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Policing in London

I sense that the centre of British political interest may be somewhere else today. None the less, I welcome the opportunity to debate policing in London, which we used to have annually when the Home Secretary was the police authority. We have not had a formal opportunity to do so for seven years, although there have been debates on policing generally as well as on matters specific to London policing. This has been a worthwhile debate, and I am grateful to the Government for facilitating it. I sense that there is huge consensus, and we have heard some very good contributions from Members on both sides of the House. I do not have the time to respond to all the points that have been made, but we have all taken them on board. I hope that the Minister and the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), who has ministerial responsibility for London, find that encouraging and that when the report of our debate reaches the MPA—obviously, its officials will read it, as will the Mayor and members of the assembly—it will see the broad themes that unite us much more than the issues that divide us. It is easy for these debates to become party political, but that has not been the case today, apart from the odd spat, which is a good thing. I am pleased, too, to have the opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), who represents an outer London constituency, while I represent an inner London constituency. There are differences in perspective, which has been reflected in our debate but, again, there is much that we have in common, particularly—I shall come on to this in a second—the development of safer neighbourhoods teams, for which she was right to claim the original advocacy and which, in all boroughs and constituencies, have made a difference, and can make a bigger difference yet. We have heard lots of statistics in our debate, and we have benefited from being given a common statistical basis—that has not always been the case in the past—by the Metropolitan Police Authority, which we have mainly used. Something that no one has said explicitly on the record is the fact that all those statistics are set against the background of a considerable growth in the London population—it is growing both in absolute numbers and in diversity. If we are seeing in general a reduction of crime, it is in a city that is growing, which is an encouraging sign. Broadly, the statistical conclusions are as follows: the population of London is going up—it is the biggest city in Britain and in Europe, it is still growing, and it will grow more—and police numbers are up. Rather oddly—I have not heard an explanation for this—in the last full year for which we have figures and which ended effectively a year ago, the figures dropped a bit. They were about 30,000, but they have come down a little bit—perhaps the money was spent on community support officers—although they may have picked up again in the year for which we do not yet have the complete figures. Until last year, however, the numbers had been growing, and CSOs, whom we had never had before, are now generally welcomed. Crime is generally going down—sadly, serious and violent crime is still going up—and detection is going up, but it is still worse in London than elsewhere. That is understandable, because London is a much more difficult place to police. However, the challenge for all of us is to say that London still has far too much crime. Crime overall must come down considerably and detection rates must go up much more. For me, the judgment is not about how much money we put in, or even how many police officers we have, but the results. We could double the number of police officers, but the crucial thing is whether they do the job that we need them to do, in conjunction with all the other agencies. As many others have said, they are not the only agency with responsibility—that is now being understood much better than it used to be. There is still too much fear of crime. Indeed, there is more fear of crime than there is crime. People think that crime is worse than it is. I made a point earlier that I felt obliged to make on behalf of my colleagues when they were fighting the election in Southwark last year. We all have a duty not to talk crime up. With respect, a lot of the media in London talk it up quite enough already. We must ensure that we are accurate when we report the position locally, in our boroughs, across London or across the country as a whole. I am perfectly happy to trade statistics about the growth in violent crime throughout the country. The Government have overseen that, although it is not entirely their responsibility. I hope that we will all, as politicians, resist the temptation to misuse the statistics in a way that suggests that crime of any sort is worse than it is. Some people say that 90 per cent. of crimes are committed by 10 per cent. of people. Those serious, serial offenders are the people we need to target. At the back of any police station, one will often see a group of photographs and a list of names of the people whom the police know are likely to be the suspects in, say, a burglary or robbery, and I am afraid that that is often the case. Dealing with reoffending, which is far too prevalent, is as big an issue in London as anywhere else. Let me make a short technical point about crime statistics. When I shadowed the Home Secretary and my colleagues and I received the regular monthly, quarterly, six- monthly and yearly statistics, one of the frustrations was that there were two simultaneous sets of statistics—recorded crime and the British crime survey. However theoretically understandable that is, it does not help the general understanding of what is going on. Some time ago, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) asked me to nominate somebody on behalf of my party to be on a working party to deal with crime statistics. I nominated somebody and they attended a couple of meetings. The group came up with a report, but its work still has not reached a conclusion. I think that there is now another working party. We need more coherent and less confusing statistics. I understand all the different academic assessments. As the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) says, crimes involving people under 16 are not reported. It is not helpful if the statistics are confusing. For years, I have made pleas locally in my borough when police officers come to police and community consultative meetings or other meetings to go through the statistics. They often give only those for the previous month compared with the month before, and only in a certain bit of the borough. I say, ““Let’s just have the spreadsheet that shows everything that tells me how Southwark is doing compared with Lewisham on one side and Lambeth on the other, and how it is doing compared with this time last year.”” That should not require anybody to have to do the work locally. It should be done by a central department that could pull down the figures and make them available so that any member of the public is able to see them as well. We need simple comparisons and simple statistics. I urge Home Office Ministers to ensure, not only for the Met, the City of London police and the British Transport police but for all police services, that we have clear and easily comparable statistics as soon as possible. In all the welter of statistics, there has been a common assessment of what is the most serious and worrying feature—the growth in violent crime. The tables that the Met gave us show that the murder figures have come down in the past three or four years but are still higher than they were when this set of figures began in 1998-99. Gun-enabled crime went up considerably, nearly doubling, and has gone down only in the past year. Robbery has gone up and down over the years, but it has doubled in the eight-year period and increased in the past two years. People are worried about that on the streets, where it is one of the greatest causes of fear. Burglary has decreased considerably, for all the reasons that we know, and that also applies to motor vehicle crimes. People are protecting their property better, and that is good and encouraging. However, although violence against the person has decreased in the past couple of years, it has increased hugely—by about 50 per cent.—over the eight-year period. Rape has also increased, although it has been decreasing in the past few years. Convictions for rape form a small percentage of the allegations; 5 per cent. is a pitiful figure for the country. I guess that the same trend applies in London. The fundamental problem is how we break out of the culture in which primarily young people, but also others, believe that using guns and knives is acceptable. We all agree that many of those crimes are related to drugs, alcohol or both. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park said, we must concentrate on alcohol-related crime. It happens not only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights but at all sorts of other times. Tackling drug-related crime, which happens because someone is either on drugs or committing the crime to feed a habit—or, in the case of dealers, trying to make money out of exploiting people—is central to reducing violence in London. A friend runs an eminent Christian charity in Peckham called XLP, which has been running for 10 years, and got the Queen’s award for a voluntary sector organisation. When I asked him to describe his perception of the trend in youth crime in those 10 years, he said that, when he started, people had guns or knives—mainly knives—because it was cool. They then moved on to using them for crime, but now many youngsters pick them up out of fear. That is a serious concern. Young people are most frequently the victims of gun and knife crime. They are both the protagonists and the victims. We must look beyond the young people and start with the families. Northern Ireland is a more peaceful place because the women in particular said that violent behaviour was unacceptable. Mairead Corrigan, who became a Nobel peace prize winner, and others rose up. They told their fathers, brothers, boyfriends, fiancés, husbands and children that violence was unacceptable. In the end, families have to say, ““This is unacceptable.”” Of course, it is more difficult if one has a big family or is a single parent, but the message must be conveyed. Peer group pressure, family leadership and school leadership are fundamentally important. It is also important, when possible, not to exclude kids from school. Exclusions affect some communities worse than others. There should be better educational opportunities, training and work. Some fantastic work, which has been applauded, takes place. My friend the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and I are in an area that includes the Lambeth and Southwark sports action zone, which does excellent work in engaging young people, especially young men, in using their energies. If they participate in community games and sport, and estate-based sports, thereby finding pride, self-satisfaction and respect, they do not have to do other stuff for pride, self-satisfaction and respect. I went to the Downside Fisher boxing club annual dinner the other day. Youngsters who box are not into drugs and drink because the discipline required to do well in boxing means that they train and do not drink, do drugs, smoke or stay out all night. By and large, they have to live a disciplined lifestyle. At a lower level, people in all our constituencies regularly complain of antisocial behaviour. There are some huge gangs—of an extraordinarily large size—in Southwark. We all have a responsibility to challenge antisocial behaviour, although it is sometimes a bit risky and I do not commend it to vulnerable people. I agreed with the leader of the Conservative party when he said last week that we have a duty to remind people that manners and respect matter. Lack of manners and respect is partly a consequence of not having grandparents and an extended family around as children grow up. Some of the immigrant communities are much better at ensuring that their youngsters understand manners and respect because the extended family is around. Irish families used to be good at that and now that often applies to Caribbean and African families. However, everyone has a responsibility for ensuring that respect matters. Terrorism has been a huge blot on London’s recent history. In commending the police as a whole in the three forces that we have talked about, I particularly commend those who deal with anti-terrorist matters. I have been able to have some close quarters experience with them over the years, and they do a fantastic job. Yes, of course mistakes are made—more often due to intelligence than the police—but they do a commendable job. The one thing that we absolutely have to do is prevent the sort of victimising of communities that results from the sort of press and PR exercises that make a big story out of raids in certain parts of the capital city, as we saw in east London, which then start tarnishing whole communities. I do not know where these stories come from. Peter Clarke, the deputy assistant commissioner—there are so many people with titles below the commissioner these days that I get confused—or the guy in charge of anti-terrorism matters in the Met criticised the leaking of such information last week, as it hinders the police. We really must stop trying to sell these raids and anti-terrorist activities in advance. If people are arrested, then charged and convicted, it is a story; but the investigation should not be the story in the same way. There is no benefit from making it look as if a whole community is involved. I shall say just two sentences about something that has barely been mentioned. It appeared in the ““metline””, one of the Met police magazines. This week’s or month’s edition regrets the fact that traffic policing has almost disappeared. We may all be victims of traffic policing at some time, so this is a sort of double-edged sword to help make the argument. If we want a capital city that works, people cannot be allowed to sit in box junctions without being clobbered; people have to behave, so traffic policing is important. One thing that has happened in that context is that we now see lots of police on push bikes, which I think is a great initiative. There were not really any in London two years ago, but now they are all over the place. It allows the police to be more flexible. New York city police did it years ago and saw the benefit of it. I have a few organisational points. The Minister was responsive to the need to get our structures better. The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) made a very strong point about safer neighbourhoods teams, which are great, but as she and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park said, they have to be at the times and places where they are needed. We have to move the police from a culture whereby they do three shifts of equal numbers every day to one that says, ““Look, you don’t need to do much community safety policing between 8 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon; you need it much more between 3 in the afternoon and 3 in the morning””. That is what the communities tell us. The communities rather than the police must lead that. The combination of police, community support officers and neighbourhood wardens—including specials, which are very important—is crucial and each borough must be allowed to work out the balance of those extra people paid for by the local authority as it chooses. There will be different answers in different parts of London’s 33 authorities. I put to the Minister my point about the need to get the old order changed to the new order of where we have consultation locally. The age of the police and community consultative group has probably gone now that we have safer neighbourhoods partnerships. I think that we could have something that allows residents, councillors, businesses, the voluntary sector and others to meet, so that there are not lots of little meetings that actually say the same thing, but more effective meetings. It is important to make absolutely clear—the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) made this point—that accountability applies not just to the police, but to the local authority in the same place, representatives of the court service and offender management teams, prisons, borstals and other young persons institutions if they are in the local authority area too. The public can then get the people in front of them on a regular basis and there cannot be any buck passing. The police cannot say, ““It is nothing to do with us; it is the council”” without the council being there. Every council now has not only a leader but a person responsible for community safety. I am really keen to commend this to Ministers as a way of securing proper accountability. There are lots of responsibilities. One point made by the Met police commissioner this morning is that social services have a role to play. That is a council responsibility, so the council leader—or somebody on the council executive—needs to take responsibility for it.