---

Crime Reduction

I am obviously grateful to the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement. She was quick in its early stages to take credit for the reduction in some categories of non-violent crime. Has she read the report of the Prime Minister’s strategy unit, which confirms that a full 80 per cent. in those reductions have nothing to do with the Government’s law and order policies? Does the Home Secretary also accept that, if one genuinely wants a strategy to deal with not only crime but the public fear of crime, far from the thin gruel of the statement, she needs to abandon the mix of legislative hyperactivity, policy populism and addiction to mass incarceration, which has the disfigured the Government’s approach to law and order for too long? Does she also agree that, for the strategy to be credible, she needs to show how she will deliver on her pledges? How are we to believe that neighbourhood police teams will be rolled out by April 2008 and be sustainable beyond that, when the Government cut by a third the number of promised community support officers? Local authorities throughout the country do not yet know whether they will have to pick up the bill. Will the Home Secretary explain why the statement is silent on the urgent need to involve victims and communities in the administration of justice? Does she agree that she should work with her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to roll out aggressively the excellent community justice panels, which were pioneered in Somerset and elsewhere and give offenders the opportunity to explain themselves to victims and communities? Will the Home Secretary also explain why the statement is silent about one of the biggest crises in our criminal justice system—the epidemic of reoffending? A full 92 per cent. of young men who go to prison for short-term sentences reoffend in a matter of weeks and months of release. Does the Home Secretary agree that it is time to tackle the Government’s addiction to so-called summary justice? It is a pay-as-you-go approach to justice, which includes the roll-out of penalties and the over-use of cautions and fixed penalty notices, and has done much to damage public confidence and contribute to lamentable conviction rates. The Home Affairs Committee’s report today confirmed that now only three out of every 100 crimes lead to a conviction in court. At first glance, the statement is not a strategy but a rag-bag of unrelated, minor media initiatives, which ignore the fundamental failure in the Government’s relentless and shameless populist approach to law and order.