Immigration Rules: Paragraph 322(5)

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss).

I will concentrate on one case—that of my constituent, Mr Iftikhar Ahmad—although there are many others. He has run a business in this country that employs other people since 2011. He is also a victim of the Prime Minister’s hostile environment. I do not know what it says about the state of our country that we have ended up with a provision that was designed to protect us from terrorism being used to pick on people for minor tax difficulties, but it does not make it sound to me like the sort of place anyone would particularly want to live.

The Minister must know perfectly well that whenever MPs raise this issue, the replies they get are wholly inadequate. We get a cut-and-paste letter with a standard stamp on it, which tells us that nobody bothered to read our letter and that there is absolutely no prospect of our being told when the matter might be dealt with. I do not blame the Minister for the hostile environment—the Prime Minister created that state of affairs when she was at the Home Office—and I know that since this issue got a bit of attention in the press, the Government have announced that it is no longer their policy. I was delighted to hear that.

Despite the limited time, I wonder whether the Minister will tell us honestly what happened. She is the Minister left holding the baby. What happened? How did we end up in this state of affairs? Will she give us a clue about what she thinks is the number of people affected? I certainly have reason to believe it is well over 1,000. The number of people affected by Windrush started small, but we suddenly discovered it was much bigger. How many lives like the ones we have heard about are being wrecked as a result of this situation, and what will she do for people such as Mr Ahmad, his wife and his three children? He cannot provide for them anymore. Just like everybody else who is affected, he has almost spent his life savings—savings he accumulated through his hard work in this country, while he was paying taxes and helping the rest of us. He is almost spent up. Will the Minister give him a chance to work while the review is concluded?

Police Station Closures: Solihull and West Midlands

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Julian Knight]

The £9.5 million is a significant sum in that respect; I will move on to where, specifically, I think the money should come from, in terms of the police and crime commissioner.

Devolution does not mean leaving each region simply to sink or swim on its own. At Westminster, we help to oversee the pooling and sharing of resources across the UK. I was therefore pleased that the Government recently announced hundreds of millions of pounds in extra cash for policing, including a £9.5 million boost for the West Midlands police, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) has just referred to. I was confident, along with many of my constituents, that that had put our vital police services on a secure footing, so hon. Members can imagine my shock when I learned that the commissioner plans to close Solihull police station and many police stations across the west midlands.

Let us be clear: there is no good financial case for this closure. According to the press, Mr Jamieson is sitting on a £100 million reserve. On top of that, he recently spent an extra £10 million on non-frontline staff, many of whom do very valuable work but cannot substitute a strong, local police presence. In such circumstances, extra cuts to frontline services are completely non-justifiable. We must not underestimate the significance of this: until recently, our town had two proper community police stations.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I want to ask about the £10 million for non-frontline staff. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that we are talking about fraud investigators, child abuse investigators, 999 call handlers and forensic scientists? Does he think that getting rid of those will help to drive crime down or up?

[Julian Knight]

Of course, I recognise that the non-frontline staff do very valuable work. However, as I will explain shortly, the police and crime commissioner cannot say that his cuts will make a substantive difference either to frontline services or to these non-frontline staff.

In my view, what Mr Jamieson has done is a straightforward breach of trust. When Shirley police station closed its doors in 2015, local residents were reassured that the Solihull branch offered a long-term future for a properly resourced local police presence. Now, less than three years later, it is to go, too. Instead of the Solihull branch, the commissioner proposes to have a front desk somewhere in the borough, but even though the consultation on that proposal is under way, we have not been told where that will be or what precisely it will comprise. Before Solihull police station is closed, I strongly believe that local residents have a right to know exactly what will replace it. At present, they are simply being told to trust Mr Jamieson—as I have already explained, they have no reason to do that.

Worse, research by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who is here today to show her strength of feeling and support—as a Whip she is not permitted to speak—raises serious doubts about the extent to which the money raised from the sale of our police station can be redirected to frontline staff. According to the Library, police and crime commissioners are allowed to move funds from their capital to their revenue accounts only in very limited circumstances—primarily to deliver structural changes and to unlock long-term savings.

My constituents deserve to know whether—and how—Mr Jamieson actually intends to use the sale to boost local policing, as I have certainly heard nothing about new capital projects in Solihull or in any of the constituencies of my hon. Friends. It will not do for our police station to be sold to finance new programmes in other parts of the west midlands. My constituents should be given clear assurances that any revenue savings made by closing the station will be spent to boost local police services, and that there is not carte blanche to redirect them all over the place.

Not that local residents have had much of an opportunity to have their say—stakeholders have been offered only 18 working days to respond to the consultation, and originally no point of contact at all was provided for the general public. Only after a lot of chasing by my office was an email address finally provided for the public. Other concerned MPs, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, and I were not even given the courtesy of a call before the details were released to the press. My colleagues and I find that the commissioner is growing ever more autocratic in his dealings with us and our communities, issuing diktats from the centre against the will of local residents.

Solihull is a large town with a distinct character. Residents expect to see that fact reflected in their public services. Local Conservatives and I fought hard over the past few years to secure a devolution deal for the west midlands that brought power down from Westminster, while protecting the authority and independence of our local council. Decisions such as these will only confirm many of my constituents’ worst fears about how communities like Solihull risk getting short-changed by regional institutions that focus too heavily on major urban centres.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Good afternoon, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. There are mixed views about the value of police stations. Paul Kohler, a London university lecturer who was subject to a savage beating when a gang broke into his home, has stated that he is still alive only because of the rapid response from the police station, which is 300 yards from his home in Wimbledon. It is pretty understandable that someone who has had that horrendous experience takes that view. However, my neighbours live about 3.2 miles from the nearest police station, so they could not possibly benefit similarly. The current Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, stated that she believes having police out on the streets is the best guarantee of a rapid response.

What we know about the west midlands is that the latest settlement means a real-terms cut. Even after we increase the precept for some of the poorest families, we are left with a £12.5 million gap. Forcing us to rely on the precept to fund policing means that we end up with less than Hampshire, despite its smaller population and lower levels of crime.

“Closure of police stations” is not always accurate as a description. In some situations, it refers to the closure of public desks rather than an actual facility. To return to the plans for the west midlands, I understand that only two of the 24 buildings for closure are police stations open to the public. As we have heard, the purpose is to save £5 million a year in order to protect 100 police officer posts. Given that we now have 2,000 fewer officers than in 2010, I am anxious not to see any further loss of personnel.

There are currently 10 publicly accessible front desks across the west midlands, and the proposals set out to retain 10 publicly accessible front desks. We must bear it in mind that some 361 police stations closed between 2010 and 2012. The police, to be fair, point out the cost of keeping such buildings open and the often low level of usage by the public.

Back in 2012, a report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary warned that 264 police stations would close to the public over a three-year period, as chief constables attempted to balance the books. The then Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), responded by saying that what mattered was that frontline policing was preserved. That same view was expressed three years later by the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), then the Policing Minister. He said in a Westminster Hall debate in 2015 that it was not about buildings but about people. However, the Tory police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley threatened legal action against the Home Office over cuts to his budget in the same month of that year, because he said they would force him to close three police stations with the loss of 147 jobs.

When the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) was Policing Minister, he considered the closure of police stations to be an operational matter for chief constables. And, of course, in a famous memory lapse, the former Mayor of London—now the Foreign Secretary —complained about the closure of a police station in his constituency, having forgotten that he had ordered the closure of 65 police stations.

Arguments about the closure of police stations are not new. The received wisdom of the Government to date is that it is an operational matter; that it is about putting police on the street rather than in offices and adapting to new ways of working. That is, it would appear, until we are talking about the west midlands and a Labour police and crime commissioner.

We should not be mourning the closure of police stations. The problem before the House is not local mismanagement but the culmination of a series of untenable cuts that started when the present occupant of 10 Downing Street was the Home Secretary and which continue today, destroying the capacity of our police to control the streets and protect the public from violent crime.

Police Grant Report

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I want to start, as the Minister did, by paying tribute to the men and women who serve in our police service. The counterpart to this debate took place a little under a year ago, and no one could have imagined the unspeakable series of attacks that would follow in 2017. Throughout, our police service officers have risen to the highest standards of bravery, dedication and duty, truly honouring the founding principles of policing in the process. Chief among that covenant is that our police service depends ultimately on public support. After a year in which we have seen officers run into danger to keep the public safe, the police can rarely have counted on such strong public support as they enjoy today.

But I know from speaking to those officers that they are tired of warm words, backed up with no action from politicians. Today they are under sustained pressure the like of which the service has rarely, if ever, encountered, and today we have heard that there is not to be a single extra penny from central Government for local police forces.

Before I go into the detail of the funding settlement before us, I want to deal with the demand that the Minister says he recognises the police are under. Between 2010 and 2017 the average number of 101 and 999 calls has rocketed; in South Yorkshire it has tripled. Just last year 999 calls increased by 15%. Forces such as the West Midlands police are receiving the number of calls on one day in June that they used to receive only on new year’s eve. In the last year overall crime has risen by 15%, the largest increase since records began, violent crime is up by 20%, robberies by 29% and sexual offences by 23%. Last year over 1.4 million more people than the year before experienced antisocial behaviour, while the number of orders handed out fell by a quarter. Yet those are only a tiny proportion of the issues our police have to deal with.

On becoming Home Secretary, the now Prime Minister told the police their only “mission” was

“to cut crime. No more, and no less”,

but 83% of calls to command and control centres are non-crime-related. They are calls associated with mental health—last year the Met took an average of one mental health call every five minutes—or with missing persons, a demand that has tripled for some forces over the last seven years. They are associated with a raft of vulnerabilities, because, as other services buckle, the police are relied upon more than ever as the social service of last resort.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, contrary to what the Minister has alleged, what Labour Members are doing today is standing up for their constituents and voting against cuts that are unsafe and putting our constituents at risk?

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Today we will be voting against a completely inappropriate police funding settlement that leaves our communities exposed and the public at risk.

On top of all the demand I have listed, there is the unprecedented terrorist threat our country now faces. It is frankly unbelievable that, as the National Police Chiefs’ Council has recognised, the report before us fails to meet those growing needs and exposes gaps in the protection of the public.

So we have no choice but to vote against the motion tonight. We do so for three key reasons. First, the report prescribes an eighth consecutive year of real-terms cuts in Home Office funding. Secondly, it pushes the burden on to hard-pressed local taxpayers, and the very areas that have seen the most substantial cuts will get the least, inevitably creating a lottery of winners and losers that has no place for public safety. Thirdly, it fails to meet the needs identified by police chiefs, first and foremost in the area of counter-terrorism but also in local policing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I should say at the outset that I might have to leave before the end of the debate as I have to take the Chair in Westminster Hall.

As the Minister would not do so, let me begin by acknowledging that the cash freeze in this settlement is, when we take inflation into account, actually a real-terms cut for West Midlands police. That is what the Government are doing to policing in the west midlands. It is in addition to the 2,091 officers we have already lost and the £145 million that has been cut from the budget since this lot came to power.

The West Midlands police and crime panel has agreed to the commissioner’s request to add an extra £12 to the precept paid by already hard-pressed council tax payers—had it not, the situation would be even worse—but given the high number of band A and B properties in our area, the west midlands simply does not have the same revenue-raising capacity as places such as Surrey or Hampshire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) said. Hampshire’s population is almost 1 million smaller than that of the west midlands, but Hampshire will raise more through its precept, meaning it will experience budget growth as a result of the settlement, whereas even after a £12 council tax increase, West Midlands police will still be £12.5 million short of the money needed just to stand still.

Today’s settlement is a ministerial announcement of a further cut to policing for the people of the west midlands. It will mean fewer officers, even less neighbourhood policing, slower response times and the closure of 28 police stations. We have heard a lot of talk about reserves, so let me be clear: other than the basic requirements for insurance and emergencies, West Midland police’s reserves will be exhausted by 2020. We spent what was in the kitty on making up for the earlier cuts; there is no secret hoard at Lloyd House. Of course, the Government are quick to argue that they have given extra money for counter-terrorism, but the Minister needs to recognise that £47 million of the £50 million received by West Midlands police has already been spent. Such policing costs £100,000 a day when the threat level is critical, and neighbourhood policing, which is already virtually non-existent in many of the communities that I represent, ceases to function altogether.

Our chief constable says that given the challenges his force faces, he cannot understand why, as the largest force in the country apart from the Met, we are spending below the national average per capita on policing. Basically, there is not enough money to provide a properly resourced police service in the west midlands. The public can no longer expect police protection when they need it. The 101 phone service is a joke, routine burglaries do not get a response, the clear-up rate is falling and public confidence is at an all-time low.

Some 92% of my constituents who responded to my recent crime survey said that the Government’s reduction in the number of police officers had proved to be a false economy. Why will the Government not admit that they have got it wrong? How long will we have to put up with the “emperor’s new clothes” farce we witnessed at Prime Minister’s questions today? The Prime Minister must be the only person in this country who thinks that crime is falling, just as she was the only one who thought that stop-and-search powers were a bad idea. Well, try telling that to the parents of a knife crime victim.

The simple truth is that we cannot rely on the Government to keep dangerous rapists and violent criminals in prison after they are caught. We cannot rely on them to provide a properly resourced probation service to supervise criminals on the outside, and now we cannot rely on them to provide enough money to police our towns and cities. Their record is one of total failure. The Minister should be apologising; he should be ashamed of himself.

Policing

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

Mr Speaker, may I place on record the fact that I note your earlier remarks?

I thank my hon. Friend for recognising the changes that have occurred in society. I know for sure that my constituents are much more vulnerable to crime online than they are when they walk up and down Ruislip high street, and our policing needs to respond to that. I also understand the importance that our constituents attach to seeing the police on our streets. Getting the balance right around capabilities is the job that we have given to police chiefs and democratically accountable local police and crime commissioners. I thank him for welcoming the increase in investment, and I am sure that he will make representations to his police and crime commissioner about the allocation of the additional resources.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Given the huge number of A and B council tax band properties in Birmingham, is not the reality of the proposals that the poorest people in Birmingham are going to pay the most for a declining police service, in what is becoming the worst-funded police force in the country?

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Gentleman and I, along with other west midlands MPs, had a constructive conversation about the challenges of policing in the region. I simply do not see how local people will be worse off, as he is trying to suggest, from an increase of £450 million in investment in our police system next year, including an additional £9.5 million for the West Midlands police. I do not see how he can, with any real integrity, present that as downgrading the police force.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I am happy to confirm that the Prime Minister is always right. I will certainly look carefully at the letter the hon. Lady has received to ensure that we comply with it.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does the Home Office accept that there are some areas of police activity—tackling aggressive antisocial behaviour and domestic violence, and some aspects of counter-terrorism work—that are in danger of being severely undermined unless additional specific resources are made available, especially for efficient and hard-pressed forces such as West Midlands?

[Amber Rudd]

We accept that police forces are under pressure because of the high level of terrorist activity this year, which has been unprecedented, and because of the success of some of our campaigns to increase reporting, such as on child sexual exploitation and domestic abuse. We are looking at what we can do, which is why we have invited comments from all police forces and will be taking them into account.

Aggressive Antisocial Behaviour

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered tackling aggressive antisocial behaviour.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bailey. For seven years, the standard response of Ministers to any question or doubt about crime and antisocial behaviour has been an assurance that crime is falling. Those of us who ventured that police budgets were being cut too deep and too fast, exposing areas such as the west midlands to severe grant reductions, have been brushed aside. I have lost track of the number of Ministers who think that all is solved by the stock answer that crime is falling.

It is certainly true that the crime survey for England and Wales provides a valuable picture of long-term trends for certain types of offences, but it does not necessarily capture the picture on the ground for other types of crime, so it is wrong for Ministers to rely on those statistics to the exclusion of all else. The fear that dominates the daily lives of real people and their families is not addressed when Ministers issue such a stock reply.

Estimates are especially unreliable when it comes to particular types of offences and, as a consequence, we frequently underestimate certain crimes. Sexual offences and child sexual exploitation, about which we are beginning to learn much more, are good examples of underestimated crimes. Antisocial behaviour almost certainly also falls into that category. Until 2015, the headline figures also excluded fraud and computer misuse. When those figures are added, the number of crimes rises from around 5.9 million to around 11 million, which suggests that there is even less room for complacency.

Not that long ago there were major debates about the need to improve the quality of police recording of crime. When recording is done properly, we have a more reliable measure to assess recent or current trends. In the last year alone, police recorded crime increased by 10%—the biggest year-on-year rise in a decade—which includes a 20% surge in knife and gun crime. That rise is actually accelerating; a 3% increase in the year to March 2015 was followed by an 8% rise in 2016.

Turning to antisocial behaviour, most people think of their home as their sanctuary, their castle, and the place where the troubles of the external world can be set aside, if only for a short time. But what if home is not like that? What if, because of aggressive antisocial behaviour, intimidation, threats and harassment, a person’s home becomes just another place of risk and fear—a place where they can be subjected to deliberate and intolerable levels of noise, and where dangerous and uncontrolled dogs are allowed to run free, threatening children? What if walking a few hundred yards to or from their own front door risks a confrontation and potential assault? What if the immediate vicinity of their home is plagued by thugs with motorcycles, who constantly congregate outside or nearby?

According to some reports, there has been a 1% decrease in antisocial behaviour incidents. I find that impossible to believe. Try telling my constituents that antisocial behaviour is declining. As far back as 2012, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary reported concerns about the wide variation in the quality of decision making associated with the recording of antisocial behaviour by police forces. That resulted in a review, but as budgets are increasingly stretched, I find it hard to believe that there has been a vastly improved focus on tackling antisocial behaviour. We are talking about offences including vehicle and bike-related crime, vandalism, criminal damage, graffiti, nuisance neighbours and extensive intimidation, involving threats, verbal abuse and domination of whole neighbourhoods.

Not only do Ministers say that crime is falling but they regularly tell us that they have protected police funding. That is simply not the case. The reality is that the central Government grant remains largely the same, and the shortfall in police budgets has been transferred to the council tax precept. Analysis by the Library tells us that since 2010, police expenditure from tax and grants has fallen by 5% in cash terms and 13% in real terms.

The National Audit Office has pointed out the effect of that sleight of hand: the force areas most affected by funding reductions are those that are most reliant on the police grant. Four of the five forces that are most dependent on the central Government grant—all, incidentally, in the midlands and the north—are those experiencing the worst overall budget reductions. I am sure that the Government understand perfectly well that economically depressed areas with a relatively low council tax base are not capable of making up for the loss of central grant, even if they raise the council tax precept to the maximum permitted level.

In the west midlands, which is one of the hardest hit areas, we have faced cuts of £130 million since 2010—the highest proportion in the whole country. In 2017-18, we have suffered a further £6 million budget cut. The chief constable has recently been forced to point out that policing will “break” unless forces are given “real terms protection”. In Northumbria, the chief constable has said that his force is close to no longer being able to provide a professional service. The chief constable of Avon and Somerset police said:

“We now face a tipping point. We cannot sustain further funding cuts without extremely serious consequences.”

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case on behalf of his constituents and the city of Birmingham. The West Midlands police service has suffered a real-terms cut of £18 million this year. The chief constable has warned that the force is stretched to the limit. The police and crime commissioner has said that call-out times are getting longer; they are now up to 24 hours for 999 calls about domestic violence, and the police often do not turn out at all to deal with antisocial behaviour, although it is said to be very serious. Does my hon. Friend agree that the first duty of any Government is to ensure the safety and security of their citizens, and that it is absolutely wrong that the Government have cut 2,000 police officers from the West Midlands police service, putting the public at risk?

[Steve McCabe]

I agree totally. Those reckless cuts and the Government’s refusal to recognise the consequences are the reason why we are experiencing such problems.

As well as giving us a hopelessly complacent message about crime falling, Ministers for far too long have tried to tell us that this is all about back-office savings—that the police are top heavy in administration and there is plenty of fat. As my hon. Friend says, the figures tell a different story. The number of police officers in the country has fallen for seven consecutive years, despite all those promises to protect the frontline. Since 2010, more than 20,000 police officers and 6,000 community support officers have been axed.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the falling numbers of police officers, and especially community police officers—in my region of Yorkshire, more than 400 have been lost—has a huge impact on antisocial behaviour, such as crimes committed on off-road bikes and mopeds, which plague communities like mine in Barnsley? Does he agree that more needs to be done to tackle it?

[Steve McCabe]

I do agree. It seems to me that one feature of policing, particularly in relation to antisocial behaviour, must be deterrence. If people feel that they will not be caught and there will be no consequences, there is nothing to inhibit their behaviour, and that is exactly what we see in communities right across the country at the present time.

Policing has now reached a historic low, with forces at their lowest strength per 100,000 of the population since records began back in 1979. In the west midlands, as we have heard, we have 2,000 fewer officers compared with 2010 and there are 50% fewer community support officers. Conversely, better-funded forces such as Surrey, which benefit from the perverse nature of police funding decisions, have managed to increase their numbers of police officers for their low-crime communities over that same period. That says something about priorities and attitudes to crime and antisocial behaviour.

All of this is having a profound effect on police morale. The Police Federation report for 2017 shows that 58% of officers have reported not having time to do the job to the standard they would be proud of; 57% report being single-crewed, which increases operational risk, and 39% report high job stress.

I was recently told of an incident by someone who works in community safety. There was a local neighbourhood disturbance, with about 40 youths with weapons roaming the area, threatening each other and carrying out attacks. After several members of the public made repeated calls, a police car eventually turned up, sirens blaring. The youths scattered, and naturally there were no arrests. It turned out that the occupant of the police car was the duty inspector for the area, who was the only officer available. He freely confessed that he had had no choice but to turn up sirens blaring in the hope that he might scatter the youths. Is that really the level of policing we should expect in this day and age when our neighbourhoods are under attack? Force-wide voluntary resignations increased by 11% last year, and long-term absence is at record levels. Our police are stretched to breaking point.

It is hard to see how any Minister could come to the House with a straight face and continue to argue that the impact of their cuts is not affecting operational performance. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary’s police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy report for 2016 talks of the risk that forces are struggling to meet demand and are resorting to artificial means of suppressing that demand. The report suggests that that might be done by downgrading the severity category of a call or by setting a quota for the number of cases that get referred for special assistance. For example, a number of forces are increasingly dealing with calls for service over the phone rather than deploying officers to visit the victim. That can be very inappropriate in certain types of cases—for example, assault or sexually related offences—and there can be no guarantee that the person charged with conducting the phone call has the correct skills to carry out such an interview.

Particular areas of concern are the large number of incidents in control rooms that do not receive an appropriate response, as referred to earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). An immediate response should be within 15 to 20 minutes and a prompt response is usually within an hour. In either event, that is likely to be too long to prevent a crime or, in most cases, catch a perpetrator red-handed. However, in far too many cases, calls are not allocated for several days. That is consistent with the many examples of which Members will be aware from their constituents, saying that they phoned the police but did not hear back or that officers attended several days later but made no attempt to take finger prints or record any other significant details that might help identify the culprit. In too many circumstances, the response to a crime is a perfunctory police appearance, well after the event—that is if they turn up at all.

Across the United Kingdom, the number of abandoned 999 calls more than doubled in the 12 months from June 2016, rising from 8,000 to nearly 16,500 across 32 forces. The number of 101 calls abandoned over the same period also rose—by 116%. In total 230,000 calls were abandoned; 101 is the number that the police prefer the public to use to report antisocial behaviour. That is the reality of much police response in this day and age.

As I have said, we have to be careful about relying on ministerial fantasies that crime is falling. Half of police forces inspected since August 2016 have been rated as “inadequate” for failing to record hundreds of thousands of crimes reported to them—approximately 219,000 crimes a year. Only three forces were rated as “good”. West Midlands police were found to have failed to record an estimated 38,800 crimes. In 2015-16, no further action was taken in 74% of recorded offences and by 2016-17 that had increased to 76%. By far the largest category of “no further action” cases resulted from a failure even to identify a suspect. It is not hard to see why crime is rising if the fear of being caught is rapidly diminishing.

Perhaps I may take this opportunity to remind the Minister of the importance of those findings and the store the Government place on HMIC inspections. The former policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), told us that

“HMIC’s rolling programme of crime data integrity inspections will keep the spotlight on forces to improve the accuracy of their crime recording.”

That is exactly what HMIC is doing, and it is reporting an increasing number of forces unable to cope and, in many cases, opting to downgrade the reality of the crime people are experiencing.

There is little evidence of a robust Government response to those HMIC warnings. Ironically, even HMIC is seeing its budget cut, with a 14% reduction in cash terms since 2012. First the Government cut the police, and then they cut the agency charged with keeping track of police effectiveness. Is it really that surprising that there has not been an HMIC report on force handling of antisocial behaviour since 2012?

The Government have embarked on a dangerous road. It is important to remember that, as part of the incoming coalition Government’s efforts to diminish the Labour legacy, they put arguments about civil liberties ahead of issues of public safety. In everything from control orders, designed to protect us from would-be terrorists, to antisocial behaviour measures, Ministers set out to loosen existing legislation and controls. To some extent, the changes were cosmetic, but they had an impact, as can be seen from the reduction in the use of stop-and-search powers, and the corresponding increase in knife crime.

The then Home Secretary branded Labour’s antisocial behaviour measures “bureaucratic, expensive and ineffective”. She embarked on a series of changes that led to a loss of focus on bearing down on antisocial behaviour, as practitioners had to take time to learn new language and procedures for tackling existing issues for which powers were already proving quite effective. However, it was more than a rebrand. Abolishing ASBOs and introducing injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance was a weakening of the stance on antisocial behaviour. Breach of an ASBO was a criminal offence; breach of a civil injunction was a civil contempt, carrying a much lower maximum penalty. Significantly, under-18s can be dealt with only by the youth courts, where the penalties are lower.

Also, collapsing ASBOs and related measures into a civil injunction effectively removed the graduated response that Labour’s measures were designed to achieve. It is true that there was a fairly high breach rate for ASBOs, but acceptable behaviour contracts and antisocial behaviour injunctions were stepping stones prior to an ASBO. There were stages to be gone through, and warnings could be issued if the initial response failed to quell the unacceptable behaviour. The Government’s changes swept all that away, along with all efforts to monitor the effectiveness of the legislation.

The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice regularly respond to questions about the effectiveness of their policies with the standard defence that it would not be cost-effective to collect the information requested. Indeed, the Government have contrived to make it virtually impossible to measure the effectiveness of their response to antisocial behaviour. Not only do they fail to collect information centrally; county courts do not do it either. Consequently, the only way to obtain information on the Government’s injunction strategy would be to examine individual case files. In fact, the Government have no capacity to link arrests, recorded crime, and prosecution and conviction data. They have no idea of the effect their policies have on crime and antisocial behaviour.

Labour’s approach was not just about court orders. Family intervention projects were established to provide focused work on those families considered most likely to generate antisocial behaviour problems. In 2007, the Department for Communities and Local Government produced a report that found that both criminal and antisocial behaviour had declined markedly at the point when those families exited the programme. The risk that they would face eviction because of their behaviour had also considerably reduced. Once again, the incoming Government sought to change things, and introduced a decentralised troubled families programme, with a significantly broader focus and, of course, fewer resources. It coincided with huge cuts in local authority youth programmes and other social services spending.

Despite early positive claims about the troubled families programme, an independent evaluation found that there was no significant impact across its key objectives and that it was not possible to evaluate estimates of savings, despite Government attempts to argue that the policy had resulted in savings of £1.2 billion. That, of course, was at a time when Ministers were keen on arguing for payment by results. However, the independent evaluation noted:

“The financial framework could have been significantly improved if it had followed the model of other programmes, which included a requirement to demonstrate that results were attributable to the programme.”

It is my contention that those changes in legislation, and the loss of focus, have damaged our ability to tackle antisocial behaviour. I attended a recent meeting of a community safety panel covering my constituency. I was impressed by the commitment of those present—about 23 people, including a fire station commander, who chaired the meeting, a police inspector, two councillors, a community representative and several council officers. It was a two-and-a-half-hour meeting; they are bi-monthly. It was full of presentations, which I must say I found interesting. However, what I did not get was that CompStat feeling: where were the raw data and the demand to do better? Where, indeed, were the results, and demands for action? I fear that, without greater direction from the senior echelons of the various agencies, community safety panels will become another part of the local bureaucratic apparatus. They are well intentioned, but what issues will they resolve?

It was interesting to hear that the panel had noted an increase in gang activity in south Birmingham and was concerned about an emerging picture suggesting that children are getting involved in gangs at a much earlier age, and that membership is no longer confined to those from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds but embraces those from what we might regard as quite middle-class homes. It seems to me that that information supports my view that we are losing control of our neighbourhoods, and that we need Government-directed activity and local intelligence to come together to provide clear action plans to tackle the threat posed by that emerging gang culture.

Neither the Home Secretary nor the Prime Minister made a single reference in their conference speeches to antisocial behaviour. It is clearly not on their radar. Nor did they mention police resources. It is all very well the Home Secretary saying that she plans to keep the police safe, but how safe are they if there are not enough of them to do the job and they are exposed to risk every time there is a local incident? There was a passing reference in her speech to a review of moped crime—I hope that will also cover motorcycle crime. I welcome that, although my constituents would like a timescale and a promise of clear action. Perhaps the Minister can update us on what the Government intend. Also, where is the evidence that under-18s are the greatest offenders in acid attacks? If there is not such evidence, what exactly will be achieved by the Home Secretary’s announcement on the matter?

I reassure the Minister that I do not raise these issues for the sake of it. A recent analysis that received more than 1,000 responses in my constituency highlighted the priority that my constituents accord to such matters. More than 70% reported being very concerned about the rise in crime. With respect to the visibility of, and access to, police and community support officers, almost 90% reported experiencing a decrease; 92% regard it as a false economy that the Government have pursued a policy of reducing police numbers, especially when so much money can be found for other items. Nearly 40% of those I asked about the 101 non-emergency police number had never heard of it. Of those who had used it, nearly 30% reported that it was unsatisfactory. The chief complaint, which will be no surprise, is the time that it takes to get through. Too many people are left hanging on, and are forced to give up. Those who do get through often find the response unsatisfactory.

Bearing in mind that I am a Birmingham MP and that what happens in London does not reflect the whole country, the Minister may want to note the fact that nearly 75% of those responding to the survey thought that we might need to look again at the rules on stop-and-search. I remind you, Mr Bailey, that it was the present Prime Minister who championed curtailment of the use of stop-and-search. I wonder whether the increase in acid and knife attacks, gun crime and gang activity suggests we may need to listen to the majority of our constituents, who are asking about their civil rights.

Often in crime surveys it is argued that people’s fear of crime is a much bigger issue than their actual experience, so I asked how many of those responding had been a victim of crime or had someone close to them experience a crime in the past 12 months. Over 50% said that they had; that is not exactly a picture of crime falling or a situation that is under control. One of the few aspects of antisocial behaviour the Home Secretary acknowledged in her conference speech was the problem of moped and motorcycle crime and associated offences—94% of respondents said that it is time to come up with new ways of tackling that menace, as current methods are simply not working.

What should we do? Clearly, we need a greater uniform presence, and to that end I support Labour’s sensible and costed proposals for an extra 10,000 officers. I recognise that it takes time to recruit and train such numbers, so in the interim we can perhaps look at making better use of other personnel, such as transport police, council security staff and even some traffic wardens. I draw the line at suggestions that employees of private security organisations such as G4S should be given the power of arrest, and I hope that the Minister will knock that on the head today.

I advocate that we need to examine stop-and-search once more, particularly where there is evidence of a high risk of weapons being carried and increases in knife and gun crime and other violent assaults. Members will recall that the Prime Minister claimed in her 2014 conference speech that the number of black people being stopped and searched had fallen by two thirds as a result of her intervention. However, the figures show that although overall stop-and-search is down, the number of black people being stopped and searched as a percentage of the total has actually risen. It is a failed policy. Discrimination needs to be tackled, but not with red tape that ties the police in knots and puts the safety of whole communities at risk.

I do not understand why, in an age of high-quality cameras that are so small and relatively cheap, it is so difficult to mount more successful surveillance operations in areas where particular types of street crime such as theft, assault and carjacking are prevalent. When it comes to the pursuit of those on mopeds and motorcycles, why is more attention not given to drone technology, and where local communities are clearly being intimidated, why not make more use of professional witnesses to identify and prosecute prolific offenders?

We need to see a new energy in tackling aggressive antisocial behaviour, with guidance from the Home Office to chief constables, police and crime commissioners and local authority chief executives making it clear that it is a priority and must be tackled. That should be coupled with a reinvigoration of community safety panels, with a clear emphasis: their job is to collect and analyse data, so that they can demonstrate how they are getting on top of rising neighbourhood crime and aggressive antisocial behaviour. If the Government are determined to hide behind the cloak of localism, they must issue guidance on how data are collected and shared on the success of measures such as criminal behaviour orders and civil injunctions. We must be able to see reliable comparisons, so that there is proper evidence about the scale of the problem and the success and failure of existing strategies and policies.

I support the development of a national transformation fund to tackle some of the worst areas of deprivation, but we should also entertain the idea that such an approach should be coupled with a new family intervention programme, so that those who create the most problems are not simply left to enjoy state benefits without any obligations on their behaviour. We need to revisit their entitlement to enjoy rented tenancies in areas where they cause untold trouble.

In circumstances where the perpetrators are homeowners or responsible for those living at their abode, we need to be bold. Where the culprit or someone regularly living under the roof of that person is guilty of persistent aggressive antisocial behaviour, we need to change the law so that eviction is the end point. Local authorities should be given new powers with the police, so that those who persistently practise aggressive antisocial behaviour, or permit its practice from their dwelling, can have their property made subject to a compulsory purchase order—effectively forcing them to leave the area and preventing them from continuing to practise the evil that they have inflicted on innocent victims for too long.

The simple truth is that the last Labour Government picked up the challenge of aggressive antisocial behaviour in our neighbourhoods and did something about it after years of neglect. The present Prime Minister has failed us on that vital area of crime by cutting our police, ignoring the predicament of our constituents and allowing crime and antisocial behaviour to grow. It is time for a substantial change.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Adrian Bailey (in the Chair)]

Do you want 20 seconds to wind up?

[Steve McCabe]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (in the Chair)]

I thought not.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered tackling aggressive anti-social behaviour.