Alan Johnson
Main Page: Alan Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)Department Debates - View all Alan Johnson's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes with concern the Government’s failure to prioritise the safety of communities by not protecting central Government funding for the police; notes the conclusion of the Audit Commission and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary that any budget reduction over 12 per cent. will reduce frontline policing; pays tribute to the police and other agencies for achieving a 43 per cent. reduction in crime, including a 42 per cent. cut in violent crime, since 1997, and for maintaining that reduction through last year’s recession; notes that public perception of anti-social behaviour is at its lowest level since it was recorded in the British Crime Survey of 2001-02; further notes that the previous Government set out plans in its Policing White Paper to drive down policing costs whilst maintaining core funding; and condemns the Government’s policy of reducing police numbers, restricting police powers and imposing elected commissioners to replace police authorities, thus condemning the police service to unnecessary, unwelcome and costly re-structuring at a time when their focus should be on maintaining the fall in crime and anti-social behaviour.
The previous Government were the first since the end of world war one to leave office with a lower level of crime and disorder than when they came into power. In a previous debate when I mentioned that fact, the Home Secretary challenged it by rather bizarrely mentioning Michael Howard—now the noble Lord Howard of Lympne—who may have been many things, but was not a Government. Although it is true that the noble Lord Howard—recently much derided by his former colleagues—was the only Conservative Home Secretary in 18 years to preside over any reduction in crime at all, it was a modest reduction, to 4.6 million crimes a year, compared with 2.3 million in 1979, when the Conservatives were elected. In other words, without Lord Howard’s contribution, crime under the Tories would have more than doubled; thanks to him, it merely doubled, with violent crime rising by 168% and robbery by 405%.
The Conservative party that presided over that truly miserable record refuses to acknowledge the tremendous work of the police and other agencies in tackling its legacy. The Conservatives can no longer deny that crime has fallen, including violent crime, so they resort to saying that crime is still too high—and they are right: it is. But when they were in power, the chances of being a victim of crime were 40%; now it is 21.5%, the lowest since records began. The latest statistics, published by the new Government in July and covering 2009-10, confirm the trend. Both recorded and surveyed crime continued to fall, by around 9%, through the deepest global recession in the post-war era, thus effectively destroying the theory of Lord Howard’s fiercest critic, and probably his most feeble predecessor, the current Justice Secretary, that crime fell under Labour only because the economy improved.
The purpose of today’s debate is to set out why that record of success is being jeopardised and to highlight three specific areas: first, the Home Secretary’s failure to stand up to the Treasury and insist that policing and counter-terrorism be prioritised in the comprehensive spending review; secondly, her determination to restrict the ability of the police and other agencies to use DNA, CCTV and, now we discover, antisocial behaviour orders to deter and catch miscreants; and thirdly, the dogmatic pursuit of the abolition of police authorities and their replacement by a single elected commissioner.
In respect of the CSR, we know that some Secretaries of State are arguing vociferously for their Departments, but the one with the best argument is apparently content to take a 25% to 40% cut in her budget. Before Government Members seek to intervene on me with their Chief Whip crib sheets—subtitled “Patrick McLoughlin’s route to a ministerial career”—let me say that if Labour had won the general election, the Home Office budget would have been cut and the police would have had to make savings. That is not a matter for conjecture: £1.3 billion of savings that we would have implemented by 2013 are itemised in last year’s pre-Budget report, the Budget, last November’s policing White Paper and other public documents.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
On that issue, I have read the wording of the motion carefully, in which Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition make the point that it is the Government’s deliberate policy to reduce police numbers, which is not the case. I simply make the point that I made before, in the debate in July, that the shadow Home Secretary specifically said on 20 April that he could not guarantee that there would not be a reduction in police numbers. Does he stand by those comments in the election campaign, and does he not see that even a fair-minded person would think his contribution today just slightly disingenuous?
Alan Johnson
I knew that that one would be on the crib sheet. Of course it was right to say honestly to the public that no Home Secretary could guarantee that police numbers would not fall by a single police officer. The number of police and recruitment for the police are matters for chief constables and police authorities. What we guaranteed, as I will explain in a second, was that the central funding that the Home Office provides—which has led to the recruitment of 17,000 more police officers and 16,000 police community support officers—would continue to be provided, index-linked, because we considered crime and policing to be a priority.
The savings that we set out included £70 million in reduced police overtime, £75 million from business support and back-office functions, £400 million from procurement and IT, and £500 million from process improvement. My deal with the previous Chancellor—the one who did produce progressive Budgets—was to prioritise the police and security services by maintaining the 2010 level of central funding necessary for the continued employment of record police numbers, thus reducing the Home Office budget by around 12%, or £1.3 billion,without hitting front-line policing.
We have had a report from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and the Audit Commission endorsing that approach. The report, “Policing in an age of austerity”, concluded that
“cost cutting and improvements in productivity could, if relentlessly pursued, generate a saving of 12% in central government funding …while maintaining police availability.”
This is therefore not an argument about whether there need to be cuts to the police budget over the next four years; it is an argument about a cut of 12% or, as the Chancellor announced on 22 June, a cut of 25% for the Home Office, which he describes as an unprotected Department.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I assure my right hon. Friend that I thought of this question myself. On Monday I met the chief constable of Kent, who was concerned about the lack of information coming out of the Home Office. I do not know whether things were done in the same way when my right hon. Friend was Home Secretary, but although the Policing Minister said on Monday that we had to wait until 25 October for the comprehensive spending review, chief officers are now having to prepare their budgets without knowing even a ballpark figure for the cuts. Would it not be helpful if the Government could give an indication as to how much the figure could be, so that chief officers could prepare for what is inevitable?
Alan Johnson
I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. I do not think that the collegiate approach in this House has stretched as far as Members on the Opposition Benches getting the Government Chief Whip’s crib sheet. I know that that was his own question, although I suppose that it might have come from our crib sheet. The issue is this: we would not have revealed before a CSR what the settlement was. That is why it is difficult to itemise the savings in advance of a CSR. What can be done—and what we did with the police in the policing White Paper—is to identify those areas that I have mentioned and ensure that the police and the security services understand that we were prioritising police and security. Also, in this year Parliament, including those now on the Government Benches, approved the allocation of funding, knowing that there would be another pay increase in the three-year police pay deal. What has happened now is that the Government have not only demanded more savings this year, despite having to meet that pay increase, but frozen the precept. The police are in a far worse position, including the chief constable of Kent, than they would have been had we been in government.
It is extraordinary that the Government should refuse to add policing to health, education and international development as an area requiring special consideration. The Chancellor is fond of quoting Canada as a precedent for the kind of savage cuts that he heralded in the emergency Budget, but the Canadian Government were not foolish enough to slash police budgets. Expenditure on policing fell by just 0.1% in the years following the Canadian Star Chamber cuts, and then rose steadily thereafter. The number of police officers dipped by at most 3%. In this country, the budget will be slashed by at least 25%, which means a cut in police numbers of between 35,000, as estimated by Professor Talbot, the respected criminologist at Manchester university, and 60,000, according to the magazine Jane’s Police Review, which took what I hope is the exaggerated view that the cuts might amount to 40%.
The HMIC report means that there can be no further pretence that front-line policing can somehow emerge unscathed from this kind of budgetary carnage. As well as failing to protect central allocations, on which police forces rely for between 50% and 90% of their funding, the Government have placed a two-year moratorium on any increases in the local precepts. So much for localism. As a result, plans are already being drawn up in every police force throughout the country to cut the number of officers, as my right hon. Friend has pointed out. The 16,000 police community support officers, who are popular with the public and central to neighbourhood policing, are bound to go if there are cuts of 25%. As civilian staff, they are more easy to dispose of, which is why police forces such as Durham have already put every PCSO under notice of redundancy.
There was nothing about this in the coalition partners’ manifestos. Indeed, the Lib Dems, who believed that this country was under-policed, were promising to use the money saved by scrapping identity cards to recruit 3,000 additional police officers. We now have the Government’s own figures for the amount of money that will be saved by scrapping ID cards. I will willingly take an intervention from anyone on the Lib Dem Benches if they want to tell me how many police officers that equates to. Is it 3,000? No. Is it 2,500, 2,000, 1,000, 500, 200? No. If we used all the money saved by scrapping ID cards, we would get 117 extra officers, not 3,000. Would that we could look forward to any increase in officer numbers at all. It is now likely that the Lib Dems will preside over the loss of 3,000 officers every four months over the next four years.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful point about the contribution of the Liberal Democrats. Many people have wondered whether this Government would be any different if the Lib Dems were not involved, but are we perhaps now starting to see how they are involved? When we look at the cuts in policing, the decision to put yobbos on to the street rather than in prison, and they ways in which the Government are on the side of the criminals rather than of the police, we can see that the lily-livered Liberals are indeed making their contribution to government, just as people were beginning to wonder what they were doing.
Alan Johnson
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. During the general election, the Conservatives and Labour were united in saying, “Don’t let the Lib Dems anywhere near crime or national security—or immigration, for that matter.” We remember some of their policies in that area. I do not blame the Lib Dems at all for the Government’s policy on crime and policing. The Home Secretary has been careful to have only one Lib Dem in her team, and she is a very good Minister, but the Government have not allowed her anywhere near the important stuff in the Home Office. This policy cannot be described as a coalition approach. Certainly, the decision not to prioritise the police in the comprehensive spending review was made by the Conservatives.
I have mentioned the likely loss of police officers over the next four years. Let us have no doubt that cuts of this magnitude will also put national security at risk, as the most senior counter-terrorism officer in the UK has made clear. Insufficient resources will inevitably lead to the closure of regional counter-terrorism units, to fewer surveillance teams to monitor suspects, and to a reduction in the number of police officers who work full time on counter-terrorism.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Was my right hon. Friend concerned about yesterday’s announcement of the abolition of the Audit Commission? We are going to see massive cuts across the board, and the Audit Commission normally monitors, evaluates and supports the performance of the police. The cuts will have differential impacts, and in Swansea, 38% of the people are in public sector employment. They face massive cuts, and unemployment and education cuts are growing, which is fuelling more localised crime. Is he worried that we will not have the tools to assess what is happening, to enable the Government to channel resources to where they are most needed?
Alan Johnson
That is certainly an issue, particularly in the light of the HMIC-Audit Commission’s joint report. We must take a rigorous approach to its conclusion that, if the Government cut more than 12%, front-line policing will be affected. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Audit Commission has been done away with; I hope that HMIC will not come next.
As police numbers reduce, so will their powers. I shall deal with DNA and CCTV in a moment.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Before the right hon. Gentleman moves on to other matters, may I tell him that I have been listening carefully to the points that he has made about cuts? He knows full well that his Government had pledged to make 20% cuts in public sector spending. If they were not going to occur in the Home Office, where were they going to be?
Alan Johnson
When we were in government, we decided to pick the priority Departments, and the chosen areas were health, education, international development and crime and policing. It is extraordinary that the present Government—[Interruption.] Hang on! I am answering the question. It is incredible that the present Government believe that international development, health and, to a certain extent, education must be prioritised, and that they are more important than crime and policing. Quite frankly, I can say as a former Health Secretary that we did not commit to increase the health budget above the rate of inflation. That budget was £110 billion. I went from the Department of Health, which had a £110 billion budget, to the Home Office, which had a budget of about £10 billion. We would have saved £73 billion; we would not have gone for a saving of £113 billion, which Boris Johnson described only yesterday as cutting too savagely and too deeply. It is a central feature of this argument that the Government are going too far with the cuts and that they are failing to treat crime and policing as a priority in the comprehensive spending review, even though it is a priority for constituents everywhere.
During the summer, the Home Secretary made a speech saying that we needed to “move beyond the ASBO”. I want to make two things clear. First, the antisocial behaviour order is the most serious of a range of civil powers introduced in 1998 so that the police, local authorities and other agencies could tackle the problem in a co-ordinated way. They needed to tackle the kind of behaviour that falls short of criminality but nevertheless destroys people’s lives. These powers are not driven from Whitehall, as the Home Secretary suggested, but through community safety partnerships that involve community groups and social enterprises.
The second thing that we need to be clear about is that, where those powers are used effectively, they work. I shall lapse into what I hope is uncharacteristic immodesty for a moment when I say that they worked particularly well during my year as Home Secretary, when an additional emphasis was placed on the victim and on intensified activity in localities where public perception of antisocial behaviour was above average.
The social affairs correspondent of The Guardian said recently that these measures had had no discernible effect, but they had a discernible effect in the one place where an effect can be discerned—namely, the British crime survey. The Home Office, under the current Home Secretary, stated on 15 July that, whereas previous reductions had been in one or two specific areas,
“the reduction between 08-09 and 09-10”—
the glorious year of Johnson—
“reflects falls in the proportion of people perceiving a problem with almost all types of anti-social behaviour that make up the overall measure”.
That refers to reductions in abandoned cars, noisy neighbours, drunkenness, drug use, youth nuisance, litter, vandalism and graffiti. Those are all issues for which there were insufficient powers prior to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The statistical release went on to say that antisocial behaviour was now at its lowest level since records began, with, for the first time, a majority of the population agreeing that the police and councils were dealing with antisocial behaviour in their local area.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman cites statistics. Forensic Pathways, an organisation in my constituency, has used Home Office data to show that, although the volume of crime has fallen in the past seven years, the detection and clear-up rates have not fallen. So the cost of crime, per crime, is going up, and the police are becoming less efficient. Does he not think that, rather than ploughing money into a broken system, it is better to get the bureaucracy off the backs of the police so that they can do the job we want them to do, which is to detect more crime?
Alan Johnson
It is great to hear Conservative Members accepting that crime has fallen, as they spent so long dancing around the issue under the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). They were told off by the UK statistics authorities and by everyone who looked at the matter. Some people in the police force are looking askance at what this Government are doing. I mentioned the record under the previous Conservative Government. The hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) is right that the conviction rate needs to be tackled as well, but under the previous Conservative Government, it was not just the conviction rate and the detection rate that had not been tackled, as crime reached 4.6 million—a doubling—under the Tories. There was a 168% increase in violent crime and a 405% increase in burglary. Of course, the Labour Government can be criticised for aspects of what happened over the last 13 years, but what no Conservative Member can do is to suggest that somehow crime has gone up when that was in fact their legacy. If Britain were ever broken, it was broken between 1979 and 1997. The statistics I am citing are not mine; they are the Home Secretary’s.
The death of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter last year shocked this House and shocked the country. It had a profound impact on me as the incoming Home Secretary. That is why I wanted to intensify action. There is no evidence from this tragic incident that it is time to move beyond the ASBO. All the evidence, summarised so astutely by the coroner in that tragic case, showed that the police and local authority in Leicestershire were acting as if they lived in the pre-ASBO era, when no powers existed. One police officer said at the inquest that antisocial behaviour was nothing to do with the police. He was wrong. It is certainly not the responsibility of the police alone, but the police are responsible for it. That police officer was wrong, but 13 years ago, he would have been right. We have to be careful not to return to those days. The Home Secretary speaks of the need to tackle the root causes of this kind of behaviour as if she is unaware of Sure Start, free nursery education, family-nurse partnerships, family intervention projects, the education maintenance allowance, the huge increase in apprenticeships, the 30% increase in the number of kids from deprived areas going to university and all the other measures introduced by the Labour Government—yes, to be tough on the causes of crime, as well as on crime itself.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is providing us with an excellent list of the range of powers available to deal with the very complex issue of antisocial behaviour. It is not just about enforcement, as it is also about tackling the causes. Does he agree that the victims of antisocial behaviour disproportionately live in the poorest parts of our communities in Britain? Someone living in a nice leafy suburb behind a gated community might not appreciate the misery still caused by antisocial behaviour. That is why we need the powers to deal with the problem.
Alan Johnson
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who did a great deal during her time at the Home Office to pursue this agenda. I think that all social strata can suffer from this problem, but she is right in what she says about poor areas. That is why we must never go back to the days when the typical response to this problem on the Labour Benches was saying that we should not get involved in it. We did; we have; it succeeded. We pioneered restorative justice. We began linking drug treatment to prison sentences. We trebled investment in prison education. As a result, reoffending is down by 20% and youth reoffending by nearly 25%.
The Home Secretary said in her July speech that for 13 years people had been told that
“the ASBO was the silver bullet that would cure society’s ills”.
I want her to give me one example—just one—of a Minister ever making any such claim. We never did. It took a whole range of measures to deal with the spiralling crime that we inherited, and that is what we did. As usual, the only thing wrong with the Home Secretary’s pronouncements is the facts.
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
If the ASBO was such an excellent policy, will the shadow Home Secretary please explain why the chief constable in my local area wrote an article published in The Daily Telegraph on 30 July saying that
“we need to give people the confidence to tackle anti-social behaviour. In Germany, two thirds of citizens would intervene in public; in this country, two thirds would not. Referring everything to the police, and the legal system, is not the answer to every problem—nor is it affordable.”?
Alan Johnson
There it is, this is another “big society” argument—or “do it yourself”: there will not be any PCSOs and police numbers will be cut, so do it yourself. Actually, that article did not in any way contradict what I am saying. There is not one police officer or local government officer in this country and no one on a crime and disorder reduction partnership who does not understand that people have to work together using a range of measures, including getting communities involved. It works successfully where communities have decided to turn their own communities around, but they get help. What the Government are now proposing—the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) could not have put it more succinctly—is that people will get no help in future. That is the Tory argument that we are countering. As I said before, the Home Secretary is often accurate on everything except for the facts.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Following the irrelevant drivel that we have just heard in the previous intervention, is my right hon. Friend aware that Inspector Damian O’Reilly of my constituency, who has just won the Greater Manchester police’s community police officer of the year award and has been entered for the national finals, wrote to me to say:
“Were ASBOs to be abolished it would be devastating for both the community and the officers who put much effort into obtaining them, the problems would reoccur and the only winners would be the criminals?”
Alan Johnson
Yes, I agree. As I mentioned, ASBOs are the most serious of the range of measures to combat antisocial behaviour, as an acceptable behaviour contract or a simple letter to the parents of a miscreant might be enough to stop it. What we introduced, as the coroner in the Fiona Pilkington case pointed out, was 15 measures that the police and local authorities could use, dependent on severity of the behaviour. ASBOs, as I say, apply at the more severe end, but all those measures need to be used together, depending on the problem.
Alan Johnson
No, not again, if my hon. Friend does not mind; I have already given way once to him.
On DNA, the Home Secretary says with the smug piety that can have come only from working closely with the Liberal Democrats that our proposed way forward on the DNA database was disgraceful, because, she says with eyes blazing, it meant that the DNA of innocent people would be retained. That is what the right hon. Lady says and I see her nodding her head; it is a viewpoint that she uses against us. The fact is, however, that she proposes to do exactly the same. The difference is that we would keep the DNA profiles of those innocent of both serious and non-serious offences while she would keep the former but not the latter. Furthermore, we would both take the DNA from all those arrested and keep it for a sufficient period to check against previous crime scenes. The logic of the lofty argument that she has got from the Lib Dems—[Interruption.] I will come on to the issue of six years in a few moments. The logic of the argument that innocent people’s DNA is being kept is that we should not take DNA from anyone until they are convicted. Let me explain how nutty that proposition is; it is so nutty that it is not even a Lib Dem conference policy—always a good gauge of whether something is extraordinarily daft.
There is no evidence whatever that those arrested but not convicted of a non-serious offence have any lower propensity to be re-arrested than those arrested but not convicted of serious offences. I repeat—no evidence whatever. If there is, we will no doubt hear it put forward from the Government Dispatch Box. Mark Dixie, the man who brutally raped and murdered Sally Anne Bowman in her front garden, was on the DNA database because he had been arrested but not convicted of a pub-fight—a non-serious offence. If that DNA link had not been made, a guilty man would have remained free to rape and murder again and an innocent man, Sally Anne’s boyfriend, who had dropped her off outside her home after a blazing row witnessed by passers-by, would probably be serving a life sentence. Steve Wright, the murderer of five prostitutes in Ipswich, was on the DNA database because he had been arrested for suspected theft. He would not have been on the database under the Scottish model, which this Government want to adopt.
Furthermore, while the Scottish model retains the DNA of those arrested but not charged for three years—I come to the issue raised by a sedentary comment from the Minister for Immigration—rather than for six years as we propose, it also allows the police to extend the period of retention for unlimited further two-year periods. The next time Members hear the Home Secretary accuse Labour of wanting to retain the DNA of innocent people for six years, they should remind themselves that she wants to adopt the Scottish model. She wants to adopt a system that allows the DNA of innocent people to be retained indefinitely; a system that has no evidential support; a system that, according to the Association of Chief Police Officers, would cost an additional £158 million to administer because of all the bureaucracy involved in the two-year reviews; and—most important—a system that would have probably left 26 murderers and rapists unconvicted had it been in force last year.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
There is not a shred of evidence for that.
Alan Johnson
The Minister is in the Home Office now. He can seek the evidence. It comes from ACPO’s research, and it comes from Home Office statistics. That is why I used it when I was Home Secretary. That is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and I used it when we steered through legislation that was agreed to by the Minister’s colleagues. [Interruption.] During the wash-up period, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell said, “No way will we agree to this”, but they agreed to it. They could have stopped it, but they did not. I hope that that is because they have begun to realise their sheer folly—and I assure them that they will discover what folly there is in the actions proposed by the Government.
As for CCTV, we still do not know what the coalition means by its reference to greater regulation, or why it considers that there is a problem. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) that that reference definitely came from the Liberal Democrats, but we do not know what it means. Given the existence of the Data Protection Act, the Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act, all of which apply to the authorities responsible for public-space CCTV surveillance, it is difficult to gauge the problem, but in the light of the portentous speeches of the Deputy Prime Minister, we must conclude that the Government want fewer CCTV cameras because the Liberal Democrats have consistently accused the last Government of introducing a “surveillance state”.
I support CCTV and reject the argument that it offends civil liberties. Indeed, it protects the civil liberties of our citizens—and, as we have seen recently, those of the occasional cat dropped in a wheelie bin. I agree with the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who, in 2007, wrote this—it is excellent—in his local newspaper:
“I had been shown a community centre on a council estate that had been burned down in an arson attack… If only there had been CCTV, the attack might have been prevented or the perpetrator caught…. to those who claim that this all heralds a Big Brother society, I say, why should innocent people worry that someone is watching out for their safety?”
The right hon. Gentleman spoke for Britain then. The vast majority of the population would support what he said, although sadly it is not the view of the pseudo-libertarian Government of whom he is now a member.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
First, the episode of the cat in the bin was filmed not by state-controlled CCTV, but by CCTV that belonged to the householder. [Interruption.] There is a big distinction. Secondly, does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that many leading members of his party have expressed concern about the 13-year legacy of the last Government, and about the fact that the balance between policing and civil liberties has tipped in the wrong direction? All that we seek to do is redress that balance. It is critical to a right and proper society that policing and the rights of the individual are balanced correctly, but the right hon. Gentleman’s party failed to achieve that in 13 years.
Alan Johnson
Well, that went on a bit.
I am perfectly well aware of what kind of CCTV caught the cat in the bin. Mine was a throwaway remark, and I now wish that I had not thrown it away. But it is good to hear that the hon. Lady believes that we went too far, and wants to reduce the number of CCTV cameras. That is her point, is it not? Good.
I can tell the hon. Lady about the level of bureaucracy that will have to be introduced if the CCTV cameras are to be taken away from Catwoman’s observer and every other private household. It simply cannot be done. As for CCTV in public spaces, it is already governed by all the legislation that I mentioned earlier.
Alan Johnson
No, I will not give way again. It was tedious last time, and it would be tedious again. If the Government want to strike a blow against the surveillance state, they should sack Andy Coulson, not take away CCTV cameras.
We recently learned of another power that was due to be introduced, but is now held in suspended animation. This is a serious point. I refer to domestic violence protection orders, which received cross-party support earlier this year. They are designed to protect instantly women and children who are under threat. ACPO, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Women’s Aid and the Home Affairs Committee urged their introduction to close a major gap in public protection. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Committee.
There was no dispute whatsoever about the need for that measure, but although the Home Secretary has said that her
“ambition is nothing less than ending violence against women and girls”,
she presides over a regime that is threatening the enormous progress that has been made in tackling domestic violence over the last 13 years. There has been a 64% reduction since 1997. I am pleased to see that the Attorney-General is present, because he, with rather more grace than the Home Secretary, has recognised the significant increases in successful prosecutions and the sharp fall in the number of discontinued cases, as well as the amazing reduction in domestic violence. However, as the Home Secretary will agree, there is much more to be done in this crucial area.
Thankfully, the Government were forced into a U-turn on anonymity for rape defendants—mainly, I have to say, owing to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who pursued the issue tirelessly. I think that it is time to execute the same manoeuvre, and to get on with introducing domestic violence protection orders as quickly as possible.
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Domestic violence is an issue that should worry Members throughout the House, as, indeed, should all forms of violence against women. If the last Government were so concerned about it, however, can he tell me why it took them 12 years to produce a strategy to end it?
Alan Johnson
The answer is quite simple. The Home Secretary ought to do some research. From 1998 onwards we did not need a strategy, because we had introduced an action plan involving the changes that led to the reduction to which I referred. [Interruption.] The statistics that I quoted came from the Attorney-General and from the Home Office. If we had waited 12 years to introduce any measures to deal with this issue, we would not have reduced domestic violence by 64%.
As I said earlier, during the biggest global recession that we have experienced since the 1930s, crime fell by 9%. During the recession of the 1990s over which the Conservatives presided, it rose by 18%, and domestic violence doubled. That was the legacy of the broken Britain that we remember from those days. It is ridiculous of the Home Secretary to suggest that because we published a strategy to deal with domestic violence against women and young girls and then moved to the next stage, we did nothing for 12 years. We did nothing for 12 years except reduce domestic violence by 64%, and produce all the other statistics quoted so generously by the Attorney-General.
I have dealt with the reduced resources being inflicted on police forces with restricted powers. Let me now deal with the third part of the triple whammy: the imposition of elected commissioners to replace the hundreds of experienced councillors, magistrates and other citizens who sit on our police authorities. Here we see the “we know best” arrogance of the Government in all its depressing detail. The public did not vote for the abolition of police authorities at the general election, or for their replacement by an elected commissioner. This model is opposed by the police, by local councillors of all political persuasions, by ACPO, by the Association of Police Authorities, and by practically everyone who knows anything about policing.
The Local Government Association, under a Tory stewardship, says it does not believe that introducing directly elected individuals is the best way in which to strengthen police accountability. The association believes that such action
“will weaken the ability of the police, councils and other public services to cut crime.”
It could also “fragment local partnerships” and make a “place-based budgeting approach”—I am not sure what that is—“more difficult” to operate. Yet the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice has said:
“we are not going to consider other models, this is the model we are going to introduce, that is the coalition agreement.”
And so we have a rushed White Paper, “Policing in the 21st Century”. Incidentally, the Conservatives also produced one of these in 1993; it was called “A police service for the 21st century”, so the titles do not change much but the content certainly does. They published the more recent document on 26 July for an eight-week consultation period over the summer break. Helpfully, at the back of the document there is a code of practice on consultations, which includes the criterion:
“Consultations should normally last for at least 12 weeks with consideration given to longer timescales where feasible and sensible.”
Irrespective of where we stand on the political spectrum, the topic under discussion is a major issue about which there are deep reservations. To quote from the code of practice, it is “feasible and sensible” to have a longer consultation than 12 weeks; there is no argument whatever to curtail it.
The first objection to the proposal is its puzzling inconsistency in relation to the approach to elected mayors. While a referendum is necessary if a city or town might have an elected mayor, no such public consultation is proposed for the equally profound step of introducing a single commissioner to replace the collective and diverse wisdom of police authorities—and this, again, from a Government who preach localism.
There is, of course, an attraction in direct accountability; indeed, when we were in government we looked at the issue not once, but twice. However, the difference between us and the dogmatic zealots who now occupy the Treasury Bench—I excuse the Attorney-General from that—is that we consulted properly. Our 2004 consultation found overwhelming opposition to direct elections. Respondents pointed out the dangers of extremist groups succeeding on low turnouts, single-issue groups dominating, a move to a more short-term approach with re-election dependent on quick wins rather than long-term objectives, the politicisation of accountable bodies and the lack of public appetite for elections and the cost of running them. However, the case for directly electing the 17 members of the police authority—which is what we consulted on and which was Liberal Democrat policy at the last general election—is much stronger than that for the replacement of police authorities by a single elected commissioner. This is the most ill-considered and pernicious aspect of the proposal.
Sir Ronnie Flanagan looked at this issue in his 2008 review. He expressed the great fear about a single person with a political mandate exerting pressure that too readily conflicts with operational judgment. He pointed out that it may also be an impediment to collaboration—which, rightly, is a major part of the Government’s White Paper—since the vote for the post will be on localised issues rather than the largely unseen issues of cross-border collaboration.
Flanagan made a number of points from a policing perspective, but an even stronger argument concerns the loss of a body of people who are geographically diverse as well as diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender and background. The Government propose a new body—a police and crime panel—to oversee the commissioner. That is meant to provide the checks and balances. The body will, however, have no say on policing and no veto over the commissioner’s decisions. Therefore, we face the prospect of having an elected commissioner who, as the White Paper makes clear, will have a team of personal appointees, and a police and crime panel to overview the commissioner but not the police, whose overview will be conducted by a single commissioner whose decisions are final. Somewhere in all of this will be elected councillors—and in some places elected mayors. Chief constables will have to find their way around this maze, with all the additional costs involved, while trying to cope with the biggest financial upheaval the police service has ever faced.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
If it is okay to elect a Prime Minister and local councillors, why is it so wrong to give a local community the chance to choose the kind of policing it wants for its neighbourhoods? Why are the right hon. Gentleman and his party so hostile to local democracy?
Alan Johnson
This is a very different issue from that of elected mayors, because they have a broad remit. We introduced elected mayors, and we agree that the Mayor of London should chair the police authority. The trouble is that he finds doing that too hard, so he has stepped down and his unelected deputy is now chairing it. We agree with the Mayor chairing it, however; that is very important.
To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I believe, as do many other Members on both sides of the House, that the narrower a post’s remit, the more difficult is the argument that we should elect someone to the post by individual ballot, which I presume is why the Government are not suggesting electing the local leader of the health service or the local chair of an education authority. This is a fundamental argument. If there is a broad remit, part of which is policing, election is fine, but if someone is being elected to a post that addresses only one narrow remit, then I think it is wrong. I have serious concerns about this, and the Flanagan consultation showed that they were widely shared.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that one of the problems with having elected police commissioners—or whatever they are going to be called—is that policing organised and serious crime, which we do not necessarily hear about on our doorsteps but which reaches into our communities, will get deprioritised and will not be attended to as seriously as it should be?
Alan Johnson
I think that is absolutely right, and on this there is no difference between the Front Benchers. The Government refer in their White Paper to the “golden thread” of connectivity. That is a very important point; indeed, Sir Paul Stephenson made it in a recent speech. It is more and more the case that police forces have to co-operate across borders to tackle terrorism, cybercrime and serious organised crime.
Several generations of police reformers in the USA have regarded the British model of insulation from political control as a solution to their problems of corruption and partisanship. They also consider that the fact that America has literally hundreds of police forces makes their job really difficult. The point is that they cannot go back—once this kind of measure is introduced, that is it; there is no return. I therefore think the Government are being extremely foolish in going down this route. They suggest that there will be no political interference and that the commissioner’s powers will be little different from those invested in a police authority now, which begs this question: what is this upheaval for?
The Government say there is the problem of the invisibility of police authorities and we agree, as do the APA and the LGA. That is why so much effort is going into addressing that invisibility issue without jeopardising either the effectiveness of the really good people involved, who have served their communities well, or the crucial principle of the operational independence of chief constables.
I think there is a better solution and I offer it to the Government in a spirit of political generosity. If the Government are wedded to some measure of direct accountability, I believe a solution might be direct elections for the chair of a police authority while leaving police authorities in place and certainly not causing this huge upheaval—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I did not catch the sedentary comment of the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice; if he wants to intervene he can. I think that such elections would be a far better way forward and that the Government should seriously consider that alternative. Instead of the eight-week consultation period, the Government should opt for 12 weeks at least so that these issues can be properly debated. I also believe that if they decide to plough ahead with this they should at the very least give the local population a chance to decide in a referendum whether it wants to maintain the current system or move to a single directly elected commissioner.
On police powers, I say in the same spirit of political generosity that the Government should maintain the DNA legislation, which they supported in the pre-election wash-up, until 2012 when the database will have been in operation for six years. At that point there should be a review of the actual evidence, instead of us just having the projections that inform both our model of six years and the random guess plucked out of the air, which is how Scotland came up with the three year option. Then we can decide properly on the relative merits of the two models. Otherwise we are going to wipe all the DNA information from the database after three years and find out after six years that it is irrefutable that we needed to maintain that information for that length of time to catch murderers and rapists.
The Government should also not reduce the number of public-space CCTVs. I do not wish to interfere with the CCTVs outside Mrs Smith’s house at 42 Acacia avenue. We do not need to reduce CCTV coverage in public spaces.
On the most important issue—on police funding—the Home Secretary has to fight her corner to ensure that policing and security are prioritised in the comprehensive spending review and that cuts in the police budgets do not exceed 12%. As this Government’s honeymoon period draws to a close, they are vulnerable on many issues, none more so than crime and security, where the issue is not about political vulnerability; it is about the vulnerability of our citizens as they seek to go about their daily lives. Despite the successes of the past 15 years, from Howard to Johnson, the battle against crime and disorder has to be stepped up, not scaled back. I warn this House and Members on the Government Benches that the Government are taking the wrong approach and that by refusing to listen and consult they demonstrate not their commitment to civil liberties, but their failure to protect the most important civil liberty of all: the right to be safe from crime and disorder.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“notes the appalling fiscal deficit left by the last Government and reiterates the urgent need to restore the nation to economic health; recognises that the police will need to play their part in reducing that deficit; and welcomes the Government’s proposed policing reforms, which will deliver a more responsive and efficient police service, less encumbered by bureaucracy, more accountable to the public and, most importantly, better equipped to fight crime.”
The text of the Opposition motion and the 50-minute speech that we have just heard from the shadow Home Secretary provide yet more proof, if any were needed, of the utter state of denial of the Labour party. From listening to the shadow Home Secretary and reading the motion, one would wonder how on earth Labour lost the election; it had such a perfect record on everything. Let me just remind the House of its record. Labour doubled our national debt and left us with the biggest deficit in the G20. As much as Labour Members might now like to pretend otherwise, if they had won the election, they would have had no choice but to take action to reduce the deficit. We know that they were already planning 20% cuts—they just did not have the guts to tell us where those would come from. This afternoon, however, we were told by the shadow Home Secretary that they were going to come from health, defence and local government—[Interruption.] Labour Members say that he did not say that, but I asked him where the cuts were coming from and he said, “Well, they weren’t going to come from policing and education” and that he would have taken—
Alan Johnson
The right hon. Lady really does need to follow the debate and to read the documents. Some £75 million was to come from police overtime, £400 million from procurement and £500 million from process. This was all set out in the pre-Budget report, the Budget and last November’s policing White Paper—£1.3 billion-worth of savings. The Government can keep parroting that we have never set all this out, but the trouble is that we have and it is available to look at.
Mrs May
I say to the shadow Home Secretary that the intervention that he has just made was not the answer given to the question that I put to him earlier about the cuts and on which I was just commenting. The Labour party went into the election promising 20% cuts. He claims that those would not have come from the Home Office budget. I asked him where they would have come from and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) has made clear from a sedentary position, the right hon. Gentleman made it clear that they would have come from health—that is what the shadow Home Secretary was saying.
If the shadow Home Secretary will not listen to me—he does not appear to wish to listen to me on the issue of cuts—perhaps he will listen to the following:
“When ... Alan Johnson”—
flails at—
“the coalition for protecting NHS spending against cuts being inflicted elsewhere in Whitehall, Labour looks as if it is indulging in opposition for opposition’s sake. Comfortable it may be. But it will not bring Labour back to power.”
Those are not my words, but those of the former Labour Cabinet Minister, Alan Milburn. So let us hear no more nonsense from those on the Labour Benches about police budgets and police numbers.
Labour’s denial is not just about police funding; it is also about its record on crime and policing. I had hoped that the shadow Home Secretary would use the freedom of being in opposition to get around the country and to be out there meeting people and finding out what they really think about what is happening. He might, thus, have learned about the booze-fuelled violence that takes place in too many of our town centres at night, and about the gang crime in our cities and the antisocial behaviour that makes so many people’s lives a misery. But judging by his speech today, and indeed by the motion, he has not bothered to find out what people actually think—
Mrs May
Wait a moment. That is a shame, because there are occasions when the shadow Home Secretary stops playing party politics and is a bit more candid about his record and about our policies. On licensing, for example, he has said:
“I regret not doing more to tackle the problems caused by binge drinking during my period in office. The Government”—
this coalition Government—
“is right to stop alcohol being sold below cost price. It’s something we should have done.”
Mrs May
The shadow Home Secretary listens selectively to one or two of the things that we say; I have just made the point that sometimes he is willing to put aside party politics and to make statements of that sort. Sadly, we did not hear any of those statements in the speech that he has just given. Instead, we heard the familiar rewritten history of the past 13 years. Let us examine some of the claims that Labour makes about that period. It hired a record number of police officers, but it bound them so tightly in red tape that they are available on the streets for only 11% of their time.
Alan Johnson
I shall say two things on this. Those on the Government Benches are deriding Michael Howard so, first, I should say that it was the White Paper called “A police service for the 21st century”, produced under Lord Howard, that introduced all of the target regime and suggested that the Home Office should be able to appoint the chairs of political authorities. Some of that was the right thing to do. I know that he is derided by those on the Government Benches, but Michael Howard was actually a very successful Home Secretary.
My second point deals with the HMIC’s figure on availability. HMIC talks about the percentage of the police who are available at any one time to be on the streets. The police work in shifts, and some police officers are sick, some have to be in court, some deal with counter-terrorism and some deal with child pornography, so that statistic is meaningless. Many police officers have been quick to point that out. There is no way in which under the previous Government that availability rate would have been any higher.
Mrs May
I say to the shadow Home Secretary that I am deeply disappointed in what he is saying. I will tell him who that statistic means something to—it means something to my constituents, and to those of other hon. Members, when they do not see police on the streets. They know the reality, but sadly the shadow Home Secretary is not willing to accept it. The reality is that because of things that his Government did we have seen that police officers have been tied up in bureaucracy and red tape, kept in police stations filling in forms when they could have been out on the streets, where people want to see them and where they want to be.
This is not just about the bureaucracy faced by police officers; the previous Labour Government passed a record number of laws, but left office with nearly 900,000 violent crimes taking place a year. They spent a record amount on criminal justice, but they left office with 26,000 victims of crime every single day. Labour Members might think that that is a record to be proud of, but we do not and neither do the British people.
Mrs May
Once again, the trouble with the Labour party is that it is making up things about what our policy is, purely in order to meet the arguments that Labour Members want to bring into this House. On CCTV, we have said that we want better regulation of it and automatic number plate recognition—ANPR—and it is right and proper for us to introduce that. If the Labour party thought that there was nothing to be done about CCTV, why did it start looking at introducing somebody to examine the regulation of CCTV? The regulation of CCTV is important and I suggest to the hon. Lady that she does not go around trying to suggest that the Government are going to get rid of CCTV cameras as a result of our policy to regulate those cameras better.
The hon. Lady has given me a welcome opening here, because I wanted to go on to discuss not only the record of the previous Labour Government, but what we are going to do— that is despite the fact that this is an Opposition day debate. I want to talk about how we as the new coalition Government will deliver effective policing that cuts crime in an era of falling budgets, because we on this side of the House are determined not only to tackle the legacy of debt we have been left with by the last Government, but to make sure we deliver high-quality public services even as we reduce public spending. If we are to succeed, the policing reforms I announced to the House before the summer recess, which were so derided by the shadow Home Secretary, will be vital.
Despite spending more on criminal justice than any comparable country, we remain a high-crime country—the chance of being a victim of crime here is higher than almost anywhere else in Europe—[Interruption.] Those on the Labour Front Bench are making lots of comments from a sedentary position, but that is again part of the denial. The idea that this country is somehow a wonderful world where people do not experience crime or antisocial behaviour because of the impact of the last Government is completely false. We remain a high-crime country and we need to do something about it. The complacency on the Opposition Benches about this issue is, frankly, breathtaking.
Alan Johnson
Will the Home Secretary confirm that the figure, which is in the White Paper, comes from the international crime victims survey, which was last carried out in 2004 and surveys 2,000 people—in comparison with the British crime survey, which surveys 45,000 people—and sometimes takes its statistics from those convicted, a very important point that was raised in an earlier intervention, and sometimes has nothing to do with the level of crimes? It is not a basis for saying that we have the highest crime rates in Europe. Will she confirm that?
Mrs May
What I will confirm is that yet again, in this debate, we have seen from those who made up the Labour Government an unwillingness to accept what people out there see and feel on their streets. It is about issues of crime and levels of crime in this country that are not acceptable. Whatever the right hon. Gentleman says about the figures, I think that figures such as those that I quoted earlier—26,000 victims of crime a day and nearly 900,000 violent crimes a year—are not figures to be proud of. They are figures that we need to deal with. We need to do more and that means unfettering the police and allowing them to get out on the streets and to do what they should be doing, which is dealing with crime.
Alan Johnson
I thank the Minister for giving way. It will give him a chance to get his breath back.
I have said this consistently, and I will say it again very slowly. We set out in the November White Paper, the pre-Budget report, the Budget and other public documents savings of £1.3 billion over the next four years. That is about 12% of the Home Office budget. The HMIC report, to which the Minister referred, said that with a lot of effort it was possible to save 12% without affecting front-line services. That is the argument.
Nick Herbert
The right hon. Gentleman says that he would have protected police spending. So which budget would he have cut more deeply? Would it have been health? Would it have been defence? Of course Labour Members will not tell us, but we do know that HMIC has said that £1 billion a year—12% of the budget— could have been saved through better and wiser spending. We will not know the availability of resources until the outcome of the spending review on 20 October, but we are determined to protect front-line services.
When he was Home Secretary, the right hon. Gentleman would not guarantee police numbers. Perhaps that is not surprising, because we know that police numbers across the country were starting to fall on his watch. He knew that he could not guarantee the funding, and he knew what was around the corner.
The second part of the shadow Home Secretary’s contention was that we should make no attempt to protect civil liberties. His entire attack was based on what we planned to do in relation to the restoration of those liberties. The Labour party’s position is straightforward: the DNA that is taken from innocent people should be retained. The shadow Home Secretary based that on the argument that crimes would be solved, so why should he stop there? If the end justifies the means, why not take DNA from everyone? If the Labour party is suggesting that all people are potential criminals, they should believe that that would deal with crime. In fact, the end does not justify the means. Labour, the party that proposed 90 days’ detention without trial, still does not understand that if we undermine liberty and erode public confidence in law enforcement—if we take away freedom—we do not make people safer at all.
The third part of the right hon. Gentleman’s contention was that we should not accept the need for reform of policing. The Government believe that we must replace the bureaucratic accountability and top-down targets of which the last Government were so fond with democratic accountability, rebuild the bridge between the police and the public and reduce Home Office interference, so that we can give local people a real say over policing in their areas.
Labour Members raised various spectres. The hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) spoke of the risk of politicians being in charge of police forces. Who else should be in charge of police forces, other than elected people? Police forces must answer to someone, and I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that it might be right and proper for them to answer to democratically elected people. The shadow Home Secretary raised the spectre of extremism. That is a constant cry from the Labour party. The British national party won just 2% of the vote in the last election, but it suits Labour’s argument to suggest that extremists will be elected. We on this side of the House say, “Let us trust the people when it comes to who will be elected to these positions.” The people will decide who should represent them and hold the police to account.
We are determined that local authorities will still have a role on police and crime panels, and are determined to press ahead with this reform. The shadow Home Secretary said that the reform simply was not necessary. Why? Why, in 2003, did the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), propose directly elected police authorities?
“For many people”,
the Labour Government said then,
“the question of who is responsible for what in terms of keeping communities safe is simply unclear. We must rectify this. Strong, transparent accountability is vital for community confidence.”
In 2008 the Labour Government made the same proposal for introducing a form of direct elections into the governance of policing. The then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said:
“We are…committed to introducing a stronger link between those responsible for delivering policing and the public they serve. We will legislate to reform police authorities, making them more democratic and more effective in responding to the needs of the local community.”
Do Opposition Members think these arguments have changed? If they were right in 2003 and 2008, why are they not right now? Indeed, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) simultaneously said we should reject further restructuring—his motion says that—and proposed a third reform. He suggested just a few hours ago at the Dispatch Box that we should have directly elected police authority chairs. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, “Three strikes and you’re out. You’ve reneged on your promise to reform police authorities twice; why should we believe your latest back-of-the-envelope proposal to do it again?”
We, however, are determined to drive forward with our programme of reform, and it is reform that does not end at the greater accountability of local police forces. It includes measures to deal with serious and organised crime, the creation of a national crime agency, and placing police forces under strong duties to collaborate so they can cut costs and tackle crimes that cross force borders. It also includes a serious programme to tackle bureaucracy and to give the public more information through crime mapping and information about crime that is really happening in their streets—not statistics, which, frankly, the public no longer believe. It includes, too, proposals to reform the pay and conditions of police officers, and we start from the position, as we do across the public services, that we trust the professionals. That is why we want to return charging decisions to police officers, as was mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and for South Swindon (Mr Buckland).
The reforms move beyond policing, too. There are reforms of the licensing laws to deal with the problem of 24-hour drinking and reforms to the toolkit of antisocial behaviour measures to ensure the police and local authorities have the ability to deal with that problem.
We do not accept the right hon. Gentleman’s rose-tinted view of the years of the last Government. We do not accept what he described as the “glorious year of Johnson”. Where did that glorious year end up? It ended up with 10,000 incidents of antisocial behaviour every day, 100 serious knife crimes every day, 26,000 victims of crime every day and 1 million victims of violent crime a year. That is not a glorious record. Five million to 10 million crimes a year is not a glorious record; that is not a record about which the Labour party should be remotely complacent, yet Labour Members rise from the Opposition Benches and suggest nothing more needs to be done to deal with crime other than the ineffective remedies they proposed before.
What did the Labour Government spend their time doing? They spent it wasting money by amalgamating forces, creating bureaucracy with reams of guidance, introducing a policing pledge and spending £6 million a year on doing so, and, of course, creating new laws: 50 Acts of Parliament and 3,000 new offences, and not just offences that would help deal with crime. After all, did these offences make people safer? No, they did not. With their new laws, the Labour Government introduced 24-hour drinking and the so-called café culture, and they downgraded cannabis. They also released 80,000 offenders early under their end-of-custody licence scheme, which, of course, they scrapped just before the election was called. Above all, they spent and wasted industrial sums. They are in double denial: they created the deficit and they are failing to deal with it. We say that we cannot go on like this, spending more than three times the entire budget of the criminal justice system—that of the police, courts and probation service—on debt interest every year. We are determined to deal with the deficit and it is our responsibility to do so. That is the difference between the two sides—we are driving radical reform and they are stuck in the past.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
The House proceeded to a Division.