§ 11. Miss HoeyTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what further support he will consider giving to local victim support groups. [28407]
§ Mr. MacleanVictim Support receives generous financial support from the Government. We increased our grant to the organisation last year by £1.6 million—from £8.4 million to more than £10 million—a rise of 20 per cent., and we have increased it further this year by another 8 per cent.
§ Miss HoeyIs the Minister aware of the excellent work by the victim support group in Lambeth, particularly the pioneering work on trauma counselling and extra security measures for pensioners who have been burgled? Will he look again at the Home Office criteria for funding Victim 470 Support nationally so that the new and innovative work by local groups can he funded by Home Office grants and given extra resources?
§ Mr. MacleanI am well aware of the wonderful work by Victim Support around the country and of the various innovative schemes run by enthusiastic volunteers. However, the Home Office does not fund individual schemes: we fund the national organisation, which distributes funding to local groups, and that is as it should be. I would not want to get involved in making hard decisions between individual local schemes but prefer to let the professional national organisation do it. As for the overall resources, I remind the hon. Lady that in the past eight years Victim Support has received additional Government funds of 55 per cent., 43 per cent., 21 per cent., 20 per cent., 28 per cent., 15 per cent., 20 per cent. and the extra 8 per cent. this year. That is unprecedented financial support for any voluntary organisation.
§ Mr. Ian BruceWhat are the Government doing to support witnesses? The whole House will appreciate that when it is necessary for witnesses to come forward in order to convict guilty people we need to support those witnesses during the difficult time before and after they give evidence.
§ Mr. MacleanMy hon. Friend is right. We recognise that many convictions depend on the evidence of witnesses. That is why we are keen to support the Crown court witness schemes that Victim Support is setting up throughout the country and to see whether any further measures need to be taken to deal with intimidation of witnesses. That is why we welcome the measures that the Lord Chancellor's Department is taking in the design and construction of all new courts to ensure that the needs of the victims are given every bit as much importance as those of the criminal.
§ Dr. HowellsIs the Minister aware that a good deal of Victim Support's work arises from crime associated with hard drugs and that heroin and crack dealing is killing young people in our communities? Nine heroin-associated deaths have already occurred in mid-Glamorgan this year. What is the Minister doing to ensure that the police are given the necessary resources and direction to clear our streets of hard drug dealers?
§ Mr. MacleanI am surprised to hear such a question from the Principality, where there has been generous funding of police forces this year. Throughout the whole of England and Wales, our police service has been funded on average by an award of more than 3 per cent. Our police service does an excellent job in tackling drugs, but it is only one of the partners that we want to encourage to do more about drugs. That is why the central drugs co-ordination unit published its strategy for pulling together all sectors of Government to ensure that we concentrate on removing the temptation of drugs from young people in the first place and bearing down hard on those who do it. If the Opposition had supported many of the measures in the Criminal Justice Act that they voted against, perhaps the problem would not be so severe.
§ Madam SpeakerOrder. Answers are becoming far too long.