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The Riots

I will endeavour to follow your strictures, Ms Clark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on securing this important debate, and I want to say that it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who so effectively articulates his community's frustrations about what happened there. I wish to use this opportunity to again express my condolences to all those who lost loved ones in the rioting. The rioters' behaviour was unacceptable and without justification, much of it driven by gratification, or greed—the right hon. Member for Tottenham said that he saw smiling faces during the events. Much of the rioting was conducted with total disregard for people's safety. I had the chance to visit Croydon shortly afterwards, and the arsonists there clearly had no regard whatever for the people living above the shops to which they chose to set fire. They had absolutely no idea whether people were in the flats, and I hope that they are severely dealt with. I commend the performance of individual officers and of the emergency services generally. I am sure that Members will have received briefings from a range of organisations. The Local Government Association briefing refers to the London fire brigade's receiving nearly 2,200 calls from the Monday to the Tuesday of the riots, which was about 15 times its usual rate. The fire brigade had to attend fires in many places around London; the clear intention of the arsonists was to draw the brigade in, with the police to back it up, so that they could then move on to commit their crimes elsewhere. I commend also the work of local authorities, many of which responded immediately and were able to clear up the damage to such an extent that people walking through the streets the following morning were not so aware of what happened the night before and, finally, I commend my local police. My borough commander, who is about one year from retirement, never expected to be leading a baton charge down Sutton's High street. He effectively dispelled those who intended to cause trouble in our town centre. Many aspects of what happened rightly need to be subjected to scrutiny. The right hon. Member for Tottenham mentioned the initial incident involving Mark Dugan and its handling by the Metropolitan Police Service and the IPCC. I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to say more about that incident because it is under investigation, but one aspect of it that distresses me is that there does not seem to have been a great appreciation of the history in Tottenham. That history seems to have escaped many of the parties that one would have thought would have been aware of it and more sensitive to the need to deal with the matter very carefully. The availability of officers with level 2 public order training needs to be looked into. In London, just four groups of 18 officers are trained to deal with this type of incident. The Met also needs to look at scenario planning. It was clear that the service was not set up to deal with this number of incidents, or with this scale of disturbance. I am sure that lessons will be learnt about how it can ramp up the number of officers much more quickly. I say that with the benefit of hindsight. I do not think that the Met or anyone else could have anticipated what would happen on that first night and in the days that followed. There are also lessons to be learnt about gangs. Perhaps I was guilty at the beginning of saying that there was heavy gang involvement; the figures suggest that it was only 13%. Perhaps the G8 anarchists were the main instigators, but we will find that out only later. Perhaps they were involved in, or responsible for, the most serious violence. I welcome the Government response as it stands, with the £20 million allocated by the Department for Communities and Local Government to help recovery and regeneration. I know, having seen the impact in Croydon and reflected on how many different parties will have to agree to work together quickly and effectively, including the local authorities, the insurance companies and businesses affected, that great commitment and co-operation will be required. If that work does not happen quickly, some people will walk away from their businesses, particularly those who have costs. I was talking to a dry cleaner who said that £70,000 was needed simply to buy the equipment again, so swift action is needed. On the criminal justice response, I have written to the Secretary of State for Justice to see what lessons were learnt about how the courts responded. They responded quickly, but there have been concerns that they did not get the information they needed, such as probation reports. Was that the case? There may be lessons to be learnt about courts operating overnight, although, as I understand it, magistrates who are volunteers may not be enthusiastic about the prospect of working through the night as a matter of course. On the criminal justice response, as I have stated already, serious crimes were committed and they will receive serious sentences. The riots were an aggravating factor but, in my view, some of the sentences were still disproportionate. Members will know the case of Ursula Nevin, a mother of two children, who was sentenced to five months in prison for handling stolen goods, although she was not personally involved in the riots. The appeal judge in that case clearly felt that the sentence was disproportionate, the aggravating factor of the riots notwithstanding. One consequence, according to UNICEF, is that the child prison population has risen by 8% since the riots, which is of concern to us all. Of those charged, 65% were remanded in custody, whereas normally only about 10% are. An opportunity was missed to use restorative justice as part of the rehabilitation revolution. It would have been an appropriate response to force low-level offenders to sit down with victims, if the victims wanted it, in order to apologise and make reparations for what they did. Restorative justice is effective. Home Office research shows that it leads to a 14% reduction in reoffending, which we all want. It could also have been an opportunity for intensive community sentences. Projects were set up under the previous Government, and I hope that they will be evaluated, as I believe that they will prove at least 10% more effective than short-term prison sentences in reducing reoffending. Again, if we are serious about reducing reoffending and reducing the number of victims in the longer term, we must consider such measures. On restorative justice and community sentences, in the words of the chief inspector of prisons, it stands to reason that someone paying back to the community on a supervised scheme, and someone who has to pay bills and behave responsibly, is more likely to go straight than someone locked up and sleeping through their sentence. The Government intend, rightly, to ensure that prisoners cannot sleep through their sentence and are encouraging work in prisons, but that is a long-term ambition on which we are working. On the local authority response, I thought that today's debate would involve a stronger push for eviction of tenants and withdrawal of benefits. Some speakers, particularly one speaker who may come after me, may push that agenda, but we will see. On the eviction of tenants, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) rightly pointed out that some anomalies will be involved. One anomaly that he did not mention is that, if a private owner-occupier was involved in the riots, they cannot be evicted from their property, so distinguishing between tenants and private owners is a challenge. Also, there are problems associated with evicting tenants for offences committed in their area but not tenants who committed offences in other areas.