Crime

My Lords, I warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, for bringing forward this debate, which is particularly timely. Yesterday we had the Statement on the national security strategy, which mentioned the police only once. I appreciate that the Statement concentrated on other things, but when there is a national emergency of any sort it is to the police that people turn first, because they are in the front line of dealing with such emergencies. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, commented that this was going to be a very reflective debate—and he was absolutely right. It has been reflective of lessons learnt and has looked into the future, which is why it has been particularly interesting. Some speakers have touched on the future, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker of Wallasey, who spoke about counterfeiting. That is often an overlooked crime, given the effects that she graphically described. It links in, as she said, with other crimes and is often not a stand-alone crime. I think, for example, of the recent problems of people selling counterfeit DVDs. They are themselves often the victims of crime in that they have been duped into coming into the UK—having paid sums to do so as an illegal immigrant—and are then further exploited in selling counterfeit DVDs. Counterfeiting is much understressed. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, emphasised cyber crime. Most of us have probably had personal experience of that through so-called ““fishing”” e-mails. There are campaigns on many ways in which the public can protect themselves against various crimes, but I have not seen a government campaign warning of the dangers of replying to e-mails which encourage people to reveal their bank details, although individual banks make an effort to pursue this. It is astoundingly common for people to respond to those e-mails, which suggests that a campaign against them should be initiated. An area that has not been mentioned, and on which I should like to dwell very briefly, is that of domestic violence. It is depressing that this is still one of the commonest crimes in this country. It accounts for 16 per cent of all violent crime, it has more repeat victims than any other crime and on average, shockingly, 35 assaults will occur before a victim even phones the police. It still claims the lives of two women a week and 30 men a year. It affects a very large number of people in this country, not only direct victims but children who live in violent households. Is the Minister satisfied that there is enough standardisation of response across all police forces? While there have rightly been calls for a local ability to respond to local demands, that needs to be balanced with standard reporting so that we can see exactly how each force is performing. Gaps remain in the area of domestic violence that need to be filled. There is also a gap for which the Government are responsible because of their decision not to allow any recourse to public funds for women who do not have legal immigrant status but who are still subject to extreme domestic violence and have no option but to stay with the perpetrator of that violence or else to live on the street. While I appreciate that these women are illegal immigrants, this matter needs to be looked at—this has been commented on by Amnesty and other organisations—but the police’s hands are tied with regard to this very difficult issue. There are two ways of preventing crime. First, one can try to remove opportunity and temptation. The police campaign encouraging people to lock their cars and use identification marks on their possessions has been very effective. Police forces run very good campaigns to encourage people to use the newer technologies such as SmartWater to identify goods. Secondly, one can try to prevent people offending and reoffending although I am sure that the police must feel deeply frustrated about that. I do not want to take up time quoting prison statistics because I am sure your Lordships are well aware how high reoffending rates are, but I must point out that however well the police do their job it is being fundamentally undermined by a system of failing rehabilitation. Last week the Minister, Beverley Hughes, talked of targeting 1,000 children worst offenders with substantial intervention support. But as her Written Answer of 11 March shows, there are still about 96,000 other young people offending. It is shocking that each year there are 97,000 first-time entrants into the criminal justice system. This is a really big problem. I want to highlight a scheme that seeks to prevent crime. Community Action Through Sport, which runs over the county border in Cornwall, recently came to my attention. It is the brainchild of Chief Inspector Julie Williams, who had had a lot of complaints about the anti-social behaviour of young people in the town centre. A dispersal order was about to be introduced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act. However, she chose to take a very different course and set up a scheme that rewards young people for their good behaviour. Depending on the level of their good behaviour, they are awarded a sporting activity. If they help an old lady who falls over while getting off a bus, they might get a free swim in the local swimming pool. The chief inspector has forged a partnership between the local authorities and sports providers to reward young people who behave well, and publicise that in the community. The scheme has had another big benefit in that the perception of crime has plummeted in that area. Noble Lords mentioned that the perception of crime is a problem and a preventive scheme of that sort is extremely valuable and important. The chief inspector has to run the scheme in addition to doing her day job. It received some funding from the lottery which has enabled a full-time project officer to be employed to spread it further. This illustrates the difficulty of getting money for measures to prevent crime as opposed to it all being spent on locking people up. Important contributions were made to the debate. I was pleased that the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, devoted his speech to talking about traffic crime; he highlighted how many deaths occur a year due to traffic crime and speeding. Coming from a rural area, I know that that is one of the crimes that people most fear. I live at the end of the north Devon link road, on which a shocking number of deaths occur each year. People rely on the police to be in the front line in trying to persuade people to cut their speed on that road. When I talked to school pupils in the area as part of the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme I discovered that they were not worried about terrorism—one would not expect that in north Devon—but they were worried about dying in a car accident. This is a very real problem and I am glad that the noble Viscount highlighted it. The police have wide support on this issue, even from people who know that they are speeding and should not. A theme that ran through this debate was that political will is needed to shape the future of the police. We have had the Flanagan report and noble Lords have highlighted comments made by, among others, the Police Federation, that cutting central targets will allow police officers to deliver the type of policing that local communities want and will eliminate the ridiculous arrests that officers are often compelled to make to satisfy Home Office diktats. Those comments were echoed around the House by noble Lords who have great experience in these matters. The policing community and local communities are now holding their breath to see whether the Government bring forward a Green Paper that responds to the wide consensus about what is holding back the police and local communities from forming the sort of bond and partnership that they want in order to address the issues that they face. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to give the House some confidence in terms of a timetable to address that. There were some other very insightful and detailed speeches, from which I learnt a great deal, for example about Crimestoppers from the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, and from the noble Lord, Lord Imbert. The noble Baroness touched on the role of the media, and it is critical. Apart from ““Crimewatch””, which is a factual programme, there is ““The Bill””, which everyone watches. That counteracts somewhat the effect of the red tops, which is often to make people unduly concerned about crimes, because they perpetuate the fear or perception of crime that the police are working so hard to overcome. We have had a very valuable debate this afternoon, and I thank the noble Baroness for introducing it.