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Policing in London

It was nothing to do with the Liberal Democrats, then; I am glad to hear that from the Minister. For once, I agree with him. The safer neighbourhood concept is clearly the right approach to take, and it is working. In that context, may I make my usual complaint in such debates, which is that Bromley does not get a reasonable share of London’s police? The fact is that we are far worse off than Lewisham or Croydon, and have fewer police than either, despite the fact that ours is the largest borough in the whole of London. My constituency takes up half of that borough, so I suffer particularly badly, as does my hon. Friend, from the paucity of police on patrol, when it comes to dealing with difficult areas. An example is Biggin Hill, which is right on the edge of the London borough of Bromley, and actually a lot of police happen to reside there. It takes about 20 minutes to get there from anywhere else, and that is a recipe for local crime, because people know that it takes time to get there from other parts of Bromley, and that there are not enough police in Bromley anyway. Leaving that aside, I accept that there are more resources for the police, and more police in London, and that the safer neighbourhood concept is right. None the less, it is clear from the debate, despite varying interpretations of the figures, that the results have been pretty patchy. The figures that the Metropolitan Police Authority supplied to all of us—we are therefore all arguing from roughly the same brief—show that the total number of notifiable offences is about the same as it was nine years ago, which is more or less when the Government came to power. There has been a decrease in burglary and in motor vehicle crime, but an increase in robbery, gun-enabled crime, murder, and violence against the person. I accept that there was an increase in the first four or five years of that period, and that there is now a decrease; I understand the Government’s point about that. However, the truth is that given the way in which we currently manage things—that is the important constraint—that decrease is unlikely to carry on unless the additional resources provided over the past few years continue to be put into London policing. The truth is that that is unlikely because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs pointed out, there are severe constraints on Government spending. It is highly unlikely that the Government can maintain the increase in spending and investment in policing in London of the past few years over the next few years, and that is the difficulty with saying that the trend will continue. The number of crimes and the amount of antisocial behaviour that we are experiencing at the moment are far worse than has been the case historically. In 1931, to take a pre-second world war year, there were three crimes for every police officer, but there are now 44 crimes for ever police officer, to put the matter in historical context. Sir Ian Blair said that we could easily leave our doors open—perhaps one could do so in 1931, but one certainly cannot do so today—which was a curiously inept comment. The fact is that, historically, the situation on crime and antisocial behaviour is extremely bad. If we compare the UK with other countries, it is very bad indeed. A recent UN survey showed, once again, that Britain was at the top of a list of about 20 countries whose crime rates were analysed. We were the worst country of the 20 developed nations that it looked at. My hon. Friend made a point about New York. When the authorities concentrated on crime, there was a massive fall in the amount of robbery and crime as a whole in New York. In the early 1990s, New York was way ahead of London, but it is now significantly behind London. One would expect the application of those resources to produce results, but it has not produced as much as we expected, even though it has produced some results in London, which is regrettable. Anecdotal evidence from my constituency shows that there is growing criticism of the way in which the safer neighbourhood scheme operates. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) made a point about the shift system, the operation of which is not entirely sensible. One of my residents was told that if he did not like the shift system that was in operation in his area, as he lived close to the border of another scheme, which might have a different shift pattern, he could ring it up to make an application if he could not get his local team to respond. We therefore need much greater flexibility. I accept that there is a learning curve but, none the less, we are not getting police at the right time of day to deal with the drugs, crime and antisocial behaviour problems that are evident. Another problem stems from the fact that it is difficult to man the local shops that were opened to operate the scheme. For all the hullabaloo, they are typically open for only two or three hours a day, so people believe they are completely useless and ask what the point of them is. We spent taxpayers’ money on opening all those things in different wards, but they do not contribute to the solution of the local crime problem. There are therefore ongoing difficulties, which I hope that the Mayor will take into account when he reviews the system. There is clearly a difference between the resources that are put in and the outcomes, which is unsatisfactory. The causes are interesting, and the Prime Minister himself has commented on them. Looking back over his 10 years in office, he said that his attempts to deal with the causes of crime were ““misguided””—that was his word. He thought that the investment in various societal programmes such as the new deal, Sure Start, the improvement in schools, teaching and so on, would lead to a reduction in crime and antisocial behaviour. The investment has undoubtedly gone in, but we have not seen that level of reduction in antisocial behaviour. He was admitting that there had been investment, but that the way in which it had been managed was not satisfactory. That is the heart of the problem. We all agree that there has been significant investment, but it has not been managed, and the methods used to handle it have not been sufficiently good. I point in that respect to a comment by the chairman of Kent police federation that I saw in The Times the other day. He said:"““Policing has become too focused on targets set by politicians that produce figures used by the same politicians to pat themselves on the back and that produce figures only they believe…The performance culture is choking the common sense out of policing.””" That is part of the problem. As my hon. Friend pointed out, targeting can be contradictory and over-complicated. Indeed, the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush (Mr. Slaughter) agreed, citing comments from one of his local people. The amount of paperwork and administration associated with targeting is often overwhelming. Obviously, some of it is necessary from an accountability point of view, but a lot of it is not. That centrally driven, ring-fenced approach has led to a great deal of waste and discouragement in relation to honest and common-sense policing. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that local solutions make more sense. If we can trust people locally more than we have done, that must make sense, even though occasionally there will be mistakes and perhaps things will be pushed from one borough to another. No solution is perfect, and local solutions will have their downsides, but we need more local responsibility. We also need a shake-up of the criminal justice system. This is not simply a question of policing—the system as a whole is causing these difficulties. As my hon. Friend said, we need not only investment but reform. As so often with this Government, investment has happened but reform has not, so we have an unsatisfactory solution from which we are all suffering. Let me make one final point about the difficulties that we face in this country. The other day, I read a fascinating article by a reporter in The Sunday Times which compared homes for offending children in London and in Hamburg. It said that children in the Hamburg home typically spent an average of three years there, so the staff had a chance to turn round their behaviour. There was much less time to do that in the London home, because children spent an average of only one year there. Moreover, the approach in Hamburg was noticeably more relaxed. For example, the reporter was amazed to find that some of the children got a massage before lights-out in the evening. [Interruption.] I do not want to hear any sniggers from the Labour Benches. The kids enjoyed that; it was part of the daily routine. When that was put to a member of staff at the London home, they said:"““There are all sorts of…issues involved…We wouldn’t chance it. In everything we do, we work according to strict protocols.””" The reporter is shown"““two ring folders bulging with statutory regulations and policies.””" One of the managers said:"““Many senior managers in this field are more interested in reports, statistics and numbers than the individual needs of the children we look after.””" That is the truth of the matter. The Hamburg home got startlingly better results by dealing with the children in a much more relaxed, normal and human way than did the rules-bound London home. That is precisely the sort of point that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition makes from time to time. We are missing the point by spending the same amounts of money on getting very poor results because we are not treating people like human beings. This is a fundamental issue. We need to look at policing as a whole, in terms not only of the resources going in but how they are managed and handled in the course of doing the job.