Crime

My Lords, without reservation I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, for giving us the opportunity for this debate. Her helpful and constructive remarks set the tone for what is proving to be a reflective occasion. It would be quite wrong to speak in a debate of this kind without placing on record a tribute to the police and security services for all that they do on our behalf. Their courage, commitment and professionalism which usually prevail are special assets for the nation. The quality of their service is often outstanding, not least that of senior police officers. To maintain high standards, the importance of accountability and monitoring and of independent scrutiny and investigation when things go wrong is great. But that scrutiny and investigation must be seen to be independent and it must itself be of the highest quality. There has been emphasis in the debate on the importance of training. I would underline that and say that I believe that higher education has a vital role to play. There are many examples now of how that contributes to the development of the police services. I declare an interest because I professionally advise De Montfort University, which is involved in this kind of work, and I serve voluntarily in the governance of the London School of Economics, the University of Newcastle and Lancaster University. If this work is to succeed, it is important to have continuity—to be able to plan ahead so that proper resources are there. One cannot switch it on and off just like that. A lot of emotion and sensational journalism surrounds crime. I hope that the House will forgive me if I take the opportunity of this debate to look at the facts for a moment or two, albeit that some calculations are obviously less statistically significant than others. The British Crime Survey arguably provides the most reliable measure of trends over time since it has a consistent methodology and is pretty unaffected by changes in the reporting and recording of crime. The BCS for the year ending March 2007 showed that over the previous 10 years all crime as it measured was down 32 per cent. Burglary was down 55 per cent, all vehicle thefts were down by 52 per cent, all household offences were down by 33 per cent, all BCS-recorded violence was down by 31 per cent and all personal offences were down by 32 per cent. Figures for the year ending September 2007, compared with those for the year ending September 2006, are interesting. Overall level of crime remains unchanged at around 10.7 million crimes. The risk of crime, according to the BCS, came down by 1 per cent. Violence largely remained unchanged, but with a 2 per cent decrease. All personal crime saw a 6 per cent decrease, all household crime saw a 2 per cent decrease and vandalism was down by some 4 per cent. Domestic burglary did see an increase of 5 per cent, but theft from the person saw an 11 per cent decrease. In applauding all that, as I do, we must recognise that the challenges remain great. Ethnic realities and perceptions and the implications of those for stop-and-account, let alone stop-and-search, people trafficking, prostitution, rape, gun crime, drugs and, some would argue, even more exactingly, alcohol, and of course youth-on-youth violence are all examples of those challenges. They are complex social issues necessitating effective law enforcement and highly imaginative, wider, sensitive and co-ordinated social policies. Education is often highly relevant and we must beware of criminalising significant numbers of the young. It is impressive that the police themselves can be ahead of existing public opinion in understanding all that and working towards it. In recent conversations that I have been able to have with a few key police personnel—some still serving and some recently retired—the point repeatedly emphasised by them has been that successful policing depends critically on working with the community. In effect, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, in his important report, had that as a central theme. Public confidence and trust are vital. That is why in my home county so many of us welcomed the decision to keep the Cumbrian force as a Cumbrian force rather than seeing its dynamic drawn towards urban areas in Lancashire, which would have been inevitable had the forces been combined. Neighbourhood and local policing really do matter. This priority of working with the community is nowhere better illustrated than in counterterrorism policy. Without trust and confidence where it matters, the task is made immensely more difficult. That is why—I hope my noble friend will forgive my taking the opportunity to make this point—some of us are totally unconvinced by the proposal to hold people for 42 days without charge, and totally convinced of the need to move forward on introducing at least some element of intercept evidence in court proceedings. Justice has to be seen to be done and procedures have to be as transparent as possible. Quite apart from the human rights and natural justice concerns to which I hope we all subscribe, there is the issue of counterproductivity. I believe that counterproductivity is unforgivable, and whether it happens inadvertently is irrelevant. Counterproductivity undermines the efforts to contain terrorism. Some significant players in the police with frontline experience and operational responsibilities, with whom I have been fortunate enough to be able to speak recently, share this anxiety. To pretend that all those involved in the struggle against terrorism want detention for 42 days is just not what I have encountered. It behoves us to take the views of those in the police service seriously. I referred earlier to certain crime statistics, and perhaps I may talk a little about what is happening to the police service in terms of personnel. Over the past, decade the police workforce has increased by 27 per cent. On 30 September 2007, the personnel of the police service totalled 231,822, of whom 139,170 were police officers, an 11 per cent increase on March 1997. Police numbers fell by 800 between March and September 2007. However, a decline of 0.6 per cent in officer numbers must be looked at in the context of the 0.8 per cent increase in police personnel overall during the same period, an increase of some 1,796. In any case, it was the first time there was a reduction in police officer numbers since March 2000 in the 43 forces in England and Wales. As forces more critically examine the roles of officers and look for ways to improve efficiency and effectiveness, their police staff are taking on more roles from police officers. In the past 10 years, police staff numbers, excluding police community support officers, have risen by 19,529 to 76,721, an increase of 34 per cent. Of course the focus should not be on officer numbers, but on making the best use of officer time. Equally important is how policing is delivered. The workforce mix must reflect the best way to deliver policing. In this context, it is encouraging that many forces are already employing police staff in operational support roles that do not need the powers or training of a police constable, and surely that is exactly what should be happening. On a like-for-like basis, government grant and central spending on services for the police will have risen by nearly £4.8 billion, from £6.2 billion in 1997-98 to £11 billion, a 77 per cent increase which in real terms is more than 39 per cent. For 2007-08, the Government provided £350 million in funding for neighbourhood policing, representing a 41 per cent increase towards the cost of achieving the target of 16,000 police community support officers by April 2007, and towards having a dedicated neighbourhood policing team embedded in every area of England and Wales by 31 March. The three-year settlement for 2008-09 to 2010-11 for policing at least provides a background of stability and continuity, and I believe that it is altogether welcome that the Government achieved the target of 14,000 special constables by 2007. I conclude by returning to the issue of counterterrorism, which preoccupies us all. The Home Office has provided record funding for counterterrorism policing. In 2006-07, it allocated £106 million of the counterterrorism specific grant to the ACPO Terrorism and Allied Matters scheme and £142 million for the Metropolitan Police Service. I understand that in 2007-08 the Home Office plans to increase still further this extra funding by £95 million to the ACPO TAM scheme and by £45 million for the MPS. I welcome that, but I implore my noble friend and his colleagues to recognise that it would be tragic in this context to undermine it all by an ill-advised insistence on a totally as-yet-unargued extension to 42 days of the ability to hold people without charge.