Burglaries (Hansard, 20 January 2003)

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Falconer of Thoroton)

We have already made significant progress in reducing domestic burglary.

The British Crime Survey gives the best available measure of the amount of crime actually affecting the public, regardless of changes in reporting or recording levels. According to the latest figures, published on 9 January, burglary is down 39 per cent compared to 1997 and has reduced slightly over the past 18 months (though the level of reduction is not statistically significant).

We have a comprehensive strategy to drive burglary down further. In addition to several programmes of work that will affect a range of crimes—including Narrowing the Justice Gap, reducing re-offending and 68WA our anti-drugs strategy—we have a number of initiatives targeted more specifically at domestic burglary.

Minimum sentences for third time burglary convictions were introduced in December 1999.

All police authorities have agreed targets for reducing domestic burglary by 2005. Performance against these targets will be assessed under the performance monitoring arrangements set out in the National Policing Plan. These arrangements will inform the work of our Police Standards Unit, which is working with police forces to help them meet these targets, through, for example, developing and sharing best practice.

Under the Reducing Burglary Initiative (part of our Crime Reduction Programme) which ran from 1999 to 2002, we funded 250 local anti-burglary projects. The overall impact of this initiative is still being evaluated, but some lessons about what worked most cost-effectively have already been learnt and are being disseminated to the crime and disorder reduction partnerships. These will inform plans for further local projects funded from other funding streams, including our Safer Communities Initiative, Communities Against Drugs, the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and New Deal for Communities (we estimate that around 20 per cent of the funding available under these last two schemes is used to tackle crime.

Over 80 per cent of the latest strategies developed by the crime and disorder reduction partnerships include burglary; and many of the local public service agreements being negotiated between central government and local authorities include a target for burglary reduction that stretches performance beyond what would be expected anyway.

We are pursuing a number of options for providing home security advice to the public, especially those at greatest risk of being victimized—for example, we will be launching later this month a website containing crime prevention advice tailored specifically for students.

Those living in rented accomodation and houses in multiple occupancy are also at high risk and we are discussing with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister what more can be done to improve security standards in such properties.

We are also considering with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) what can be done to ensure adequate standards of security in new homes and those formed by conversion of other buildings.