My Lords, I start by declaring my interests as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Policing, as chair of the anti-forced marriage charity, Freedom, and as an adviser to Airwave Solutions and to Lockheed Martin.
This debate has been enlivened by the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. Having twice sat on Metropolitan Police appointments panels which promoted him, and indeed having sat on a third panel which did not promote him and where he accused me of heckling him, I look forward to his future contributions in your Lordships’ House.
This Bill is a strange pot-pourri of measures. It reminds us that this coalition Government have run out of steam. And what do Governments do when they are short of legislation to make themselves look busy and purposeful? Why, they turn to the Home Office, because the Home Office can always be relied on to produce a ready-basted, oven-ready Bill, and this is the 2013 offering.
In fact, I support significant parts of the Bill—for example, the extension of the role of the IPCC, some of the new child protection measures, the creation of the new firearms offences, the extension of dangerous dogs legislation and the making of forced marriage an offence. However, it is counterintuitive to be weakening the powers to combat anti-social behaviour at the same time as 80% of the population believe that the problems have got worse in the past year. No doubt the Minister will explain that to us.
However, what is missing is the context. Overall, crime has declined in the past 15 years or so. The trend in burglary is particularly marked and has been remarkably consistent. However, the significant change in the past couple of decades is that new developments—homes, both new build and refurbished, schools, play areas, hospitals, and many others—have been informed by and have adopted the principles of Secured By Design. Indeed, this morning I spent an hour and a half looking at some of the homes that have been built on the new Olympic park site. They have all been built using Secured by Design principles.
Since its inception under the auspices of the Association of Chief Police Officers in 1989, Secured by Design has achieved a great deal. Secured by Design developments—those using the products and materials that it has approved—are half as likely to be burgled and they show a 25% reduction in criminal damage. This is at a modest cost. The additional cost of using Secured by Design standards in the average home is only £170. In one year alone, some 700,000 burglaries could be thwarted if appropriate security devices were installed, representing an annual saving of more than £1.97 billion. Indeed, the Association of British Insurers has estimated that the introduction of Secured by Design standards across the UK would bring more than £3.2 billion-worth of savings to the economy over 20 years.
This is a success story and one which I am sure the Government and the Home Office would wish to trumpet. Is it not strange then that this same Government are now seeking to undermine this success story? The Department for Communities and Local Government published—in the depths of August, typically—a consultation document seeking views on the results of the recent review of building regulations and housing standards. The proposals it is putting forward on the security of buildings suggest a two-tiered standard: a basic minimum level that could be generally required and a so-called enhanced standard.
The basic standard is demonstrably inadequate and has been shown to have little security benefit. Frankly, there is little point in specifying stronger locks. They are not much of a deterrent if the door in which they are located may be so flimsy that it can be kicked in with one firm kick. Even the enhanced standard would be lower than the existing Secured by Design standards, and they could be required by a local authority only where what is described as a “compelling” case existed for the higher standard to be applied in the case of an individual development. To make this compelling case, a local authority will have to demonstrate that the development will be subject to an “elevated” risk of burglary and that there will be a higher than normal impact of burglary on the tenants.
It goes without saying that this is a test that is almost impossible to pass in respect of a new development. What is more, the test has to be applied site by site in a way which is likely to produce confusion and added uncertainties for developers, who, when they submit a proposal, will not know whether the authority will be able to apply the enhanced standard. However, as has already been said, this enhanced standard will not be as beneficial as the existing proven Secured by Design guidelines. It will not be open to a local authority to require those proven guidelines, and to apply even the enhanced standards it will have to go through complicated processes to demonstrate the compelling case required by the DCLG, with all the implicit threats of legal action that that entails.
This is the antithesis of localism. I may need to be corrected on this but I believe that it is a policy of this Government that localism is a good thing. But this is saying that local authorities shall not apply these higher standards that have been drawn up and are proven to work. Surely it should be for local people through their locally-elected councillors to decide what level of security is appropriate for their own neighbourhoods. Instead, those same local people are being forced to accept a centrally driven dumbing- down of standards, which puts their communities and individual householders at risk.
This is all being put forward as a simplification of the planning process and that somehow these Secured by Design standards, which on average cost £170 per dwelling, have been the cause of stalled developments. What world are DCLG Ministers and officials living in? Have any of them had to live in an area blighted by excessive crime facilitated by poor design and inadequate security standards? Local authorities should be able to choose the level of security standards that they consider appropriate for the communities that they represent. What is the problem that Ministers think they are
going to solve by preventing that local democratic discretion? What is more, we can only assume that no consideration has been given by the Government to the consequences down the line. This change, which will curtail police influence on planning for secure facilities, is dangerous and short-sighted.
What it risks is that the progress that has been made over the past two decades in designing out crime, reducing burglary and making anti-social behaviour harder will be put into reverse. What it risks is adding to the costs of the criminal justice system. If we throw away the advantage that designing out crime has given us, how will our communities cope in the future with a diminished police force and neighbourhood policing being no more than a distant memory while the threat of crime rises again? Who benefits from this short-sighted policy? The only people who will benefit are the developers who will see an increase in their profits. Yet again we see a Government who neglect the many in favour of the privileged few.
What representations did the Home Office make about these ill thought out proposals? Is the Home Secretary powerless in stopping her Cabinet colleague, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, discarding 20 years of progress in reducing crime? May we perhaps have an assurance that, even at this late stage, Mr Pickles will be reined back? If we do not get some progress on this there is frankly no point in having this Bill, worthy though some elements of it may be. We might as well acknowledge that this Government are prepared to give up the fight against crime, solely to placate a handful of privileged developers.
Unless we get some serious assurances from the Minister on these points, this Bill will be rendered an irrelevance. We might as well pack up now. Unless we get some assurances tonight, I for one am not prepared to support this Bill receiving its Second Reading and will be not content.
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