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Policing in London

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.