CRIME AND THE COMMUNITY

HL Deb 29 November 1967 vol 287 cc99-117

2.53 p.m.

LORD ROWLEY rose to call attention to the problems created by crime, and particularly planned crime, in the community; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper, I am very conscious of the temptation to dramatise the problem of crime which is facing our community to-day. Almost daily the newspapers report raids and robbery with violence, involving in many cases callous brutality and in some cases sadism. I think the whole nation was shocked the other day when it read of the attack upon a farmer's wife in Scotland, when, in order to compel her to disclose the place where the family money was kept, the robbers attacked the baby of the wife. We read in the papers this afternoon that only this morning, within two or three miles of this Chamber, there was an attack upon a young police officer who was investigating suspicious circumstances. He was attacked by three men and thrown over a railway bridge on to the rails below; and no doubt that young police officer will have sustained quite serious injuries.

I do not come here this afternoon with any blueprint of a solution. My intention in putting this Motion on the Order Paper was to focus the attention of your Lordships on a situation where in recent years there has been a great, almost staggering, increase in crime in our community which must, if it continues, seriously impair our British way of life. We must realise that the image of the British nation, which for so long has been held up as probably the most law-abiding nation in the world, is being, or is likely to be, tarnished if this increasing wave of crime throughout the country continues.

I think we can depend only upon the facts. It is not a matter of opinion as to whether or not crime is increasing; we should look at what facts are available. I realise that figures do not always justify certain conclusions, but I think the best I can do this afternoon is to produce some figures which have all been obtained from official sources, and which I think your Lordships will find startling in their extent. It seemed to me that the best way to bring the position home to the minds of those who may be listening to me, or who may read what is said in this debate, was to use the figures on a basis of comparison.

Let us first of all take robbery with violence and assault with intent to rob. Of course, that covers the type of case about which we are so frequently reading, where two, three, four or six thugs attack somebody with a view to robbing him. In 1937, 30 years ago, in the whole of England and Wales there were 209 such cases. In 1966, there were 4,474 such cases. If we take the Metropolitan area alone, the figures for robbery with violence in 1966 were 1,992. It is true—and possibly a good thing, too—that in 260 of those cases the robbers failed to steal anything, but in the other 1,700 cases the value of property stolen, mostly cash, was £.1½million. So that a relatively small number of individuals were able to get away with £1½ million tax free.

I think we are all entitled to compare the fact that we have to pay taxes on what we earn, and that these people are able to get away with £1½ million divided between a relatively small number and without paying tax. What is more, in my opinion it is a direct encouragement to a lot of young men of that type. If they think that there is easy money to be made they are prepared, even for the first time, to use violence because of the large amounts involved. I shall have a little to say later as to what I think the public should do, and the responsibility it bears in almost making it easy for these people to do what they are doing.

In the Metropolitan Police area in 1966 there were about 1,900 cases of robbery with violence. In 1937, the same year that I took before, there were 102 cases in the whole of that area. I think we can form an opinion as to the seriousness of the problem if I quote the views of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in his Report for 1966. He said: Robbery with violence, particularly when firearms, vicious weapons or noxious liquids are used, is perhaps the greatest menace which has to be faced in London to-day. That is a very serious statement for the Commissioner to have to make.

I have dealt with robbery with violence and with assaults with intent to rob. They, of course, as the lawyers present in the House will know, are indictable offences. Now I want to deal with the larger section of indictable offences, such as larceny, burglary and house-breaking—and here the figures are even more startling. Let us take indictable offences as a whole, including the figures for London, which I have just quoted. In 1937, in England and Wales there were 266,000 indictable offences. Of those 266,000, 92,000 were in London. In 1966—last year—for the whole of England and Wales the number was 1,199,000, of which 282,500 cases were in London. My Lords, if these figures do not constitute an appalling commentary on the Affluent State, it is difficult to know what does. It would appear that as our material standards improve our moral standards are deteriorating. It is true that the Commissioner pointed out that, comparing the first seven months of 1966 with the first seven months of 1967, there has been a reduction of something like 7,500 in the number of indictable offences—a reduction of roughly 4 per cent.—and to the extent that it goes this is, of course, welcome news. None the less, I suggest that all these facts and figures constitute a sombre picture of our community life to-day.

My Lords, one can imagine people asking: What about the police? In my view, the police forces of our country are faced with an almost impossible task in dealing with this problem, first, because they are undermanned. The Police Commissioner, in his Report, indicates that the Metropolitan Police Force is 6,200 men below establishment. I understand that most of the provincial police forces are similarly undermanned. If we take the total police forces of England, Wales and Scotland, I think I am right in saying—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—that we have something fewer than 70,000 men. That figure seems to be in question, but it does not matter. Take France, which has a population less than ours. I am not going to say that we should always seek to adapt what the French do, but I am told that, with a population less than ours, they have a total police force of 130,000. It seems to me that this shortage is a handicap on the efforts of our police in dealing with this particular problem.

The police have the efficiency; they have efficient equipment. I hope that some noble Lords who are present will have had the advantage that I have had of visiting Scotland Yard or some of the county police headquarters. I was very impressed with the scientific aids that are operated, certainly in Scotland Yard. The computerisation, the automation, the radio-telecommunications and teleprinter services were all used, and there is no doubt that any failure on the part of our police forces to grapple with this burning problem is certainly not due to a lack of efficiency.

But I think that we have to do more than expect the police to carry this burden alone. I believe the public have their part to play as well. I believe we have to become security conscious. What is happening? We read in the papers almost every week, if not every day, of women being sent to take thousands of pounds to the bank or to collect thousands of pounds to take back to the factory or the shop to pay wages. It is the same with the banks themselves, too. There was the case in Dolphin Square, a mile or so from this Chamber, outside a small branch of Lloyds Bank, when, at 10 o'clock in the morning, an elderly bank clerk, with a young clerk to act as escort, walking between the car and the entrance to the bank, were waylaid by two thugs. This was at 10 o'clock in the morning, when people were round about. These clerks had ammonia thrown in their eyes, they were coshed and struck to the ground, the satchel was taken away and within two minutes the thugs had disappeared. It is the same with post offices. We read of a post office in Kennington on which there was a raid. All the £75,000 worth of postal orders and insurance stamps, apparently, which was in a safe under the control of the sub-postmistress, was taken. She was compelled to disclose the combination of the safe; and, at their leisure, the thugs got away with this vast amount of loot. I would suggest that employers have to realise that we are living in such times, and that they must take all precautions.

Just as I am going to endeavour to show that crime is organised, is planned, so I think the defence against the criminals at large must be organised as well; and I am quite sure—in fact, I understand that it is so—that the police throughout the Metropolitan district, and I am sure throughout the country, would be only too happy to give advice as to the steps which should be taken. The police are in an impossible position because they are faced with a kind of guerrilla war on the community. Those who have had command of military operations against guerrillas know that one of the great difficulties is the surprise attack. The guerrillas do not give notice of when they are going to make their bid. Nor, in this country, do they give notice when they are going to attack a bank or those who may be carrying cash from one place to another. So the criminals who are engaged in activities of this type have all the advantage of surprise.

I am not suggesting for one moment that all these activities are masterminded; that we have two or three Al Capones in London who will enrol, recruit and pay large numbers of these thugs to carry out these operations; but I do say that these criminal activities are definitely organised on business lines. What happens? The place that is intended to be raided is carefully observed for several weeks, if necessary, beforehand. The operation is planned in every detail, and the raid is carried out with military precision and timing, just like a commando raid used to be carried out in the days of the war. Moreover, as we saw from what took place at a Co-operative bank recently, the criminals of to-day are equipped with the latest equipment. In that case they were able, during the week-end and at their leisure, to penetrate (I think it was) a foot or two feet of concrete or steel with a flame-thrower device which had apparently been developed in France after the war in order to destroy some of the many concrete shelters that had been put up during the war.

It is true, of course, that the criminal has been helped, and the police handicapped, by another development. These thugs always use stolen cars; and the Police Commissioner reports that in London alone during last year 7,600 motor cars were stolen from their rightful owners. We are all aware of what happens. The criminals seem to specialise in Jaguar cars. It is a pity that Jaguar owners cannot take steps to make it more difficult for their cars to be stolen. I do not own a Jaguar, but I believe they are one of the fastest cars we have. Another difficulty that the police are facing is the ability of the criminal—with the aid of a stolen car at the place of operation and another half a mile or so away—to make a get-away quickly. It appears to be an acknowledged fact that the criminals listen to police radio transmissions; and no major crime is committed that does not involve the use of a stolen car.

My Lords, I have said that the public have their part to play in this by taking more precautions than they do. But what can the Government do? The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, took, I think, the first major step in this great campaign against crime when during his tenure of office as Home Secretary he established what is known as the Crime Research Unit. I think that was a valuable step; but I must frankly say that we have not been told much about its activities.

I wonder whether something could not be done along the lines of the President's Crime Commission appointed by President Johnson two years ago. Noble Lords ned not get apprehensive when I pick up this huge volume. It is the first report of the President's Crime Commission, which is called The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. The Commission, a very representative one, have examined and analysed every facet of crime that one can conceive of and have produced a remarkable document. It contains many most valuable recommendations which I am quite sure would be of value to those seeking to combat crime in this country. I should like to ask the noble Lord who is to reply to the debate whether or not the Home Office are giving consideration to publishing a Report by the Criminal Research Unit, to which I have just referred or, if not, whether they would give consideration to the establishment of some sort of Commission which would have as its terms of reference the responsibility for examining and analysing every possible facet of crime, whether it be drug-taking, juvenile delinquency, rioting in the streets or what-have-you.

The American Commission's Report has been followed by a Bill which has gone through the House of Representatives and is now going through the Senate. It is a Bill which is called, technically, the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Assistance Act 1967, but which is more popularly known as the Street Safety and Crime Control Bill. Under it, money is provided by the central Government to aid the State Governments and the local authorities. We do not have State Governments, but we have county responsibilities which are included in our local government. The main purpose of this Bill is to encourage the methods of public protection against criminals, by providing equipment and by the establishment of agencies which would be responsible for planning all forms of activities in resistance to the criminal element. The Report also seems to attach great importance to public education relating to crime prevention, including an education programme in schools and in community agencies. So throughout both the Report and the Bill there is great emphasis on planning.

My Lords, I turn now to the question of punishment. We are all aware of the great debate on whether, and to what extent, punishment should fit the crime and what forms that punishment should take. I strongly support the imaginative policies carried out by the Home Secretary following the work of my noble friend Lord Stow Hill when he was Home Secretary and, no doubt, anticipated by that of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. I am a strong supporter of probation and of the parole system—and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is here because he is the new chairman of the Parole Board. But having said that, I must express some doubt as to whether in all cases we need to be too emphatic upon letting people out on parole or treating them as first offenders. A noble Lord who is not here this afternoon told me the other day that as chairman of a quarter sessions he had before him a young man who had committed a similar offence some months ago. Because he had been a first offender he had been put on probation. Within a few months had repeated the offence and, no doubt, the second time was not put on probation. But I am more concerned with those who use ammonia and shotguns, the violent criminals. Surely there is a case for giving them more severe punishment. They have brought suffering and injury to people on their lawful occasions through committing these acts, and I should like to see the Government having another look at the application of the principles relating to both probation and parole.

My Lords, I finish by saying a word or two about "having a go". I think this is another field in which some members of the public can contribute to the solution of this problem. I thought that I was much too old ever to think of "having a go", but when I read the other day of the Field Marshal of 67 or 63 years of age "having a go" with three men—and I met him the other day and he seemed none the worse for it—it seemed to me that there was still hope for some of us of my age.

VISCOUNT MONTGOMERY OF ALAMEIN

My Lords, did the noble Lord refer to my age as 68?

LORD ROWLEY

My Lords, the noble and gallant Viscount looks even younger than 68.

VISCOUNT MONTGOMERY OF ALAMEIN

My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the great increase in crime to which he has been referring has its roots primarily in the break-down of religious truth in the family life in this country?

LORD ROWLEY

My Lords, I was going to finish on that note. I have already said that as we get more materially prosperous there seems to be a lowering of our moral standards. I shall to some extent cover the point raised by the noble and gallant Viscount in a moment; but I want now to say a word about "having a go". There are complications about that, as the Minister will agree.

Some weeks ago a relative of a Member of your Lordships' House was passing a jeweller's shop in Sloane Square just at the time when three criminals were raiding the shop. He was evidently quite husky enough to "have a go"; and he did "have a go". He was giving what is popularly known as "what for" to one of them, when the other two came on the scene. He was coshed and thrown to the ground and injured to some extent—certainly his clothes were damaged. He got a letter of thanks from the firm that owned the shop; but that was all. He has no right to any insurance or to any compensation from anyone and—

THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM)

My Lords, I must correct the noble Lord. He must have heard of compensation for criminal injury. I cannot comment on a particular case, but there are certainly arrangements for payment of compensation in cases similar to that he has described.

LORD ROWLEY

Well my Lords, my informant was apparently not aware of that. I thought it had to be a question of going to the assistance of a police officer, and there was no police officer on the spot at the time. No doubt the noble Lord will check that, because it is important. It is a little hard on anyone who "has a go" if he has to buy a new suit—and they are pretty expensive these days—because he has gone to render assistance against an attack by one of these criminals.

Then there is the question of a motor car which becomes damaged. Suppose a motorist rams his car against a "getaway" car which is being used by those engaged in one of these operations. What is the position? I should like the noble Lord to tell us, or to look into it. Is the motorist entitled to recover the cost of repairing a car which he has used deliberately to ram a "get-away" car? These are practical points about which we all ought to be satisfied. I hope that the noble Lord will tell us.

My other point about the public as a whole (and this applies especially to employers and shopkeepers who do not take the necessary precautions) is that there is too much apathy and indifference. I find that people take the view, "It could not happen to me". That is a very dangerous point of view to take, because we know that anyone, at any time, in any place, may be subjected to an attack. These attacks may vary in degree according to the amount of loot which the criminals think they are likely to secure.

Finally, my Lords, may I say this? In my view, crime is a social problem which is interwoven with almost every aspect of our national life. Those who commit acts of violence, those who rob, those who burgle are not the only persons who are guilty of anti-social conduct. The drug pedlars; their victims, the drug addicts; the teenage vandals; the young hooligans who deliberately commit damage in railway trains and provoke riots at football matches—they are all contributing towards the weakening of the fibre of our community and are equally guilty of anti-social conduct.

In my view (it is also the view which was expressed by the Commissioner of Police in his Report last year), there is a greater need for more parental control and wiser teaching, both at home and in the schools. There is a need to seek to fire the young people of our country with a greater idealism, a greater spiritual faith; and certainly to inculcate into their minds—for, of course, they are the citizens of to-morrow in our great community—the need to live up to higher standards of moral conduct. In my view it is only along these lines that we can hope to safeguard our great national heritage and our British way of life. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.24 p.m.

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR

My Lords, I am but a new Member of your Lordships' House, but I venture to say that it is high time that we should discuss again here the state of crime, which as the noble Lord, Lord Rowley, was right in saying, is a disgrace to our nation. We are all indebted to the noble Lord for initiating this debate. He was good enough to let me know a considerable time ago that he was thinking of doing so. He and I have not collaborated in preparing our speeches, but I hope it will be found that mine is, as it were, complementary to his and that by different ways we have arrived at the same conclusions.

My Lords, the prevention of crime is even better than its detection. I know that the Home Office and the Police Service have been increasingly stressing crime prevention in their training of young policemen at District Training Centres, and of detectives at the Detective Training Centres, and at the Police College at Bramshill. In addition, in my time at the Home Office specialist courses were started at Stafford. I should like to know from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, whether those courses are being continued and are proving productive, and whether the knowledge gained there is permeating the whole service; because I am sure that that was the original intent in the development of those courses.

I think we should all like to know, too, how much the Police Service is gaining in its attempts to win the cooperation of the public. The noble Lord, Lord Rowley, spoke of this. Last year the Home Secretary himself initiated a national crime prevention campaign. If I remember rightly, it was concentrated largely on housebreaking and on car thefts, as those were thought of as the special fields in which ordinary members of the public could do more to protect themselves. I believe that such a campaign must be continuous and that it must largely be projected by television right into the home. One might say that this sort of campaign is directed against petty crime, rather than against planned crime which is, perhaps, the central theme of this debate. But that view, my Lords, is mistaken. There is no greater handicap on the police in fighting large-scale organised crime than the enormous number of police man-hours which have to be spent following up petty crimes which could have been prevented by a little more care on the part of the public.

With regard to large-scale crime, one would like to know how much success the police are achieving in getting the owners of valuable goods to take intelligent precautions for safeguarding them. How far are insurance companies, for example, insisting that vehicles carrying valuable loads do not travel the same route at the same time on the same day of the week so that thieves will know exactly where and when to lie in wait for them? Is there a working party still in permanent session between the police and the insurance companies to secure that the companies are swiftly made aware of the latest crime methods and the most effective means of countering them; to persuade the insurance companies to charge differential premiums according to the precautions taken by the insurers, or indeed to refuse cover unless certain precautions are taken? We are all careful to see that the radiators of our cars are filled with anti-freeze mixture in winter. This is not only because it is annoying to have a cracked radiator, but also because the insurance companies have given us notice that unless we take that precaution they will not be prepared to meet the cost of radiators cracking because of frost. I believe that in the matter of preventing crime insurance companies can in similar ways exercise very great influence.

My argument is that the reduction of that portion of crime which is foreseeable and preventable makes that much more available in the way of resources to tackle crime which is less foreseeable and hardly preventable. Tackling that sort of crime is a matter of resources and of brains. When I say resources I am thinking of police numbers and equipment and deployment. But numbers, my Lords, come first. One cannot read the two reports published annually, the Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, and the Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, without being made aware of the difficulty that chief officers of police experience in detaching men for special duties—special and much-needed duties—because of the sheer shortage of police manpower in the big cities.

If I may, I will read one telling paragraph from the Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis for 1966: Last year I reported on the setting up of a highly mobile striking force, the Special Patrol Group, which started in April, 1965. All its members are volunteers and their activities have strongly confirmed my hopes for its success. The Group has been responsible for 530 arrests for crime and the recovery of £21,220 worth of stolen property as well as making 197 arrests for other offences. It has now been deployed upon crime prevention and detection within thirty police areas within this Police District; it has taken part in many searches, including Epping Forest and territory in Hertfordshire when the fugitive Roberts was arrested for the murder of three Metropolitan police officers. Its flexibility, mobility and facility of communication makes it an effective formation for dealing with police problems in contemporary circumstances. When the manpower situation permits I would propose to extend the scheme considerably. There we have an initiative which is undoubtedly proving successful, but the Commissioner is not able to exploit its full possibilities because he simply cannot afford to detach sufficient men from the main body of his Force. His Force—the Metropolitan Police—at the end of last year, as the noble Lord, Lord Rowley, said, was over 6,000 short of establishment. The provincial forces throughout England and Wales were 12,000 short of establishment. That is a 25 per cent. shortage in the Metropolitan Police and a 16 per cent. shortage elsewhere in England and Wales, but that 16 per cent. is an average, concealing county areas which are up to establishment and big cities where the position is as grave as it is in London.

Generally, the shortage is not due to lack of recruits for the police; it is due to wastage of trained men. I hope that the Government will be able to tell us to-day how much result is being achieved from the inquiry by the Working Party which the Home Secretary set up on police manpower. One fully recognises the temptations on men in their twenties and thirties to leave the police. In the big cities where the police are scarcest there are also the largest number of competing vacancies waiting for them, where they can get as good pay, maybe better, and, what may count much more than that, more regular hours and no week-end work. Police hours will always be more irregular than office hours. As against that, police work is less monotonous and more exciting than most work in offices, and there are plenty of people who would prefer to have the excitement rather than the monotony.

I fear that a good deal of the wastage is contributed to by understandable friction over little things: having to work in out-of-date police stations; canteen arrangements which fall short of what a good employer would provide for his staff; regulations that may be out of date in the modern world, and so forth. I am not criticising anybody in saying this. I carried the responsibility and felt the handicap imposed by old buildings, but we must be vigorous to get these handicaps removed. Whenever, as Home Secretary, I opened a new police headquarters anywhere in the Provinces, I could see that the amenities provided there for the ordinary policeman would be the envy of almost every man in the Metropolitan Police. That is no criticism whatever of the Commissioner or of those who are responsible for running the Metropolitan Police. The trouble is the old buildings.

A count not many years ago showed that out of 176 police stations in the Metropolitan Police District, which is broadly Greater London, only 39 had been built since 1910. One knows that in the old days the police had to work in all sorts of quarters. When a police force was first established in Great Yarmouth in 1836, the authorities decided that it should be housed in the local gaol. Of course, that may have given them opportunities of getting to know their customers, but it was hardly an ideal environment for the police service. There is nothing like that nowadays. Yet there are many police stations up and down the country, particularly, I would say, in the great cities, which are much too prison-like and too little modernised to encourage able and ambitious men to look forward to working there all their days. As Home Secretary, I managed to get much more money for prison buildings out of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I never got enough. I am convinced that modernisation and better amenities in police buildings are an absolute necessity if wastage in police numbers is to be reduced.

The loss of trained policemen is a loss of value to the State too, both by the money spent on their training and then wasted, and by the loss of efficiency of the Force through loss of numbers. It is of course the standard of efficiency with which we are concerned all the time in this debate, because only a highly efficient and well-manned police force can be successful in combating crime at its present level.

We must also have a sufficiency of high intelligence in the Police Service. It is called on to do the work of the nation without getting its due share of the nation's brains. I would pay the highest possible tribute to the Police College at Bramshill and the work it does. After careful inquiry over a period, a new plan of courses at the Police College was just starting when I became Home Secretary, including the special course for selected constables. I believe that this new pattern of courses there is right, but it has not succeeded, as I believe its authors hoped it would, in attracting into the police anything like a sufficiency of sixth-formers, let alone a sufficiency of graduates.

In 1964 we arranged a private weekend conference at the Police College, inviting headmasters, headmistresses, careers masters, secretaries of university appointments boards and others to meet a number of senior police officers and representatives of the Home Office. That conference ended with unanimous agreement among all the educationalists present that there were numbers of boys and girls in the sixth forms of schools who would be admirably suited to a career in the police and would enjoy it, but the idea had not yet come to their knowledge or caught their imagination. I know how much has been done in subsequent years arising out of that conference, including the appointment by the police of schools liaison officers to assist recruiting. But the fact remains that out of 5,000 young men who started their training as police recruits in provincial police forces in 1966, only 110 had two "A"-level passes. That was an improvement on the year before, but of course it was still far too low. Out of 660 women recruits, only eight had two "A"levels—the same number as the year before.

I believe that this is the very heart of the battle against planned crime. We all are endowed with different qualities, and if a man has brains it does not prove that he necessarily has the courage that a policeman needs. Nor do I believe—and in this I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Rowley—that the criminal world is as full of master-minds as those who write about it sometimes suggest to us. But if we are effectively to counter planned, highly organised crime we must make sure that the Police Service of the future has a decisive predominance over the criminal world in high intelligence. I welcome the fact that 16 graduates entered provincial police forces last year. I welcome the development, which started in my time, enabling men who do well in the special courses at Bramshill to have an increasing chance of getting to a university.

But what I ask your Lordships to accept—what I ask the Government to accept—is that we cannot provide art effective Police Service in the future, fit to counter more and more sophisticated crime, unless we recruit to it far more than the present handful of men and women who have carried their education up to "A"-level standard or beyond. If the present methods of recruitment are not attracting them, we must break the bonds of our thinking. We must not be tied down by the past; we must try much more daring methods, for until the Police Service attracts a higher proportion of the young brains of the country, it cannot equal the task that lies ahead of it.

A small boy was once asked to write down what were the requirements of a lifeboatman and he wrote: "A lifeboat-man requires three things: great courage, a spirit of self-sacrifice and a mackintosh. "It was very apt that he remembered material equipment as well as the things of the heart. This is important in the Police Service, too. Do not let us forget the policeman's equipment. The strongest weapon against crime, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Rowley, will agree, is a well-manned, well-equipped, resourceful and courageous police force. New equipment, the application of new scientific methods, and new tactics in policing are all of great importance. But in the last resort they are less important than the numbers and quality of the men and women in the Service—though, of course, I grant that we shall be more likely to get and keep men and women of high quality if we give them the modern equipment that they need and deserve.

It is easier to afford and deploy crime-fighting equipment efficiently in a large police force than in a small one. Though do not always see eye to eye with the present Home Secretary, I pay tribute to his brave decision to amalgamate the 120-odd separate police forces in England and Wales into something under 50 larger forces. I think this decision was right, and I think his timing was right, as soon as it became clear that local government reorganisation was to be put off for some years awaiting the Report of the Royal Commission. I hope that he, for his part, feels grateful to me for the provisions that I introduced in the Police Act 1964, because if I had not amended the law relating to amalgamations he could not have got his present amalgamation policy through.

My very last decision as Home Secretary was to establish the regional crime squads, and in so doing I had to allay a certain amount of local authority suspicion and resistance. My own belief is that, at any rate in our present circumstances, the combination of enlarged police forces, an efficient inspectorate, regional crime squads covering a number of police areas, and central services provided at the Home Office, such as the Police Research and Planning Branch, to which the noble Lord, Lord Rowley, referred, meets our needs better than a single national police force with central control could do. I will not argue that point now, except to say that I attach extreme importance to the freedom of individual chief constables to initiate experiments in policing. I am not sure that we should get as much of that if we had a single national police force under central control. Now, if a local experiment is successful, Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary can carry the successful idea across to other forces, just like bees fertilising flowers—and I trust that my friends in the Inspectorate will forgive me for that comparison.

I hope that the Research and Planning Branch which I initiated is doing well. When I read of all the responsibilities it has taken on, I cannot help thinking that it must be understaffed and under strain. But that only illustrates again the general strain on police manpower, which is admitted to be, in total numbers, inadequate. Of course, alongside the work of that branch we must press ahead in parallel with criminological research, both in the Home Office and at the universities. Every Home Secretary is probably impatient—I certainly was—at having to wait for the results of research which one wished could have been started earlier. In my time, the bottleneck, so far as criminological research was concerned, was not lack of money: it was, rather, shortage of people at universities and elsewhere ready to take up work in criminology. Considering how much research work is done through universities into subjects that often seem rather useless, it used to irk me that the development of criminological research was held up by lack of people sufficiently interested in the subject. Maybe the Government can tell us that the situation is better now.

In a limited time—and there are many speakers to follow me—no one can do more than speak of limited aspects of this grave subject, the war against crime. I have resisted the temptation to-day to express views about new and experimental methods of policing, new scientific equipment, and so forth, because I thought it right at the beginning of the debate to concentrate on the strength of the police in quantity and quality, which I believe is at the heart of it all. The growth of serious crime in the past twenty years is something of which our country must be ashamed. We are not unique; it is paralleled in most of the industrialised countries of the world. But do not let us excuse our shortcomings by pointing out that they are shared by other people.

Crime is primarily a problem of the young. I am not seeking by that to say that there are no "old lags"—of course there are. But it is a fact that few people take to systematic crime in their grown-up years who have never been in trouble with the courts when they were young. There is something seriously wrong with our mental and social environment, or with our upbringing of the young, or both, in that 50 per cent. of indictable crime is committed by those under 21, and 27 per cent. of it by those under 17. In breaking away from the excessive strictness of Victorian society, as we were right to do, we must avoid and resist being led as a nation into a so-called progressive outlook that almost excuses crime. It needed the terrible murder of three policemen near Shepherd's Bush last year to jolt the British public into remembering that the police were their protectors and not their oppressors. One of the most significant passages in these police reports is. I think, the paragraph in the Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis for 1966 which says: It was observed that for a number of weeks following the shooting of the three officers at Shepherd's Bush in August there was a distinct drop in the number of complaints made against the police. The police are our protectors, not our oppressors, and they deserve much greater assistance, and much greater confidence, than many members of the public are just now prepared to grant them. However we strengthen our police forces, however we re-equip them, however we modernise police tactics, the police will remain gravely hampered if they do not receive full co-operation from the public.

Sir Ranulph Bacon's famous exhortation to the public to "have a go" has had its effect. Some members of the public have perhaps taken it too literally and been too brave, and have suffered injury, or even death; but I think it should be widely known, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, that compensation for criminal injuries is now available. I know that much that I did as Home Secretary was criticised; but I do not believe anybody has ever criticised me for initiating that scheme, by which members of the public who suffer criminal injuries can obtain compensation.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, may I lust add to what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, rightly said, that the payments made by the Compensation Board are not confined to compensation for injuries received in the course of assisting, the police? With regard to the motor car question, local police authorities can, and do, make payments in respect of such losses.

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR

Yes; I am very glad the noble Lord has filled out the picture in this way.

My Lords, I must draw to an end. I would add only this. We want not only to be sure that we can arrest and convict those who have committed crime we want to re-create a more law-abiding society. The only sound and reliable basis for a law-abiding community is the maintenance of moral standards, and we must never allow a permissive attitude to morality to undermine that.