§ Mr. Greville Janner (Leicester, West)I am grateful for the opportunity, even at the last gasp of this sitting, to raise the tragic problem and continuing saga of misery represented by the thousands of people who are reported missing. Some are never found, and many could he helped much more than they are.
I started trying to get information about missing persons 10 years ago, and the great difficulty has been the absence of any satisfactory national statistics. Only the Metropolitan police have reasonably full statistics, and even their figures are vague and unsatisfactory.
When I asked recently for figures for the county of Leicestershire and for the United Kingdom as a whole, I was told that the information could be obtained "only at disproportionate cost". The cost of people going adrift, cutting themselves off from society, or being torn away from it is so vast that the suggestion that the Government are not even prepared to set aside resources to find out how many such people there are, where they are, how old they are and what could be done to help them, is disgraceful and surprising.
The best statistics that I have been able to obtain are from the missing persons bureau of the Metropolitan police. I pay tribute to the bureau, which carries out its duties in a kind, considerate and helpful way. Its work is the sort of asset to society that we like to think our police forces were created to provide.
An extrapolation from the Metropolitan police figures shows that the number of young persons and vulnerable adults missing and not traced in the United Kingdom rose from 468 in 1975 and 473 in 1978—the last full year in office of the Labour Government—to 1,176 in 1982. That virtual threefold increase is not unconnected with the current crisis of the economy, disadvantage and unemployment. Those are the best figures that I can find.
We do not know how many youngsters are missing at any one time and we have to treat the available figures with suspicion. For example, the Metropolitan police figures show that 393 young people under 14 years of age went missing last year, but most of those turned up. Most had been taken away by one parent and reported missing by the other or had absconded from care.
There is a staggering and fearful total of missing adolescent girls aged between 14 and 17. In 1973, in the Metropolitan area, the figure was about 1,400 and in 1982 it was 1,846. Again most of them were traced, but how many are missing at any one time no one knows because the figures spill off one into the other and, all too often, even if they turn up, their families do not bother to tell the police.
Again, we have adults who voluntarily cut themselves adrift. They are fully entitled to do this, but all too often they leave behind families, spouses and children. They are left to such marvellous, caring and compassionate agencies as the Salvation Army and sometimes the Samaritans to care for with limited resources and without sufficient support from the Government.
When attempts are made to trace people who are missing and to put them in touch with their relatives, the means of doing so are totally inadequate. There may be some help from the vehicle licensing bureau or the DHSS but, in the main, quite rightly the police are not entitled 525 to access to the files of those who are on supplementary benefit. Therefore, by insisting on the privacy of those who have gone astray, their families are not helped to contact or find them. There must be a very much better method than the one that we operate at present.
Unlike 1973, when I first asked the House and the Government to consider this matter, there is today at least a national computer. But, surprisingly, police forces are not required to provide information about missing persons. They do so if they wish and entirely voluntarily. To quote the Minister's answer, they are
not required to report to the missing persons bureau cases of missing juveniles or vulnerable adults and do not report to the bureau cases relating to non-vulnerable adults."—[Official Report, 17 March 1983; Vol. 39, c. 218–19.]We have some cases of youngsters and vulnerable adults reported and none of the others. It means that there is no information.In ordinary circumstances, this is scarcely a matter of national interest because it tends to be one of personal tragedy and family wretchedness, but sometimes a spotlight is cast into the gloom by a massive tragedy which attracts a vast amount of public attention. That is what has occurred recently as a result of the horrific findings of the police in the garden at Muswell Hill. Without referring to any prosecution case which may or may not result, I am informed by the police that they have found 15 bodies in the garden, all males over the age of 19. Five or so have been identified with reasonable certainty, and one certainly. Only one of the five was recorded as a missing person.
When these bodies came to light there were some 2,000 missing persons whose cases had to be considered in trying to identify the bodies in the garden. There were 100 telephone calls with which the Muswell Hill police had to deal. That may in one sense seem a lot of telephone calls. However, there are 2,000 people presumed missing in the long term whose families do not know where they are. It is a signal of the stress and distress of society that only 100 of those families even bothered to try to find out whether one of their children or relations was lying dismembered in that awful garden in north London.
So we have this spotlight which, once again, has created an illustration not only of the lack of compassion of the present system, because we do not know how many people are missing, but of the enormous cost to the police and the public in ordinary terms of having to try to track down people in the event of a tragedy where people are proved positively not only to be missing but to be dead. What an awful society it is when 15 bodies can lie in a garden and so few people care whether they are members of their family. What a wretched society it is if people can simply disappear and so few care about it.
At any time of the year it is a problem. It is good fortune that this debate is the last before Easter. Holidays for most of us are times of joy, family reunion and religious happiness, but for the lonely and wretched they create a more poignant unhappiness. More suicides take place on Sunday all over the world than on any other day. More families will be devastated in the next few days by someone going missing and destroying not only their immediate happiness but potentially their world. Some—nobody knows or bothers to find out how many—will never turn up again.
526 There is no simplicity in the figures. I inquired of the police in Leicestershire about the number of people missing in the county. I discovered that there are few. When I inquired at the police station in the area in my constituency with the highest unemployment in Leicestershire—probably over 50 per cent. and with a tremendously high level of disadvantage—I discovered that not one person is missing or untraced. Often the disadvantaged society cares more about neighbours, families and friends than some better-off societies which create more loneliness.
We do not know how we shall cope. All that we know is that the Government and the police have failed to provide statistics. We cannot find out whether a person is away, drifting or missing. Their names will not necessarily be on a computer if they are non-vulnerable adults. There is a mess—chaos—and it is a disgrace to the United Kingdom.
Who is trying to deal with the situation? Organisations such as the Salvation Army and the Samaritans have insufficient resources. The time has come for a full inquiry. When I asked for an inquiry and a written answer refused it, I thought that there must be a mistake. I still believe that Ministers, whatever our policy differences, exercise individual compassion on matters that concern us and want to know the position so that we can cope with it.
I ask the Minister to tell the House that the refusal was an error and that, after further thought, he has decided to hold a full inquiry. I hope that he will say that he intends to create a central, computerised operation for tracking down missing persons for their own sake, for the sake of their families and for the sake of society. I hope that the Minister will say that when these statistics are gathered, they will be used in a way that will enable people to trace their relatives and to find their friends. I hope that the statistics will not be in the form used by the Metropolitan police, but that they will be broken down further.
I ask the Minister to use his influence to channel resources to the Salvation Army and all the organisations that help to look after missing persons. I draw his attention to the sad fact that the Salvation Army does not deal with juveniles. There are gaps throughout the social service operation and they should be plugged.
The House should draw the public's attention to the problem and ask people to take care of each other over the holiday and to recognise the problems that holidays create; not merely to report those who go missing, but to help by reporting people who are traced. That would save much time-wasting for the police. We should also make this plea to hospitals which care for people suffering loss of memory. I am told that, on occasions, hospitals fail to inform relatives that they have found their elderly folk and are looking after them.
Finally, I hope that resources can be extended to prevent people from going adrift when there is no need for it. I shall give one example. Leicester city council, as part of its prodigious efforts to help our citizens through the worst recession that has ever hit the city, has created enterprise workshops. Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) and I visited a workshop where small bleeper contraptions were being made for the use of elderly people. The idea is that if they go adrift, the attention of the nursing home or the people caring for them will be directed to them. People may smile at the concept of the elderly not knowing where they are, 527 but it is another aspect of the tragedy of missing persons, highlighted, as it is, by the vast number of missing adolescent girls, by the hundreds of youngsters, some of whom are lost never to be found, by the fifteenfold tragedy of Muswell Hill and by the failure of the Government to provide the resources that proper statistics would reveal are necessary.
I ask the Minister to give a positive and helpful reply—a request that will be echoed throughout the country in thousands of homes which are literally bereaved as a result of this problem.
In conclusion, I hope that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will enjoy your holiday, as I hope we all will, without being struck by this problem or any other which is avoidable by the efforts of ourselves and the society in which we live.
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Patrick Mayhew)I am certain that many Members will share the concern that has been expressed today by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) about the problem of missing persons. His great interest in the subject has been known to me for the past 10 years. He has done much to bring the subject to public notice.
I fully appreciate the unhappiness that is caused to relatives and friends of such people, even when their absence is of only short duration. However, the figures that are available—I shall come to this aspect of the matter in more detail in a moment—show that the great majority of persons reported missing are subsequently traced. I know that the police perform an extremely thorough and conscientious job in tracing missing persons, and that every effort is made to ensure that they are found as soon as possible. It is another issue, however, whether in every case they should be put in contact with those who are looking for them. The hon. and learned Gentleman, speaking eloquently on the wireless this morning and in his speech this afternoon, suggested, whether deliberately or not, that in every case those who are looking for members of their family who had left or had gone missing should be put back in contact with them. I thought I heard him imply this morning that a reunion should be compelled.
§ Mr. Greville Jannerindicated dissent.
§ Mr. MayhewThe hon. and learned Gentleman says that that was not his intention, and I accept that at once.
§ Mr. JannerI should like to make it clear that it is the privilege of an adult Briton of sound mind to disappear. I hoped that I had made that plain because I spoke of the necessity for privacy in the records of the police and DHSS.
But it is also the duty of society to bring people together if they can reasonably do so, and if those involved wish to come together—or at least to pass on the means by which that can be achieved.
§ Mr. MayhewI am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for clarifying that point. It gives rise to questions of privacy and liberty from an adult who goes adrift, although, of course, the considerations are different for children.
I thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech was a trifle marred by his suggestion that the regrettable increase in the numbers of people reported missing was in some way attributable to the Government's economic 528 policies. At the end of his speech, he shot that horse by saying that in the most disadvantaged area of his constituency, fortunately, no one was missing. We must approach these matters without reference to party considerations. In all conscience, there is enough to worry us without that.
When a person has been reported as missing in the metropolitan area of London and initial inquiries have failed to trace him his details are recorded in the index of the missing persons bureau. Provincial forces that have reason to believe that a missing person has left their area may also record them as missing in that index. In all cases where anyone is taken to hospital by police in the London area as a result of an accident or illness in the street and, for some reason, his relatives are not informed, or where a dead body cannot be identified, or where a person is found wandering, a message is sent to the missing persons bureau and particulars are recorded there and checked to see if they match those of any of the missing persons. Similarly, in all cases where the police have reason to believe that a juvenile who comes to their notice may be a missing person, the index will be checked.
The hon. and learned Gentleman paid a generous tribute to the missing persons bureau maintained by the Metropolitan police, and I am grateful to him for that. I know that it will be received in that quarter with pleasure.
Where the police consider that publicity would be useful, especially in the case of missing juveniles, they would probably offer particulars to the local or national press and to the Police Gazette, which goes to all police forces and is regularly used for the national circulation of details of missing persons.
Some of the statistics published in the written answer given on 17 March to the hon. and learned Member appear to have been misinterpreted in a recent press article. For example, there appears to have been some double counting, with the result that the numbers of children under the age of 14 reported missing and untraced during the past 10 years were said to have amounted to 940 for the Metropolitan police district and to 340 for other forces. When figures are taken up and given wider circulation, it is right to record that the true numbers remaining untraced, from whatever day those persons went missing, were at the end of 1982 about 250 for the Metropolitan police district and 60 for provincial police forces.
An analysis made earlier this month of boys under 14 years of age in the missing persons index showed that 137 were still recorded as missing in the Metropolitan police district. Of those, 97—or 71 per cent.—were believed to be in the company of one of their natural parents, although their whereabouts were not known to the police or, of course, to the parent who reported the child missing. Another 20—or 15 per cent.—were children who had absconded from local authority homes and were believed to have returned to their itinerant parents. Only a small number, about 19 cases or 14 per cent., were, therefore, still missing in the commonly accepted sense of this word.
That draws attention to the difficulties that may arise in the use of the category "missing persons". There are certain difficulties in determining whether a person ought properly to be regarded as missing. In the instances that I have just mentioned, where there is a broken home, to the parent with whom a child normally lives, when the child goes missing, goes to the other parent, and that fact is not known to the first parent, the child is a missing person. To some extent, I suppose that one cannot cavil 529 at that. Certainly the gravity of the case is less in that instance than when a child wanders off, becomes lost, and no one sees him or her again. So there are difficulties of categorisation.
Is an adult who leaves his home voluntarily and of his own accord, without leaving a forwarding address, to be considered a missing person? Many people would say "Not necessarily so". As the hon. and learned Gentleman fairly reminded us, the law of England and Wales allows adults freedom of movement, and there is no obligation on them to keep in touch with relatives or friends, although there is, rightly, an obligation on them to maintain a wife and children. Again, there is the case where police are contacted when a child has been sent to the shops, has failed to return after several hours, and then does so. His attention may have become distracted, he may have met friends, or he may have stopped somewhere. Is that child to be considered a missing person?
The point, therefore, needs to be made: is the term "missing person" somewhat loosely used to cover those different situations? The hon. and learned Gentleman is entitled to say that at least there should be an agreed nomenclature so that, quite apart from the figures and the reporting of numbers, we know that we are all talking about an agreed class of person when we talk about missing people. There is also the question of when, or at what stage, someone should be regarded as missing. In the Metropolitan police district, the practice is that when a person turns up within 48 hours the details are not normally fully recorded in the missing persons index.
It has been suggested that at any one time there are about 25,000 missing persons. Again, that appears to arise from a misunderstanding of the figures in the written answer of 17 March. The figure of 21,000 people recorded only locally in 1982 was not recorded centrally, because the cases were cleared up within 48 hours. The figure of about 6,700 cases that were recorded centrally included about 5,400 cases that were cleared up during the year. That left fewer than 1,400 persons remaining untraced in 530 the Metropolitan police district at the end of the year. That is a high figure, of course, but it shows a very different picture from the figure of 25,000. Before taking a mistaken, misleading or exaggerated view of what is admittedly a serious position, it is important to recognise that fact.
I have mentioned the difficulties of definition, because they highlight the problems that will occur of attempting to keep unified statistics on a national basis. As I said to the hon. and learned Gentleman on 21 February, the methods and equipment that police forces use to trace missing persons are for each chief officer of police to determine. This matter was considered in 1973 and 1975 by the Association of Chief Police Officers. However, a study is to be carried out to assess the feasibility of converting the present arrangement of a manually-based index in London to a computer-based system. There are difficulties. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will regard it as a positive response that I recognise the strength of his feelings on the subject for a centrally-maintained index, and I am prepared to ask the Association of Chief Police Officers to look at the subject again to see whether chief officers would now find it of practical use for police forces from all over the country to contribute to and operate a national index for the police service. I undertake to refer that matter to the association. Slightly different questions arise about whether the voluntary services should operate and contribute to that. Matters of confidentiality arise, as I know the hon. and learned Gentleman will understand.
I am grateful to him for raising the matter. It is right that it should be brought to public attention. I hope that we shall be able to make progress and that the hon. and learned Gentleman thinks that I have dealt sufficiently with the subject in the short time available.
§ Resolved, That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. Lang.]
§ And accordingly the House, having continued to sit till Three o'clock, adjourned till Monday 11 April, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 24 March.