Home Affairs and Justice

First, our proposals do not touch on London, precisely because an existing arrangement in respect of the Mayor is bedding in. Outside London, we believe that our proposals will be markedly better than what the Government are putting forward. The size of the police areas with which we are dealing would mean that it is most unlikely that a directly elected police commissioner would be hijacked by any single interest group. The problem I have with the Home Secretary's proposals—although we have yet to see the detail—is that a system by which we have directly elected members of the police authority who are also, as I understand it, to be chairing the crime and disorder reduction partnerships in the areas that they represent strikes me as much more susceptible to the very politicisation that our proposals are designed to avoid. I hope that we will have an opportunity for a reasoned debate on that issue, because I am always prepared to listen to the Home Secretary but its strikes me that the Government's system is much more likely to create the problems that the Home Secretary is raising her eyebrows about than our proposals. In due course I will seek to persuade the Home Secretary, and doubtless the hon. Member for Eastleigh, that the ideas that we are developing—I accept that they are not fully finished in their detail—will offer a much better model than what the Home Secretary has in mind. We share a common aspiration, which is to improve local accountability. My fear is that I do not think local accountability will be improved. I think that there is a much greater risk that single-issue politics may intrude, which the Home Secretary and I share a desire to avoid at all cost. Subject to that, I will listen carefully to the Home Secretary, but it would be wrong of me not to highlight my concerns about this aspect of the policy. One cannot be in favour both of increasing centralised Government control and of handing back accountability to local communities; that is the other point I would make. The Government still think that they can direct policing better than the police and still think that they know local priorities better than local communities. Our policy will be to release forces from the iron grip of Whitehall and to vest real control over law and order at a local level. May I turn to what has been said about trying to take action to seize the assets of the Mr. Bigs in the criminal underworld? It is a laudable aim, but one is bound to make the following point to the Government. They set up the Assets Recovery Agency in 2003, vowing to put the fear of God into criminal gangs living the high life from the proceeds of crime. It cost £65 million to set it up, but it managed to recoup a mere third of that in criminal assets. In fact, it failed abysmally. The Government swept it into the Serious Organised Crime Agency, but that agency's record is equally poor, missing by a wide margin each of the targets set by Ministers for forfeitures, confiscation and restraint orders. So now the Government are yet again proposing to create new law to try to address basic failures in law enforcement. We have already touched on the issue of 24-hour licensing. We believe that a large part of the binge-drinking problem comes from the introduction of that reckless policy. The Government announced a tough crackdown on retailers, pubs and clubs, and Ministers are right to be concerned. Last year there were 1 million victims of alcohol-related attacks. Alcohol-related admissions to accident and emergency wards are up by a quarter, and 24-hour drinking has resulted in a 25 per cent. increase in late-night violence. These are appalling statistics, and the Home Secretary would do well to take account of them. We have for months been calling on the Government to reverse the 24-hour drinking policy and to replace it with local authority control over licensing. We have also called for a ban on loss-leader alcohol sales, and I am glad that there appears to be some movement on that. A rise in tax on high-strength lagers, beers, ciders and alcopops would enable us to lower tax on lower alcohol drinks associated with responsible drinking. We will look carefully at the Government's review of happy hours and promotions, but on its own that is an inadequate response to the social problems that antisocial and binge drinking are causing. We will also take a constructive look at the Government's proposals to create new criminal offences relating to prostitution and to tighten controls around lap-dancing clubs. I share the Home Secretary's wish for decisive action to be taken against those profiting from prostitution and human trafficking. Why, however, has she cut the Metropolitan police's human trafficking unit, which was the most effective such unit in the country, and why have convictions for trafficking for sexual exploitation halved in the last year from what was an already low and declining rate? [Interruption.] Do Labour Front Benchers wish to intervene? A private conversation is taking place, but I am happy to give way. The current much-hyped proposals will do nothing to provide the unequivocal signal that we need to send to those engaged in human trafficking that they will not go unpunished. We now have the seventh immigration Bill since the Government came into office. That is the surest admission that they keep getting it wrong, but we will look carefully at their new powers for the UK Border Agency, and I was very pleased to hear today the unequivocal commitment that they will not require individuals to prove at random and without cause their identity just because they have been out of the country for any period. We also think that further tinkering with the points system will be no substitute for an overall annual limit on economic migration. The immigration Minister has now made the position clear on several occasions. Will the Home Secretary join in the consensus? My hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) will address in further detail the Justice Secretary's proposals to reform coroners' procedures, strengthen victim and witness protection and reform the law on homicide. I am sure that there is much in those issues on which we can engage constructively, but I will just make two points. First, any attempt to reintroduce the power of Ministers to remove coroners and juries from inquests will be firmly resisted. Secondly, we are pleased that the Government have dropped plans to reform the Sentencing Guidelines Council so that criminal punishments depend on the levels of prison capacity—a proposal that would further weaken the justice system and undermine public confidence. We cannot support attempts to weaken criminal justice just because the Government have failed to provide enough prison places. We had at one stage expected the Government to introduce proposals for a new communications data Bill to provide wide new powers for the collection, retention and sharing across Government of even more personal data. It was reported last month that the Home Secretary's officials had advised that the original proposals were"““impractical, disproportionate, politically unattractive and possibly unlawful””." Can the Home Secretary confirm whether that advice reached her, and whether she agreed with it? I assume that she did because of her sensible decision to consult, which we entirely welcome. I suspect that the Home Secretary and her Department will have the sympathy of many Members across the House about the Home Office's legitimate concerns in this area. We will look carefully at any proposals that she presents, and test the justification, proportionality and safeguards rigorously, robustly and with an open mind. The Government, and in particular the Home Office, now have one of the most extensive and intrusive security powers available anywhere in the democratic world. It is noteworthy that today one aspect of that—the collection and retention of the DNA of those who have never been charged or convicted of offences—has fallen foul of the European Court of Human Rights. I am delighted to learn that, and I long believed it would be the outcome to the challenge to the Government's incoherent position on the subject. It would be nice to learn during the course of today's debate how the Government intend to move to put right this wrong that has been perpetrated and that has caused immense upset to large numbers of law-abiding people, as I have routinely found from the letters I have received in my mailbag. There are also concerns about the national identity card register proposal and the further attempt to force through the measure of 42 days of detention without charge. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 has been stretched well beyond its original focus of dealing with serious crime and terrorism, and we have the onset of a surveillance society that has been outpaced only by the rise of the database state. The Home Secretary is wrong about the repeated suggestions from Government that if Members do not agree with any particular security proposals they care less about tackling the threat of terrorism than she does. I wonder what way of life will be left for our children if we do not start to get the balance right on matters such as DNA and surveillance and start to restore some common sense into our arguments, and if we fail to question, and if necessary resist with all due vigour, incessant Government requests for more oppressive and intrusive state powers. This is not ultimately a question of balancing security and liberty, because we cannot defend our freedom by sacrificing it. Time and again the Government have proved that they cannot be trusted with the powers and authority enacted by Parliament. That is one of the key issues we will have to address. If ever there was a time to question the powers of counter-terrorism police and to test ministerial accountability over, and responsibility for, the unwieldy security apparatus built up over the past 11 years, and to make the case for resisting the Government's periodic attacks on the right to trial by jury, it must be now, when a Member of this House has been arrested carrying out his work. Parliament itself—the heart of our democracy—suffers at the hands of what increasingly appears to be an unprecedented abuse of state power. It is an abuse of power that this Home Secretary says she knows nothing about and does not wish to take responsibility for. We need much better than that.