Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am afraid to say that I am unlikely to be a Minister under any Government, Conservative or Labour. That is the reality of the situation. I will tell the Minister what I think should happen, although this is purely my opinion. About 100,000 people commit half the crime in this country, according to the Carter report, and only 15,000 of them are in prison at any one time. If we could put the other 85,000 in prison—not throw them into a hole, which is more or less what happens at the moment—we could train them properly, get them off drink and drugs, deal with their anger management problems, and give them vocational qualifications and skills. That might take time and it would cost money, but we spend £2 billion dealing with 80,000 prisoners. We could spend another £2 billion, or even another £4 billion, dealing with another 80,000, which would involve up to £6 billion. However, those prisoners cost £60 billion every year, according to the Home Office in 2000, so by removing from the streets the people who are responsible for half of all crime we could save £30 billion. That means that prison could pay for itself, quite apart from the fact that it takes off the streets those who make the lives of law-abiding people a misery. It would give those people an opportunity, because at the moment they have no opportunity at all. One of the most shocking statistics, incidentally, is not the number of people who commit suicide, but the number of prisoners who die after they come out of prison, quite often because they take heroin and do not realise how strong it is. There are people dying all the time because they come out of prison. Prison is a safe environment for many of the people who are inside. I do not believe in throwing people into a hole. I do believe in a good Prison Service that looks after people properly. I am also interested in the parts of the Bill that deal with the NHS. I ask the Minister to consider something with an open mind. As he might know, I serve as a special constable with British Transport police, which is funded by the rail operators and has made most train stations, particularly in London, much safer. I will not bore him with the anecdote, but I once had to deal with a situation in a hospital. [Interruption.] I have only two and a half minutes left, but it is a good anecdote. The security guards in the hospital were unwilling to deal with a violent patient. The nurse told us that they were sitting down having their cup of tea and were not willing to get involved. They were getting very low pay—minimum wage, I would guess, or slightly more—and simply were not interested. If NHS hospitals, particularly those in inner cities, had dedicated police officers who dealt only with those hospitals, they would have a body of people trained in the law and, more importantly, the equipment to deal with violent offenders, which, unfortunately, security guards do not have. That idea has worked well with train stations, and is basically what the Ministry of Defence police do on MOD sites and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary at nuclear establishments. I see no reason why we cannot do something similar with hospitals, particularly in built-up areas, where it is easy to get from one to the other. When the Minister looks again at the legislation that allows homeowners to defend themselves, will he bear it in mind that, according to a survey released recently, one in four people keep a baseball bat or blunt instrument under their beds to deal with criminals? That creates a great deal of danger to both them and—although I must admit that I do not lose too much sleep over it—the criminal. There must be a better way, and a way of enabling people to undergo training and have access to proper equipment that would enable them to defend their families, rather than relying on a baseball bat, which may harm them or someone entering their home. Parts of the Bill are to be commended, but the Minister cannot disguise the fact that, as a result of it, 1,300 extra people every year will walk the streets, most of whom will reoffend.