Home Affairs and Justice

I am far more worried about the possibility that a populist, who was not necessarily badged under the BNP logo but might be running as an independent or whatever, could secure election in some part of the country under the proposals of hon. Gentleman's Front-Bench colleagues, or could be running a crime and disorder reduction partnership under the Government's proposals. Those seem to be real risks, so if we want to avoid confrontational politics in holding our police forces to account, and if we want to make sure that police authorities are genuinely representative of all the strands of opinion and the different groups and minorities in their force areas, we must look again at what the Government propose, and we must not go the way that the Conservatives suggest. There is much to be welcomed in the proposals for crime mapping. As I said, I welcome extra transparency, and if we can reach a situation whereby people, locally, where it really matters, understand what is happening to crime—and, by the way, to clear-up and detection rates in their area, which are not included in the Government's proposals—we can increase reassurance that crime is being adequately dealt with. That is important. I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield that there are real doubts in the public mind about the integrity of crime statistics, in part because it is easy to point out contradictions between the recorded crime figures and the British crime survey figures. I have little doubt that the BCS data, for reasons that Conservative Ministers gave when they were last in government, are the best for assessing long-run trends, but I should like the Office for National Statistics not to have a mere tick-box regulatory role but to take direct, hands-on responsibility for the statistics. I can remember the 1980s, when the Conservative Government changed the definition of unemployment almost every other month. By the end of the decade, public faith in the unemployment figures had virtually disappeared, and it was necessary to re-establish public faith by ensuring that the figures were seen to be collated by an entirely independent body removed from those using the data to make political points. I very much hope that there will be broad consensus for the proposals. We are very much in favour of many of the measures that the Home Secretary has announced in this place and elsewhere. Many of them were trailed in the press—not, I suspect, a leak but a brief: in government, ““we”” brief, but ““they”” leak. There were a number of briefings, which seemed highly orchestrated, about the advantages of ending binge drinking with measures to restrict promotions and super-cut-price deals. Much of that, however, is to use legislation as a press release rather than using existing legislation to increase the number of prosecutions of off-licences for selling to people who are under age. That problem is extraordinarily prevalent. One survey suggested that 40 per cent. of establishments selling alcohol are prepared to sell to under-age drinkers, and do so—yet the existing law is poorly applied. There has been an increase in the number of prosecutions relating to the sale of alcohol to under 18-year-olds; in England and Wales, the figure has increased from 105 in 2002 to 854 in 2006—the latest figures available to me. However, in comparison with the scale of the problem—if it really is the case, as the survey suggests, that 40 per cent. of establishments are selling to under-age people—the number of prosecutions is still just scratching at the surface. We need to be much tougher in dealing with this issue. The Home Secretary spoke about the immigration Bill. The Liberal Democrats will support the Government's commitment to the integration of ethnic minority communities, which is absolutely crucial and a vital part of ensuring that a proper immigration policy works, but why are the Government cutting funding for non-English speakers? There has been a 39 per cent. plunge in non-English speakers enrolling on English language courses: the number is down from nearly 550,000 to 335,000—the lowest since 2001-02—[Interruption.] The Minister for Borders and Immigration suggests that the figures are somehow false, but they come from the Government's answers to our parliamentary questions.