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Policing in London

No, I do not. As I have already said, there is interplay between the BCS and recorded crime figures, and the hon. Lady may not understand the component parts. The British crime survey measures individual responses to crime rather than crime reduction, but of course people can have a nice time quoting figures from either the BCS or recorded crime statistics to fit their argument. The reality is the interplay between the two, and the fundamental point that the hon. Lady misses is that they do not set out to measure exactly the same thing. The BCS is not a measure of recorded crime, which the police do in a different way. London deserves a bit better than a rather foolish debate about the interplay between the BCS and recorded crime figures. The development of neighbourhood policing in London over the past five years is the jewel in the crown. It has different nuances for each borough, which is entirely appropriate. A framework of six, with one sergeant, two police officers and three police community support officers in each ward, is a far-sighted neighbourhood policing method. That the model may be adapted for different areas and that—shock, horror!—Bromley’s safer neighbourhood team may do things differently from Harrow’s or that the teams in Bermondsey and Tower Hamlets might work differently despite their proximity only goes to show the responsiveness and substantiveness of the model. As the teams bed in, I hope that boroughs will learn from each other about best practice rather than it being spread only from ward to ward. Just as important as the visibility of the safer neighbourhood teams and the work they do on a daily basis are the imaginative ways in which they talk to and respond to the ward communities they police across London. The work of safer neighbourhood teams, either at ward level or in clusters of wards, can be extraordinarily powerful when aligned with environmental and other council services in the borough in a neighbourhood management approach. The Metropolitan police has a good record on diversity over the past five years and a good story to tell. The work force are more diverse than ever before. One of the useful by-products of the development of the PCSO model is the increasing number of recruits from black and minority ethnic communities, especially in London; there is also a stronger gender balance than in the routine force. The same can be said of special constables, where the Met has exceeded its target of 25 per cent. recruitment from BME communities and achieved a figure of 30 per cent. Recruitment of police officers in London, especially from a BME background, remains a challenge, however, so I hope that with the advent of the National Policing Improvement Agency many of the issues formerly dealt with by Centrex will be looked at in some detail. The British Transport police, too, does a fine job in London. The BTP is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, but it would be remiss of me not to mention the service in a debate on policing in London. The BTP’s responsibility for our railway and underground systems is a discrete but significant task. The routine safety of passengers and their sense of security and well-being and the terrorist threat require a robust response. In a single year, London Underground carries more than 1 billion passengers and, on 8 December 2006, for the first time ever, carried 4 million passengers on a single day. The BTP certainly does not lag behind developments in the Met and other forces; it does a fine job.