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Crimestoppers (Great Yarmouth)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr. Chope. I am certainly pleased to have the opportunity to debate this subject, although I do not think that it will be very contentious. It will probably be one of the easier debates for the Home Office to respond to, because the subject is one deserving of celebration rather than one that requires the Home Office to intervene or take any particular action. As I say, I am pleased to have secured this debate. Although the subject is Crimestoppers in Great Yarmouth, this is really a celebration of the fact that the nationally recognised and successful Crimestoppers scheme started in Great Yarmouth some 25 years, on 24 June 1983; the exact anniversary is next Tuesday. The scheme was started by Detective Inspector Mike Cole and was ably supported by the then manager of the Woolworths store in the town centre, Jim Carter; both of them are visiting Westminster Hall today to enjoy the celebrations of what was achieved in Great Yarmouth. I want first to express my appreciation for the initiative, which, as I say, was taken by Mike Cole and Jim Carter to start the scheme. I would also like to mention the then local chief superintendent, Peter Howse; the then chief constable, George Charlton, and the late Peter Ware, who was the editor of the Yarmouth Mercury at that time. Each of them had their own input and helped to make such a success of the new scheme. It is only fair that we look at the humble beginnings of the scheme, which were in another country, where the idea first came about to encourage members of the public to give information on suspected criminals. The scheme started in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1976. A young man had been shot dead during a robbery at a filling station, and having made little headway in finding the perpetrator, police decided to set up an anonymous phone line for witnesses to come forward with information. Within 72 hours, arrests were made, but what amazed the New Mexico police was the number of people giving information on other, unrelated crimes. The Crimestoppers concept was born. It was another six years before a youthful Detective Inspector Mike Cole was on a police visit to Peoria, in Illinois. He took a particular interest in the scheme that was being run by a sergeant in the community relations department. Working from a dedicated room, the sergeant was taking information from the public about crimes. The difference was that this information was given anonymously, and callers giving information that led to an arrest put themselves in line for a reward payment from money donated by local businesses. That was Crimestoppers Illinois-style. Mike Cole was so impressed by the scheme and its results that, on his return to Great Yarmouth, he submitted a report daring to suggest that it be tried out in the town. Both his chief superintendent and the chief constable gave their approval. However, it was by chance that Jim Carter, the manager of the local Woolworths, who had been in that post for only about a year, received a letter from Chief Superintendent Peter Howse asking for support. The bottom line was that both Mike and Jim saw this scheme as an opportunity to get the community involved in crimefighting. At this juncture, I want to take time out to pay tribute to another of my constituents, Carol Saldinack, who I am sure some people will have heard about from the media. She was the lady who reported her two sons to the police for their vicious attack on a father of two from Chichester. She reported them because she saw it as the right thing to do. Although she was not able to have anonymity—indeed, she did not want it—her action does give us hope that there are people who recognise that it is not the job of Government or the police alone to catch criminals; we all have a responsibility. I have met Carol and she wants to continue getting the message out about the need for all of us to take responsibility. If that means using Crimestoppers as a way of giving information anonymously, that should be encouraged. Returning to the road that led to Crimestoppers, the next step was to convene a meeting of all the local businesses and, of course, the media in Great Yarmouth. Peter Ware, who was the editor of Yarmouth's local paper at the time, was on board from day one, giving the required space in the paper to fuel the Crimestoppers trial. The local business community willingly donated some cash and then £10 per month into the Crimestoppers account. The scheme was officially launched on 24 June 1983 and the anonymous calls came in to a collator's office from 9 am until 5 pm, with an answer machine taking calls outside those hours. Once any information was received, the real police work began, with police gathering their own evidence, because anonymous information never could and never should be treated as evidence to be put before a court. The scheme was a huge success and it had a positive effect on the crime figures. Other forces took a keen interest, and it was not long after officers from the Metropolitan police visited Great Yarmouth that the scheme went nationwide. Recalling the visit by the Metropolitan police officers, Mike Cole said:"““I was in the office one day when the switchboard said they had two superintendents from London in the front office. Their names were Harley and Street, so I thought it was a wind-up, but it was on the level.””" Thus, the scheme began in what Jim Carter described as:"““the sleepy backwater of a Norfolk seaside town.””" Just four years later, Crimestoppers began to expand, with Thames Television adopting the idea and promoting it in the capital. Locally, the next huge step was the involvement of Anglia Television in promoting Crimestoppers throughout the Anglia region. The irony is that the then head of programming at Anglia, Jim Wilson, went on to become chairman of Norfolk police authority and of Anglia Crimestoppers. From humble beginnings in Norfolk, Crimestoppers has spread to every part of the British isles. The essence of Crimestoppers has never changed. Mike Cole and Jim Carter feel very proud—quite rightly, in my opinion—to have been in at the start of one of the country's best crimefighting initiatives. They still recall those early days when the rewards were paid out under the town hall clock. I do not know if they had to wear a red rose for identification, but I do know that this wonderful scheme is a huge success story. Great Yarmouth should be proud of having been in at the start. Having looked at the scheme's humble beginnings in Great Yarmouth, I shall look at some of the successes of Crimestoppers nationally over the last 25 years, up to the present day. After its infancy in a single Great Yarmouth office, operating from 9 to 5, Crimestoppers now has 39 regional boards across the UK, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. In its first year as a national venture, it received fewer than 5,000 calls; last year, it received more than 80,000 calls. As well as its network of permanent staff, Crimestoppers has more than 400 people volunteering in their spare time to help to fight crime, and it is supported by a 24-hour call centre, ensuring that calls can be answered around the clock every day. With this supporting network, Crimestoppers has been no small success. Since the scheme went national in 1988, 84,000 arrests and charges have been made; nearly 1 million actionable calls have been received, and as a result, more than £100 million-worth of goods have been recovered and more than £145 million-worth of drugs have been seized. To put those impressive figures into context, some 17 people are arrested every day as a result of information given to Crimestoppers. In addition, every five days one person is charged with murder as a result of information given to Crimestoppers. Following on from these impressive successes, Crimestoppers is now a leading player in a number of successful crime reduction partnerships. Teaming up with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, Crimestoppers has been a partner in ““Most Wanted””, an initiative that has been in place since November 2006, which helps to catch some of Britain's most dangerous criminals and missing convicted sex offenders. As part of the launch of ““Most Wanted””, five appeals for missing offenders were posted on the initiative's website. Within hours, as the result of the widespread publicity, Gordon Stewart, one of the five missing offenders, surrendered to the police. The website has received more than 8 million hits; more than 1 million appeals were viewed by the public when the campaign was launched, and to date nine offenders have been located. Crimestoppers has also had success abroad, leading the campaign alongside the Serious Organised Crime Agency to catch British criminals in the Costa del Sol. Operation Captura in the Costa del Sol encourages anyone who recognises the wanted criminals on its website to call Crimestoppers from Spain, to give information anonymously on a dedicated Spanish free phone number, which is—