HC Deb 03 March 1983 vol 38 cc366-7
16. Sir John Biggs-Davison

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will state his conclusions to date on the preliminary report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis on priorities and problems facing his force.

Mr. Whitelaw

I refer my hon. Friend to the speech that I made in the House on 28 February.

Sir John Biggs-Davison

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the concern in Waltham Abbey and other parts of the Epping Forest division falling within the Metropolitan Police district that not enough police are readily available to the public? Will steps be taken quickly to introduce the neighbourhood watch scheme?

Mr. Whitelaw

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The neighbourhood watch schemes, as suggested by the Commissioner, are extremely important. We can assure the citizens of London—that is important—that, to reverse the circumstances that we inherited in 1979, we have managed to increase the number of police officers substantially. The previous Commissioner put 1,000 police officers back on the beat and the present Commissioner proposes to make another 650 available. That is considerable progress in a short time. Much more needs to be done, but it cannot all be done in a day. It would have been much easier if the Opposition had done something about it before.

Mr. Crouch

Has my right hon. Friend reached any conclusion about the shambles that has been caused at Hyde Park corner as a result of the Commissioner's action to slow up the free flow of traffic there?

Mr. Whitelaw

I understand that that action was decided upon by the GLC, not the Commissioner.

Mr. Hattersley

The Home Secretary said that circumstances regarding crime and the police have changed since he became Home Secretary. We all confirm that, in that the increase in crime since he became Home Secretary has been enormous. As his hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State said that that increase had nothing to do with the increase of unemployment, does the Home Secretary have any idea what has caused the increase in crime? What does he propose to do about it?

Mr. Whitelaw

The right hon. Gentleman has based his question on an entirely false premise. That is not what I said. I said that we had done a great deal to reverse the circumstances that were left to us by the Labour Government and that we had done that, first, by putting more policemen on the beat. The right hon. Gentleman has never been able to stand up for that. He persistently says that he wants more policemen on the beat, but the Government in which he served denied that opportunity and the good management of the Metropolitan Police, and ensured that the police went back into panda cars. We have reversed that trend and the right hon. Gentleman had better realise it.

Mr. Hattersley

Can the Home Secretary bring himself to answer my simple statistical question? Is it not a fact that, having been elected on a promise of law and order, the Government have presided over three years of the worst increase in crime in Britain's recent history?

Mr. Whitelaw

I accept that there has been a considerable increase in crime. Nevertheless, if only the Government in which the right hon. Gentleman served had backed the police and not despised its middle management we should have been in a much better position to deal with the problems than we have been. We now have to retrain the middle management and the police and improve the appalling conditions that we inherited.