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Crime (London)

The right hon. Gentleman is right, but he surely recognises that viewing must take place anyway. We argue that real time gives advantages, and that waiting three weeks for the hard copy to arrive through the post is not acceptable. I am not entirely sure that I understand his point. Thirdly, we propose that new measures on violent crime, particularly in relation to knife and gun crime, be taken. On the Mayor's own figures, 10 gun crimes a day take place in London, which is higher than when he took office. We believe that more should be done in relation to hand-held scanners. We all know that the British Transport police began Operation Shield in London to tackle the scourge of the carrying of offensive weapons, through the use of hand-held metal detectors and walk-through detection arches. We have looked at the Metropolitan Police Authority reserve, particularly the contingency reserve where we believe that 2 per cent. of net revenue is squirreled away. The current budget proposal includes a reserve of about 2.4 per cent. We would reduce that to 2.3 per cent. That could release up to £2.5 million for more detectors. The British Transport police are using one model of metal detector for Operation Shield. The Met have a preferred model, AD11-2, which is a lot cheaper. Depending which option we went for, our £2.5 million, which we show we can provide, would pay for up to an additional 26,000 hand-held scanners. Not enough cognisance has been taken by the current London Mayor of best practice established by the Association of Chief Police Officers. ACPO's Secured By Design standards result in a quarter less crime in housing estates than in non-Secured By Design housing estates. Those standards cut crime and the fear of crime. Despite Mr. Livingstone's two terms in city hall, there is not much sign of that being made a priority. Our fourth proposal concerns rape crisis centres. Only one for the whole of London based in zone 5 is woefully inadequate and does not acknowledge the fact that sex offences have risen in the capital. There were 546 more sex offences during 2006-07 than in 2000-01. We have a fifth and final proposal. We believe that the police service should be made more accountable to Londoners and we have said that for the first time there will be online crime mapping by street and neighbourhood. We have inadequate, unhelpful and difficult-to-access crime maps, of which the biggest two are in the west midlands and West Yorkshire. It is high time that the greatest city on earth had online access so that people do not have to read dodgy Government statistics, but can see crime street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. That will improve their confidence in police figures and allow them to hold their local basic command unit commanders to account. We see a Labour Mayor and a Labour Prime Minister out of ideas and out of excuses when it comes to their failing crime record. The Opposition believe that it is possible to take the handcuffs off the police and give Londoners the law and order policies that they so richly deserve.