards a technologically-based system that seems to be on a horizon that never gets any nearer””." Somewhat wistful and plaintive, perhaps, but not a bad summary of the position. This debate also gives us the opportunity to see where we have come from in the past nine years, and where we are now. Between 1979 and 1997, under the Government which the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, was happy to serve in, this is what happened: crime doubled, increasing faster than in any other major Western country; violent crime rose by 168 per cent; the number of convictions fell by one-third; and the chances of being a victim of violent crime trebled, and of being a victim of burglary, more than doubled. In 1992, the then Prime Minister John Major promised 5,000 extra police officers. Their numbers rose by only 3,500. When Michael Howard was Home Secretary, between 1993 and 1997, police numbers fell by 1,132. Mr Howard was kind enough to confirm these charges:"““We hear only that for the period as a whole from 1979 to 1997 crime doubled under the Tories. It is an accurate figure—it did.””.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/5/00; col. 999.]" No wonder electors in 1997 judged that the Conservative Government could not be trusted with community safety or crime. The picture is different today, not just with a record number of police officers—now standing at 141,270, about 14,000 more than 1997—but because of the new ways that police and public are working together in their communities to provide more security and safety in and around people’s homes. I know, from the regenerated former tower block estate of Castle Vale in my former constituency, what an impact this has on people’s lives. About 15 years ago, it had one of the worst robbery, burglary and crime rates in the West Midlands. Today, it is the safest place to live in the West Midlands. The British Crime Survey in April told us that, in the year to December 2005, the risk of being a victim of crime remained the lowest since 1981 at 23 per cent. It showed that overall crime was stable, including violent crime. Domestic burglary was down by 11 per cent, and vehicle crime by 9 per cent. The police-recorded crime figures broadly confirmed the British Crime Survey result, expect that it showed an alarming one-fifth rise in detected drug offences, and a 1 per cent rise in violence against the person. I commend the extra cash and effort being put in by the Home Office to things such as the alcohol misuse enforcement campaign, the tackling violent crime programme and the Respect Action Plan, which reflects and meets the public’s demand for effective action to combat anti-social behaviour. There is useful evidence that the threat of anti-social behaviour orders, and their allied anger management and parenting courses, are having an impact in areas where they are targeted. Although violent crime is stabilising, and nearly half of all violent offences involve no injury, there is still too much, especially with the deplorable culture of too many young people feeling it fashionable to carry knives, even into schools. It is a sad fact that with more employment, more enjoyment and more chances and choices to build better, more fulfilling lives, too many people are prepared to use violence. There has been an impressive improvement in the overall asylum position. The UNHCR tells us that number of claims last year was the lowest for 13 years, at 30,500; 70 per cent lower than 2002. This partly reflects better security at ports of entry, and joint working with the French and other immigration and border authorities, and partly because the ending of violent situations in some countries which provided the push factor to seek safety abroad. It seems that about 12,000 of those whose asylum claims failed are now being removed. It is good to know—and we should welcome this, because it responds to public demands—that a pilot project which offered failed asylum seekers £2,000 cash to return home, and £1,000 to help them resettle into jobs or start their own businesses, was taken up by almost 2,000 people in the first four months of the year. That helps them and their family, and saves the taxpayer an average of £11,000, which is the cost of forced removals. I have two final points. I applaud the more focused efforts to try to reduce reoffending rates among convicted prisoners, which are still too high. But those efforts are hampered by serious overcrowding. As the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee stated this week, there needs to be serious thought about making wider use of properly supervised, properly funded sentences in the community, with prison reserved for those convicted of the most serious offences. The Public Accounts Committee drew attention to the 3,900 remand prisoners, a third of whom do not get a prison sentence on conviction and who might instead be tagged while awaiting trial. It is also deplorable that 2,300 children are held in prison accommodation and 5,000 profoundly mentally ill people are in prison, rather than in secure psychiatric hospitals or hostels. At 77,000, our prisons are bursting at the seams and are frustrating the efforts of prison and civilian staff to offer help to convicted prisoners to build more fulfilling and useful lives on their release. I know that the Minister will understand when I gently say to her that I retain immense concern about the lack of a national firearms database, which is an interest that I share with my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. It is now nine years since Parliament decided that one should be set up. Can the Minister now confirm—and if she cannot, perhaps she will be kind enough to write to me—that the revised pilot scheme in the Metropolitan Police and Lancashire Constabulary areas did start, as promised, in April—though without the link to the police national computer, which renders it not as useful as it should be—and will she also now tell us when it is forecast that the full system will become operational?