§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Heppell.]
§ 7 pm
§ Linda Gilroy (Plymouth, Sutton)Plymouth is the largest city in the far south-west of England, and with its size and position as a major port come a variety of policing and safety challenges. Home to almost 260,000 people, my constituency of Plymouth, Sutton is part of the Devon and Cornwall constabulary area, geographically the largest policing area in England, with both rural and urban areas.
Between 1995 and 1998, young people in Plymouth rated crime and the fear of crime just behind poverty as the second worst thing about living in Plymouth. Young people were the most likely of any demographic group to be victims of crime. One in 15 young citizens between the ages of 18 and 24 was likely to be a victim of violence, and one in 14 was likely to the a victim of domestic burglary.
I am pleased to note that recent crime figures estimate that the national crime rate has declined by more than 6 per cent., and that this Government's anti-crime policies have contributed to a consistent decline in crime in the west country generally over the past few years. Home burglary, the handling of stolen goods, and fraud and forgery offences are all down by more than 15 per cent. in Plymouth.
In the 12 months to March 2001, even violent crime figures were going down in all but one of the eight wards in my constituency. However, after 30 years of relentlessly increasing crime rates, it will be some time before people feel a difference in their personal and community safety. In this debate, I want to draw to my hon. Friend's attention the achievement of our crime and disorder partnership, as well as to highlight some specific aspects of local crime fighting, in which the Government's further support will help to ensure that the outlook for Plymouth continues to improve.
The Government have a vital role to play in targeting resources and changing the law and criminal justice system to help communities in their fight against crime. However, active communities with statutory, voluntary and private organisations working in partnership are essential to achieving effective crime prevention and reduction.
Plymouth is an example of a can-do city that is creatively developing its own solutions in partnership with the guidance of supportive, prevention-focused Government policy. Such a partnership has operated in Plymouth longer than in most other parts of the country. With its mission statement to reduce crime and the fear of crime, the Plymouth community safety partnership consists of representatives from Plymouth city council, the police, the commercial and voluntary sectors, and the local health and fire departments.
The partnership evolved from joint agency work originally led by the Plymouth crime prevention panel in the late 1980s. In 1994, the Plymouth community safety strategy group was established. Inspired by the Morgan report, the chief constable, Sir John Evans, invited local authorities in his area to look at partnership as a way to build on the community policing principles for which the 893 Devon and Cornwall constabulary are well known. Plymouth was therefore well placed to meet the requirements of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, to carry Out a crime and disorder audit and to draw up a strategy to tackle the priorities identified by that audit.
If the Minister is not already aware of Plymouth's reputation for partnership work, I am sure he will soon become familiar with it. That audit showed significant achievements already arising from successful partnering and problem-solving policing. Domestic burglaries had declined by 54 per cent., and there had also been a substantial increase in detected drug crimes. Detection of possession was up 20 per cent., and trafficking detection was up 40 per cent. over the three-year period. There was, unfortunately, an overall 8.9 per cent. increase in reported violent crime during the review period. Not surprisingly, the audit also revealed a correlation between the wards with the highest social and economic deprivation and those with the greatest numbers of violent offenders and offences.
Eighty-four per cent. of students excluded from school were reported to be associated with crime. There was a strong correlation between alcohol excesses and disorder. The greatest public disorder occurred in the city centre and Plymouth's clubland areas.
Some of the partnership's additional primary findings were as follows: offenders per capita are young—predominantly 10 to 24 years old; one in 12 burgled homes has been burgled previously; and vehicle crime remains the largest category of crime in Plymouth.
Repeat offenders put disproportionate stresses on a range of Plymouth city agencies and account for a disproportionate amount of the city's crimes. For example, although drug-related crime accounts for only 2 per cent. of Plymouth's overall crime, more than 80 per cent. of acquisitive crime is related to drugs. That represents £1 million a week.
I strongly support our commitment to make Britain the toughest place in the western world for drug dealers. That is an ambitious challenge, which many constituents whom I met during the election campaign wanted realised. I shall work to support those in my constituency who are dedicated to tackling the mayhem that drug addiction causes.
I feel most strongly for the innocent bystanders. A feature of drug dealing in Plymouth appears to be that it is carried out in houses rather than on street corners. The lives of the people who live next door become a nightmare which they seem powerless to end. The police and the local authority are using the new powers that we introduced in the previous Parliament to implement antisocial behaviour orders.
We have new resources of approximately £220,000 over three years from the community action drugs fund. That will help to broaden and deepen the resources in the city for preventing and treating drug addiction. The successful bid for additional funds to enhance and extend the CCTV resources in the city centre will also help. I am pleased that the Government and the police authority have made funding available for recruiting 275 additional police officers in the west country. Forty-one will be based in Plymouth. Those additional resources are vital to help us to bear down on crime in our community.
894 The Minister can be confident that they will be well used. as the achievements of the community safety partnership show.
Since the partnership was formed in 1994, vehicle theft has decreased by 50 per cent. and burglary has dropped by 60 per cent. Since 1998, burglary in multi-let properties has been targeted and has decreased by 44 per cent. A project to tackle the 20 streets with the most burglaries has exceeded the 20 per cent. reduction target for the past year. Last year's target for reduction in theft of and from cars has been exceeded.
However, the Minister knows that as targets are achieved and exceeded each year, bearing down further on crime becomes ever more challenging. I have already referred to the most important reduction, which is that in violent crime. Last year's target was to contain the increase to 8 per cent. The outcome is a reduction of 8 per cent.
I want to consider some subjects that merit further attention. Bearing down further on violent crime means tackling domestic violence. The domestic violence strategy for the city will be launched next week, on 5 July, after extensive consultations between the partners. Although our city has done well from its applications for various funds, we were not lucky in the initial distribution of funding for domestic violence projects.
Domestic violence is an aspect of crime that perhaps lends itself less than others to targeted funding for targeted outcomes. One of the aims of work in the area is to ensure that incidents are reported. Policing that is targeted at reducing numbers can sometimes be subject to conflicting pressure because initial work may increase crime figures. I should be grateful if the Minister could tell the House about any future plans for enabling crime and disorder partnerships to do new work on domestic violence and whether there may be further rounds of funding for such work.
Plymouth would like to do some new work on proposals for a restorative justice programme for women. Women, often with young children, end up with a custodial sentence in proportionately greater numbers than their male counterparts. The Plymouth project builds on the good experience of the youth offending team in developing reparation schemes with young people. That may involve a meeting with a victim, or, when more appropriate, writing a letter, or work on a damaged community building. A similar approach for female criminals as an extra option for the courts to consider would often be better for the victims as well as being more successful in re-integrating the woman and her family.
My hon. Friend the Minister knows that Plymouth was one of the areas to pioneer arrest referral schemes for drug offences. It has also designed a project that takes a similar approach to offences committed under the influence of alcohol. The idea, drawn up by the Plymouth team, has attracted funding and is being used in other parts of Devon. Given the role that alcohol plays in disturbances in our very lively city, I hope that it will not be long before we see this scheme, which was invented in Plymouth, in action in Plymouth.
Having pioneered such work in relation to drugs, the partnership is now working even further upstream of the arrest referral point of intervention. The police are now working with other agencies to focus on drug users, when 895 it is believed that they are funding their habit—usually of fairly chaotic drug use—by theft or burglary. Getting them into early treatment prevents all the crimes that they might have committed before the evidence existed to arrest them. That saves individual people the cost of suffering those crimes and represents a saving on escalating costs to the public purse in terms of health, tackling crime and other public service budgets. It also reduces crime.
Earlier, I acknowledged the significant investment that has been made in CCTV, and the effective role that CCTV has played in reducing crime in the city. There will shortly be further investment in North Stonehouse and in upgrading the control room facilities, as a result of additional funding announced earlier this year. However, this will still leave a key area of the centre of Plymouth unmonitored. Emma place and the surrounding streets are part of a longstanding red-light area in which residents are keen to see some improvement to the quality of their lives. A bid for CCTV there was unfortunately not one of the successful bids earlier this year.
Small pockets of money are available from the Communities against Drugs funding and the CCTV bids granted earlier this year, which could contribute to the project but which do not quite add up to enough to give it an early start. I ask the Minister to be vigilant in monitoring whether there is any scope for finding money for the project, perhaps by re-allocating, money from other projects that may be underspent. The project would complete CCTV oversight of the main trouble spots in the city centre. It would also mean a great deal to some of my constituents, who have been working to improve their area for some time.
Finally, I want to mention another innovative project which is not looking so much for money as for support to do something that has the potential to have a significant impact on young people way beyond the bounds of Plymouth. Since becoming the Plymouth coroner in 1998, Mr. Nigel Meadows has campaigned for more open court hearings and made history by inviting schoolchildren to attend inquests into the deaths of drug users. When a case ends, the children are invited back in into court for a one-to-one session with Mr. Meadows and allowed to ask any questions they like. He has been trying to persuade the authorities to allow cameras into his court, so that many more people can see what goes on. He has approached the Home Office, been referred to the Lord Chief Justice and then been referred back to the Home Office. In desperation, he is now writing to our colleague the Attorney-General to tell him of his wish to open his court to cameras.
I appreciate that this may not be within the Minister's remit, but the problem appears to be that no one is willing to own the issue. Mr. Meadows also has plans to engage convicted drug users in attendance at his court as part of our innovative local rehabilitation programmes. As part of my former employment, I had to read the transcripts of coroner's inquests. They made grim reading and I can easily understand that hearing in court about the stark reality of how the life of a drug user—normally a young drug user—can end is a good way of achieving effective prevention and rehabilitation.
Five deaths from drugs in Plymouth have come to the coroner's attention during the past 10 days. I hope my hon. Friend will, as a matter of urgency, ensure that the Plymouth coroner's idea is given serious consideration. 896 Interpretation of section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 seems to be the sticking point. If the law needs to be changed to clarify the position, perhaps that could be considered.
My hon. Friend will forgive me for raising so many issues. I realise, of course, that an Adjournment debate is not the place for announcements to be made about such issues, but I hope that he will understand my enthusiasm to celebrate the creativity, innovation and, best of all, results that stem from Plymouth's community safety partnership experience.
Having learned of Plymouth's good track record in partnership and problem solving, I hope that the Minister will look at Plymouth as a good place to support the piloting of new schemes. A second audit is planned for this year, and the results will be useful to determine which of the measures that we have used will continue to work, further to bear down on crime in Plymouth. We have achieved good results thus far, but we have more work to do before our citizens, young and old alike, will feel a quantum difference in their personal safety.
I believe that Plymouth is at the cutting edge of partnership community safety and policing. Minister, please continue with legislation that supports Plymouth and other communities in bearing down on crime and pilot more problem-solving approaches in Plymouth. We make good use of funds and can help the Government to meet their targets. Come and visit Plymouth, celebrate our successes with us and ensure that we continue to have the chance to show how we can positively transform the quality of life of our constituents.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Bob Ainsworth)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) on securing the Adjournment debate for which she has been trying for some time. She will not be surprised to learn that my comments will echo much of what she said.
It is Government policy to increase police numbers. As a result, we have established the crime fighting fund to provide the necessary additional resources to all police forces. We have also provided extra resources to aid policing in rural areas. Devon and Cornwall police will recruit an extra 79 officers this year as a direct result of both those measures. In turn, the city of Plymouth will benefit from 16 more officers over the coming months.
The Government also recognise, however, that the fight against crime cannot be won by the police working alone. In some of the first legislation that we introduced on coming to power in 1997, we created crime and disorder partnerships to bring together at a local level all those with a part to play in reducing crime. The story of crime reduction in Plymouth is, as my hon. Friend said, an excellent example of what can be achieved by a wide variety of local agencies working in partnership, supported, when necessary, by central Government funding.
Plymouth reacted early to the principle set out by the Morgan report in 1991, which is that
reduction of crime cannot be left to the police alone".It formed the Plymouth community safety strategy group in 1993, and a safer cities project followed, running from 1994 to 1997. Following the introduction of the Crime 897 and Disorder Act 1998, the Plymouth community safety partnership was formed by agencies that by then needed little convincing of the advantages of working together.Since 1998, the partnership has run a range of projects funded by a number of Government programmes such as the crime reduction programme and the single regeneration budget, which have successfully targeted the most vulnerable and victimised areas of the city. Those programmes have helped to reduce domestic burglary, vehicle crime and violent crime—offences identified by the Government as being of most concern to the community.
An example is the homesafe project, which received £170,000 from the reducing burglary initiative. That was aimed at improving the security of houses of multiple occupation. Those houses, which, frequently, consisted of bedsits occupied by students, represented only 3 per cent. of local housing stock but accounted for 20 per cent. of domestic burglary. The scheme involved the city council housing department, the fire and rescue service, local private landlords and higher education colleges.
A security certificate scheme was developed, which encouraged private landlords to improve door and window security standards to a level that qualified them for a certificate. Only those landlords holding such a certificate would be recommended by the colleges to students looking for accommodation. Since 1998, burglary in those properties has dropped 44 per cent., compared with the national burglary reduction target of 25 per cent.
A further project called "Safe as Houses" was granted £72,000 under the reducing burglary initiative to improve security in 3,800 homes in 20 streets identified as suffering the highest incidence of burglary. As a result of those security improvements, burglary rates in those streets have dropped 22 per cent. since 1999. In the city as a whole, rates dropped by 17 per cent. in the year to September 2000, compared with 1999.
Vehicle crime has also been tackled through partnership involving all the key agencies. A variety of approaches have been adopted. Publicity using local radio and advertisements in the local press have targeted potential victims, giving simple precautionary advice that they should not leave property visible in parked vehicles. Offenders and potential offenders have been targeted through the TREADS motor project, which provides an understanding of cars and teaches driving skills to all young people, while providing extra programmes for those who are at risk or have been referred to the project through the youth offending team. More than 250 young people from Plymouth have been through the scheme since the beginning of the year, and it has led to a reduction in reoffending among this group.
Vulnerable sites such as car parks have been targeted for increased security. Two car parks have achieved the Association of Chief Police Officers secure car park standard, and £114,000 was granted under the crime reduction programme closed-circuit television scheme to assist by providing cameras for the car parks at Derriford hospital. That sustained activity addressing all elements of vehicle crime has reduced offences of taking a vehicle without consent by more than 50 per cent since 1994. Over the last year the number of thefts from vehicles has fallen by 10.5 per cent., while the number of vehicle thefts has fallen by 13.2 per cent.
898 The partnership has also successfully targeted violent crime in public places and on licensed premises. A registration scheme for door staff on licensed premises has been introduced, requiring them to undergo training before being licensed to supervise doors.
The CCTV scheme at Derriford hospital, along with improved links with the health and ambulance services, has helped to reassure staff and reduce their vulnerability. As a result of those and other initiatives, violent crime in the city has fallen by 8 per cent. over the last year, as my hon. Friend said. That is a significant achievement, given the increases seen in many cities with similar problems.
The partnership is continuing to build on this success. I am aware that it has two further bids for Government funding for CCTV schemes. I assure my hon. Friend that the bids are being evaluated, and that we hope to decide shortly which have been successful.
Drugs continue to be a major influence on crime levels, and a recent concern is evidence that crack cocaine has begun circulating in the city. The Government have recognised the damage that drugs can do to local communities and have announced funding for all community safety partnerships to tackle the problem: the communities against drugs fund. The Plymouth partnership will receive £224,700 this year, and is actively developing plans to use the money to disrupt the local drugs market. Those plans will be produced in consultation with the drugs action team and the local police commander, whose willingness to consider and adopt a wide range of policing options has already contributed significantly to the successes enjoyed in the city.
§ Linda GilroyI am pleased that the Minister mentioned the local Chief Superintendent Pearce. Will he congratulate the superintendent and his team on coming down very hard on the recent advent of crack cocaine in the city, through Project Ovidian? That appears to have put the lid on the problem at least for the present, although we must remain vigilant.
§ Mr. AinsworthThat is certainly what I intend to do. According to all that I have heard from officials in the Home Office, the superintendent's attitude to the partnership and to methods of working in the city have been innovative, and he has been supportive in employing policing methods that have delivered considerable success.
Although levels of crime in Plymouth remain above average, they are being reduced, but people's fear of crime often remains disproportionate to the actual risk. Reassurance from familiar and recognisable figures in the community often helps to address such fears. The Government have provided nearly £90,000 to fund the presence of 12 neighbourhood wardens in the city. They have been there sine April this year, providing ready and visible reassurance and acting as the eyes and ears of the community, solving problems as they arise and connecting residents with additional services when required to do so.
Crime is often the product of a range of factors present in particular areas. The Government are addressing the underlying issues through a number of programmes in Plymouth, which include a new deal for communities programme, a health action zone, an employment zone, and an education action zone. The new deal for 899 communities programme is providing almost £49 million over 10 years to improve the infrastructure of a deprived community at the heart of the city, through an integrated approach to problem solving by the local people.
Reducing crime is a major issue that will be addressed in the first year of the new deal programme through a number of initiatives aimed particularly at burglary and drug abuse. A further eight constables are planned for the area covered to help to tackle crime and disorder and to reassure local people. A CCTV scheme is also planned, together with the development of the homesafe project. Work with excluded pupils and young persons and family drug support programmes will also be undertaken.
The first year programme will commence on 2 July, and on 5 July a domestic violence strategy is due to be signed by representatives of all the key agencies. The targets set in this strategy will also be incorporated in the city council corporate plan.
As the partnership commences its crime audit and consultation with the people of Plymouth in preparation for the new crime reduction strategy, its efforts will be supported by resources from the Government's partnership development fund, which has provided £1.7 million this year to help community safety partnerships in the south-west to improve their performance. A substantial part of this funding is aimed at improving the IT available to collect, analyse and share data within the partnership. That will provide geographical information systems, which allow crime hot spots to be accurately mapped and tracked, so enabling resources to be targeted more effectively at areas where crime is most threatening.
Plymouth has consistently shown the benefits that can be achieved through working in partnership. It has shown that, by identifying and targeting crime problems, real reductions can be made by focusing actions around the community safety model. That model combines activities 900 to improve law enforcement and crime prevention, and the rehabilitation of offenders. The experience that the partnership has gained will be invaluable as the new crime reduction strategy is developed and integrated with the broader regeneration work that is being taken forward in the city.
My hon. Friend raised the matter of the Plymouth coroner, Mr. Nigel Meadows, being able to allow cameras into his court. I am sorry if the Plymouth coroner feels that his inquiries about filming have not been dealt with appropriately. The issue is subject to the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 1925, which prohibits photography in court. Whether the prohibition applies in the particular circumstances envisaged by the coroner is a matter for him to decide. That was explained to my hon. Friend's neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), in correspondence on behalf of the coroner last year. The Government have no plans to amend the legislation. If further clarification is needed, I shall try to ensure that it is supplied.
§ Linda GilroyWould my hon. Friend also agree to further discussion and perhaps a meeting with the coroner? It is such an enterprising scheme, and we need every tool in our arsenal if we are to succeed in making this the toughest country in the western world on drug dealers.
§ Mr. AinsworthI would not be opposed to that. We want to listen to views, but I hope that my hon. Friend realises that there are many aspects to allowing cameras into court. If she makes those representations on behalf of the coroner, I promise to consider them and to respond as positively as I can.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Seven o'clock.