HC Deb 26 June 2000 vol 352 cc382-3W
33. Mr. Corbett

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress he has made in reducing the incidence of burglary. [126152]

Mr. Charles Clarke

The reported crime figures for 1999 show a fall in the total numbers of burglaries of over 15 per cent. in the last two years (down from 1,127,000 in the year ending March 1997 to 953,000 in the year ending March 1999). While econometric models predict upward pressure on the level of burglary, we are committed to reducing crime and all police authorities have set five year targets for reducing the number of domestic burglaries. Nationally, these amount to a 25 per cent. reduction by March 2005.

Under the Reducing Burglary Initiative (part of our £400 million Crime Reduction Programme), we plan to invest over £50 million by 2002 in projects covering over two million households in high crime areas, with the aim of preventing 15,000 burglaries by March 2002 and 25,000 in the longer term. The projects are being evaluated and the lessons learned about what works, and is most cost-effective, in different circumstances will be of wider benefit to all local crime and disorder partnerships seeking to improve their own anti-burglary strategies.

So far, 224 local anti-burglary projects, covering around 800,000 households, have been approved at a total cost of nearly £16 million.

As part of the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions' New Home Energy Efficiency Scheme (HEES), we have also committed up to £12 million to improve home security for low income pensioners living in high crime areas in England and Wales. New HEES started earlier this month.

In April 2000, we launched a Distraction Burglary Taskforce to combat the problem of burglary by bogus callers which predominantly affects very vulnerable members of the community. Pilot schemes across the country, spearheaded by the National Neighbourhood Watch Association, will try out different community based methods of tackling this crime

We have also launched a Property Crime Reduction Action Team to take forward work at a national level to reduce property crime, including ways of designing out crime. And we have also set ambitious targets for tackling drugs misuse, which is strongly connected to property crime, and have launched a number of related initiatives, including new Drug Treatment and Testing Orders and arrest referral schemes.

Finally, we are also funding several related projects under the Targeted Policing Initiative, including schemes to disrupt the stolen goods markets and to tackle drug related crime.