HC Deb 11 July 1986 vol 101 cc605-12

Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.

11.2 am

Mr. Simon Hughes

The Home Secretary in part alluded to the issue of drugs which gives rise to concern, but he did not mention alcohol. In 1983 and 1984 the battle against drugs was seen to be one of the chief concerns in the deployment of resources for the policing of London. One of the underlying trends on the street is that the problem is clearly increasing again and the initial success is now being overtaken by a growing general trend across the range of drug use, not just of heroin, which has been of chief concern, but of crack, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). We need to find ways in which we can not only contain the problem but develop a strategy which works to pick up, not only the big dealers, who are obviously the key to a successful reduction and restriction of drug dealing in London, but the dealers at the next tier. In all honesty, I fear that at the moment, the battle against continuing and pervasive drug use in London is at most being held, and certainly not being won. We need to find ways to continue more effectively to develop strategies and should not just content ourselves with the new structural ways of trying to deal with the problem.

I hope that the Home Secretary also recognises that if there is also a problem of regular and consistent alcohol abuse, especially by young people in areas of high numbers of licensed premises, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, there will be a massive use of police personnel dealing with offences which are often caused by one person who has been drinking against another who has also been drinking. In London the number of offences is great, the level of serious crime is great, and the percentage of that affected by alcohol is substantial.

I am sure that the Home Secretary recognises the problems in all urban areas where drink and crimes committed by the young adult are often interlinked. One cannot ignore this link as part of the general responsibility that the Home Office has for the control of licensed premises and so on. I make no suggestion that there should be a censored society but I do make a suggestion that there should be more responsible decision-making as to where and how one can allow late-night entertainment to continue in places where it does maximum disservice to a local community, and where there has clearly been regular previous abuse within that community.

I now turn to prevention. One of the mechanisms set up as part of the process of making policing responsible and accountable to the community—policing by consent—is the consultative committees. The Minister of State is aware of that and it has been raised in the meetings that he and his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary have on a regular basis with me and my colleague, the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Cartwright), and also with representatives from other parties in London.

There were to be consultative committees set up everywhere under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 but they are not all in place. There appears now to be a discrepancy about how many. The Home Secretary suggested that six local authorities do not have consultative committees. The hon. Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler) suggested that there were nine. I know less about other areas than I know about Southwark. When the Minister winds up, I should be grateful if he would include reference to those points. I hope that he will say what he considers to be the ways forward and not look back in a recriminatory way. We need to find ways to establish and make effective these committees.

In Southwark there was a severe problem. Both sides felt that they had a good case. The local authority and impartial participants, such as the Church, in the person of the Bishop of Woolwich, Methodist ministers and so on, became involved and felt that the police were not being sufficiently responsive to the desire to integrate the community. There was the local authority-established consultative procedure and the police procedure. While there are two competitive procedures and both sides feel that the other is being unreasonable, we do not make progress in establishing a proper forum in which people can properly air their concerns in a public place.

Mr. Wheeler

Perhaps I can assist the hon. Gentleman with his point. My information about nine Labour-controlled boroughs not taking part in the scheme came from a document which those boroughs published called "Policing London, July-August 1986." I assume that it is correct in what it says.

Mr. Hughes

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That is why it is important that the Minister, if he can, gives us the most up-to-date position and tells us of any plans to resolve those problems.

Another important area in the prevention of crime is the special prevention needed for the vulnerable in our society. Two of those groups have been mentioned—women and ethnic minorities. Clearly it is right that the police should be deployed to ensure that those people begin to feel the security which they do not feel at present. Another group which is increasingly vulnerable is old people. Nothing is more horrifying than the regular series of reported offences of the most savage type often committed by young people on old people, especially old people on their own. We need to establish—it applies particularly within policing—ways in which the police locally are aware of the places where old people live, whether privately or in council social services homes, residential accommodation, and the areas where old people are concentrated. They should try to direct, not only neighbourhood watch, but other local mechanisms for mutual support, so that there are many more ways in which old people can feel secure in their own homes. Not only do they now not feel secure outside, in the street, on the estate, in the lifts or on the staircases and so on; they often now feel insecure in their own homes. It must be a priority in terms of expenditure. We should look at ways of providing grants to provide methods to help such people without them having to try hard to find that help. The police should be seeking ways of preventing crime being directed at them.

With regard to the response to crime, it is welcome that the establishment is being increased. That will help. The sooner that happens, the better. It is welcome that increasing numbers of police in uniform are being released from civilian work. Since I have been in the House, I have sought to have that done—it is a proper development.

However, I remain to be convinced about the net effects of reorganisation, in terms of increased personnel. I am reassured that we are still to have a consultative level, according to the latest letter that I have received. It is to be on a local authority basis for the time being, with the abolition of the police districts. Particularly given that the consultation process was unsatisfactory, I hope that we shall see the rewards that we were originally promised. My recollection is that last year we were told that there would be 300 extra police officers on the ground. In his speech today, the Home Secretary suggested that there were 200. Unless I am mistaken, that is a counting down by some 50 per cent.

I shall be unhappy if the reorganisation does not produce substantial benefits in front-line policing. One of the arguments for it was that administrators would be taken away from New Scotland Yard so that there would need to be less bureaucracy. People need to see the service, not lots of bureaucrats. I am sure that the Minister of State will accept that. I hope that he will appreciate that the test of reorganisation will be the number of people on the ground delivering the policing service.

The Home Secretary must accept that he does not yet appear to have an adequate answer to an important point made by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) as to why, despite the massively increased cost and increased police numbers, we still have such an unsatisfactory clear-up rate compared with some time ago. This last year, there may have been a slight increase in some of the areas of clear-up, but it is less than the national average improvement. We must keep on questioning why the massively expensive police force in London does not do better in clearing up many of the areas of crime. I accept that murder and homicide have a good clear-up rate, but the intermediate levels of crime still have a poor clear-up rate. Intrusions into people's houses and some crimes of violence against people have low clear-up rates. We need to work particularly hard because it is unsatisfactory that so much time and effort is deployed to so little effect.

The Home Secretary gave the figures for the number of times last year that firearms were used in London—five, compared with 238 in New York. I recognise that, but the other important figure is the number of occasions on which police officers go out equipped with firearms. That is important, because the tradition of an unarmed police force is one that we want to sustain. None the less, it is increasingly in question because increasing numbers of police go out armed, and the authority for the police being armed either seems to be unjustified in retrospect, or is worrying to the community or both.

I accept that there has been an increase in the number of crimes committed with firearms, and that we need to do more to restrict the use of firearms. The Home Secretary will remember that my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich and I raised this matter with him. More should be done to cut the outlets of firearms, allowing them to be used for crime. Ideally, the response should be to restrain the police from dealing with the problem in the same way. Otherwise, the problem escalates. That matter intensely worries many people in London.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Giles Shaw)

The issue of firearms has been steadily reduced in recent years. The latest figure for 1985 compared with 1984 was another 14 per cent. reduction. I shall give the hon. Gentleman the absolute figures when I reply.

Mr. Hughes

I am grateful for that response, and I shall be grateful for the figures. I hope that the Minister accepts that the public need reassurance that the police arc not being increasingly equipped with firearms.

Mr. Corbyn

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a further problem that more police are now being trained in the use of firearms, even if the issue of firearms is being reduced? Taken with the Commissioner's call for preparedness to use firearms, a dangerous precedent is being set.

Mr. Hughes

The report that was produced a week ago made it clear that there would be more training, in the context of the public order suggestions by the Commissioner.

Although there is to be no immediate deployment of plastic baton rounds, they are now to be provided. I hope that the Minister of State and the Home Secretary will accept that there would be grave discontent and substantial worry if from provision we went to deployment. It is bad enough that they are being provided -anywhere — my party opposes that. I appreciate the dilemma, but we do not want Northern Ireland on the streets of London. Many people rightly fear that when they know that such weapons are in the armoury.

Policing has to go on day in, day out. It does not help either the police or the community when the police are distracted from their main task of preventing and dealing with crime. I have had correspondence with the Home Office, and I am not yet satisfied with the answer, about the massive deployment at Wapping—and the people at Wapping are not all thugs, as has been suggested by one Conservative Member. Many of those people have had no previous convictions in their lives. They go there to picket peacefully. They come to constituency surgeries such as mine and complain, saying "We were there protesting and the police started to interfere in our right to protest." Then there is escalation and the affair gets out of hand. There have been some horrendously violent incidents.

Last year it was the miners' strike that took police away from the streets of London. This year it is Wapping. Many incidents are partly self-induced responses. Although one has to make sure that in areas where there is a real risk of public disorder there is an adequate police presence, I do not believe that the way in which the police have responded in Wapping has been necessary as a response to the protest or compatible with the proper deployment of police throughout London. When police cannot be identified by individuals on the streets—there are real complaints — the Home Office's response should be, "Are we doing the right thing?" Action should be taken which will lead to a reverse of the escalation that has been added to by the number of police on the streets there.

Many public order protests, such as the recent antiapartheid march, take place with thousands of people on the streets of London, and pass off peacefully every time. I hope that we can allow the police of London to get on with their job without being distracted. Many do an excellent job for Londoners, but they have an enormous way to go. I hope that the Home Secretary will take away from the debate not only our support for the initiatives that have been taken, which go in the right direction, but our concern about the things that distract the police from doing the job that we all wish them to do. I hope that he will respond in a way that will reduce the concern of many hon. Members about some of the ways in which London has been policed in the past 12 months.

11.18 am
Mr. William Shelton (Streatham)

I listened with great interest to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I welcome very much what he said, especially his reference to Lambeth, to which I shall return.

I should like to refer to one or two of the problems that affect some of my constituents. The first is prostitution in Streatham. Areas that have never been afflicted by that malaise in the past are being so afflicted, and it is causing great distress among my constituents. I have written to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State about it. We all know what an extraordinarily difficult problem it is. I am told by the police that many of the ladies who arrive in Streatham to ply their trade come from King's Cross. I do not know whether that is true.

There are four possible remedies. The first is already being taken to some extent in Streatham. An extra police budget has been allocated by the chief superintendent, and there are regular patrols of two officers, who regularly make arrests. Apparently it is having some effect, but the problem is that to have a permanent effect, which will probably do no more than squeeze the problem into someone else's constitueny, those patrols must be kept up for another six months or a year, to break the link between the punters, as the police call them, and the prostitutes. That takes manpower and time. It is a drain on resources.

There are more police in Streatham than there were when the Conservative Government came to office, but there is now far more demand for "aid" for such places as Wapping and to cover demonstrations. I wonder what the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) thinks would have happened if no police had been sent to Wapping. I am prepared to wager that the News International building would not now be standing and perhaps there would have been loss of life. I am sure that if the right hon. Gentleman had been Home Secretary he would have arranged police protection. I wonder what would have happened during the raid on the distribution centre. Had a responsible Labour Government been in power, I am sure that they would have reacted in the same way.

I hope that the Streatham police force can continue its patrols. If it cannot, the situation will deteriorate again. A grave nuisance is being caused to ratepayers. They are molested on the pavement outside their houses or even in their front gardens. They find couples behind their garages. It is too much. Something must be done.

In Southampton the public are being asked to give confidential information about number plates of cars cruising the streets. The police then interview the drivers and ask them why they were driving round the streets. The police in Streatham are prepared to do the same. Considerable difficulties might be involved and it would be time-consuming, but the police are prepared to follow Southampton's example because of its deterrent effect.

Last year the penalty imposed on convicted ladies averaged £30. That is nonsense. I do not know how long that sum has remained unchanged, but the maximum fine for the offence is much higher. I hope that magistrates and justices of the peace will consider imposing more realistic fines.

I am urged by my constituents to press for the reintroduction of custodial sentences. I am not convinced that that is the way forward. I doubt that it is because too many people are already in our prisons. Some of the girls have families and small children who would have to be looked after if the women were imprisoned. However, I should like to know the Minister's view.

Another possibility is that of licensed brothels, which they have in France and Germany. I should find brothels repugnant. The idea would not command public support, and the House would not support such a move, so that cannot be the way forward. To repeat: we must have sufficient police to maintain patrols. Higher penalties should be imposed and we should consider following Southampton's example of lateral thinking.

Many hon. Members will have seen the alarming headline in The London Standard describing a heroin war in the streets of Brixton and a drug-related shooting. I see the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser) present. His constituency takes in part of Brixton, which is divided between three constituencies in all. Two people were recently shot at Cynthia's night club in Acre lane.

Shortage of manpower causes a problem. The central drugs squad at the Yard is of enormous back-up help, but it is mainly involved with the major dealers and, rightly, with importation. That does not help the police in my constituency when dealing with the "Yardies", for instance, as The London Standard calls the new gang which is trying to take over and is behaving ruthlessly.

Only 12 officers are assigned to the drugs squad in Brixton. They are finding it extraordinarily difficult to cope. As always, manpower and money are the problem. Twelve men are not sufficient to cope with the task.

In Brixton, 11 squads are involved in major investigations. These include nine murders, one investigation for linked rape and another for the drug-related shooting. They have made six arrests and only five cases are outstanding. A man has been arrested in connection with the rape and another for the shooting at Cynthia's night club. The squads are doing well, but more resources are needed to contain the drugs problem as well in Brixton.

The situation is complicated. In Brixton a car bearing CD plates and from an African country is regularly on the "front line" and apparently makes frequent trips. The driver of the car knows he is under police surveillance. This is an illustration of the problems confronting the police in Brixton.

Streatham has about 60 neighbourhood watch schemes. They are first class. The year before last burglary figures fell by 5 per cent. and last year by 17 per cent. I agree with the police that that reduction is due partly to neighbourhood watch. A serious drawback is Lambeth council's reluctance to allow neighbourhood watch schemes on Lambeth council estates. That reluctance is gradually being broken down by pressure, but it is inexplicable that Lambeth council should not support the schemes.

What about neighbourhood policing—a phrase which sprang from the Scarman report? It is thought by some people, who are not aware of what is happening, to be soft policing. Streatham practises neighbourhood policing and it is certainly not soft.

The principles are, first, that the law must be upheld. Then, of equal importance, there is the need to secure the understanding and co-operation of the local community. That is what I mean and what the police mean by neighbourhood policing. Perhaps the police do not always achieve that aim but they try hard. They try to achieve the aim in two main ways in Streatham. The community police consultative group has already been mentioned. That group is experiencing difficulties in Lambeth. The police committee set up by Lambeth council has refused to discuss with the police matters of importance, and merely writes letters of complaint. However, with the change of leadership, meetings take place about every two months with Miss Linda Bellos, the new leader of Lambeth council.

I can give an example of the attitude towards the police in Lambeth. Two elderly people were recently strangled at an old persons' home. So far the police have not been permitted to take elimination prints from the staff. I hope that they will be allowed to take those prints. The police are prepared to take them on the premises.

I find it extraordinary that Lambeth council has thrown the community police consultative group out of the town hall. It is no longer allowed to hold meetings there. This group, which is of such importance to the community, has to hunt for church halls or community halls in which to meet. It has no resting place because the town hall, owned by the people of Lambeth, is denied to it. That is disgraceful. I know that my right hon. Friend's sympathies are with that group and I should be grateful if he can do anything to help. Understandably, attendance at meetings is falling slightly. However, it is going extraordinarily well. The main thing is that the police and the groups which attend are learning from each other about their respective problems and consequently the meetings are becoming much more constructive. They understand the points of view and the restraints. The fact that we have got through the period since September last year, when there were riots, so well until today—I make no predictions about what might happen, but I am very optimistic—is in great part due to the group, and it is vital that it should continue.

The second part of the neighbourhood community policing—

It being half past Eleven o'clock MR. SPEAKER interrupted the proceedings, pursuant to his ruling this day.

Mr. Speaker

Before I call the Minister of State, Treasury, to make his statement, may I say that I deferred the statement today for half an hour to accord with what I took to be the unanimous view of the House, taking into account the exchanges which took place yesterday in the debates and the extreme complexity of this subject. I must make it clear that what has happened today should not be taken as a precedent, and that statements on Fridays will take place at 11 o'clock and on any other day immediately after questions.

11.31 am
Mr. Tony Banks

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry to delay the proceedings with this point of order. We are told that the House exercises control through the accountability of the Home Secretary to the House over the Metropolitan police. Since this is one of the rare opportunities that we have to debate the affairs of the Metropolitan police, I hope that this complex subject will not detain the House so long that we cannot continue our discussion of a matter of great importance to Londoners.

Mr. Speaker

I always take such matters into account, on a Friday or any other day.