Home Affairs and Justice

This has been an interesting and unexpectedly lively debate. I am pleased to say that three Conservative Back Benchers were able to speak, but that rather more spoke from the Government Benches. [Interruption.] Well, it is unwise to make charges at the beginning of the debate. I enjoyed the speech made by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert); it must have been the first time that the adjective ““tantric”” has been worked into a debate on the rather solemn and sober matter of crime and justice. I am grateful to him for his approbation for my second outing in the other place: walking backwards twice in front of Her Majesty. [Interruption.] I am also grateful for that sedentary comment that I looked marvellous. That is what the Home Secretary also said to me, and I shall tell my mother. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman's claims at the end of his tantric remarks that all would be much improved were there to be a Conservative Government would be slightly more credible were the experience of previous Conservative Governments to be in that direction—the simple fact is that it is not. I brought this book out earlier, and it is well worth reading—copies are available in the Library, as well as on my bookshelf. I am talking about the 1994 conservative party campaign guide. It is a wonderful source of information, and it makes a central point on pages 413 and 414. The book dates from the time when luminaries such as the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), and the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), were fully involved in the Conservative party as advisers or researchers; they were almost certainly writing this book. The Conservatives were pointing out on those pages, with glowing self-praise, the great value that the party had brought to a wider understanding of crime figures by the then Government's establishment of the British crime survey in 1981. They said:"““Unlike the figures for recorded crime, which show the number of crimes reported to the police, the BCS endeavours to build up an accurate picture of the number of crimes actually committed.””" They then apologetically said:"““Inevitably, the BCS shows that more crimes are committed than are actually reported to the police””." I ask my hon. Friends, because sometimes this is disputed, to note the second tire, which says:"““While recorded crime doubled between 1981 and 1991, the BCS shows that the actual number of crimes committed rose by…50 per cent.””" So, that is all right then. During the Conservatives' 18 years in office, crime rose by 50 per cent. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), the deputy Chief Whip, ought to know that on becoming a Whip he takes not tantric vows—we will tread lightly on that one—but Trappist vows, and he ought not to make interventions. I think that he is paid, unlike any of his Front-Bench colleagues; that was a matter of great resentment when I was doing a proper job on the Opposition Front Bench and remaining silent. I am perfectly willing to concede to him that the BCS and, I believe, the recorded crime figures showed that something of a reduction in crime took place between 1995 and 1997, provided he is willing to concede to Labour Members that the same BCS that the Conservatives established has shown that since 1997 there has been not a 2 or 3 per cent. reduction in crime, but a 32 per cent. reduction. That is paralleled by reductions in recorded crime, too. The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) mentioned violent crime and, as his right hon. Friend the Leader for the Opposition sometimes does, he said expansively that violent crime had doubled in the past 11 and a half years. In 1998, I was presented with a submission that, I suspect, had been around the Home Office for many years. The officials, quite properly, could not tell me that, but it seemed to me to be of an antique nature. The submission stated that the recorded crime figures as they then were did not properly present what was going on locally in reports to the police of crimes that had been occurring in those areas. A number of proposals were made to me for changing the way in which recorded crime figures were reported and recorded. The consequence of that statistical change, in some series, would have been an 80 per cent. increase in the level of offences recorded—and that was what happened. Against the advice of some people in the Government—I am unrepentant about this—and because I have always been committed to integrity in official statistics, as the record shows, I said that we ought to make the changes, notwithstanding the fact that much mischief would be made with claims that we were increasing crime, which we were not. A consequence of the change was that common assaults were included within the figures for violent crime as recorded crime. As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows well, such assaults are not only common in description but are the most common offence of violence. The result of the change and of another change in the national crime recording standards has been an increase in the numbers of crimes of violence that are recorded by 100 per cent. That does not in any way represent an increase in the level of violent crime taking place in our society. Proper debate cannot take place unless Opposition parties, as well as Government, are willing to recognise the reality behind the statistics as well as making the kind of points that they do.